Nadja Damij

What Motivates Us for Work? Intricate Web of Factors beyond Money and Prestige

Efficiency at doing a certain task, at the workplace or otherwise, is strongly influenced by how motivated individuals are. Exploring new ways to motivate employees is often at the top of a company’s agenda. Traditionally identified motivators in Western economies primarily include salary and prestige, often complemented by meaning, creation, challenge, ownership, identity, etc. We report the results of a survey conducted in Slovenia, involving an ensemble of highly educated employees from various public and private organizations. Employing new methodologies such as network analysis, we find that Slovenians are stimulated by an intricate web of interdependent factors, largely in contrast to the traditional understanding that mainly emphasizes money and prestige. In fact, these key motivators only weakly correlate with the demographic parameters. Unexpectedly, we found the evidence of a general optimism in Slovenian professional life - a tendency of the employees to look at the “bright side of things”, thus seeing more clearly the benefits of having something than the drawbacks of not having it. We attribute these particularities to Slovenian recent history, which revolves around gradually embracing the Western (economic) values.

A Process-Oriented Modelling Technique

This paper discusses the problem of process model-ling and aims to introduce a process-oriented technique called the activity table to find a better solution for the problem mentioned. This is a simple and effective tech-nique, which is based on developing the activity table. Business process modelling is done by identifying the business processes and is continued by defining work processes and activities of each chosen business process. This technique is independent on the analyst and his/her experience. It requires that each identified activity must be connected to its resource and its successor activity and in this manner contribute a great deal in developing a process model, which represents a true reflection to actual business process. The problems of conducting a surgery and sales claim are used as examples to test our technique.

Ranking of Business Process Simulation Software Tools with DEX/QQ Hierarchical Decision Model.

The omnipresent need for optimisation requires constant improvements of companies’ business processes (BPs). Minimising the risk of inappropriate BP being implemented is usually performed by simulating the newly developed BP under various initial conditions and “what-if” scenarios. An effectual business process simulations software (BPSS) is a prerequisite for accurate analysis of an BP. Characterisation of an BPSS tool is a challenging task due to the complex selection criteria that includes quality of visual aspects, simulation capabilities, statistical facilities, quality reporting etc. Under such circumstances, making an optimal decision is challenging. Therefore, various decision support models are employed aiding the BPSS tool selection. The currently established decision support models are either proprietary or comprise only a limited subset of criteria, which affects their accuracy. Addressing this issue, this paper proposes a new hierarchical decision support model for ranking of BPSS based on their technical characteristics by employing DEX and qualitative to quantitative (QQ) methodology. Consequently, the decision expert feeds the required information in a systematic and user friendly manner. There are three significant contributions of the proposed approach. Firstly, the proposed hierarchical model is easily extendible for adding new criteria in the hierarchical structure. Secondly, a fully operational decision support system (DSS) tool that implements the proposed hierarchical model is presented. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed hierarchical model is assessed by comparing the resulting rankings of BPSS with respect to currently available results.

Business Process Approaches

In recent years, understanding and analyzing the functioning of an organization from the business process view point became widely accepted and adopted compared to the functional understanding of the organization. This is because the process-oriented understanding of the organization represents an important way of ensuring changes in the organization’s structure and functioning in order to create a better, more competitive and successful enterprise.

Interviewing IPR Executives

We start the empirical part of this book by asking the question: How can a move from IPR management to business management be accomplished? Chapter 4 is thus a short methodological review describing the empirical approach we employed, our comments regarding select interviewees, connected processes of data gathering and data analysis.

Innovation Property Rights Process Management

We start by identifying IPR processes as business processes focusing on their inputs, outputs, and activity sequencing and resource allocation that consequently enable the development of IPR process models. Additionally, we look at various business process definitions in order to set foundations for the empirical research in the following chapters.

IPR Management to Business Management

This chapter presents one of the highlights of this book as it draws on the interviews and brings us one step closer to the definition of IPR management rooted in practice. It begins by emphasizing the notion that IPRs are different from other intangibles, especially with regard to their manageability and informational value. The chapter continues by accentuating the IP executives’ views of the IPR’s benefits.

IPR Management in Action: The Road to “Better” IPR Management

This chapter builds upon the previous chapters and first deals with examining the human resource dimension from the individual and departmental level. The chapter then continues with the practical side of IPRM tools.

IPR Characteristics in Practice: Back-Office to Front-Office

This chapter answers the question of IPRM characteristics and scope. First, we delve into attributes such as “integrated,” “aligned,” and so on to discern their meaning in practice in IPR savvy companies . We show what is behind these often used monikers.

Untangling the Intangibles: The Scope of IPR Management Research

This book provides insights into the intellectual property rights (IPR) managerial practices of key IPR executives from a range of multinational companies, including major research and development firms. It identifies gaps in IPR management and considers the Tabular Application Development (TAD) methodology IPR process optimization model. The authors adopt an interdisciplinary approach, providing a conceptual framework derived from practice and enriched with theoretical insights and offering organizational recommendations. Taking into account both Back- and Front-office processes towards intellectual property rights management will help businesses navigate the maze of IPR and maximize the value they get from innovation.