Olga Levina

Granularity as a Cognitive Factor in the Effectiveness of Business Process Model Reuse

Reusing design models is an attractive approach in business process modeling as modeling efficiency and quality of design outcomes may be significantly improved. However, reusing conceptual models is not a cost-free effort, but has to be carefully designed. While factors such as psychological anchoring and task-adequacy in reuse-based modeling tasks have been investigated, information granularity as a cognitive concept has not been at the center of empirical research yet. We hypothesize that business process granularity as a factor in design tasks under reuse has a significant impact on the effectiveness of resulting business process models. We test our hypothesis in a comparative study employing high and low granularities. The reusable processes provided were taken from widely accessible reference models for the telecommunication industry (enhanced Telecom Operations Map). First experimental results show that Recall in tasks involving coarser granularity is lower than in cases of finer granularity. These findings suggest that decision makers in business process management should be considerate with regard to the implementation of reuse mechanisms of different granularities. We realize that due to our small sample size results are not statistically significant, but this preliminary run shows that it is ready for running on a larger scale.

Proposal for Components of Method Design Theories

Gregor and Jones have proposed components for design theories, building on theory concepts from behavioural sciences and prior publications. Their design theory structure addresses IT artefacts in general, not specific to any type, such as constructs, models, methods or instantiations. Their work is an important contribution to the academic discussion of design theories. The authors are building on this and believe that specialised design theory structures for different types of artefacts further increases utility, usability and acceptance of the components for both academia and practise. They have analysed each of the components published by Gregor and Jones and proposed refinements specific to method design artefacts wherever applicable. For each component, they derive evaluation criteria and present examples of method publications fulfilling the criteria. They argue that by presenting method design theories according to this structure the contribution of method design artefacts to the body of knowledge will increase.

Enhancing Semantic Service Discovery in Heterogeneous Environments

The advent of service-oriented architectures promises companies efficient and effective support of their business processes. Discovery of services with appropriate functionality may be supported by enhancing the syntactical information using additional semantics. However, services of different providers are generally described with heterogeneous concepts. This paper investigates how heterogeneity during service discovery may be overcome using automatic similarity computation. A suitable approach is introduced and a prototype demonstrates that a reliable alignment tool increases overall quality of service discovery.

Vorschlag für Komponenten von Methodendesigntheorien Steigerung der Nutzbarkeit von Methodendesignartefakten

ZusammenfassungGregor und Jones haben, aufbauend auf Theoriekonzepten der Verhaltensforschung und früheren Publikationen, Komponenten von Designtheorien vorgeschlagen. Ihre Designtheoriestruktur behandelt IT-Artefakte im Allgemein und ist nicht auf einen bestimmten Typ wie z. B. Konstrukte, Modelle, Methoden oder Instanziierungen zugeschnitten. Ihre Arbeit ist ein wichtiger Beitrag zur wissenschaftlichen Diskussion über Designtheorien. Die Autoren bauen darauf auf und nehmen an, dass spezialisierte Designtheoriestrukturen für unterschiedliche Artefakttypen die Nützlichkeit, Nutzbarkeit und Akzeptanz der Komponenten für Wissenschaft und Praxis weiter steigern. Sie haben alle von Gregor und Jones publizierten Komponenten analysiert und schlagen spezifische Verfeinerungen für Methodendesignartefakte vor, wo es passend erscheint. Für jede Komponente leiten sie Evaluationskriterien ab und präsentieren Beispiele publizierter Methoden, die die Kriterien erfüllen. Ihrer Ansicht nach wird der Beitrag von Methodendesignartefakten zum Wissensbasis durch die Formulierung von Methodendesigntheorien nach der vorgeschlagenen Struktur gesteigert.AbstractGregor and Jones have proposed components for design theories, building on theory concepts from behavioural sciences and prior publications. Their design theory structure addresses IT artefacts in general, not specific to any type, such as constructs, models, methods or instantiations. Their work is an important contribution to the academic discussion of design theories. The authors are building on this and believe that specialised design theory structures for different types of artefacts further increases utility, usability and acceptance of the components for both academia and practice. They have analysed each of the components published by Gregor and Jones and proposed refinements specific to method design artefacts wherever applicable. For each component, they derive evaluation criteria and present examples of method publications fulfilling the criteria. They argue that by presenting method design theories according to this structure the contribution of method design artefacts to the body of knowledge will increase.

Motivating social sharing of e-business content: Intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, or crowding-out effect?

