2,567 research outputs found
Abstract State Machines 1988-1998: Commented ASM Bibliography
An annotated bibliography of papers which deal with or use Abstract State
Machines (ASMs), as of January 1998.Comment: Also maintained as a BibTeX file at http://www.eecs.umich.edu/gasm
A Survey on Economic-driven Evaluations of Information Technology
The economic-driven evaluation of information technology (IT) has become an important instrument in the management of IT projects. Numerous approaches have been developed to quantify the costs of an IT investment and its assumed profit, to evaluate its impact on business process performance, and to analyze the role of IT regarding the achievement of enterprise objectives. This paper discusses approaches for evaluating IT from an economic-driven perspective. Our comparison is based on a framework distinguishing between classification criteria and evaluation criteria. The former allow for the categorization of evaluation approaches based on their similarities and differences. The latter, by contrast, represent attributes that allow to evaluate the discussed approaches. Finally, we give an example of a typical economic-driven IT evaluation
Knowledge Representation Concepts for Automated SLA Management
Outsourcing of complex IT infrastructure to IT service providers has
increased substantially during the past years. IT service providers must be
able to fulfil their service-quality commitments based upon predefined Service
Level Agreements (SLAs) with the service customer. They need to manage, execute
and maintain thousands of SLAs for different customers and different types of
services, which needs new levels of flexibility and automation not available
with the current technology. The complexity of contractual logic in SLAs
requires new forms of knowledge representation to automatically draw inferences
and execute contractual agreements. A logic-based approach provides several
advantages including automated rule chaining allowing for compact knowledge
representation as well as flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing business
requirements. We suggest adequate logical formalisms for representation and
enforcement of SLA rules and describe a proof-of-concept implementation. The
article describes selected formalisms of the ContractLog KR and their adequacy
for automated SLA management and presents results of experiments to demonstrate
flexibility and scalability of the approach.Comment: Paschke, A. and Bichler, M.: Knowledge Representation Concepts for
Automated SLA Management, Int. Journal of Decision Support Systems (DSS),
submitted 19th March 200
HOW EUROPEAN TENDERING LEGISLATION AFFECTS SOFTWARE SELECTION
European tendering legislation aims to enhance competitiveness by promoting equality, proportionality, transparency and non-discrimination. This legislation applies to the purchase of software packages by large public institutions. This study aims to clarify how this tendering legislation shapes software selection processes. \ \ By examining the selection of a strategically important software package at a professional service organization, this study provides initial evidence on how the decision-making process in software selection is affected by the tendering process in terms of the following dimensions: 1) juridification, 2) objectivity, 3) linearity, 4) formalization and 5) communication. \ \ The decision-making quality of this tendering process is evaluated from the buyer´s perspective against functional, economic and political norms of rationality. From each of these rationalities, the tendered software selection process results in losses as well as gains. A notable finding is that tendering does not exclude political manoeuvring, with power and influnce practiced in other ways. \ \ Key words: Tendering, Software selection, Decision-making process, Functional Rationality, Political Rationality, Economic Rationality, Decision-making quality
Assessing the nature of psychological contracts: conceptualization and measurement.
The purpose of this study is to clarify a feature-oriented assessment of psychological contracts, an underdeveloped approach to psychological contracts. From a theoretical perspective, the study aims to conceptualize the nature or different dimensions of a psychological contract drawing upon theoretical frameworks and cross-national research. Reviewing the 13 nation-studies of psychological contracts organized by Rousseau and Schalk (2000), we find support for the relevance of four theoretical dimensions: time frame, tangibility, scope and stability, as well as indications for two additional dimensions: power distance and individualization. From an empirical perspective, the 6 conceptualized dimensions are being operationalized in terms of employees' expected entitlements as well as their expected obligations and tested in a large, representative sample of 1,106 employees across industries, organizations and legal contracts. The analyses resulted in 12 scales and indicated that the expected entitlements and obligations of scope, stability, power distance and individualization do not highly correlate with each other while high correlations between entitlements and obligations of time frame and tangibility exist.Measurement;
Meta Modeling for Business Process Improvement
Conducting business process improvement (BPI) initiatives is a topic of high priority for today’s companies. However, performing BPI projects has become challenging. This is due to rapidly changing customer requirements and an increase of inter-organizational business processes, which need to be considered from an end-to-end perspective. In addition, traditional BPI approaches are more and more perceived as overly complex and too resource-consuming in practice. Against this background, the paper proposes a BPI roadmap, which is an approach for systematically performing BPI projects and serves practitioners’ needs for manageable BPI methods. Based on this BPI roadmap, a domain-specific conceptual modeling method (DSMM) has been developed. The DSMM supports the efficient documentation and communication of the results that emerge during the application of the roadmap. Thus, conceptual modeling acts as a means for purposefully codifying the outcomes of a BPI project. Furthermore, a corresponding software prototype has been implemented using a meta modeling platform to assess the technical feasibility of the approach. Finally, the usability of the prototype has been empirically evaluated
Recommended from our members
What drives contract design in strategic alliances? Taking stock and how to proceed
We collect and assess prior empirical evidence on contract design in alliances that has been published since Parkhe’s (1993) seminal study on inter-firm contracts. We elaborate on the effects of transaction-related factors, experience gained from prior relationships, and deliberate learning efforts on contracts. Our paper offers three contributions. First, we systematically review the existing literature on alliance contracts and summarize our findings. Second, while prior research has traditionally focused on contractual complexity, we place the content of contracts center stage and identify three contractual functions. While existing studies on contractual functions predominantly refer to safeguarding as a response to appropriation concerns, we also consider coordination and contingency adaptability as outcomes of adaptation concerns. Third, we disentangle the differential influences of previous experiences on distinct contractual functions and show that experience gained from prior relationships has different effects on safeguarding and contingency adaptability than on coordination. Overall, we add to the systematization of the current debate on alliance contract design and trace promising avenues for future research on the impact of transaction- and experience-related factors on the complexity and content of alliance contracts
A Conceptual Model and Typology for Information Systems Controls
Controls are widely used in business and are often related to information technology (IT) because IT systems are used to implement business controls and because the introduction of IT entails additional control concerns. Thus, control aspects should be part of information systems analysis and design. Furthermore, information systems need to be examined for completeness and correctness of their controls. However, despite the importance of IT controls, no general, well formalized framework is available to guide the analysis of controls requirements, the design of controls in systems, and the audit of existing systems. This paper presents a conceptual framework of controls based on an ontological foundation and an extended typology of IT controls. The framework can be used to analyze IT control issues and manage IT control assets. An initial evaluation of the typology using a published control framework and an example indicates its potential usefulness
- …