4,934 research outputs found
Documenting Knowledge Graph Embedding and Link Prediction using Knowledge Graphs
In recent years, sub-symbolic learning, i.e., Knowledge Graph Embedding (KGE) incorporated with Knowledge Graphs (KGs) has gained significant attention in various downstream tasks (e.g., Link Prediction (LP)). These techniques learn a latent vector representation of KG's semantical structure to infer missing links. Nonetheless, the KGE models remain a black box, and the decision-making process behind them is not clear. Thus, the trustability and reliability of the model's outcomes have been challenged. While many state-of-the-art approaches provide data-driven frameworks to address these issues, they do not always provide a complete understanding, and the interpretations are not machine-readable. That is why, in this work, we extend a hybrid interpretable framework, InterpretME, in the field of the KGE models, especially for translation distance models, which include TransE, TransH, TransR, and TransD. The experimental evaluation on various benchmark KGs supports the validity of this approach, which we term Trace KGE. Trace KGE, in particular, contributes to increased interpretability and understanding of the perplexing KGE model's behavior
UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024
The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp
Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure
A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium
Essays on Manufacturers’ IT Capabilities for Digital Servitization
Over the last decades, studies have found that transformational drivers affect how firms innovate their business models (Chesbrough, 2010; Massa et al., 2016). In markets in which physical products become commodities, the servitization of business models is a transformational driver for firms (Wise & Baumgartner, 1999). For its part, digitalization increases the potential to reshape business models through novel use cases of technology (Yoo et al., 2010). Recently, digitalization was found to extend the opportunities from servitization through digital technologies as digital servitization (Paschou et al., 2020). Digital servitization describes a firm’s shift from product-centric offerings to service-centric offerings with the help of novel IT assets (Naik et al., 2020). The manufacturing industry provides promising examples of firms with portfolios of physical offerings that might undergo such a transformational shift (Baines et al., 2017).
So far, digital servitization research focuses primarily on four topics: re-defining the notion of servitization in the context of digitalization, identifying digital servitization value drivers, linking the transformation to specific technologies, and deriving how novel service offerings arise (Paschou et al., 2020; Zhou & Song, 2021).
Despite the breadth of digital servitization research, how firms can shift to service-centric offerings remains unclear (Kohtamäki et al., 2019). Specifically, research lacks studies on the prerequisites and mechanisms that link theory with evidence on achieving IT-enabled service innovation (Paschou et al., 2020). Further, how firms must organize to build and operate IT-enabled services around these technologies remains unclear (Paschou et al., 2020). In a recent report on the manufacturing industry, practitioners confirm these gaps and associate them with a lack of managerial and technical knowledge (Illner et al., 2020).
A theoretical lens that helps to address these shortcomings is the knowledge-based theory. It suggests that knowledge is the primary rationale, so that a firm benefits from its assets (Grant, 1996b; Nonaka, 1994). The knowledge-based theory understands a capability as a directed application of knowledge in a firm’s activities (Grant, 1996b; Nonaka, 1994). In the context of digitalization, firms require IT capabilities based on knowledge of how to capitalize on IT assets (Lee et al., 2015). Digital servitization research finds that IT capabilities are critical for identifying, adapting, and exploiting IT-enabled service innovations (Johansson et al., 2019). Still, little extant research informs firms that undergo digital servitization about which IT capabilities can help to strengthen their competitive advantage (Coreynen et al., 2017).
Even though IT capabilities may be necessary for success in innovating IT-enabled services, the required knowledge needs to be disseminated effectively throughout an organization (Foss et al., 2014; Grant, 1996a; Nonaka, 1994). The organizational control theory offers a theoretical perspective about knowledge dissemination mechanisms, which can be horizontal or vertical (Ouchi, 1979). Horizontal knowledge dissemination mechanisms depend on codifying processes in rules or measuring process outputs through indicators, while the locus of exerting these rules and indicators determines the vertical knowledge dissemination. The IT innovation and IT governance literature refers to these knowledge dissemination mechanisms as formalization of IT activities and centralization of IT decision-making (Weill, 2004; Winkler & Brown, 2013; Zmud, 1982). However, how to orchestrate knowledge, particularly for IT capabilities, in firms that undergo digital servitization is not yet clear (Kohtamäki et al., 2019; Münch et al., 2022; Sjödin et al., 2020).
Against this background, this dissertation addresses how manufacturers organize their IT capabilities while encountering the transformational drivers of digital servitization by answering the following overarching research question:
How can manufacturers organize their IT capabilities to capitalize on digital servitization? (References to be found in the full text):List of abbreviations in synopsis............................................................................................................V
Part I: Synopsis of the dissertation..........................................................................................................11
Motivation.......................................................................................................................................12
Research design...............................................................................................................................22.
