RETHINKING THE BUSINESS PROCESS THROUGH REENGINEERING

Rethinking business through reengineering is based on the assumption that to meet contemporary demands of quality, service, flexibility, and low cost, processes must be kept simple. Examples of simplifying processes are combining several jobs into one, letting workers make decisions, performing the steps in a process in a natural order, and performing work where it makes the most sense. The net result is that work may be shifted across functional boundaries several times to expedite its accomplishment. Traditional inspection and control procedures are often eliminated or deferred until the process is complete, providing further cost savings. The authors, focusing their research on enterprises from Oltenia Region, demonstrate how reengineering can be carried out in a variety of corporate settings. But although workers are the ones who need to be empowered to carry out reengineering, the authors are adamant that the process must start at the top. This is because it involves making major changes that are likely to cut across traditional organizational boundaries. Those empowered to make the changes at lower levels must know they have the support of top management, or change won�t occur.reengineering, rethinking business processes, regional economy, leadership, organization

Using WSDM and Web Service Ping for QoS based Web Service Selection

By using the standard Web Service Distributed Management (WSDM) and Web Service Ping, we introduce a lightweight solution to the Web Service QoS problem. The Management of Web Services (MOWS) part of WSDM is used to publish Web Service's QoS parameters. Management using Web Services (MUWS), the second part of WSDM, is used to monitor IT resources' QoS. Examples are server's QoS, application server's QoS and network's QoS. Web Service Ping can be used as a simple diagnostic tool for Web Service's latency and Web Service's availability across organizational boundaries. Therefore, we propose to introduce a standardized Web Service Ping operation into all Web Services. All QoS data retrieved by using MOWS, MUWS and Web Service Ping, can be used for Web Service selection. We introduced a new Web Service selection architecture, the Delegation Web Service as selector. Compared to Web Service Broker as selector, consumer as selector and QoS enhanced UDDI as selector, the Delegation Web Service as selector offers a better solution for implementing Web Service load balancing and can increase the security of and for Web Services

Don’t throw rocks from the side-lines: A sociomaterial exploration of organizational blogs as boundary objects

Purpose Social media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A root metaphor of the boundary object domain is the notion of relatively static and inert objects spanning similarly static boundaries. A strong sociomaterial perspective allows the immisciblity of object and boundary to be challenged, since a key tenet of this perspective is the ongoing and mutually-constituted performance of the material and social. Design/methodology/approach The aim of our research is to draw upon sociomateriality to explore the operation of social media platforms as intra-organizational boundary objects. Given the novel perspective of this study and its social constructivist ontology, we adopt an exploratory, interpretivist research design. This is operationalized as a case study of the use of an organizational blog by a major UK government department over an extended period. A novel aspect of the study is our use of data released under a Freedom of Information request. Findings We present three exemplar instances of how the blog and organizational boundaries were performed in the situated practice of the case study organization. We draw on literature on boundary objects, blogs and sociomateriality in order to provide a theoretical explication of the mutually-constituted performance of the blog and organizational boundaries. We also invoke the notion of ‘extended chains of intra-action’ to theorise changes in the wider organization. Originality/value Adoption of a sociomaterial lens provides a highly novel perspective of boundary objects and organizational boundaries. The study highlights the indeterminate and dynamic nature of boundary objects and boundaries, with both being in an intra-active state of becoming, challenging conventional conceptions. The study demonstrates that specific material-discursive practices arising from the situated practice of the blog at the respective boundaries were performative, reconfiguring the blog and boundaries and being generative of further changes in the organization

Innovation sustainability in challenging health-care contexts : embedding clinically led change in routine practice

The need for organizational innovation as a means of improving health-care quality and containing costs is widely recognized, but while a growing body of research has improved knowledge of implementation, very little has considered the challenges involved in sustaining change – especially organizational change led ‘bottom-up’ by frontline clinicians. This study addresses this lacuna, taking a longitudinal, qualitative case-study approach to understanding the paths to sustainability of four organizational innovations. It highlights the importance of the interaction between organizational context, nature of the innovation and strategies deployed in achieving sustainability. It discusses how positional influence of service leads, complexity of innovation, networks of support, embedding in existing systems, and proactive responses to changing circumstances can interact to sustain change. In the absence of cast-iron evidence of effectiveness, wider notions of value may be successfully invoked to sustain innovation. Sustainability requires continuing effort through time, rather than representing a final state to be achieved. Our study offers new insights into the process of sustainability of organizational change, and elucidates the complement of strategies needed to make bottom-up change last in challenging contexts replete with competing priorities

Policy and Security Configuration Management Systems in Cross-Organisational Settings

