Thomas Kohlborn

Identification and Analysis of Business and Software Services—A Consolidated Approach

Although the benefits of service orientation are prevalent in literature, a review, analysis, and evaluation of the 30 existing service analysis approaches presented in this paper have shown that a comprehensive approach to the identification and analysis of both business and supporting software services is missing. Based on this evaluation of existing approaches and additional sources, we close this gap by proposing an integrated, consolidated approach to business and software service analysis that combines and extends the strengths of the examined methodologies.

Business and Software Service Lifecycle Management

Although the service-oriented paradigm has beenwell established in the technical domain for quite sometime now, service governance is still considered a researchgap. To ensure adequate governance, there is anecessity to manage services as first-class assetsthroughout the lifecycle. Now that the concept of service-orientation is also increasingly applied on thebusiness level to structure an organisation’s capabilities,the problem has become an even bigger challenge.This paper presents a generic business andsoftware service lifecycle and aligns it with the commonmanagement layers in organisations. Using serviceanalysis as an example, it moreover illustrateshow activities in the service lifecycle may vary onlower levels of granularity depending on the focus onbusiness or software services.

Interview with Michael Rosemann on ambidextrous business process management

Purpose – More than two decades after the early works about Business Process Management (BPM) were published by the disciplines thought-leaders of that time, the authors were interested in getting an assessment of what BPM has been able to achieve so far, what promises have been fulfilled, and where BPM should be heading in the future. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the above issues. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted an interview with Professor Michael Rosemann, one of todays authorities in the BPM field, who shared with us his thoughts on ambidextrous BPM. Findings – According to Michael Rosemann, the BPM community has, since its conception, put much effort in mastering exploitative BPM that focusses on analyzing and automating single processes as well as on improving such processes step-by-step. However, explorative BPM, which emphasizes radical process change, process innovation and the enabling of new business models, still is in its infancy. Professor Rosemann therefore c...

A Framework for the Study of Positive Deviance in Organizations

ABSTRACT Positive deviance describes behavior that deviates from salient norms, yet is positive in its intention or effect. It has received considerable attention in the sociology literature, and is increasingly being studied in the context of the workplace. The development of a cumulative tradition in this domain, however, is hindered by the continued coexistence of multiple definitions of positive deviance in organizations and the use of various measurements and research designs. In this article, we synthesize existing definitions and approaches to the organizational study of positive deviance, integrate them into a coherent conceptual framework, and offer methodological advice and illustrations.

Quality assessment of service bundles for governmental one-stop portals: A literature review

Service bundles, in the context of e-government, are used to group services together that relate to a certain citizen need. These bundles can then be presented on a governmental one-stop portal to structure the available service offerings according to citizen expectations. In order to ensure that citizens utilise the one-stop portal and comprised service bundles for future transactions, the quality of these service bundles needs to be managed and maximised accordingly. Consequently, models and tools that focus on assessing service bundle quality play an important role, when it comes to increasing or retaining usage behaviour of citizens. This study focuses on providing a rigorous and structured literature review of e-government outlets with regards to their coverage of service bundle quality and e-service quality themes. The study contributes to academia and practice by providing a framework that allows structuring and classifying existing studies relevant for the assessment of quality for government portals. Furthermore, this study provides insights into the status quo of quality models that can be used by governments to assess the quality of their service bundles. Directions for future research and limitations of the present study are provided as well.

Unravelling (E-)Government Channel Selection: A Quantitative Analysis of Individual Customer Preferences in Germany and Australia

The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of individual differences on service channel selection for e-government services. In a comparative survey of citizens in Germany and Australia (n=1205), we investigate the impact of age, gender, and mobility issues on the selection of personal or mobile communication as channels for service consumption. The results suggest that Australians are more likely to want to use new technology-oriented channels as internet or mobile applications while Germans tend to use classical channels as telephone or in person. Moreover, differences with respect to age, gender, and mobility exist. Implications for practice and issues for future research are discussed.

Conceptualizing a bottom-up approach to service bundling

Offering service bundles to the market is a promising option for service providers to strengthen their competitive advantages, cope with dynamic market conditions and deal with heterogeneous consumer demand. Although the expected positive effects of bundling strategies and pricing considerations for bundles are covered well by the available literature, limited guidance can be found regarding the identification of potential bundle candidates and the actual process of bundling. The contribution of this paper is the positioning of bundling based on insights from both business and computer science and the proposition of a structured bundling method, which guides organizations with the composition of bundles in practice.

Service-Enabled Process Management

This chapter discusses some relationships between service-oriented architecture and Business Process Management. In particular, the chapter presents a method for analyzing a business process to enable its execution on top of a service-oriented application landscape, thereby leading to the notion of service-enabled business process. The chapter also provides an overview of contemporary technology standards for implementing service-enabled processes.

A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF LOCAL E-GOVERNMENT DEVELOPMENT: THE POLICY MAKER PERSPECTIVE

Developments in information and communication technologies have been an enabler of enhanced, citizen focused services by governments around the world. Electronic Government, or E-Government, is widely regarded as a disruptor of traditional e-government service provision through greater citizen access, enhanced democracy, improved information quality, and a range of governmental efficiencies. Local government has been a key e-government focus for many nations due to the wide and varied interactions these governmental agencies have with citizens. A gap in the literature exists that monitors the development of local e-government, especially from the policy maker perspective, of This study presents the findings of a longitudinal study exploring the development of local e-government in New Zealand – from the policy makers’ perspective. All local and regional authorities in New Zealand were surveyed in 2000, 2004, and 2012 with the goal of understanding the key considerations associated with the development of e-government strategies and subsequent implementation of associated infrastructure. While local e-government development has been more incremental than transformational, there has been a trend towards greater consideration of citizen-focused issues including the likes of Consumer Confidence, Trust, Accessibility, The Digital Divide, Indigenous Peoples, Security, and Privacy. This offers a degree of reassurance that local authorities remain, and are indeed increasingly, focused on the provision of enhanced services to the communities they serve.

From Business Process Models to Service Interfaces

Service-oriented architectures are often at the heart of modern enterprise information systems. Given that these systems are intended to support the day-to-day operations of an organization, a natural question to ask is how do we ensure that an organization’s service-oriented architecture is aligned with its business processes? This chapter dives into this question by sketching a method for analyzing a business process in view of enabling its execution on top of a service-oriented application landscape. The chapter also provides an overview of technology standards and platforms for implementing business processes in the context of service-oriented architectures.