Enterprise Engineering and Management at the Crossroads

The article provides an overview of the challenges and the state of the art of the discipline of Enterprise Architecture (EA), with emphasis on the challenges and future development opportunities of the underlying Information System (IS), and its IT implementation, the Enterprise Information System (EIS). The first challenge is to overcome the narrowness of scope of present practice in IS and EA, and re-gain the coverage of the entire business on all levels of management, and a holistic and systemic coverage of the enterprise as an economic entity in its social and ecological environment. The second challenge is how to face the problems caused by complexity that limit the controllability and manageability of the enterprise as a system. The third challenge is connected with the complexity problem, and describes fundamental issues of sustainability and viability. Following from the third, the fourth challenge is to identify modes of survival for systems, and dynamic system architectures that evolve and are resilient to changes of the environment in which they live. The state of the art section provides pointers to possible radical changes to models, methodologies, theories and tools in EIS design and implementation, with the potential to solve these grand challenges.Griffith Sciences, School of Information and Communication TechnologyNo Full Tex

Crossroads Rhode Island: Proposed Social Enterprise Business Plan

Crossroads Rhode Island provides their clients with a continuum of care that includes basic emergency needs, shelter, housing, case management and vocational services for individuals and families. In order to provide these services they rely on the generosity of their donors and supporters who have helped Crossroads to become the largest homeless services organization in Rhode Island. It is important to Crossroads that they stick to their core values of safety, respect, and effectiveness when helping the homeless or at-risk individuals and families secure stable homes

Smart education for smart textiles

The aim of this paper is to present the main objectives and achievements of the Skills4Smartex project, according to its declared goals. The Erasmus+ project "Smart textiles for STEM training" is funded with support from the European Commission and it is a Strategic partnership - KA2 / Vocational Education and Training (VET), in the field of transfer of innovation from research providers towards textile enterprises & VET schools. The students within technical education acquire basic disciplines, such as mathematics, physics, technical drawing, chemistry, biology, mechanics, but the horizon of the end applications and usefulness of such basic disciplines is often not touchable. In correlation with these facts, the Skills4Smartex project is centred on improving knowledge, skills and employability of VET students in the STEM related fields, by providing the adequate training instruments to understand multidisciplinary working

Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America's Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads

Recommends investing in research, innovation, and a dynamic science and engineering workforce with the participation of underrepresented minorities. Suggests ways to improve access, motivation, affordability, and supports to raise degree completion rates

Analysis of business demography using markov chains : an application to Belgian data

This paper applies the theory of finite Markov chains to analyse the demographic evolution of Belgian enterprises. While other methodologies concentrate on the entry and exit of firms, the Markov approach also analyses migrations between economic sectors. Besides helping to provide a fuller picture of the evolution of the population, Markov chains also enable forecasts of its future composition to be made, as well as the computation of average lifetimes of companies by branch of activity. The method is applied to Belgian data from the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE). To ensure compliance with Eurostat-OECD definitions, only 'active' enterprises, i.e. enterprises with a positive turnover and/or at least one employee, are considered. The forecasting method is applied to simulate the demographic evolution of the CBE population between 2000 and 2006. This simulation seems to match well the observed changes. Taking migrations into account yields better forecasts than if they are not considered. Moreover, several off-diagonal percentages in the transition matrix are sigificantly different from zero. A case study shows that these migrations are changes in main activity and not the consequence of corrections of wrongly classified firms. Next, the average remaining lifetime and the average age of enterprises in a particular branch of activity is computed and analysed. These lifetimes and ages differ considerably across branches. As expected the life-times of public services are longer than average. Shorter lifetimes combined with an increasing number of enterprises is an indication of renewal inside the branch. A low average age is a sign of relatively new branches. Comparing age to total expected lifetime yields an indicator of closeness to extinction. This might be an indicator of the maturity of the branch. The method is more generally applicable in the sense that it can be used to analyse other populations than those from the CBE and other partitions of the populationBusiness demography, Markov chains, Transition matrix

Information integration – an essential pillar in e-government development

The purpose of this paper is to explain and promote the need for ERP implementation in the public sector, to support the growing request for effective information systems, from the e-government viewpoint and under its influence. The paper also debates the major challenges in ERP implementation issued from research of published case studies. The challenges analysis turns out four major issues to address in order to overcome the integration obstacles and create a solid infrastructure for e-government.integration, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), e-government, public sector, business process reengineering (BPR)

The role of higher education in enhancing social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship and Higher Education (HE) seem to form closer relationships. This paper concerns with the role of HE in enhancing social entrepreneurship, as it is implemented in the context of Dorset, UK, and Avalon, Canada. By utilising the theoretical dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation, the paper develops a framework of interpretation for its empirical context. In summarising its findings, it argues that the role HE can play for social entrepreneurship in both cases is highly regarded however there are a number of hurdles that will need to be overcome

Vietnamese Local State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) at the Crossroads: Implications of SOE Restructuring at the Local Level

This paper aims to capture the changing features of local SOEs under the national SOE restructuring program in the 2000s. The national policy on SOE reform in this phase had an effect of considerably clarifying and narrowing down the raison d'être of SOEs, which has been put into practice at the local level through provincial master plans. Consequently, some signs of an important change are observed: the structure of the local SOE sector is being standardized to a certain extent, and the remaining local SOEs are becoming more geared to the needs of a market economy. This trend would have far-reaching implications for the policy implementation and public service delivery by localities, which in turn would affect the long-term development of non-state sectors.State owned enterprise, Local government, Vietnam, Government enterprises