A context of use analysis is an important step in every software engineering project. Comprising the identification of the key system users as well as an analysis of the system environment and the activities supported, this engineering step is crucial for the successful development of information systems. Clarity with respect to the users’ demand for system support and their participation in the activities supported by the system is considered particularly important for systems which are critical for organizational continuity and which are used across organizational boundaries. Systems supporting policy and security configuration management in networks of IT service providers, their customers and auditors meet both of these criteria. Within the scope of this article, the context of use of such a system supporting policy and security configuration management is investigated by means of a user-oriented approach. The focus lies on a specific setting being investigated within the scope of an on-going research project. The investigation which was based on a series of qualitative interviews as well as desk research resulted in a comprehensive description of the participation of a set of key system users in activities related to policy and security configuration management as well as their demand for system support. Also the key users and the activities to be supported are discussed within the scope of this article

Crossing Organizational Boundaries in Palliative Care: The Promise and Reality of Community Partnerships

This report presents the first of a series of findings from the Community-Oriented Palliative Care Initiative (COPCI), an innovative program testing new approaches to caring for individuals with progressive, life threatening illness. Developed and supported by the United Hospital Fund, the project was designed to initiate collaborations among health care and social service organizations, with the goal of reaching seriously ill individuals and their caregivers earlier in the course of illness and providing a broad range of coordinated services. Six such networks of diverse partners received a total of $2.1 million in grants over the two-year period from mid-2000 into 2002.The urgency to provide alternatives to current standard practice is underscored by the number of individuals affected: in New York City alone, in the year 2000, some 46,000 people died of diseases typically marked by a lengthy course from diagnosis to death. While many could have benefited from appropriate and timely palliative care services, most did not receive them.The Fund reasoned that networks including not only hospitals and hospices but also social services agencies and other community resources could collectively respond, earlier and more fully, to the complex combination of medical, social, psychological, and spiritual needs that typify the months and years leading to death. Local expertise and resources should determine the structure of each network, the partners involved, and the specific model for service delivery. Drawing on the experiences of the six pioneering projects, this report focuses on the challenges of creating such new networks

The geography of strain: organizational resilience as a function of intergroup relations

Organizational resilience is an organization’s ability to absorb strain and preserve or improve functioning, despite the presence of adversity. In existing scholarship there is the implicit assumption that organizations experience and respond holistically to acute forms of adversity. We challenge this assumption by theorizing about how adversity can create differential strain, affecting parts of an organization rather than the whole. We argue that relations among those parts fundamentally shape organizational resilience. We develop a theoretical model that maps how the differentiated emergence of strain in focal parts of an organization triggers the movements of adjoining parts to provide or withhold resources necessary for the focal parts to adapt effectively. Drawing on core principles of theories about intergroup relations, we theorize about three specific pathways—integration, disavowal, and reclamation—by which responses of adjoining parts to focal part strain shape organizational resilience. We further theorize about influences on whether and when adjoining parts are likely to select different pathways. The resulting theory reveals how the social processes among parts of organizations influence member responses to adversity and, ultimately, organizational resilience. We conclude by noting the implications for organizational resilience theory, research, and practice.Accepted manuscrip

Grid-enabled Workflows for Industrial Product Design

This paper presents a generic approach for developing and using Grid-based workflow technology for enabling cross-organizational engineering applications. Using industrial product design examples from the automotive and aerospace industries we highlight the main requirements and challenges addressed by our approach and describe how it can be used for enabling interoperability between heterogeneous workflow engines

Supply Chains and Porous Boundaries: The Disaggregation of Legal Services

The economic downturn has had significant effects on law firms, and is causing many of them to rethink some basic assumptions about how they operate. In important respects, however, the downturn has simply intensified the effects of some deeper trends that preceded it, which are likely to continue after any recovery that may occur. This paper explores one of these trends, which is corporate client insistence that law firms “disaggregate” their services into discrete tasks that can be delegated to the least costly providers who can perform them. With advances in communications technology, there is increasing likelihood that some of these persons may be located outside the formal boundaries of the firm. This means that law firms may need increasingly to confront the make or buy decision that their corporate clients have regularly confronted for some time. The potential for vertical disintegration is a relatively recent development for legal services, but is well-established in other sectors of the global economy. Empirical work in several disciplines has identified a number of issues that arise for organizations as the make or buy decision becomes a potentially more salient feature of their operations. Much of this work has focused in particular on the implications of relying on outsourcing as an integral part of the production process. This paper discusses research on: (1) the challenges of ensuring that work performed outside the firm is fully integrated into the production process; (2) coordinating projects for which networks of organizations are responsible; (3) managing the transfer of knowledge inside and outside of firms that are participants in a supply chain; and (4) addressing the impact of using contingent workers on an organization’s workforce, structure, and culture. A review of this research suggests considerations that law firms will need to assess if they begin significantly to extend the process of providing services beyond their formal boundaries. Discussing the research also is intended to introduce concepts that may become increasingly relevant to law firms, but which currently are not commonly used to analyze their operations. Considering how these concepts are applicable to law firms may prompt us to rethink how to conceptualize these firms and what they do. This paper therefore is a preliminary attempt to explore: (1) the extent to which law firms may come to resemble the vertically disintegrated organizations that populate many other economic sectors and (2) the potential implications of this trend for the provision of legal services,the trajectory of legal careers, and lawyers’ sense of themselves as members of a distinct profession