1Conceptual approach and research objectives....................................................................22.
2Research methodologies and methods................................................................................4
3Structure of the dissertation.............................................................................................................5
3.1Systematization of the papers.............................................................................................5
3.2Paper1: Revisiting the concept of IT capabilities in the era of digitalization....................7
3.3Paper2: Short and sweet –Multiple mini case studies as a form of rigorous case studyresearch...............................................................................................................................9
3.4Paper3: Linking IT capabilities and competitive advantage of servitized business models..........................................................................................................................................11
3.5Paper4: From selling machinery to hybrid offerings –Organizational impact of digitalservitization on manufacturing firms................................................................................11
3.6Paper5: Manufacturers’ IT-enabled service innovation success as a multifacetedphenomenon: A configurational study..............................................................................13
3.7Paper6: The missing piece –Calibration of qualitative data for qualitative comparativeanalyses in IS research......................................................................................................14
3.8Paper7: Prerequisites and causal recipes for manufacturers’ success in innovating ITenabled services................................................................................................................16
4Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................19
4.1Resultssummary...............................................................................................................19
4.2Contributions....................................................................................................................20
4.2.1Theoretical contributions......................................................................................20
4.2.2Methodological contribution................................................................................21
4.2.3Practical contribution............................................................................................21
4.3Limitations and future research........................................................................................22
5References.....................................................................................................................................24
Part II: Papers of the dissertation...........................................................................................................29
Paper1: Revisiting the concept of IT capabilities in the era of digitalization.......................................30
Paper2: Short and sweet –Multiple mini case studies as a form of rigorous case study research.......41
Paper3: Linking IT capabilities and competitive advantage of servitized business model..................64
Paper4: From selling machinery to hybrid offerings –Organizational impact of digital servitization on manufacturing firms......................................................................................................................80
Paper5: Manufacturers’ IT-enabled service innovation success as a multifaceted phenomenon: A configurational study...................................................................................................................108
Paper6: The missing piece –Calibration of qualitative data for qualitative comparative analyses in IS research........................................................................................................................................119
Paper7: Prerequisites and causal recipes for manufacturers’ success in innovating IT-enabled services.....................................................................................................................................................136
Overview of the digital appendix on CD.............................................................................................17
Systemic Circular Economy Solutions for Fiber Reinforced Composites
This open access book provides an overview of the work undertaken within the FiberEUse project, which developed solutions enhancing the profitability of composite recycling and reuse in value-added products, with a cross-sectorial approach. Glass and carbon fiber reinforced polymers, or composites, are increasingly used as structural materials in many manufacturing sectors like transport, constructions and energy due to their better lightweight and corrosion resistance compared to metals. However, composite recycling is still a challenge since no significant added value in the recycling and reprocessing of composites is demonstrated. FiberEUse developed innovative solutions and business models towards sustainable Circular Economy solutions for post-use composite-made products. Three strategies are presented, namely mechanical recycling of short fibers, thermal recycling of long fibers and modular car parts design for sustainable disassembly and remanufacturing. The validation of the FiberEUse approach within eight industrial demonstrators shows the potentials towards new Circular Economy value-chains for composite materials
Exploring the determinants of digital transformation in its different stages in Dutch SMEs: A digital dynamic capabilities perspective
Digital transformation (DT) has become a crucial strategic imperative for organizations seeking to thrive in the rapidly evolving business environment. While digital transformation has been extensively studied in large organizations, there remains a need for more available evidence in the context of (Dutch) SMEs and how organizations go through different DT phases. This dissertation aims to address this gap by adopting a digital dynamic capabilities perspective to explore the determinants of digital transformation in Dutch SMEs and investigate how these determinants change over the different digital transformation phases. This thesis has met these aims by integrating an extensive review of the relevant literature and implementing a qualitative study. The latter includes nine interviews with experts from different Dutch SMEs and an expert panel to validate these findings. The primary conclusions produced by this study include five internal determinants, five external determinants, three sub-capabilities, each of the sensing, seizing, transforming, and safeguarding digital dynamic capability clusters, and five desired digital transformation outcomes. ‘Digital safeguarding’ has emerged as a novel capability cluster focusing on skills required from the implementation onwards. In conclusion, this study has contributed to a deeper understanding of the differences in the digital transformation determinants and capabilities between large organizations and SMEs. Moreover, this thesis has identified that boundaries between the different digital transformation phases could be fading due to the continuity of digital transformation. Simultaneously, this research has practical relevance as these findings could support Dutch SMEs in navigating their digital transformations. Alternatively, the study could help Joanknecht, a Dutch financial advisory firm, improve its consultancy services. Looking ahead, future researchers should seek to validate and expand upon the presented findings.
