Developing enterprise collaboration: a methodology to implement and improve interoperability

The aim of this article is to present a methodology for guiding enterprises to implement and improve interoperability. This methodology is based on three components: a framework of interoperability which structures specific solutions of interoperability and is composed of abstraction levels, views and approaches dimensions; a method to measure interoperability including interoperability before (maturity) and during (operational performances) a partnership; and a structured approach defining the steps of the methodology, from the expression of an enterprise’s needs to implementation of solutions. The relationship which consistently relates these components forms the methodology and enables developing interoperability in a step-by-step manner. Each component of the methodology and the way it operates is presented. The overall approach is illustrated in a case study example on the basis of a process between a given company and its dealers. Conclusions and future perspectives are given at the end of the article.     

An axiomatic design framework to design interoperable buyer–supplier dyads

ABSTRACT

Cooperation arrangements in the form of buyer–supplier dyads are a way that companies have found to deal with the current competitive environment. Despite the contributions in the interoperability literature, a cohesive framework is lacking that would allow the systematization of solutions for interoperable problems in such cooperation. Therefore, we propose a framework for systematically detail interoperability issues and to provide solutions that fit business conditions.Through a case study conducted on an automotive dyad, it is possible to achieve a better interoperable scenario, by systematically addressing the issues and providing solutions that comply with the AD independence axiom.     

A step-by-step methodology for enterprise interoperability projects

Enterprise interoperability is one of the key factors for enhancing enterprise competitiveness. Achieving enterprise interoperability is an extremely complex process which involves different technological, human and organisational elements. In this paper we present a framework to help enterprise interoperability. The framework has been developed taking into account the three domains of interoperability: Enterprise Modelling, Architecture and Platform and Ontologies. The main novelty of the framework in comparison to existing ones is that it includes a step-by-step methodology that explains how to carry out an enterprise interoperability project taking into account different interoperability views, like business, process, human resources, technology, knowledge and semantics.     

Enabling model checking for collaborative process analysis: from BPMN to ‘Network of Timed Automata’

Interoperability is a prerequisite for partners involved in performing collaboration. As a consequence, the lack of interoperability is now considered a major obstacle. The research work presented in this paper aims to develop an approach that allows specifying and verifying a set of interoperability requirements to be satisfied by each partner in the collaborative process prior to process implementation. To enable the verification of these interoperability requirements, it is necessary first and foremost to generate a model of the targeted collaborative process; for this research effort, the standardised language BPMN 2.0 is used. Afterwards, a verification technique must be introduced, and model checking is the preferred option herein. This paper focuses on application of the model checker UPPAAL in order to verify interoperability requirements for the given collaborative process model. At first, this step entails translating the collaborative process model from BPMN into a UPPAAL modelling language called ‘Network of Timed Automata’. Second, it becomes necessary to formalise interoperability requirements into properties with the dedicated UPPAAL language, i.e. the temporal logic TCTL.     

On the formal definition of the systems’ interoperability capability: an anthropomorphic approach

The extended view of enterprise information systems in the Internet of Things (IoT) introduces additional complexity to the interoperability problems. In response to this, the problem of systems’ interoperability is revisited by taking into the account the different aspects of philosophy, psychology, linguistics and artificial intelligence, namely by analysing the potential analogies between the processes of human and system communication. Then, the capability to interoperate as a property of the system, is defined as a complex ability to seamlessly sense and perceive a stimulus from its environment (assumingly, a message from any other system), make an informed decision about this perception and consequently, articulate a meaningful and useful action or response, based on this decision. Although this capability is defined on the basis of the existing interoperability theories, the proposed approach to its definition excludes the assumption on the awareness of co-existence of two interoperating systems. Thus, it establishes the links between the research of interoperability of systems and intelligent software agents, as one of the systems’ digital identities.     

Knowledge-sharing rewards in enterprise social networks: effects of learner types and impact of digitisation

ABSTRACT

The era of total digitisation demands companies to seek innovative approaches in managing digital assets. This paper presents and studies an analytical model of an enterprise social network (ESN) employed by organisations in facilitating knowledge sharing and learning. Exploring the design of reward systems that motivate workers to share knowledge, we focus on how the dominant type of learners (avid or impressionable), the network structure of the ESN, and digitisation affect the reward systems. This research provides valuable insights for practitioners to implement appropriate reward systems to promote knowledge sharing and learning in ESNs.     

A methodology proposal for collaborative business process elaboration using a model-driven approach

Business process management (BPM) principles are commonly used to improve processes within an organisation. But they can equally be applied to supporting the design of an Information System (IS). In a collaborative situation involving several partners, this type of BPM approach may be useful to support the design of a Mediation Information System (MIS), which would ensure interoperability between the partners’ ISs (which are assumed to be service oriented). To achieve this objective, the first main task is to build a collaborative business process cartography. The aim of this article is to present a method for bringing together collaborative information and elaborating collaborative business processes from the information gathered (by using a collaborative situation framework, an organisational model, an informational model, a functional model and a metamodel and by using model transformation rules).     

