An Architecture for Peer-to-Peer Integration of Interorganizational Information Systems

On the business case of independent sales agencies we discuss the requirements of tiny sized enterprises for data integration. If a multitude of independent enterprises need to be integrated, we argue that those are best represented by equal peers and describe the Architecture of VIANA: a Peer-to-Peer architecture for materialized integration of information systems, both in the interas well as the intraorganizational domain. VIANA propagates updates on data between peers and continuously monitors data quality. We argue that this type of integration can be accomplished with ideally no alteration of the participating information systems and that the integration may benefit substantially from existing data exchange formats. To this end we formulate the architecture in a way that existing XML technologies and standards may be utilized without the need for alterations

Valuation of online social networks - An economic model and its application using the case of Xing.com

Ubiquitous information technologies like RFID allow for immediate, extensive and fine-grained capture of real world information. Scalable and efficient networks for exchange of this vast amount of information amongst companies are crucial for the economic exploitation of benefits of ubiquitous information technologies. Existing networks bear several limitations like risks of single-point-offailures or bottlenecks, unequally distributed power and burdens as well as inflexibility through stringent structures and formats. In particular there is a need for improving the scalability of solutions and ensuring autonomy of network participants. In this paper we introduce a Peer-to-Peer-based architecture for exchanging distributed information, which are shared among participants of a supply chain facilitated with ubiquitous information technologies. This architecture builds on the wellestablished EPCglobal standards, but can be implemented as an autonomous network. Unlike other architectures it does not need central coordination mechanisms, because it is based on self-organizing Peer-to-Peer protocols. We argue that our architecture supports business processes especially of small and medium-sized enterprises better than other architectures. We provide a discussion about requirements for solutions and a simulation-based analysis of the proposed architecture

Autonomous Agents for Business Process Management

Traditional approaches to managing business processes are often inadequate for large-scale organisation-wide, dynamic settings. However, since Internet and Intranet technologies have become widespread, an increasing number of business processes exhibit these properties. Therefore, a new approach is needed. To this end, we describe the motivation, conceptualization, design, and implementation of a novel agent-based business process management system. The key advance of our system is that responsibility for enacting various components of the business process is delegated to a number of autonomous problem solving agents. To enact their role, these agents typically interact and negotiate with other agents in order to coordinate their actions and to buy in the services they require. This approach leads to a system that is significantly more agile and robust than its traditional counterparts. To help demonstrate these benefits, a companion paper describes the application of our system to a real-world problem faced by British Telecom

What drives contract design in strategic alliances? Taking stock and how to proceed

We collect and assess prior empirical evidence on contract design in alliances that has been published since Parkhe’s (1993) seminal study on inter-firm contracts. We elaborate on the effects of transaction-related factors, experience gained from prior relationships, and deliberate learning efforts on contracts. Our paper offers three contributions. First, we systematically review the existing literature on alliance contracts and summarize our findings. Second, while prior research has traditionally focused on contractual complexity, we place the content of contracts center stage and identify three contractual functions. While existing studies on contractual functions predominantly refer to safeguarding as a response to appropriation concerns, we also consider coordination and contingency adaptability as outcomes of adaptation concerns. Third, we disentangle the differential influences of previous experiences on distinct contractual functions and show that experience gained from prior relationships has different effects on safeguarding and contingency adaptability than on coordination. Overall, we add to the systematization of the current debate on alliance contract design and trace promising avenues for future research on the impact of transaction- and experience-related factors on the complexity and content of alliance contracts

A Systematic Literature Review to Understand Cross-organizational Relationship Management and Collaboration

An increasingly dynamic, unpredictable and challenging environment leads organizations to cross their own borders and establish partnerships to other organizations for remaining competitive. This cross-organizational relationship allows participating organizations to share resources with each other and collaborate to better handle an identified opportunity for joint work. However, besides having a mutual or compatible goal, it is common that these organizations face several challenges during the partnership. The present research aims to explore the cross-organizational relationship management. To this end, this paper outlines the systematic literature review performed to understand the collaboration and relationship establishment between different organizations and organize an ICT related body of knowledge about the topic. A discussion about the findings, challenges and open issues identified from the retrieved literature is also provided to guide further work

