Capability-actor-resource-service : a conceptual modelling approach for value-driven strategic sourcing

This PhD research addresses a problem within strategic sourcing, which is a critical area of strategic management that is centered on decision-making related to procurement. Strategic sourcing is related to two disciplines: (i) procurement and supply management and (ii) strategic management. Sourcing is the strategic part of procurement that refers to tasks like determining cost saving and value-driven opportunities, choosing the most appropriate go-to market strategies, and selecting and evaluating suppliers for building long-term and short-term contractual relationships. Many companies face challenges in obtaining the benefits associated with effective strategic sourcing. Although the concept of strategic sourcing is fairly well recognized, managers are still challenged by many barriers to its implementation. The main problem is the lack of practical instruments (i.e., tools and techniques) to implement the value-driven management approach to strategic sourcing, while at the same time preparing companies for fact-based decision-making by delivering data management and data analytics capabilities. This is the problem which is addressed with this PhD research. To address this problem, the research goal has been defined as “develop a modeling approach that enables companies 1) to drive fact-based decision-making with respect to procurement data management and procurement analytics”; and 2) to implement strategic sourcing toward achieving value-driven targets”. We apply conceptual modeling as our main solution approach to achieve the above research goal. We define three major areas where conceptual modeling can contribute to strategic sourcing decision-making: conceptualization, design and computer support. The proposed conceptual modeling approach is characterized by four different perspectives: (i) a way of thinking (i.e., a conceptual foundation), (ii) a way of modeling (i.e., a modeling language and method to use it), (iii) a way of working (i.e., a model-based analysis approach), and (iv) a way of supporting (i.e., a computer-aided design tool). The scope of PhD research is limited to the first three perspectives, while for the fourth perspective a solution architecture will be proposed as part of future research. This PhD dissertation is a paper-based dissertation consisting of six chapters. Three chapters (chapter 3, 4, 5) of this dissertation have been submitted to international peer-reviewed journals (chapter 4 is published and chapters 3 and 5 are accepted) and one chapter (chapter 2) has been published in the post-conference proceedings of an international workshop

Proceedings of the Inaugural Meeting ofAIS SIGPrag

The Special Interest Group on Pragmatist IS Research (SIGPrag) was approved by the Association for InformationSystems (AIS) council at its June 2008 meeting in Gallway. The motivation for this initiative is the growingrecognition of the importance of theorizing the IT artifact and its organizational and societal context from apragmatic and action-oriented perspective. SIGPrag\u27s mission is to provide a much-needed centre of gravity and tofacilitate exchange of ideas and further development of this area of IS scholarship.In summary, pragmatist IS research rests on the following set of assumptions: * Human life is a life of activity.* Humans do things that effect changes in their environment and/or within themselves.* Doing permeates thinking, conceptualizations and language use.* Human consciousness is a practical one that is in constant interplay with interventive, investigative, andevaluative actions.* Practical consciousness is formed by experience from previous actions and participation in social contexts.* IT and information systems are fundamentally symbolic language systems.* Linguistically expressed collective presuppositions, norms and categories (such as those embedded in ITand information systems) serve human activity and life.* The true value of IT and information systems lies in their potential to support human communication andcollaboration central to human activity and life.For more information about SIGPrag, its mission and current activities, please visit http://www.sigprag.org/The inaugural meeting of SIGPrag is to be held in Paris on Dec 14, 2008, in conjunction with the InternationalConference on Information Systems (ICIS). The meeting will consist of two parts, a scientific meeting and abusiness meeting. For the scientific meeting a call for position papers was issued in the summer of 2008, whichresulted in the following papers being selected for presentation:• What Kind of Pragmatism in Information Systems Research? by Göran Goldkuhl.• Pragmatic Approach in IS Projects Grounded on Recognised Frameworks by Raija Halonen.• Co-Design as Social Constructive Pragmatism by Mikael Lind, Ulf Seigerroth, Olov Forsgren, and AndersHjalmarsson.• Pragmatism and Information Systems (IS): Neurophilosophical approach by Garikoitz Lerma Usabiagaand Francesc Miralles.• Sustainability Communication: A role for IT and IS in relating business and Society by Mark Aakhus andPaul Ziek.• Managing Ambiguity while Reducing Uncertainty by Gianni Jacucci and Mike Martin.• A Pragmatic Conception of Service Encounters by Mikael Lind and Nicklas Salomonson.• Making the Web More Pragmatic: Exploring the Potential Of Some Pragmatic Concepts For IS ResearchAnd Development by Jens Allwood and Mikael Lind.• Introducing Human in Complex System: A Cognitive Pragmatics Based Model by G. Lortal.• The Pragmatic Web: An Application View by Mareike Schoop.• Design Research from a Communicative Perspective: How to Design Things with Words by Hans Weigand.• Representation and Correspondence: On the Validity of the Representation Assumption in InformationSystem Design by Pär J. Ågerfalk and Owen Eriksson.• Habermas’ theory in action by Jan L.G. Dietz.• Challenges to Information Systems Development by Roland Kaschek.The idea behind this inaugural meeting was to bring together people that share an affinity with pragmatist ISresearch and to initiate a scientific discussion about the role of pragmatist research in IS. We certainly hope that thisdiscussion will continue over the years to come. The papers are freely available for download athttp://www.sigprag.org

Legitimacy and the cognitive sources of international institutional change: The case of regional parliamentarization

How and under what conditions does legitimacy affect processes of international institutional change? This article specifies and evaluates three causal mechanisms by which variation in legitimacy induces institutional change in international organizations (IOs) and argues that an important, yet hitherto neglected, source of legitimacy-based change is cognitive in nature. Using survival analysis, we evaluate these mechanisms with a novel dataset on the establishment of parliamentary institutions in thirty-six regional organizations between 1950 and 2010. We find that the empowerment of supranational secretariats, engagement with the European Union, and parliamentarization in an organization's neighborhood increase the likelihood of regional parliamentarization. This suggests that legitimacy judgments that draw on cognitive referents provide an important source of international institutional change. We illustrate the underlying cognitive emulation mechanism with a case study of parliamentarization in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations