Holistic Business Learning Environment: Bringing practice and integration to business education

Vuosikymmenten ajan liiketoiminnan opetusta on kritisoitu liiasta teoreettisuudesta. Opetussuunnitelmat eivät tuota työelämässä menestymiseen tarvittavaa osaamista ja tietoa. Oppiaineisiin liittyvän tiedon ja pehmeiden taitojen lisäksi tarvitaan kykyä yhdistellä ja käyttää niitä käytännön toiminnassa. Liiketoiminnan opintoihin on tuotu käytännön näkökulmaa kokemuksellisen oppimisen avulla. Tietotekniikka hyödynnetään monipuolisesti kokemuksellisissa oppimisympäristöissä, jotka perustuvat simulaatioihin, peleihin, liiketoimintajärjestelmiin, virtuaalimaailmaan ja sosiaaliseen mediaan. Kokemuksellisen oppimisen ratkaisut ovat kuitenkin kohdistuneet yksittäisten liiketoiminnan osa-alueiden opetukseen ja teknologisiin ratkaisuihin ennemmin kuin kokonaisvaltaisin pedagogisiin malleihin. Tämä väitöskirja tutkii sitä, miten kokemuksellinen oppimisympäristö pitäisi rakentaa, jotta se antaa kokonaisvaltaisen liiketoimintanäkökulman ja käytännön harjoituspaikan tulevaisuuden liiketoimintataitojen hankkimiseksi. Väitöskirjassa rakennetaan suunnittelututkimuksen keinoin liiketoiminnan oppimisympäristö, joka muodostuu toiminnanohjausjärjestelmästä, liiketoimintasimulaatiosta ja oppimisyhteisöistä. Oppimisympäristö yhdistetään opetussuunnitelmaan dynaamisten kyvykkyyksien mallin avulla. Näin muodostuu kokonaisvaltainen liiketoiminnan oppimisen malli. Oppimisympäristön ja mallin toimivuutta tutkitaan Bloomin taksonomian viitekehyksessä ja osoituksia lisääntyneestä oppimisesta havaitaan taksonomian kaikilla osa-alueilla. Erityisesti oppimisympäristö vaikuttaa parantavan heikkojen ja keskiverto-opiskelijoiden pitkäkestoista, kognitiivista osaamista. Parannusten havaitaan johtuvan siitä, että oppimisympäristö toimii yhdistävänä elementtinä eli rajakohteena (boundary object), jota eri opiskeluyhteisöt voivat hyödyntää omasta näkökulmastaan: opettajat tuottavat sinne käytännön esimerkkejä ja opiskelijatiimit harjoittelevat liiketoimintaa vuorovaikutuksessa toistensa kanssa. Se tarjoaa yhteisen maaperän jossa voidaan liittää teoreettinen näkökulma käytännön prosesseihin ja liiketoiminta-aktiviteetteihin.For decades, business education has been criticized for being too theoretical and distant from the realities of actual business. The business school curricula are poorly aligned with the competencies and knowledge needed to succeed in today’s business world. In addition to disciplinary knowledge and soft skills, graduates need the capabilities to be able to integrate these skills and implement them in practical settings. Learning practical, integrative skills in an environment that emphasizes theoretical orientation and academic research is challenging. Experiential learning has been widely used to bring the practical element into business studies. In particular, technology-driven learning environments such as simulations, games, business information systems, virtual worlds, and social media have offered great possibilities for experiential exercises.And yet the criticism continues. Despite the technological developments, education still continues to be theoretical and academic. Experiential business education has not become mainstream. Different types of experiential learning solutions have been presented but they tend to solve specific areas of business management. They often focus on the technology rather than on a holistic, pedagogical model. Business education research is yet to present an experiential learning environment that combines people and information technology in a holistic way. This dissertation investigates how an experiential business learning environment should be constructed to provide a holistic business perspective and a practical training ground to enhance the competencies required of future business graduates. First, the theoretical foundations of learning and learning environments are examined. Second, the relevant research on business learning environments and curricula is presented. These lead on to the refined research questions. A design science approach is chosen as a method to construct and study a business learning environment artifact consisting of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, a business simulation, and learning communities of students and teachers. It is structured around a supply chain network, and the business transactions utilize automated information flows in an information system structure that is based on the principles of ERP II. The artifact alone does not solve the challenge of integrated business learning. It needs to be attached to the whole learning process. This dissertation presents an integrated business learning model that combines the artifact with a business curriculum based on the dynamic capabilities’ framework. This brings the intellectual coherence that indicates how disciplines, courses, and the business learning environment influence each other. It is the concrete combining factor between the people and the disciplinary topics on the curriculum plans and documents. There are positive indications of learning on all of Bloom’s domains. In particular, the artifact appears to improve the poor and average students’ long-term lower-level cognitive learning. The dissertation offers an explanation for such improvement: The artifact acts as a boundary infrastructure where different stakeholders carry out their own roles and tasks and interrelate with each other. It provides a common ground to join the theoretical perspective to the practical processes and tasks of business management. It is flexible and can be used from many different perspectives and for many different purposes at the same time

Integrating information and knowledge for enterprise innovation

It has widely been accepted that enterprise integration, can be a source of socio-technical and cultural problems within organisations wishing to provide a focussed end-to-end business service. This can cause possible “straitjacketing” of business process architectures, thus suppressing responsive business re-engineering and competitive advantage for some companies. Accordingly, the current typology and emergent forms of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technologies are set in the context of understanding information and knowledge integration philosophies. As such, key influences and trends in emerging IS integration choices, for end-to-end, cost-effective and flexible knowledge integration, are examined. As touch points across and outside organisations proliferate, via work-flow and relationship management-driven value innovation, aspects of knowledge refinement and knowledge integration pose challenges to maximising the potential of innovation and sustainable success, within enterprises. This is in terms of the increasing propensity for data fragmentation and the lack of effective information management, in the light of information overload. Furthermore, the nature of IS mediation which is inherent within decision making and workflow-based business processes, provides the basis for evaluation of the effects of information and knowledge integration. Hence, the authors propose a conceptual, holistic evaluation framework which encompasses these ideas. It is thus argued that such trends, and their implications regarding enterprise IS integration to engender sustainable competitive advantage, require fundamental re-thinking

