Value-based Design of Collaboration Processes for e-Commerce

Designing cross-organizational e-business applications faces the problem that the collaborating businesses must align their commercial interests without any central decision making authority. The design process must therefore yield a clear view of the commercial value of the collaboration for each economic actor, as well as a clear specification of the activities to be performed by each actor and a specification of information systems to be used by each actor. We present guidelines for designing the value network of the collaboration, which shows the commercial value of the collaboration for each participating actor. We then present guidelines for transforming the value network into process models, which show the feasibility of implementing the value network in the business processes of the actors. Our approach has been developed in different consultancy projects. We illustrate our approach with a consultancy project performed at a company that we will call the Amsterdam Times

Dynamics of Innovation in an “Open Source” Collaboration Environment: Lurking, Laboring and Launching FLOSS Projects on SourceForge

A systems analysis perspective is adopted to examine the critical properties of the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) mode of innovation, as reflected on the SourceForge platform (SF.net). This approach re-scales March’s (1991) framework and applies it to characterize the “innovation system” of a “distributed organization” of interacting agents in a virtual collaboration environment. The innovation system of the virtual collaboration environment is an emergent property of two “coupled” processes: one involves interactions among agents searching for information to use in designing novel software products, and the other involves the mobilization of individual capabilities for application in the software development projects. Micro-dynamics of this system are studied empirically by constructing transition probability matrices representing movements of 222,835 SF.net users among 7 different activity states. Estimated probabilities are found to form first-order Markov chains describing ergodic processes. This makes it possible to computate the equilibrium distribution of agents among the states, thereby suppressing transient effects and revealing persisting patterns of project-joining and project-launching.innovation systems, collaborative development environments, industrial districts, exploration and exploitation dynamics, open source software, FLOSS, SourceForge, project-joining, project-founding, Markov chain analysis.

Construction safety and digital design: a review

As digital technologies become widely used in designing buildings and infrastructure, questions arise about their impacts on construction safety. This review explores relationships between construction safety and digital design practices with the aim of fostering and directing further research. It surveys state-of-the-art research on databases, virtual reality, geographic information systems, 4D CAD, building information modeling and sensing technologies, finding various digital tools for addressing safety issues in the construction phase, but few tools to support design for construction safety. It also considers a literature on safety critical, digital and design practices that raises a general concern about ‘mindlessness’ in the use of technologies, and has implications for the emerging research agenda around construction safety and digital design. Bringing these strands of literature together suggests new kinds of interventions, such as the development of tools and processes for using digital models to promote mindfulness through multi-party collaboration on safet

A multiple case study of an interorganizational collaboration: Exploring the first year of an industry partnership focused on middle school engineering education

Background: Calls to improve learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and particularly engineering, present significant challenges for school systems. Partnerships among engineering industry, universities, and school systems to support learning appear promising, but current work is limited in its conclusions because it lacks a strong connection to theoretical work in interorganizational collaboration. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study aims to reflect more critically on the process of how organizations build relationships to address the following research question: In a public–private partnership to integrate engineering into middle school science curriculum, how do stakeholder characterizations of the collaborative process align with existing frameworks of interorganizational collaboration?. Design/Method: This qualitative, embedded multiple case study considered in-depth pre- and post-year interviews with teachers, administrators, industry, and university personnel during the first year of the Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools (PEERS) program. Transcripts were analyzed using a framework of interorganizational collaboration operationalized for our context. Results: Results provide insights into stakeholder perceptions of collaborative processes in the first year of the PEERS program across dimensions of collaboration. These dimensions mapped to three central discussion points with relevance for school–university–industry partnerships: school collaboration as an emergent and negotiated process, tension in collaborating across organizations, and fair share in collaborating toward a social goal. Conclusions: Taking a macro-level look at the collaborative processes involved enabled us to develop implications for collaborative stakeholders to be intentional about designing for future success. By systematically applying a framework of collaboration and capitalizing on the rich situational findings possible through a qualitative approach, we shift our understanding of collaborative processes in school–university–industry partnerships for engineering education and contribute to the development of collaboration theory