This work examines users motives for sharing commercial content on social networking services (SNS). We first interviewed Internet users to map sharing behaviors and SNS use (n=409). We then used a mixed-methods design combining self-reports and a scenario-based experimental manipulation to compare intrinsic and extrinsic incentive models among those who already shared commercial content (n=134). The findings reveal a contradiction between the self-reports, where intrinsic motives for sharing dominated, and the experimental manipulation, where extrinsic (financial) incentives induced greater willingness to share. We suggest two possible processes that may be at play in our results. First, based on the theory of planned behavior, whereby actions which are not motivated by financial incentives are associated with more positive normative beliefs, SNS users are likely to perceive and therefore self-report intrinsic motives for social sharing (e.g., altruism) as more important to them than extrinsic motives (e.g., financial rewards). Second, assuming that reported intrinsic motives are real and not a product of social desirability bias, financial incentives may dilute the impact of intrinsic incentives via a crowding-out effect, shifting users motives for sharing e-commerce content from intrinsic reasons (e.g., enjoyment) toward extrinsic ones with the application of financial incentives (e.g., a discount). The findings have implications for planning incentive models that fit marketing communication strategies and enhance customer engagement efforts. We examine users motives for sharing commercial content on social networking sites.Self-reports and a scenario-based experiment served to compare incentive models.In self-reports intrinsic motives for sharing dominated.In the experiment extrinsic incentives induced greater willingness to share.The crowding-out effect is suggested to help explain this contradiction.

E-visibility maturity model

E-visibility maturity (e-VM) model of firms, industries, and countries is suggested.Interactivity, globalization, sociability & security of firms websites are analyzed.e-VM assesses the potential of companies to engage customers in the global e-commerce.We apply the model to assess e-VM based on 1868 firms, 27 industries and 5 countries.The model allows evaluating firms adaptation to the challenges of the social web. The Internet has transformed traditional patterns of firm-to-customer communication and opened new channels through which enterprises can engage with consumers around the world. Yet ways to measure firms visibility in this electronic marketplace have failed to keep pace with these developments. We present a new model - the e-visibility maturity (e-VM) model - that can be used to assess the degree to which a firm or set of firms has the potential to engage customers in the global e-business market. The suggested model is developed based on a literature review, an international survey of online customers, and a comprehensive review of 1868 firm websites representing 27 industries in five countries. After presenting the model, we show how it can be scaled to different levels (e.g., the industry or country level) using three illustrative cases: a set of four countries across industries; a set of four industries across countries; and a set of four individual firms. We found substantial differences in levels of e-visibility and its specific dimensions of interactivity, firm globalization, sociability, and security between the countries and specific firms sampled. The industries sampled all emphasize firm globalization and interactivity. The model offers a simple and reliable way to evaluate a companys adaptation to the challenges of the social web, and can be used by strategists and policy makers at the industry or government level as well as to help firms establish strategies for improving their position in the online marketplace.

Assessing Social Media e-Visibility: A Framework to Compare Goods vs. Service Firms

In this interdisciplinary work we develop the Social Media e-Visibility (SMEV) framework and use it to assess the potential of a set of firms to engage the customer in the global e-business market through the usage of Social Media. The Internet opened a new procurement channel for firms that allows them reaching customers all over the world. The growth of Social Media (SoM) in recent years accelerated this development by enabling fast and even real-time interaction between customers and firms. The usage of SoM for marketing purposes has been an active topic in research and practice in recent years (Hollenbeck and Kaikati 2012; Papasolomou and Melanthiou 2012). SoM allows the company and the customer communicating with each other, but also allows customers communicating with each other about the company and creating an electronic word of mouth (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004). For the firms, well-managed SoM provides a potential tool to gain insight about customers’ attitudes, as well as an opportunity to spread commercial information using the customer as an information channel (Parka et al. 2011). Firms in various countries and industries have chosen to use SoM for their customer and product communication (Coelho et al. 2014). For example, Parka et al. (2011) documented how health organizations employ their Facebook accounts for communicating with their customers and for health advertising and promotions. SoM enables people to effortlessly access information, providing increased visibility (Boyd 2010) and therefore potential for further engagement in the e-market.

Development of Information Systems in Manufacturing

Throughout the development of the human kind manufacturing took an important role. Only with the beginning of using a tool, we see human race on the way to knowledge and intelligence. Material goods were produced to satisfy some concrete need that couldn’t have been satisfied by goods that can be found in nature.