An Explorative Study Into Situational Artefact Construction in Business Rules Management

The implementation of software products is a time-consuming activity and requires specific expertise to be completed successfully. This is especially the case in research fields where there is no or little tool support available, such as Business Rules Management (BRM) and Business Rules Management Solutions (BRMS). Tool support is essential to successfully guide the organizational implementation of a BRMS. Motivated by the diversity of organizational structures and their BRMS implementation contexts, we design a situational-aware framework for the organizational implementation of BRMS. The framework is based on the theory of situational artefact construction. Using situational artefact construction, we study 13 BRMS implementation cases distributed over the financial and public sectors in the Netherlands. Based on the results of the cases analysed we present a framework with three main artefacts that are a stepping-stone towards further research on situational implementation methodology in the BRM field

Digital Transformation in Healthcare – the case of a Chinese Medicine Inquiring System

The unique philosophy, diagnosis, and treatment methods of Chinese Medicine (CM) suggest that Health Informatics developments in this domain could benefit by adopting a more suitable synthesis, specifically, incorporating Hegelian and Kantian inquiring systems with the support from Singerian, Lockean, and Leibnizian inquiring systems, and key concepts of Knowledge Management. Directed by qualitative methodology with Case Study and Design Science methods, the specific CM inquiring system, a Patient Management System (PMS) prototype, was constructed. It is anticipated that this experiment provides suggestions and reference to Health Informatics implementations in CM. This paper focuses on the design and building of the PMS

Business Rules Management Solutions Problem Space: Situational Factors

Business rules management solutions are widely applied, standalone or in combination with business process management solutions. Yet scientific research on business rules management solutions is limited. The purpose of this paper is to define the business rules management solution problem space. Using contingency theory and relational theory as our lens, we conducted a qualitative study on 39 business rules management solutions. The range of data sources included interviews and document analysis. From the qualitative study six situational factors have been defined to classify the business rules management solution space: 1) value proposition, 2) approach, 3) standardization, 4) change frequency, 5) n-order compliance, and 6) integrative power of the software environment. The six factors can be clustered in three structures 1) deep structure, 2) physical structure and, 3) organizational structure. The classification of the problem space provides a framework for the analysis of business rules management solutions

How to Exploit the Digitalization Potential of Business Processes

Process improvement is the most value-adding activity in the business process management (BPM) lifecycle. Despite mature knowledge, many approaches have been criticized to lack guidance on how to put process improvement into practice. Given the variety of emerging digital technologies, organizations not only face a process improvement black box, but also high uncertainty regarding digital technologies. This paper thus proposes a method that supports organizations in exploiting the digitalization potential of their business processes. To achieve this, action design research and situational method engineering were adopted. Two design cycles involving practitioners (i.e., managers and BPM experts) and end-users (i.e., process owners and participants) were conducted. In the first cycle, the method’s alpha version was evaluated by interviewing practitioners from five organizations. In the second cycle, the beta version was evaluated via real-world case studies. In this paper, detailed results of one case study, which was conducted at a semiconductor manufacturer, are included

Collaboration and Dialogue in Virtual Reality

“Virtual reality” adds a new dimension to constructivist problem-based learning (PBL) environments in the architectural and building construction educations, where a realistic and lifelike presence in a building enables students to assess and discuss how the various solutions interact with each other. Combined with “Building Information Models” (BIM), “Virtual Reality” provides an entirely new opportunity to innovate and optimize the architecture and construction in its early stages, which creates and iterative learning process. There are several studies where virtual simulation tools based on predefined tutorials are tested for their ability to facilitate collaborative processes. This study addresses the problem from a new angle by the virtual universe created through the students' own iterative design of a building. The “Virtual reality” system's narrative tale arises spontaneously through the dialogue. The result of this study shows that “Virtual Reality”, as a tool, creates some changes in the dialogue conditions which affect the learning process. The use of “Virtual Reality” requires a very precise framing about the system's ability to facilitate a collaborative learning process. The analysis identifies several clear opportunities about incorporating gamification mechanisms known from e.g. video games software.