The interoperability force in the ERP field

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems participate in interoperability projects and this participation sometimes leads to new proposals for the ERP field. The aim of this paper is to identify the role that interoperability plays in the evolution of ERP systems. To go about this, ERP systems have been first identified within interoperability frameworks. Second, the initiatives in the ERP field driven by interoperability requirements have been identified from two perspectives: technological and business. The ERP field is evolving from classical ERP as information system integrators to a new generation of fully interoperable ERP. Interoperability is changing the way of running business, and ERP systems are changing to adapt to the current stream of interoperability.     

基于MACD指标的智能选股系统设计与开发

文章讨论了股票市场上MACD技术指标及应用场合,使用SQLServer2000作为后台数据库,Java和.NET作为前台开发工具,使用IKVM实现Java和.NET两种开发工具之间的互通性,设计和开发了基于MACD指标的智能选股系统,并对系统进行了测试。结果表明,系统选出的股票股价成长性相比同期沪深大盘指数的成长性要高得多。     

基于CORBA的书目信息采访系统分析与研究

多校区运营模式下,图书信息管理系统必须解决数据共享和互操作问题,建立能够适应多点管理的分布式图书信息管理系统,提供统一的管理和服务。本文探讨了利用CORBA技术的与平台无关、满足数据共享及互操作的特性,来解决这一问题的技术思路与方法。     

Knowledge Commoning: Scaffolding and Technoficing to Overcome Challenges of Knowledge Curation

Extant approaches to information provisioning to farmers to improve agricultural productivity, and thereby alleviate poverty have relied on top-down external expert-driven knowledge. Such external knowledge involves decontextualised content and the use of technical language, and is resource-intensive. An alternative view emphasises the need to explore indigenous knowledge exists in rural communities, which, in contrast, requires the use of local resources, is easily understandable, and has greater potential for adoption. This paper explores how information and communication technologies, specifically videos, can be leveraged to curate such indigenous knowledge and convert it to knowledge commons. Adopting a case study approach that involved multiple sources of data collection over a nine-year period, we unearthed a dynamic process model that we labelled as knowledge commoning. It is a process through which latent-action-oriented knowledge from high-yield farmers embedded within its social context is made available as commons. The creation of knowledge commons is an iterative process between knowledge curation and knowledge dissemination, and is guided by the demand and uptake potential within local farming communities. Further, we describe how socio-cultural barriers in knowledge commoning can be overcome through scaffolding, involving the concealment of social transformation objectives within another goal desired by the community. Technological challenges can be overcome through the process of technoficing, which encompasses pursuing social objectives using technology that is appropriate for the purpose. Building on our process model, we offer contributions to theory, practice, and policy.     

Extending the enterprise evolution contextualisation model

Enterprise engineering (EE) emerged as a new discipline to encourage comprehensive and consistent enterprise design. Since EE is multidisciplinary, various researchers study enterprises from different perspectives, which resulted in a plethora of applicable literature and terminology, but without shared meaning. Previous research specifically focused on the fragmentation of knowledge for designing and aligning the information and communication technology (ICT) subsystem of the enterprise in order to support the business organisation subsystem of the enterprise. As a solution for this fragmented landscape, a business-IT alignment model (BIAM) was developed inductively from existing business-IT alignment approaches. Since most of the existing alignment frameworks addressed the alignment between the ICT subsystem and the business organisation subsystem, BIAM also focused on the alignment between these two subsystems. Yet, the emerging EE discipline intends to address a broader scope of design, evident in the existing approaches that incorporate a broader scope of design/alignment/governance. A need was identified to address the knowledge fragmentation of the EE knowledge base by adapting BIAM to an enterprise evolution contextualisation model (EECM), to contextualise a broader set of approaches, as identified by Lapalme. The main contribution of this article is the incremental development and evaluation of EECM. We also present guiding indicators/prerequisites for applying EECM as a contextualisation tool.     

Networks In Open Systems Of Governance

Abstract

This article focuses on an abortive attempt to co-ordinate a local governance network in the domain of older persons' care in England. It locates a key source of failure in pressures in the policy context. Exogenous factors are analysed using a tiered (macro-/meso-/micro-) model linking context and agents. People occupy specific positions in the policy system and can respond differently to erratic contextual prompts. This putative autonomy imposes limits on the assumed trajectory and ontology of whole-networks in socially contested arenas and delimits the strategic space for network governance. Networks are thus as often effects as causes of social change.     

