A Human-Centeredness Maturity Model for the Design of Services in the Digital Age

A lack of measurement tools as well as a strategic and systematicapproach for companies to achieve a high degree of human-centeredness isunknown in business and research discussions. This becomes an obstacle forcompanies when designing services, which are geared to improve humans’ lives.Based on the guidelines of Design Science Research (DSR), we address this gapby developing a human-centeredness Maturity Model (MM). The design of theMM is grounded in extant literature, semi-structured interviews as well as a focusgroup involving company representatives from the field of services, servicedesign, and human-centered design. Results reveal a series of dimensions,capabilities, and stages indicating an evolutionary path towards maturity forcompanies to become truly human-centered. Becoming truly human-centeredwill allow firms to develop specific and targeted improvements initiatives, whichcould optimize resources deployment and thus, resulting in designing betterservices for the customers

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

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Why and How do Large-scale Organizations Operationalize DevOps

An essential part of organizational efforts is to provide products to customers. To sustain competitive positions on existing markets, and to expand into new markets, firms utilize and continuously optimize approaches to efficiently provide effective products. Meanwhile, applying agile practices is a commoditized way for organizations to better adapt to changes during the development of their products. For bringing products to customers, more than their development is required. Typically, multiple organizational functions, all with individual goals and practices, are included in the development and delivery of products. This is often associated with friction points between those functions, and hinders the optimization of effectiveness and efficiency in providing products to customers. In retrospective, not all firms were able to recalibrate themselves and find back to former success after they had once missed to (again) innovate by timely addressing changes on their existing markets, discovering unmet or changed customer needs, and providing new products that bring together emerging technology with evolving customer demands. This potential threat now appears to be omnipresent with the ongoing proliferation of digitalization through the practical world of all of us. The emerging phenomenon of DevOps, a portmanteau word of “development” and “operations”, describes approaches to streamline development and delivery of products across organizational functions, to efficiently provide effective products, and to enable organizational digitalization efforts. This dissertation sheds light on reasoning, configurational factors, and dynamics behind DevOps implementations in large-scale. The composition of four independent yet interrelated scientific papers, the cornerstones of this dissertation, answers why and how large-scale organizations operationalize DevOps. In sum, this dissertation adds systematic and foundational knowledge, presents new applications and nuanced concretizations of scientific empiric approaches, connects allied but distinct research communities, and provides guidance for practitioners acting in this timely, relevant and interesting domain

Future of e-Government: An integrated conceptual framework

The information and hyper-connectivity revolutions have caused significant disruptions in citizens’ interactions with governments all over the world. Failures in implementing e-government interventions suggest the lack of an integrated approach in understanding e-government as a discipline. In this study, we present an overarching and integrated conceptual framework of e-government grounded in robust qualitative research to describe the factors that must be integrated to implement e-government successfully. Drawing insights from 168 in-depth interviews conducted with multiple stakeholders in India, this study defines e-government as a multidimensional construct with customer orientation, channel orientation and technology orientation as its antecedents. Building on customer orientation and relationship marketing theories, this study proposes that the most significant factor impacting success in implementing e-government projects is citizen orientation, followed by channel orientation and technology orientation. The study also identifies the digital divide, economic growth and political stability as moderators of e-government. Furthermore, the study proposes the tangible and intangible outcomes of e-government with perceived privacy and shared understanding as moderating conditions. Finally, the study presents relevant theoretical and practical implications with future research directions.publishedVersio

IT Leadership in Transition - The Impact of Digitalization on Finnish Organizations

Digitalization is transforming business models across industries. As information technology (IT) is becoming embedded in products and services, IT leadership has an increasingly dualistic role in supporting the organization and also serving its customers' changing needs. The ACIO research program studied how Finnish industry and public sector organizations utilize information technology in developing and managing critical business capabilities. The focus was on understanding and analyzing contemporary approaches to IT leadership. This research report summarizes some of the key research findings, providing scholars and practitioners with insights into and understanding of digitalization and changes in IT leadership in Finnish informationintensive organizations

