Autonomous Agents for Business Process Management

Traditional approaches to managing business processes are often inadequate for large-scale organisation-wide, dynamic settings. However, since Internet and Intranet technologies have become widespread, an increasing number of business processes exhibit these properties. Therefore, a new approach is needed. To this end, we describe the motivation, conceptualization, design, and implementation of a novel agent-based business process management system. The key advance of our system is that responsibility for enacting various components of the business process is delegated to a number of autonomous problem solving agents. To enact their role, these agents typically interact and negotiate with other agents in order to coordinate their actions and to buy in the services they require. This approach leads to a system that is significantly more agile and robust than its traditional counterparts. To help demonstrate these benefits, a companion paper describes the application of our system to a real-world problem faced by British Telecom

Software service adaptation based on interface localisation

The aim of Web services is the provision of software services to a range of different users in different locations. Service localisation in this context can facilitate the internationalisation and localisation of services by allowing their adaption to different locales. The authors investigate three dimensions: (i) lingual localisation by providing service-level language translation techniques to adopt services to different languages, (ii) regulatory localisation by providing standards-based mappings to achieve regulatory compliance with regionally varying laws, standards and regulations, and (iii) social localisation by taking into account preferences and customs for individuals and the groups or communities in which they participate. The objective is to support and implement an explicit modelling of aspects that are relevant to localisation and runtime support consisting of tools and middleware services to automating the deployment based on models of locales, driven by the two localisation dimensions. The authors focus here on an ontology-based conceptual information model that integrates locale specification into service architectures in a coherent way

D3.2 Cost Concept Model and Gateway Specification

This document introduces a Framework supporting the implementation of a cost concept model against which current and future cost models for curating digital assets can be benchmarked. The value built into this cost concept model leverages the comprehensive engagement by the 4C project with various user communities and builds upon our understanding of the requirements, drivers, obstacles and objectives that various stakeholder groups have relating to digital curation. Ultimately, this concept model should provide a critical input to the development and refinement of cost models as well as helping to ensure that the curation and preservation solutions and services that will inevitably arise from the commercial sector as ‘supply’ respond to a much better understood ‘demand’ for cost-effective and relevant tools. To meet acknowledged gaps in current provision, a nested model of curation which addresses both costs and benefits is provided. The goal of this task was not to create a single, functionally implementable cost modelling application; but rather to design a model based on common concepts and to develop a generic gateway specification that can be used by future model developers, service and solution providers, and by researchers in follow-up research and development projects.<p></p> The Framework includes:<p></p> • A Cost Concept Model—which defines the core concepts that should be included in curation costs models;<p></p> • An Implementation Guide—for the cost concept model that provides guidance and proposes questions that should be considered when developing new cost models and refining existing cost models;<p></p> • A Gateway Specification Template—which provides standard metadata for each of the core cost concepts and is intended for use by future model developers, model users, and service and solution providers to promote interoperability;<p></p> • A Nested Model for Digital Curation—that visualises the core concepts, demonstrates how they interact and places them into context visually by linking them to A Cost and Benefit Model for Curation.<p></p> This Framework provides guidance for data collection and associated calculations in an operational context but will also provide a critical foundation for more strategic thinking around curation such as the Economic Sustainability Reference Model (ESRM).<p></p> Where appropriate, definitions of terms are provided, recommendations are made, and examples from existing models are used to illustrate the principles of the framework

Identifying Relevant Socio-Theoretic Foundations for Supporting Multi-Issue IT Cloudsourcing Negotiations