How to foster collaborative performance management? Key factors in the US federal agencies

ABSTRACT

Public employees are urged to be tireless collaborators and skilled performance managers, but can they be both at the same time? We describe two approaches to collaborative performance management observed in the US federal performance system: interagency collaboration to achieve cross-agency goals, and intra-agency collaboration to achieve agency goals. We find that some factors that reinforce intra-agency collaboration – accountability to agency goals, investment in the agency performance system – fail to support, or even undercut, interagency collaboration. However, other factors – seniority, participation in goal-setting, and goal salience – can encourage both types of collaborative performance management.     

A fuzzy clustering approach used in evaluating technical efficiency measures in manufacturing

Comparing analytical approaches is crucial when important policy decisions of corporations or government agencies may be influenced by results that depend on the methodologies certain disciplines customarily use. Technical efficiency can be measured by a full-frontier production function model or by linear programming specifications. By using these modeling approaches observations pertaining to three linerboard manufacturing facilities are classified as efficient, inefficient, scale inefficient, and other. However, observations may or may not be consistently classified into these four groups when employing the two modeling approaches. In order to validate the efficiency designations of the two modeling approaches and to determine the uniqueness of observations, a fuzzy K-means clustering approach that uses a modified hat matrix H ^* as a similarity or information matrix is employed. This approach permits observations to be allocated to clusters in a fuzzy way by defining a membership function from 0 to 1. As the degree of fuzziness increases, a sensitivity analysis with respect to individual observations belonging to some cluster can be evaluated. At the same time, this fuzzy approach assists the analyst to assess the inconsistencies that can arise when using the mathematical programming and full-frontier modeling approaches of technical efficiency.The refereeing process of this paper was handled through Rolf Färe. The majority of this research work was completed when Bill Seaver was at the Department of Management Information Resources, College of Business Administration, Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL 61455.     

Aggregating input–output systems with minimum error

ABSTRACT

Recent advances in multi-region input-output (IO) table construction have led to large databases becoming available. Some of these databases currently demand too much computer memory or user cognition to be handled effectively outside high-performance environments, especially for applications such as virtual laboratories, computable general equilibrium modelling, linear programming, series expansion, or structural decomposition analysis, thus inhibiting their widespread use by analysts and decision-makers. Aggregation is an obvious solution; but there is a need for structured approaches to aggregating an IO system in a way that does not compromise the ability to effectively answer the research question at hand. In this article, I describe how structural path analysis can be used to realise a computationally inexpensive method for aggregating IO systems whilst minimising aggregation errors. I show that there exists no one-fits-all strategy, but that optimal aggregation depends on the research question at hand.     

Economic assumptions and choice of functional forms: comparison of top down and bottom up approaches

Two alternative model building approaches are analyzed and compared. The general to specific modeling (top down approach) starts with a general model and subjects it to a sequence of restrictions to determine an acceptable specific model. This approach can start with a series expansion and the concavity or homotheticity conditions can be imposed to modify it into a cost or a production function. The simple to general modeling (bottom up approach) starts with a well known simple model and extends it until a complete system is formed. This approach can start with a Cobb-Douglas function (which satisfies the concavity and homogeneity conditions) and extends it to include the desired complexity. Relative advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches are discussed and tabulated. The electricity generation data is applied to compare the performance of these two approaches.

A Monte Carlo filtering application for systematic sensitivity analysis of computable general equilibrium results

ABSTRACT

Parameter uncertainty has fuelled criticisms on the robustness of results from computable general equilibrium models. This has led to the development of alternative sensitivity analysis approaches. Researchers have used Monte Carlo analysis for systematic sensitivity analysis because of its flexibility. But Monte Carlo analysis may yield biased simulation results. Gaussian quadratures have also been widely applied, although they can be difficult to apply in practice. This paper applies an alternative approach to systematic sensitivity analysis, Monte Carlo filtering and examines how its results compare to both Monte Carlo and Gaussian quadrature approaches. It does so via an application to rural development policies in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. We find that Monte Carlo filtering outperforms the conventional Monte Carlo approach and is a viable alternative when a Gaussian quadrature approach cannot be applied or is too complex to implement.     

Resilience,wellbeing and HRM: a multidisciplinary perspective

Abstract

Research on resilience has accumulated a vast body of knowledge which has assisted in comprehending complex HRM issues in diverse organizational settings. Yet, the existing studies have hitherto not paid sufficient attention to the multifaceted aspects of resilience and occupational contexts. We join the conversation with resilience, wellbeing and HRM by suggesting that investigating resilience from a multidisciplinary perspective situated in varying occupational contexts can advance our collective understandings of the phenomena in important ways. This paper has three general objectives. First, we show that resilience has been a long-standing issue in organizational behavior and organization studies and provide an overview of the puzzles that underpin and trigger this special issue. Second, we highlight the key insights and contributions of the papers included in this special issue by reviewing their theoretical underpinnings, methodological approaches and findings. Finally, we outline a future research agenda on resilience in organizations that can help advance international HRM research.