Towards A Situational Approach In Managing Collaborative Research Projects In IS – Finding The Right Contigency Factors

Organisations that engage in research activities with industry and academic partners face many challenges in the effective management of such collaborative projects. These projects have different facets which even change over time. Examples are explorative and creative phases in which innovative research ideas and results are investigated, followed by concrete development tasks that aim at validating and prototyping these ideas. Different project management approaches are required to address each situation adequately. Building on organisational contingency theory, we argue that the project management (PM) approach needs to consider specific contingency factors characterising different context situations of a project. We analyse relevant characteristics by means of a structured literature review and summarise our findings in a morphological framework. We distinguish resource related, outcome-related and process-related contingency factors which can be used to develop PM contingency profiles for collaborative research projects. The profiles describe a certain project situation together with the most suited management style. Application scenarios are given to illustrate the impact of our results for project managers in a collaborative research project

Smartphone chronic gaming consumption and positive coping practice

Purpose: Chronic consumption practice has been greatly accelerated by mobile, interactive and smartphone gaming technology devices. This study explores how chronic consumption of smartphone gaming produces positive coping practice. Design/methodology/approach: Underpinned by cognitive framing theory, empirical insights from eleven focus groups (n=62) reveal how smartphone gaming enhances positive coping amongst gamers and non-gamers. Findings: The findings reveal how the chronic consumption of games allows technology to act with privileged agency that resolves tensions between individuals and collectives. Consumption narratives of smartphone games, even when play is limited, lead to the identification of three cognitive frames through which positive coping processes operate: (a) the market generated frame, (b) the social being frame, and (c) the citizen frame. Research limitations/implications: This paper adds to previous research by providing an understanding of positive coping practice in the smartphone chronic gaming consumption. Originality/value: In smartphone chronic gaming consumption, cognitive frames enable positive coping by fostering appraisal capacities in which individuals confront, hegemony, culture and alterity-morality concerns

Strategic Assortment Decisions in Omnichannel Retailing: The Design and Evaluation of an Omnichannel Assortment Ontology for Consumer Confusion.

Consumer confusion is a phenomenon observed in retail settings where consumers feel irritation or frustration during the shopping journey. Consumers can be overwhelmed by assortment size, complex product variety, brand similarities, information inconsistencies or by intense stimuli from store atmospherics inducing information overload, leading to adverse reactions. Oftentimes, these experiences result in various negative short- and long-term consequences such as helplessness, purchase abandonment, dissatisfaction, or loss of trust or loyalty, thus representing a crucial challenge for retailers to prevent or mitigate. Consumer confusion has been studied extensively in a single-channel context, for instance, by investigating information overload phenomena in online shopping situations or examining increased choice sets resulting from large assortment sizes in physical stores. However, although omnichannel retailing has become the current state-of-the-art in the retail industry today, consumer confusion research from an omnichannel perspective is still very scarce. With the increased adoption of the omnichannel strategy by retailers that allow free switching behaviour for their customers during their shopping journeys, a new dimension to the consumer confusion phenomenon is observed. Customers are not only exposed to potential confusion at a specific retail situation in a single channel but are now confronted with potential new negative experiences while comparing products, prices, or information across channels. Particularly, when confronted with assortment inconsistencies across channels while switching channels, customers can experience irritation, frustration, or annoyance if the desired item is not to be found on the other channel, leading to adverse reactions that can potentially impact the retailer's financial performance. Prior literature has considered consumer confusion induced by assortment size, variety, or layout, but neglected its occurrence from assortment inconsistencies across channels from a channel switching perspective so far. This thesis focuses on the consumer confusion phenomenon resulting from assortment inconsistencies across channels from a channel-switching perspective in omnichannel retailing. Strategic assortment decisions in omnichannel retailing involve the coordination of the assortment between channels. Retailers can decide to realise a “Full”, “Asymmetric”, or “No Integration” approach for their assortment across channels. These strategic assortment decisions are taken at the Marketing-Operations-Interface (MOI), an interface harmonizing oftentimes conflicting relationships between objectives of the marketing and operations functions of the retailer. Although identical assortment across channels seems to be the desired solution to prevent consumer confusion (representing an objective from the marketing function), retailers oftentimes apply partial integration to benefit from channel-specific advantages such as the Long Tail effect (representing an objective from the operations function) which is detrimental to consumer confusion prevention. Retailers seem to neglect the significance of consumer confusion while making strategic assortment decisions at the MOI indicating that the phenomenon is not sufficiently explored or captured in an omnichannel context. Retailers appear to lack knowledge of the relevant concepts, dimensions, and consequences of the consumer confusion phenomenon. As a result, retailers are likely to fail in addressing and preventing the occurrence of the consumer confusion phenomenon in an omnichannel context. Current studies on strategic assortment decisions and consumer confusion in omnichannel retailing are very scarce and primarily based on experimental studies with a strong lack of empirical contributions. More importantly, none of the studies considers channel switching behaviour in the context of consumer confusion although representing the primary condition for the phenomenon to occur. There is a need for the integration and alignment of knowledge capturing the domains for strategic assortment decisions, the consumer confusion concept, and its short- and long-term consequences from a channel switching behaviour perspective in order to inform strategic assortment decisions at the MOI. Ontologies are explicit and formal specifications of shared conceptualisations that can structure and link information of specific domains and thus are a suitable technique for knowledge representation. Grounded on a Design Science project, this research designs and develops an ontology-based knowledge representation that captures and aligns domain knowledge on strategic assortment decisions, the consumer confusion concept and its consequences from a channel switching behaviour perspective in an omnichannel retailing context. The literature- and practitioner-informed Omnichannel Assortment Ontology for Consumer Confusion is able to integrate and represent relevant concepts and their relationships at the MOI in order to inform omnichannel retailers on the link between strategic assortment decisions and the consumer confusion phenomenon. The ontology is instantiated and evaluated through a System Dynamics model based on a case study that demonstrates successfully its ability to inform omnichannel retailers on strategic assortment decisions and the consumer confusion concept at the MOI. This study contributes to theory and practice in various ways. From a theoretical perspective, this is the first study to link strategic assortment decisions with the consumer confusion concept from a channel switching behaviour perspective. The solution design embodies novel design knowledge on the construction of an ontology-based knowledge representation. Moreover, the study enhances the fields of omnichannel assortment, consumer confusion, and channel switching behaviour research by introducing novel concepts, tools, and an improved understanding of the domains and their interplay with each other. From a managerial perspective, the ontology effectively serves as a knowledge reference that is able to guide strategic decision-making in assortment integration for omnichannel retailers at the MOI. This allows omnichannel retailers to identify and mitigate potential adverse consumer reactions induced by consumer confusion, thus eventually preventing financial impact on their retail performance

