Open semantic service networks

Online service marketplaces will soon be part of the economy to scale the provision of specialized multi-party services through automation and standardization. Current research, such as the *-USDL service description language family, is already defining the basic building blocks to model the next generation of business services. Nonetheless, the developments being made do not target to interconnect services via service relationships. Without the concept of relationship, marketplaces will be seen as mere functional silos containing service descriptions. Yet, in real economies, all services are related and connected. Therefore, to address this gap we introduce the concept of open semantic service network (OSSN), concerned with the establishment of rich relationships between services. These networks will provide valuable knowledge on the global service economy, which can be exploited for many socio-economic and scientific purposes such as service network analysis, management, and control

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

Survey on Additive Manufacturing, Cloud 3D Printing and Services

Cloud Manufacturing (CM) is the concept of using manufacturing resources in a service oriented way over the Internet. Recent developments in Additive Manufacturing (AM) are making it possible to utilise resources ad-hoc as replacement for traditional manufacturing resources in case of spontaneous problems in the established manufacturing processes. In order to be of use in these scenarios the AM resources must adhere to a strict principle of transparency and service composition in adherence to the Cloud Computing (CC) paradigm. With this review we provide an overview over CM, AM and relevant domains as well as present the historical development of scientific research in these fields, starting from 2002. Part of this work is also a meta-review on the domain to further detail its development and structure

A New Approach for Evaluating the Order Fulfillment Process Options of B2C Horizontal Portals Using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis)

By using the traditional statistical or operations research methods for deciding the product-delivery logistics, the portal companies are not using their competitive advantages on being more e-enabled, informed and computationally able than their traditional counterparts. In this paper, we show some typical characteristics of the portals like their handling of a huge range of goods in terms of transactional values or volumes. Subsequently, we have identified three types of generic product-delivery logistics of the portals with various intermediate entities or trading partners. Then, a completely different approach using an extreme point method rather than the traditional central-tendency-based statistical methods has been suggested

Web Auctions in Europe

This paper argues that a better understanding of the business model of web auctions can be reached if we adopt a broader view and provide empirical research from different sites. In this paper the business model of web auctions is refined into four dimensions. These are auction model, motives, exchange processes, and stakeholders. One of the objects of this research is to redefine the blurry concept of the business model by analyzing one business model, the web auction model. We show in this research the complexity and diversity of factors contributing to the success of the web auction model. By generalizing the results to the level of business model we also show how complex and diverse business models can be. Motivated by the lack of empirically grounded justification for the mixed business results of web auctions, this paper adopts a qualitative approach that includes telephone interviews with web auctions developed in different European countries.exchange processes;stakeholders;Web auctions

The Anesthesia Continuing Education Market and the Value Creation From a Sustainable Unified Platform

Practicing anesthesia professionals in the United States are all governed by various profession-specific regulatory bodies that mandate continuing education (CE) requirements. To date, no unified resource exists for anesthesia professionals (i.e., Anesthesiologists, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists, and Anesthesiologist Assistants) to explore the CE offerings available within the marketplace. This study endeavored to convey the potential value of a unified anesthesia CE resource. It investigated how to cultivate a sustainable platform to potentially improve how anesthesia professionals search available CE offerings and to potentially enhance how anesthesia CE providers reach anesthesia professionals. This qualitative study was conducted utilizing an integrative review of the literature. The key concepts identified and investigated were network effect, segmentation, first to market, best of breed, search costs, transaction costs, minimally viable product, evolutionary phases of platforms, platform theory, platform business model, platform economy, and types of platforms. Inductive content analysis was chosen as the organizational method for the resultant qualitative data. The goal of the analysis was to create a conceptual, practical, and strategically applicable platform paradigm for the anesthesia CE marketplace driven by the insights and amalgamations from the literature. The analyzed concepts, dimensions, and indicators of platform successes and their applications potentially facilitate anesthesia professionals’ CE explorations and CE providers’ marketing efforts, as well as contextualize the overarching impacts and implications onto the anesthesia CE industry and beyond. The conclusion portrays these impacts and implications

Value Co-creation Inside the Ridesharing Economy: Evidence from the Chinese Sharing Economy Experiencescape with Set-theoretic and SEM Applications

The study empirically examines value co-creative behaviors within the framework of ridesharing, complexity theory, and fsQCA. A total of 301, questionnaires were acquired through social media and conventional sources in the study. The questionnaires were analysed to validate our proposed hypotheses by using structural equation modelling (SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), ostensibly to assess the direct (indirect) relationships, and all feasible solutions that defined Equifinality respectively. The SEM results of the study revealed that resources and experiential consumption remain the corner stone of distinct value formation; and the antecedents of commuters’ high intention to participate in ridesharing value co-creation. Furthermore, among the dimensions of experiential consumption, escapism was found to be the most influential contributor of commuters’ high intention to participate in ridesharing value co-creation. In terms of fsQCA, the results revealed seven (7) recipes of configurations (solutions) for predicting commuters’ high intention to participate in ridesharing value co-creation. Arguably, there is a chasm in literature with respect to ridesharing value co-creation. Whiles the study intends to address this chasm, the implications of the study will enhance managerial decision-making on how to combine their scarce resources to design memorable and authentic-laden services that will attract the commuting public for value co-creation. The study narrows the chasm and further deepens the stream of literature on sharing economy through its theoretical provision, and unique focus on value co-creation in the ambit of ridesharing. Keywords: Value co-creation/destruction, fsQCA, sharing economy, experience economy, memorable experience. S-D logic, complexity theory

The Roles of Corporate IT Infastructure and their Impact on IS Effectiveness

In the strategic alignment model of Henderson and Venkatraman (1993) [1] IT infrastructure has an important but only implicitly defined role. According to evolving literature, IT infrastructure serves many different purposes in large companies. We outline the main missions (roles) of the corporate-wide IT infrastructure and its contribution to IS effectiveness and study the relationship of IT infrastructure with alignment processes and strategic integration. Our empirical tests with data from almost one hundred large companies resulted in three IT infrastructure roles, which reflect the IS communality, strategic, and flexibility dimensions of the corporate-wide IT infrastructure. The roles were not symmetrically related to the IS effectiveness and alignment perspectives. IT infrastructure roles had a significant interplay with strategic integration in improving IS effectiveness. However, the interplay of IT infrastructure roles with alignment perspectives had only marginal effects. Implications of the results for research and practice are discussed

Customer Relations Management in Information Systems Research

Customer Relations Management (CRM) involves attracting and keeping “Economically Valuable” customers while repelling and eliminating “Economically Invaluable” ones. CRM involves changing relationships and improving return-on-investment from customer relationships (ROI-CR.) We are experiencing a shift from a transaction-based economy to a relationship-based one (Keen 1999.) Two important business relationship types exist: those between enterprises and customers; and those between and among enterprises (Kalakota 1996.) This paper addresses the former. However, a there is a significant amount of research into traditional “Market Channels” (See (Bowersox 1990; Ganesan 1994; Syed Saad 1996; Cannon 1999; Geyskens 1999) for examples) as well as into eCommerce (EC) Market Channels (See (Kim 1999; Menon 1999; Son 1999)) Recent and upcoming scholarship and professional activities illustrate the importance the IS Research Community places on CRM. This paper presents a framework for IS CRM Research Topics, a discussion of IS CRM scholarly and professional research directions and activities