Proximal business intelligence on the semantic web

This is the post-print version of this article. The official version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2010 Springer.Ubiquitous information systems (UBIS) extend current Information System thinking to explicitly differentiate technology between devices and software components with relation to people and process. Adapting business data and management information to support specific user actions in context is an ongoing topic of research. Approaches typically focus on providing mechanisms to improve specific information access and transcoding but not on how the information can be accessed in a mobile, dynamic and ad-hoc manner. Although web ontology has been used to facilitate the loading of data warehouses, less research has been carried out on ontology based mobile reporting. This paper explores how business data can be modeled and accessed using the web ontology language and then re-used to provide the invisibility of pervasive access; uncovering more effective architectural models for adaptive information system strategies of this type. This exploratory work is guided in part by a vision of business intelligence that is highly distributed, mobile and fluid, adapting to sensory understanding of the underlying environment in which it operates. A proof-of concept mobile and ambient data access architecture is developed in order to further test the viability of such an approach. The paper concludes with an ontology engineering framework for systems of this type – named UBIS-ONTO

Organizational Ethnography and the Art of Judgment in-the-Moment

This paper responds to the conveners’ call on exploring and advancing Organizational Ethnography (OE) as a paradigm for the organizational sciences. This sub-theme is linked through my empirical study of senior managers in international development organizations and how they make sense of using their judgment ‘in-the-moment’ in the context of their leadership roles and work environments. I adopt an “ethnographic orientation” (Watson, 2011, p.216) and emphasize the need for a highly reflexive approach in an ethnographer’s role as making judgments throughout the challenging processes of doing “fieldwork, headwork and textwork” (Van Maanen, 2011, p.218). Theoretically, this study contributes to the existing judgment and decision making literature from a social constructionist perspective by drawing linkages to judgment as a co-constructed phenomenon. How senior managers understand their judgment-making in situations ‘in-the-moment’ is an understudied area thus far and even scarcer in the context of international development organizations. Methodologically, the ethnographic and radically reflexive approach taken addresses a gap in the literature, builds awareness and raises in importance examining the ‘multiple selves’ (Reinharz, 1997) of the ethnographer. How I influenced my research and was influenced by it as both subject and object were key to my findings. In addition to the sub-theme call, this paper also links to the overarching Colloquium theme, ‘Bridging Continents, Cultures and Worldviews’, by connecting the cultures and co- constructed views of the researcher and practitioners. The collaborative, ethnographic approach taken was a unique way to get ‘up close and personal’ in understanding what judgment meant to senior leaders in the two participating UK-headquartered organizations. With international development missions in African nations, the senior leaders continuously constructed their own bridges across borders in their financing, operations and communications between their team members and external stakeholders located in multiple countries, reliant on virtual offices and mobile and Internet technology to stay connected. My judgment as an ethnographer was necessary to determine how to best embrace this way of ‘working’ during fieldwork and become another type of stakeholder to them. I will begin with a brief theoretical and methodological background of my exploratory study, identifying the gap in the literature and how my study fills it. Then I will outline the methodology, methods, data collection and analysis and findings. Finally, I will conclude with the challenges of ‘doing organizational ethnography’ inside small international development organizations and the contributions made to advance OE as a unique way to study the social phenomenon of judgment ‘in-the moment’

London Creative and Digital Fusion

date-added: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000 date-modified: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000date-added: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000 date-modified: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000The London Creative and Digital Fusion programme of interactive, tailored and in-depth support was designed to support the UK capital’s creative and digital companies to collaborate, innovate and grow. London is a globally recognised hub for technology, design and creative genius. While many cities around the world can claim to be hubs for technology entrepreneurship, London’s distinctive potential lies in the successful fusion of world-leading technology with world-leading design and creativity. As innovation thrives at the edge, where better to innovate than across the boundaries of these two clusters and cultures? This booklet tells the story of Fusion’s innovation journey, its partners and its unique business support. Most importantly of all it tells stories of companies that, having worked with London Fusion, have innovated and grown. We hope that it will inspire others to follow and build on our beginnings.European Regional Development Fund 2007-13

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

Informatisation of transport process using GPS navigation system

Nowadays, internal business processes are one of the crucial factors of firms’ competitive advantage achievement, which is becoming increasingly important, not only on local but also on global markets. Firms’ performance improvement depends to a large extent on its flexibility, adjustability and especially ability to manage internal business processes. Hence, use of information technology is among the fundamental elements of business process change, which not only improve competitiveness but also assure long term development and growth of the firm. For all these reasons, the main purpose of this article is firstly to establish that use of information technology is feasible in all industries, explain what possible obstacles for successful informatisation are, and which are major advantages after its implementation. Secondly, within theoretical aspect we present broaden view of informatisation in logistics, whilst practical example illustrates successful informatisation of transport process with adoption of GPS (Global Positioning System) in a transport firm. Furthermore, in this article we are also introducing a case study of three transport firms describing process flow before and after implementation identifying enhanced information quality, service quality and communication as a foremost advantages and achievements after informatisatio

Deriving Information Requirements from Responsibility Models

This paper describes research in understanding the requirements for complex information systems that are constructed from one or more generic COTS systems. We argue that, in these cases, behavioural requirements are largely defined by the underlying system and that the goal of the requirements engineering process is to understand the information requirements of system stakeholders. We discuss this notion of information requirements and propose that an understanding of how a socio-technical system is structured in terms of responsibilities is an effective way of discovering this type of requirement. We introduce the idea of responsibility modelling and show, using an example drawn from the domain of emergency planning, how a responsibility model can be used to derive information requirements for a system that coordinates the multiple agencies dealing with an emergency

Inside International Development Organisations: Socially Constructing Judgement in-the-Moment

This exploratory study aimed, first, to build new knowledge on how senior managers of international development organisations defined judgement and how they made sense of it in the context of their leadership roles and work environments. A secondary aim was to explore methodologies and methods, specifically unstructured interviews and observations, to be used in the PhD phase to study the social phenomenon of judgement. Using an ethnographic and reflexive approach, this study addressed the question: How do managers understand their use of judgement ‘in-the-moment’ in practice? Results from the two participating organisations suggest that there are diverse interpretations of the meaning of ‘judgement’; it is a socially constructed process; used in uncertain situations; and influenced by time and space. These findings contribute to our understanding of how judgement in-the-moment is perceived inside an understudied area: the everyday context of small international development organisations. Theoretically, this study complements the existing literature with a social constructionist perspective and draws linkages to judgement as a constitutive element of sensemaking. Methodologically, the reflexive approach taken builds awareness of examining the ‘multiple selves’ and how researchers influence their research and are influenced by it as subject and object. The validity, methodological issues, limitations and implications for future research are also discussed

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