Advancing Smart Manufacturing in Europe: Experiences from Two Decades of Research and Innovation Projects

In the past two decades, a large amount of attention has been devoted to the introduction of smart manufacturing concepts and technologies into industrial practice. In Europe, these efforts have been supported by European research and innovation programs, bringing together research and application parties. In this paper, we provide an overview of a series of four content-wise connected projects on the European scale that are aimed at advancing smart manufacturing, with a focus on connecting processes on smart factory shop floors to manufacturing equipment on the one hand and enterprise-level business processes on the other hand. These projects cover several tens of application cases across Europe. We present our experiences in the form of a single, informal longitudinal case study, highlighting both the major advances and the current limitations of developments. To organize these experiences, we place them in the context of the well-known RAMI4.0 reference framework for Industry 4.0 (covering the ISA-95 standard). Then, we analyze the experiences, both the positive ones and those including problems, and draw our learnings from these. In doing so, we do not present novel technological developments in this paper—these are presented in the papers we refer to—but concentrate on the main issues we have observed to guide future developments in research efforts and industrial innovation in the smart industry domain

How CIOs Can Enable Governance of Value Nets

Value nets are the architecture of sourcing agreements and alliances that firms implement to gain complementary resources and capabilities from other firms. They are a source of innovation, growth, and competitive success. However, governing value nets is challenging, and the IT support needed to enable them depends on the governance mode a firm chooses. Based on case studies of three Fortune 100 firms, we define three governance modes—prescriptive, evaluative, and collaborative. Prescriptive governance specifies partners\u27 activities and retains decisions rights. It is effectively supported by dashboards that monitor the status of partners\u27 activities, alerts that surface exceptions and errors, business rules that automate activities and handling of errors, and extended enterprise architectures that protect intellectual property. Evaluative governance delegates decision rights to partners for operational execution and assesses their capabilities through periodic evaluations. It is effectively supported by loosely coupled processes that provide partners with limited autonomy, periodic reporting of performance on service level agreements, and data and process mining directed at improving partners\u27 capabilities. Collaborative governance promotes peer-to-peer collaboration with value net partners. It is supported by metadata architectures that control repositories of information and process resources, by consistent business rules to coordinate processes, by monitoring of the total costs of the relationship, and by business intelligence for predictive monitoring. CIOs and senior IT executives can apply these findings to choose an appropriate governance mode and enable it with appropriate IT applications and processes

Blockchain Technology for Emergency Response

As unforeseen situations, emergencies threaten the environment, property, and people’s lives. Large emergencies are characterized by the demand for coordination of a variety of actors, such as civil defense or disaster relief. Communication and information exchange are crucial for coordination. Therefore, a solid, stable communication infrastructure is among the crucial factors for emergency response. New technologies that seem to ensure trustworthy communication must be evaluated constantly. Blockchain technology is widely applied in a broad variety of contexts and is commonly known for its decentralized and distributed governance. This is the motivation for the design and evaluation of a framework for the adoption of blockchain technology in the case of emergency response following a design science approach. Evaluation of the artifact using a specific evaluation framework clearly indicates the suitability of the case for application of blockchain technology

Blockchain in Service Management and Service Research – Developing a Research Agenda and Managerial Implications

As blockchain technology is maturing to be confidently used in practice, its applications are becoming evident and, correspondingly, more blockchain research is being published, also extending to more domains than before. To date, scientific research in the field has predominantly focused on subject areas such as finance, computer science, and engineering, while the area of service management has largely neglected this topic. Therefore, we invited a group of renowned scholars from different academic fields to share their views on emerging topics regarding blockchain in service management and service research. Their individual commentaries and conceptual contributions refer to different theoretical and domain perspectives, including managerial implications for service companies as well as forward-looking suggestions for further research.Information and Communication TechnologyEconomics of Technology and Innovatio