EALink: An Efficient and Accurate Pre-trained Framework for Issue-Commit Link Recovery
Issue-commit links, as a type of software traceability links, play a vital
role in various software development and maintenance tasks. However, they are
typically deficient, as developers often forget or fail to create tags when
making commits. Existing studies have deployed deep learning techniques,
including pretrained models, to improve automatic issue-commit link
recovery.Despite their promising performance, we argue that previous approaches
have four main problems, hindering them from recovering links in large software
projects. To overcome these problems, we propose an efficient and accurate
pre-trained framework called EALink for issue-commit link recovery. EALink
requires much fewer model parameters than existing pre-trained methods,
bringing efficient training and recovery. Moreover, we design various
techniques to improve the recovery accuracy of EALink. We construct a
large-scale dataset and conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate the power
of EALink. Results show that EALink outperforms the state-of-the-art methods by
a large margin (15.23%-408.65%) on various evaluation metrics. Meanwhile, its
training and inference overhead is orders of magnitude lower than existing
methods.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, published to AS
An Empirical Study on Data Leakage and Generalizability of Link Prediction Models for Issues and Commits
To enhance documentation and maintenance practices, developers conventionally
establish links between related software artifacts manually. Empirical research
has revealed that developers frequently overlook this practice, resulting in
significant information loss. To address this issue, automatic link recovery
techniques have been proposed. However, these approaches primarily focused on
improving prediction accuracy on randomly-split datasets, with limited
attention given to the impact of data leakage and the generalizability of the
predictive models. LinkFormer seeks to address these limitations. Our approach
not only preserves and improves the accuracy of existing predictions but also
enhances their alignment with real-world settings and their generalizability.
First, to better utilize contextual information for prediction, we employ the
Transformer architecture and fine-tune multiple pre-trained models on both
textual and metadata information of issues and commits. Next, to gauge the
effect of time on model performance, we employ two splitting policies during
both the training and testing phases; randomly- and temporally-split datasets.
Finally, in pursuit of a generic model that can demonstrate high performance
across a range of projects, we undertake additional fine-tuning of LinkFormer
within two distinct transfer-learning settings. Our findings support that to
simulate real-world scenarios effectively, researchers must maintain the
temporal flow of data when training models. Furthermore, the results
demonstrate that LinkFormer outperforms existing methodologies by a significant
margin, achieving a 48% improvement in F1-measure within a project-based
setting. Finally, the performance of LinkFormer in the cross-project setting is
comparable to its average performance within the project-based scenario
RE-centric Recommendations for the Development of Trustworthy(er) Autonomous Systems
Complying with the EU AI Act (AIA) guidelines while developing and
implementing AI systems will soon be mandatory within the EU. However,
practitioners lack actionable instructions to operationalise ethics during AI
systems development. A literature review of different ethical guidelines
revealed inconsistencies in the principles addressed and the terminology used
to describe them. Furthermore, requirements engineering (RE), which is
identified to foster trustworthiness in the AI development process from the
early stages was observed to be absent in a lot of frameworks that support the
development of ethical and trustworthy AI. This incongruous phrasing combined
with a lack of concrete development practices makes trustworthy AI development
harder. To address this concern, we formulated a comparison table for the
terminology used and the coverage of the ethical AI principles in major ethical
AI guidelines. We then examined the applicability of ethical AI development
frameworks for performing effective RE during the development of trustworthy AI
systems. A tertiary review and meta-analysis of literature discussing ethical
AI frameworks revealed their limitations when developing trustworthy AI. Based
on our findings, we propose recommendations to address such limitations during
the development of trustworthy AI.Comment: Accepted at [TAS '23]{First International Symposium on Trustworthy
Autonomous Systems
On the Way to SBOMs: Investigating Design Issues and Solutions in Practice
Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), offers improved transparency and supply
chain security by providing a machine-readable inventory of software components
used. With the rise in software supply chain attacks, the SBOM has attracted
attention from both academia and industry. This paper presents a study on the
practice of SBOM, based on the analysis of 4,786 GitHub discussions from 510
SBOM-related projects. Our study identifies key topics, challenges, and
solutions associated with effective SBOM usage. We also highlight commonly used
tools and frameworks for generating SBOMs, along with their respective
strengths and limitations. Our research underscores the importance of SBOMs in
software development and the need for their widespread adoption to enhance
supply chain security. Additionally, the insights gained from our study can
inform future research and development in this field
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