Towards a flexible service integration through separation of business rules

Driven by dynamic market demands, enterprises are continuously exploring collaborations with others to add value to their services and seize new market opportunities. Achieving enterprise collaboration is facilitated by Enterprise Application Integration and Business-to-Business approaches that employ architectural paradigms like Service Oriented Architecture and incorporate technological advancements in networking and computing. However, flexibility remains a major challenge related to enterprise collaboration. How can changes in demands and opportunities be reflected in collaboration solutions with minimum time and effort and with maximum reuse of existing applications? This paper proposes an approach towards a more flexible integration of enterprise applications in the context of service mediation. We achieve this by combining goal-based, model-driven and serviceoriented approaches. In particular, we pay special attention to the separation of business rules from the business process of the integration solution. Specifying the requirements as goal models, we separate those parts which are more likely to evolve over time in terms of business rules. These business rules are then made executable by exposing them as Web services and incorporating them into the design of the business process.\ud Thus, should the business rules change, the business process remains unaffected. Finally, this paper also provides an evaluation of the flexibility of our solution in relation to the current work in business process flexibility research

Human Resource Management Challenges in a Slovenian Social Enterprise: A Case Study

There is a growing number of studies exploring social enterprise in order to increase the understanding of business sustainability and resilience in the social economy. However, little is known about how social enterprises or social entrepreneurs emerging from not-for-profit sectors have faced human resource management (HRM) challenges in practice. In this study, we focus on a hospitality social enterprise founded by social workers in Slovenia as a single case study. Through a series of combined interview and observation methods, we investigate the HRM challenges this social entrepreneur faced when pursuing sustainable social business. We uncovered four strategic and HRM challenges that contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the social enterprise literature. This study paves the way for future studies to focus on HRM in social enterprise

System implementation: managing project and post project stage - case study in an Indonesian company

The research reported in this paper aims to get a better\ud understanding of how the implementation process of\ud enterprise systems (ES) can be managed, by studying the\ud process from an organisational perspective. A review of\ud the literature on previous research in ES implementation\ud has been carried out and the state of the art of ES\ud implementation research is defined. Using several body of\ud literature, an organisational view on ES implementation is\ud described, explaining that ES implementation involves\ud challenges from triple domain, namely technological\ud challenge, business process related challenge, and\ud organisational challenge. Based on the defined state of the\ud art and the organisational view on ES implementation\ud developed in this research, a research framework is\ud presented, addressing the project as well as the postproject\ud stage, and a number of essential issues within the\ud stages. System alignment, knowledge acquisition, change\ud mobilisation are the essntial issues to be studied in the\ud project stage while institutionalisation effort and\ud continuous improvement facilitation are to be studied in\ud the post-project stage. Case studies in Indonesian\ud companies are used to explain the framework

Contrasting approaches to preparedness: a reflection on two case studies

This chapter reflects on ongoing research in SMEs in the manufacturing and service sectors. It contrasts different approaches to the issue of preparedness from an organisational and social perspective, in two cases where new enterprise-wide business processes were implemented and integrated in different settings. In both cases, the emergence of new systems presented a huge challenge to companies hard-pressed to marshal the resources to mount effective change and implementation projects on this scale. The cases presented enable a comparison of different strategies used, one firm responding to organic growth, and the other to rapid industry-driven change. The chapter focuses not on the implementations per se, but instead on the issue of preparedness for change. The chapter concludes by drawing out general lessons concerning how to support and maintain organisational preparedness for enterprise wide change in different industry setting

Challenges and influential factors in ERP adoption and implementation

The adoption and implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is a challenging and expensive task that not only requires rigorous efforts but also demands to have a detailed analysis of such factors that are critical to the adoption or implementation of ERP systems. Many efforts have been made to identify such influential factors for ERP; however, they are not filtered comprehensively in terms of the different perspectives. This paper focuses on the ERP critical success factors from five different perspectives such as: stakeholders; process; technology; organisation; and project. Results from the literature review are presented and 19 such factors are identified that are imperative for a successful ERP implementation, which are listed in order of their importance. Considering these factors can realize several benefits such as reducing costs and saving time or extra effort

View from the Top: How Corporate Boards Can Engage on Sustainability Performance

Corporate boards are responsible for overseeing the interests of shareholders in the long term and have a critical role to play in championing sustainability across the enterprise. Over the years, Wall Street research, academic papers, corporate reports and trends from major investors have all underscored the same message: Companies that adopt sustainable practices deliver superior financial results and can face the future with more resilience.Based on interviews conducted with dozens of corporate directors, senior corporate leaders and governance experts, this Ceres report identifies key strategies for effective board engagement that can produce tangible environmental and social impacts. Specifically, the report recommends two inter-related approaches for weaving sustainability more deeply across board functions:Integrating sustainability into board governance systems, andIntegrating sustainability into board actions.By combining robust systems and meaningful actions, boards will have a far better chance of encouraging substantive performance improvements

Third-age Entrepreneurs Propensity to Engage in New Venture Creation and Development

Christopher Brown, Diane Morrad, ‘Third-age Entrepreneurs Propensity to Engage in New Venture Creation and Development’, paper presented at the 4th European Conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ECEI), Antwerp, Belgium, 10-12 September, 2009.Increasingly the issues of entrepreneurship and new venture creation have become two of the most important drivers for future success of the UK economy, especially in the current climate of economic turbulence and uncertainty. The creation of an enterprise culture, one that depends on entrepreneurs, is one of the strategic goals of the UK Government’s action plan for micro- and small-enterprises. The development of these enterprise cultures will naturally create a marketplace ‘churn’, one that stimulates both continuous and radical innovations, and as a consequence of this contribute to the overall UK’s overall productivity and sustained economic performance. Yet research on entrepreneurs, and particularly third-age entrepreneurs, their abilities and motivation to start-up new enterprises within the environmental good and services sector is limited.Our research study utilizes qualitative data collection and analysis. We have engaged with 12 small enterprise entrepreneurs who are currently, or have already started-up a new enterprise in the EGS sector. Our research studies on how opportunities and threats influence third-age enterpreneurs’ values, attitudes and practices suggested that both, sector-wide values and practices, as well as the strength of sector-based systems of innovations, significantly influence the effective prediction of venture creation, development and creative destruction practices. It is these third- age entrepreneurs mindset Business Models (BMs), how they perceive they can generate business value and align their business practices around EGS sector opportunities and threats, that both determines their propensity to create new ventures, and their motivation and success in driving new venture creation and development oportunities. A framework is proposed based on our limited entrepreneurial mindset analysis that links their values, vision and actions with a more substantial evaluation of their overall mindset business model.Peer reviewe