Computational Explorations of Creativity and Innovation in Design

This thesis addresses creativity in design as a property of systems rather than an attribute of isolated individuals. It focuses on the dynamics between generative and evaluative or ascriptive processes. This is in distinction to conventional approaches to the study of creativity which tend to concentrate on the isolated characteristics of person, process and product. Whilst previous research has advanced insights on potentially creative behaviour and on the general dynamics of innovation in groups, little is known about their interaction. A systems view of creativity in design is adopted in our work to broaden the focus of inquiry to incorporate the link between individual and collective change. The work presented in this thesis investigates the relation between creativity and innovation in computational models of design as a social construct. The aim is to define and implement in computer simulations the different actors and components of a system and the rules that may determine their behaviour and interaction. This allows the systematic study of their likely characteristics and effects when the system is run over simulated time. By manipulating the experimental variables of the system at initial time the experimenter is able to extract patterns from the observed results over time and build an understanding of the different types of determinants of creative design. The experiments and findings presented in this thesis relate to artificial societies composed by software agents and the social structures that emerge from their interaction. Inasmuch as these systems aim to capture some aspects of design activity, understanding them is likely to contribute to the understanding of the target system. The first part of this thesis formulates a series of initial computational explorations on cellular automata of social influence and change agency. This simple modelling framework illustrates a number of factors that facilitate change. The potential for a designer to trigger cycles of collective change is demonstrated to depend on the combination of individual and external or situational characteristics. A more comprehensive simulation framework is then introduced to explore the link between designers and their societies based on a systems model of creativity that includes social and epistemological components. In this framework a number of independent variables are set for experimentation including characteristics of individuals, fields, and domains. The effects of these individual and situational parameters are observed in experimental settings. Aspects of relevance in the definition of creativity included in these studies comprise the role of opinion leaders as gatekeepers of the domain, the effects of social organisation, the consequences of public and private access to domain knowledge by designers, and the relation between imitative behaviour and innovation. A number of factors in a social system are identified that contribute to the emergence of phenomena that are normally associated to creativity and innovation in design. At the individual level the role of differences of abilities, persistence, opportunities, imitative behaviour, peer influence, and design strategies are discussed. At the field level determinants under inspection include group structure, social mobility and organisation, emergence of opinion leaders, established rules and norms, and distribution of adoption and quality assessments. Lastly, domain aspects that influence the interaction between designers and their social groups include the generation and access to knowledge, activities of gatekeeping, domain size and distribution, and artefact structure and representation. These insights are discussed in view of current findings and relevant modelling approaches in the literature. Whilst a number of assumptions and results are validated, others contribute to ongoing debates and suggest specific mechanisms and parameters for future experimentation. The thesis concludes by characterising this approach to the study of creativity in design as an alternative 'in silico' method of inquiry that enables simulation with phenomena not amenable to direct manipulation. Lines of development for future work are advanced which promise to contribute to the experimental study of the social dimensions of design