Developing an inter-enterprise alignment maturity model: research challenges and solutions

Business-IT alignment is pervasive today, as organizations strive to achieve competitive advantage. Like in other areas, e.g., software development, maintenance and IT services, there are maturity models to assess such alignment. Those models, however, do not specifically address the aspects needed for achieving alignment between business and IT in inter-enterprise settings. In this paper, we present the challenges we face in the development of an inter-enterprise alignment maturity model, as well as the current solutions to counter these problems

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

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEAMWORK EFFECTIVENESS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Even organizations that are better served by a team model find disadvantages. These include an increase in time to communicate, poor communication between members and groups, poor coordination between group members, and competing objectives. Some self�managed teams never reach their full potential or fail to be functional altogether, because they were not set up correctly and the other aforementioned negative results occur. Other teams increase productivity and quality in organization. In this article the authors have investigated how information technology can increase teamwork effectiveness.teamwork, organization, information technology, development

Virtual teams: A literature review

In the competitive market, virtual teams represent a growing response to the need for fasting time-to-market, low-cost and rapid solutions to complex organizational problems. Virtual teams enable organizations to pool the talents and expertise of employees and non-employees by eliminating time and space barriers. Nowadays, companies are heavily investing in virtual team to enhance their performance and competitiveness. Despite virtual teams growing prevalence, relatively little is known about this new form of team. Hence the study offers an extensive literature review with definitions of virtual teams and a structured analysis of the present body of knowledge of virtual teams. First, we distinguish virtual teams from conventional teams, different types of virtual teams to identify where current knowledge applies. Second, we distinguish what is needed for effective virtual team considering the people, process and technology point of view and underlying characteristics of virtual teams and challenges they entail. Finally, we have identified and extended 12 key factors that need to be considered, and describes a methodology focused on supporting virtual team working, with a new approach that has not been specifically addressed in the existing literature and some guide line for future research extracted.Virtual team, Literature review, Effective virtual team,

Together we stand, Together we fall, Together we win: Dynamic Team Formation in Massive Open Online Courses

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer a new scalable paradigm for e-learning by providing students with global exposure and opportunities for connecting and interacting with millions of people all around the world. Very often, students work as teams to effectively accomplish course related tasks. However, due to lack of face to face interaction, it becomes difficult for MOOC students to collaborate. Additionally, the instructor also faces challenges in manually organizing students into teams because students flock to these MOOCs in huge numbers. Thus, the proposed research is aimed at developing a robust methodology for dynamic team formation in MOOCs, the theoretical framework for which is grounded at the confluence of organizational team theory, social network analysis and machine learning. A prerequisite for such an undertaking is that we understand the fact that, each and every informal tie established among students offers the opportunities to influence and be influenced. Therefore, we aim to extract value from the inherent connectedness of students in the MOOC. These connections carry with them radical implications for the way students understand each other in the networked learning community. Our approach will enable course instructors to automatically group students in teams that have fairly balanced social connections with their peers, well defined in terms of appropriately selected qualitative and quantitative network metrics.Comment: In Proceedings of 5th IEEE International Conference on Application of Digital Information & Web Technologies (ICADIWT), India, February 2014 (6 pages, 3 figures

Learning relationships from theory to design

This paper attempts to bridge the psychological and anthropological views of situated learning by focusing on the concept of a learning relationship, and by exploiting this concept in our framework for the design of learning technology. We employ Wenger's (1998) concept of communities of practice to give emphasis to social identification as a central aspect of learning, which should crucially influence our thinking about the design of learning environments. We describe learning relationships in terms of form (one‐to‐one, one‐to‐many etc.), nature (explorative, formative and comparative), distance (first‐, second‐order), and context, and we describe a first attempt at an empirical approach to their identification and measurement

Leveraging Open-standard Interorganizational Information Systems for Process Adaptability and Alignment: An Empirical Analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand the value creation mechanisms of open-standard inter-organizational information system (OSIOS), which is a key technology to achieve Industry 4.0. Specifically, this study investigates how the internal assimilation and external diffusion of OSIOS help manufactures facilitate process adaptability and alignment in supply chain network.Design/methodology/approachA survey instrument was designed and administrated to collect data for this research. Using three-stage least squares estimation, the authors empirically tested a number of hypothesized relationships based on a sample of 308 manufacturing firms in China.FindingsThe results of the study show that OSIOS can perform as value creation mechanisms to enable process adaptability and alignment. In addition, the impact of OSIOS internal assimilation is inversely U-shaped where the positive effect on process adaptability will become negative after an extremum point is reached.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the existing literature by providing insights on how OSIOS can improve supply chain integration and thus promote the achievement of industry 4.0. By revealing a U-shaped relationship between OSIOS assimilation and process adaptability, this study fills previous research gap by advancing the understanding on the value creation mechanisms of information systems deployment

Will Building ‘Good Fences’ Really Make ‘Good Neighbors’ in Science?

Problematic issues are raised by the expressed intention of the European Commission to promote greater awareness on the part of scientists in the “European Research Area” about intellectual property rights and their uses in the context of “Internet intensive research collaborations.” Promoting greater awareness and encouraging more systematic usage of IRP protections are logically distinct, but as policies for implementation – especially within the EC’s Fifth Framework Programme – the former can too readily shade into the latter. Building “good fences” does not make for “good (more productive) neighbors” in science. Balance needs to be maintained between the “open science” mode of research, and private proprietary R&D, because at the macro-system level the functions that each is well-suited to serve are complementary. Recent policy initiatives, particularly by the EC in relation to the legal protection of property rights in database, pose a serious threat to the utility of collaboratively consttructed digital information infrastructures that provide “information spaces” for voyages of scientific discovery. The case for alternative policy approaches is argued in this paper, and several specific proposals are set out for further discussion.