Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Re-Thinking Work-Life Balance in the Context of Remote Work : The Importance of Personal Re-sources in Nurturing Individual Agency

The rapid growth of remote work has transformed the global workplace, turning millions of homes into workspaces. This blurs the boundaries between work and home, challenging the maintenance of this boundary and impacting the work-life balance of employees. This doctoral thesis examines remote workers’ subjective work-life experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, where remote work was extensively performed as the primary form of work in many organizations. This study utilizes longitudinal survey data (T1, N= 1218, T2, N=776) and qualitative interview data (n=89), which are analysed through various theoretical lenses, with the aim of creating a novel and holistic understanding of the phenomenon of work-life balance and the factors that influence it. The research findings indicate that work-life balance is a complex, multidimensional, and individual experience. Remote work offers several advantages that can potentially help individuals maintain a good balance across different life domains. However, it also presents risks, such as excessive work intensity, long working hours, and a lack of social support. To maintain balance, psychological detachment from work is a crucial aspect. Remote workers employ various strategies to facilitate this detachment, including cognitive control, physical disengagement, structured routines, and engaging in leisure activities. The challenges and support needs of remote work vary between individuals, and in the remote work context, are increasingly influenced by the employees’ nonwork role responsibilities, such as those of a parenting role. These research findings contribute to the work-life literature by highlighting the resources and connections underlying work-life balance. The study also emphasizes the importance of considering the specific work-life challenges faced by both parenting and non-parenting employees. A key observation is that supporting individual agency in creating balance is important, with a particular emphasis on fostering trust and encouragement from supervisors regarding the benefits of remote work. Supervisors can support remote workers by establishing boundaries, providing emotional support, and serving as role models. These research findings contribute to the work-life literature by highlighting the resources and connections underlying work-life balance, and taking into account the needs of individuals in different life circumstances. As a practical implication, this thesis encourages employers to provide more personalized support to promote work-life balance and individual agency through work-life programs.Etätyön äkillinen kasvu on muuttanut työelämää maailmanlaajuisesti, ja miljoonista kodeista on tullut työpaikkoja. Tämä hämärtää työn ja kodin välistä rajaa, vaikuttaa työntekijöiden työn ja muun elämän tasapainoon sekä luo uusia vaatimuksia rajan hallinnalle. Väitöskirjassa tutkitaan etätyöntekijöiden kokemuksia työn ja muun elämän tasapainosta ja sen hallinnasta koronapandemian aikana, jolloin etätyö oli laajamittaisesti käytössä monissa organisaatioissa. Tutkimuksessa on kerätty pitkittäinen kyselyaineisto (T1, N= 1218, T2, N=776) sekä ja laadullinen haastatteluaineisto (n=89), joita tarkastellaan useiden teoreettisten linssien läpi pyrkimyksenä luoda uutta, aiempaa monipuolisempaa ymmärrystä etätyöntekijöiden työn ja muun elämän välisestä tasapainosta ja sen hallinnasta. Tutkimustulokset osoittavat, että työn ja muun elämän tasapaino on monimutkainen, moniulotteinen ja yksilöllinen kokemus. Etätyö on tuonut monia etuja, jotka voivat potentiaalisesti auttaa ihmisiä ylläpitämään hyvää tasapainoa eri elämänalueiden välillä. Etätyö sisältää myös riskejä, kuten intensiivistä työtä, pitkiä työaikoja ja sosiaalisen tuen puutetta. Tasapainon ylläpitämiseksi psyykkinen irrottautuminen työstä on tärkeää. Sitä edistääkseen etätyöntekijät käyttävät erilaisia strategioita, kuten kognitiivisia kontrollia, fyysistä irrottautumista, aikataulutettuja rutiineja ja vapaa-ajan aktiviteetteihin uppoutumista. Etätyön haasteet ja tukitarpeet vaihtelevat työntekijän elämäntilanteen mukaan, ja etätyöntekijän perhetilanne on tiiviisti kietoutunut työn ja muun elämän tasapainon ylläpitämiseen. Teoreettisesta näkökulmasta tutkimus tuottaa uutta tietoa työn ja muun elämän tasapainon taustalla vaikuttavista resursseista ja yhtymäkohdista eri elämäntilanteissa elävien tarpeet huomioiden. Työelämän näkökulmasta keskeinen havainto on, että yksilön omaa toimijuutta tasapainon luomisessa tulisi tukea, jossa erityisen tärkeää on esihenkilön luottamus ja kannustus etätyön hyötyjen käyttöön. Esihenkilö voi tukea etätyöntekijöitä luomalla yhteisiä rajoja, tarjoamalla emotionaalista tukea ja olemalla roolimalli.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Semantic adaptability for the systems interoperability