SMEs: ERP or virtual collaboration teams

Small firms are indeed the engines of global economic growth. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play an important role to promote economic development. SMEs in the beginning of implementing new technologies always face capital shortage and need technological assistance. Available ERP systems do not fulfil the specific requirements of Small firms. SMEs has scarce resources and manpower therefore many SMEs don?t have the possessions to buy and operate an ERP System. On the other hand competition and competitiveness of SMEs have to be strengthened. This paper briefly reviews the existing perspectives on virtual teams and their effect on SMEs management. It also discusses the main characteristics of virtual teams and clarifies the differences aspects of virtual team application in SMEs. After outlining some of the main advantages and pitfall of such teams, it concentrates on comparing of ERP and virtual collaborative teams in SMEs. Finally, it provides evidence for the need of ?Software as a Service (SaaS)? where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the web for SMEs as an alternative of ERP. It has been widely argued that ERP disadvantage in SMEs such as administrative expenditure and cost, isolated structure, severe lack of software flexibility, insufficient support of SMEs business and high operating cost, lead SMEs to use virtual collaborative team which is net work base solution

Business Process Innovation using the Process Innovation Laboratory

Most organizations today are required not only to establish effective business processes but they are required to accommodate for changing business conditions at an increasing rate. Many business processes extend beyond the boundary of the enterprise into the supply chain and the information infrastructure therefore is critical. Today nearly every business relies on their Enterprise System (ES) for process integration and the future generations of enterprise systems will increasingly be driven by business process models. Consequently process modeling and improvement will become vital for business process innovation (BPI) in future organizations. There is a significant body of knowledge on various aspect of process innovation, e.g. on conceptual modeling, business processes, supply chains and enterprise systems. Still an overall comprehensive and consistent theoretical framework with guidelines for practical applications has not been identified. The aim of this paper is to establish a conceptual framework for business process innovation in the supply chain based on advanced enterprise systems. The main approach to business process innovation in this context is to create a new methodology for exploring process models and patterns of applications. The paper thus presents a new concept for business process innovation called the process innovation laboratory a.k.a. the Ð-Lab. The Ð-Lab is a comprehensive framework for BPI using advanced enterprise systems. The Ð-Lab is a collaborative workspace for experimenting with process models and an explorative approach to study integrated modeling in a controlled environment. The Ð-Lab facilitates innovation by using an integrated action learning approach to process modeling including contemporary technological, organizational and business perspectivesNo; keywords

Risky business: when a CRM vendor masqueraded as an ERP specialist

Taking a social shaping perspective we unpack the development trajectory of a packaged software product to show, that contrary to mainstream accounts, design is not completely specified a-priori and that the process continues throughout implementation, and use. We show how developers, in this case third party vendors, can continue to engage in shaping packages during implementation and also how users contribute to the development effort. In particular, we illustrate how a customer relationship management package application targeted at a particular organisational function was configured to make an enterprise wide system and the key role of the vendor in this effort. To do this we refer to a 3- year qualitative field study of an expanding United Kingdom based consultancy company undergoing extreme ICT related change. This empirical research is used to explore an often ignored phenomenon, that of the role of vendors in appropriating ICTs and the potential risks they bring. Through this, we highlight the plight and responsibilities of low-level organisational actors in this process in cognisance of the fact they usually have a minor role in ICT selection but become a major player in dealing with vendors at the implementation stage when the devil is truly in the detail. The risks we identify relate to: vendor sales pitches of products as specifically related to their capabilities and the products they put forward; the calling upon of organisational resources by vendors; vendor knowledge of the application are and the actual ‘social’, ‘technical’ and ‘organisational’ capabilities of vendors to deliver a working product. We also point to the risks managers in vendor and consumer organisations create by placing their staff in difficult conditions within appropriation processes. The implications of our work centre on the need for further research related to: vendor/developer risks of packaged software, custom and open source projects; notions of professionalism and ethics in the software industry and project working conditions

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

From Product Platform Ecosystem to Innovation Platform Ecosystem: An Institutional Perspective on the Governance of Ecosystem Transformations

Incumbent companies across industries such as banking, insurance, and enterprise software have begun transforming their existing product platform ecosystems into innovation platforms ecosystems to increase generativity in their ecosystems. Such ecosystem transformations not only entail technological challenges as the underlying platform technology changes but also organizational challenges in that ecosystem actors such as partners and customers need to become part of the transformed ecosystem. To study how incumbent companies can govern ecosystem transformations successfully, we interpret ecosystems as organizational fields and ecosystem transformations as changes to the fields’ institutional infrastructure. Based on a multiyear, grounded theory study of the transformation of SAP’s on-premises ERP system, we first identify institutionalization challenges that arise when institutional infrastructure is changed during an ecosystem transformation. We then show how field-level governance mechanisms address these challenges and how the new institutional infrastructure gains legitimacy among ecosystem actors, ultimately leading to the institutionalization of the transformed ecosystem. These findings contribute to the literature on ecosystem transformations and platform governance by highlighting the role that institutional forces play in ecosystem transformations. Furthermore, we add to the literature on institutional theory by providing insights into the dynamics of institutional infrastructure as it becomes infused with digital technologies

The Collaborative learning handbook: A Best practices guide

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