ORGANIZING FOR THE DIGITAL WORLD: A PATHWAY TOWARDS THE AGILE MARKETING CAPABILITY

The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to explain how agility intersects in the field of marketing capabilities, in order to deepen the understanding about a new marketing capability: the Agile Marketing Capability. My dissertation consists of three papers. The first paper inquires how the Agile Marketing Capability can be formally theorized and conceptualized, identifying its key theorizing elements and putting the basis for its further exploration and analysis. The outcomes of this first study identify the core dimensions (or constructs) of the Agile Marketing Capability, advance a holistic theoretical model, and discuss the underlying constructs and relationships. With this first conceptualization of a marketing-focused capability of agility, I start outlining a new path of marketing capabilities, seeking to redefine marketing capabilities by learning more about Agile Marketing implementation. Thus, I lay the terrain for future exploration and forecast of this topic, and enrich the debate on the opportunity to integrate agile principles into marketing studies, and ultimately impact marketing capabilities. The second paper provides an initial empirical investigation of agile capability in marketing field, exploring its main defining features and thus elaborating some key theoretical and empirical dimensions which may characterize and compose the Agile Marketing Capability. The outcomes of this second study identify and organize the key theoretical concepts and dimensions of the Agile Marketing Capability in a theoretical framework. To summarize study results I also formulate some propositions, which could stimulate future theoretical and empirical research towards this topic. The findings of this research considerably advance extant knowledge on capabilities greater aligned with digital transformation challenges, which is a topic still at an early stage in current literature. Specifically, the analysis carried out in the second paper improves the understanding on agility in digital and international marketing settings, contributing to extend dynamic capabilities and marketing capabilities literature. In the meantime, the framework and propositions of this study, as well as the empirical findings, contribute to explain what strategic actions are needed to foster marketing agility, thus pursuing and implementing an Agile Marketing Capability. The third and final paper extends the body of knowledge of agile capabilities in marketing field by looking at how different organizations pursue and implement the Agile Marketing Capability. The outcomes of this third study deepen the conceptualization and definition of the Agile Marketing Capability dimensions, proposing a four-stage Agile Marketing Capability maturity framework. The framework provides key actions, activities and behaviours organized in progressive maturity levels to enable organizations to assess and improve their capabilities in Agile Marketing implementation. The findings of this work contribute to deepen the body of knowledge on marketing capabilities and agility research streams, explaining the benefits that could derive from employing agile approaches and capabilities in marketing, and how their employment actually may enhance organizations’ extant marketing capabilities, particularly in turbulent and fast-changing contexts. Notably, the analysis performed in this third study sheds light on progressive behaviors and actions representative of different maturity levels in the development and management of the Agile Marketing Capability. The maturity framework proposed in this paper and the empirical findings clarify to managers and practitioners how to assess current maturity level in the development of such capability, understand potential improvement actions, and, thus, achieve higher levels of performance. Briefly, it provides useful guidelines for organizations to become more agile in their marketing capabilities

Enterprise Architecture Artifacts Facilitating the Strategy Planning Process for Digital Transformations:a Systematic Literature Review and Multiple Case Study

The exploitation of new value propositions enabled by disruptive digital technologies—also known as digital transformations—influences the configuration of people, processes, and technology in a firm and must be considered in the enterprise’s strategy. Strategy planning, i.e., the process that determines strategy, is facilitated by enterprise architecture (EA). Hence, strategic plans are reflected in EA documents called artifacts. Our research identified fifteen EA artifacts that facilitate digital transformations’ strategy planning process through a systematic literature review. Furthermore, a multiple case study in the financial services sector was carried out to verify our theoretical findings. The case organizations show a fragmented implementation of EA artifacts, with each organization having established its own, almost unique, way of using them. Only four of the theoretically conceptualized artifacts were found in all organizations. Moreover, two EA artifacts used in all case organizations were not included in our theoretical conceptualization. In combination with the empirical research, the systematic literature review leads to an improved understanding of EA artifacts and their use in the strategy planning process for digital transformations

Ambidextrous IT Governance: The Art of Balancing Exploration and Exploitation in IT Governance

Through a case study at a global technology company, we investigate how organizations can adapt their IT governance approach to the information system at hand. This is done by considering the degree of information system integration and whether the system is related to supporting operational efficiency (exploitation) or innovation (exploration). Based on the findings of the case study, we introduce the concept of ambidextrous IT governance to describe how IT governance can be adapted to fit the dual needs of both exploration and exploitation through the use of IS