In the current global and competitive business context, it is essential that enterprises adapt their knowledge resources in order to smoothly interact and collaborate with others. However, due to the existent multiculturalism of people and enterprises, there are different representation views of business processes or products, even inside a same domain. Consequently, one of the main problems found in the interoperability between enterprise systems and applications is related to semantics. The integration and sharing of enterprises knowledge to build a common lexicon, plays an important role to the semantic adaptability of the information systems. The author proposes a framework to support the development of systems to manage dynamic semantic adaptability resolution. It allows different organisations to participate in a common knowledge base building, letting at the same time maintain their own views of the domain, without compromising the integration between them. Thus, systems are able to be aware of new knowledge, and have the capacity to learn from it and to manage its semantic interoperability in a dynamic and adaptable way. The author endorses the vision that in the near future, the semantic adaptability skills of the enterprise systems will be the booster to enterprises collaboration and the appearance of new business opportunities

The impact of mathematics teaching efficacy on teachers’ pedagogical practices

This study explores the pedagogical practices of 167 Year 4 and 160 Year 8 New Zealand mathematics teachers who have different levels of mathematics teaching efficacy. Using data from the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement 2013, the teacher questionnaire items believed to be the indicators of mathematics teaching efficacy were selected, represented by six items such as “I feel confident about teaching maths”. Then, low, mid, and high efficacious teachers were identified and compared to see how they differed with respect to their teaching profile and the frequency they used effective pedagogies when teaching mathematics (italicised below) (Anthony & Walshaw, 2007). Twenty eight percent of Year 4 and 41% of Year 8 teachers had high mathematics teaching efficacy. Compared with the other teachers, teachers with high mathematics teaching efficacy were better able to provide an ethic of care in their classroom, they more frequently arranged their classrooms for learning to enable students to collaborate, and more frequently expected their students to communicate their thinking and debate ideas with others. They more frequently provided students with worthwhile mathematical tasks, they more frequently provided opportunities for their students to build on their own thinking, and to explore how new learning linked to or changed what they already knew. They more frequently expected their students to make mathematical connections by reflecting on their learning, to use multiple representations, and use ideas and skills from different curriculum areas

Manager’s and citizen’s perspective of positive and negative risks for small probabilities

So far „risk‟ has been mostly defined as the expected value of a loss, mathematically PL, being P the probability of an adverse event and L the loss incurred as a consequence of the event. The so called risk matrix is based on this definition. Also for favorable events one usually refers to the expected gain PG, being G the gain incurred as a consequence of the positive event. These “measures” are generally violated in practice. The case of insurances (on the side of losses, negative risk) and the case of lotteries (on the side of gains, positive risk) are the most obvious. In these cases a single person is available to pay a higher price than that stated by the mathematical expected value, according to (more or less theoretically justified) measures. The higher the risk, the higher the unfair accepted price. The definition of risk as expected value is justified in a long term “manager‟s” perspective, in which it is conceivable to distribute the effects of an adverse event on a large number of subjects or a large number of recurrences. In other words, this definition is mostly justified on frequentist terms. Moreover, according to this definition, in two extreme situations (high-probability/low-consequence and low-probability/high-consequence), the estimated risk is low. This logic is against the principles of sustainability and continuous improvement, which should impose instead both a continuous search for lower probabilities of adverse events (higher and higher reliability) and a continuous search for lower impact of adverse events (in accordance with the fail-safe principle). In this work a different definition of risk is proposed, which stems from the idea of safeguard: (1Risk)=(1P)(1L). According to this definition, the risk levels can be considered low only when both the probability of the adverse event and the loss are small. Such perspective, in which the calculation of safeguard is privileged to the calculation of risk, would possibly avoid exposing the Society to catastrophic consequences, sometimes due to wrong or oversimplified use of probabilistic models. Therefore, it can be seen as the citizen‟s perspective to the definition of risk