The Quality of Collaboration Process Design

Despite mixed research results, the practical value of collaboration support such as Group Support Systems (GSS) and Facilitation is well established. One of the key challenges in collaboration support is the design of collaboration processess. Such design should be based on a theory on the quality of collaboration process design. The main challenge in this research is to identify the factors that impact the quality of a collaboration process design. Collaboration Engineering (CE) is an approach to designing and deploying collaboration processes for high value recurring tasks. CE intends to enable an organization to increase the quality of collaboration for a recurring mission critical task in the organization, for which ongoing facilitation support is too expensive. Instead of a professional facilitator, a practitioner supports the group based on a short training in which he learns to execute a collaboration process design made by an expert. This design should support the group in efficiently achieving its goal through a high quality collaboration process, and needs to be transferable to the practitioner. The latter implies that the design should be clear, complete, reusable, predictable and flexible. To create such designs we need to specify the factors that foster high quality collaboration, and we need to offer support for design of a transferable high quality collaboration process design. This research will elicit these factors and offer them in a CE support tool

The Quality of Collaboration Process Design

Despite mixed research results, the practical value of collaboration support such as Group Support Systems (GSS) and Facilitation is well established. One of the key challenges in collaboration support is the design of collaboration processess. Such design should be based on a theory on the quality of collaboration process design. The main challenge in this research is to identify the factors that impact the quality of a collaboration process design. Collaboration Engineering (CE) is an approach to designing and deploying collaboration processes for high value recurring tasks. CE intends to enable an organization to increase the quality of collaboration for a recurring mission critical task in the organization, for which ongoing facilitation support is too expensive. Instead of a professional facilitator, a practitioner supports the group based on a short training in which he learns to execute a collaboration process design made by an expert. This design should support the group in efficiently achieving its goal through a high quality collaboration process, and needs to be transferable to the practitioner. The latter implies that the design should be clear, complete, reusable, predictable and flexible. To create such designs we need to specify the factors that foster high quality collaboration, and we need to offer support for design of a transferable high quality collaboration process design. This research will elicit these factors and offer them in a CE support tool

On people and complexity in healthcare service supply

Healthcare logistics is treated as a fundamentally emergent complex system primarily because a broad range of stakeholders are included. The patient is the primary “customer” of the service producers in the supply chain, including the doctors, nurses, medicine and insurance providers, and hospital administrators. Problematic issues regarding healthcare quality that need to be solved or improved are discussed, and suggestions for furthering and accelerating progress are offered. Careful application of information technology in designing appropriate information systems is advocated. Three specific illustrative cases of healthcare services that have been analyzed and assessed are summarized. The overall intent is to motivate creative processes for delivering more efficient and effective healthcare utilizing complex system behaviors and engineering principles, and an ethically-founded worldview. Keywords: case studies, collaboration, complex systems engineering, complex systems, ecosystems, healthcare services, information systems, interdependencies, logistics, process emergence, supply chain managementpublishedVersio

Business Process Model for IOT Based Systems Operations

The internet of things (IoT) is an innovative and advanced high-level IT development that provides the connection between a large network of devices equipped with numerous computing capabilities, actuation, and sensing with the help of internet connection, consequently providing multifarious novel services regarding smart systems. All around the globe the attractive big data analytics and IoT services are allowing initiatives regarding smart systems. Business processes are commonly executed inside the application systems where computers, objects of IoT as well as humans participate. However, for the system-supported processes, the use of IoT technology is still facing the problem of the absence of a standard system architecture that is essential to manage the coordination in a smart IoT environment. Business process management (BPM) is regarded as a substantial technique for designing, controlling, and improving the processes of a system. This article introduces a BPM modeling approach for IoT-based systems operation exploits IoT using BPM by adopting an IoT framework architecture and considering IoT data for interaction in a defined process model. The methodology has been carried out on top of current BPM modeling notions and system techniques for formal representations of the system and also to get through the challenges of collaboration and connection