Service level agreement (SLA) negotiations involving cloud-based information technology (IT) service providers and customers are now commonplace. Although historical research on negotiation has often relied on economic foundations, the important nature of IT service levels to organizations’ operational effectiveness suggests that negotiation complexities in the context of cloud-based outsourcing (or cloudsourcing) cannot be well understood by relying on economic perspectives alone. To that end, this paper reports on experiments designed to determine the relevance of competing sociotheoretic frameworks as they pertain to IT cloudsourcing negotiations. Contributions include a rigorous examination of hypotheses derived from social exchange theory, equity theory, learning theory, and the win–win theories of negotiation. Additional contributions include the development of methodological constructs (using the Euclidean geometry) that reflect the complex nature of IT cloudsourcing SLAs, i.e., that they are composed of numerous service category contract clauses where negotiation tradeoffs within a service category as well as across service categories are possible. We find strong support for the relevance of the social exchange theory to IT cloudsourcing negotiations, as well as moderate support for the win-win theories of negotiation. Our conclusions provide clear directions for extending our work into the realm of negotiation support systems, and we rely on our findings to conjecture that IT cloudsourcing negotiation is a unique context for sociotheoretic negotiation research due to the inherent importance of information technologies to organizations’ operational effectiveness

Special Libraries, September 1976

Volume 67, Issue 9https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1976/1007/thumbnail.jp

Own-language use in language teaching and learning: state of the art

Until recently, the assumption of the language-teaching literature has been that new languages are best taught and learned monolingually, without the use of the students’ own language(s). In recent years, however, this monolingual assumption has been increasingly questioned, and a re-evaluation of teaching that relates the language being taught to the students’ own language has begun. This article surveys the developing English language literature on the role of students’ own language(s) in the language classroom. After clarifying key terms, the paper charts the continuing widespread use of students’ own languages in classrooms around the world and the contemporary academic and societal trends which have led to a revival of support for this. It then explores key arguments which underpin this revival, and reviews a range of empirical studies which examine the extent and functions of own-language use within language classrooms. Next, the article examines the support for own-language use that a range of theoretical frameworks provide, including psycholinguistic and cognitive approaches, general learning theory and sociocultural approaches. Having explored the notion of ‘optimal’ in-class own-language use, the article then reviews research into teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards own-language use. It concludes by examining how a bilingual approach to language teaching and learning might be implemented in practice

Evaluating the performance of model transformation styles in Maude

Rule-based programming has been shown to be very successful in many application areas. Two prominent examples are the specification of model transformations in model driven development approaches and the definition of structured operational semantics of formal languages. General rewriting frameworks such as Maude are flexible enough to allow the programmer to adopt and mix various rule styles. The choice between styles can be biased by the programmer’s background. For instance, experts in visual formalisms might prefer graph-rewriting styles, while experts in semantics might prefer structurally inductive rules. This paper evaluates the performance of different rule styles on a significant benchmark taken from the literature on model transformation. Depending on the actual transformation being carried out, our results show that different rule styles can offer drastically different performances. We point out the situations from which each rule style benefits to offer a valuable set of hints for choosing one style over the other

カイワ ダイアログ アンショウ ニ ジュウジ サセル ガイコクゴ シドウホウ ガ スピｰキングジ ノ テイケイ ヒョウゲン ノ シヨウ ト アンキ ガクシュウ ニ オヨボス エイキョウ ニ カンスル キソ ケンキュウ

PDF/A formatsAccess: via World Wide Web東京外国語大学大学院総合国際学研究科博士 (学術) 論文 (2016年4月)Author's thesis (Ph.D)--Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2016博甲第214号Bibliography: p. 183-195Summary in English and Japanese東京外国語大学 (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)博士 (学術

Teaching Materials and CLIL Teaching

The Reform of the Italian school system that came into effect in 2012 introduced CLIL into the upper secondary school curricula. As a result, it has created ad-hoc teacher education programmes for subject teachers to learn to teach their subject in a foreign language using CLIL methodology. This revolutionary step has involved the University Language Centres in the teacher education and it has generated the publication of a large quantity of teaching material (TM) for all school subjects, as well as academic research in this field. It is relevant both for the teacher trainer and for the subject teacher to develop a critical perspective of the TM available. Thus, this article aims to examine the published TM currently available on the market from a methodological viewpoint. The material analysed and the methodology applied here were used in teacher education programmes for future CLIL teachers in which the author of this paper was involved as a teacher trainer of the University of Cagliari Language Centre. Certain critical aspects of language learning, such as comprehensible input and adherence to the 4Cs (communication cognition, content, and culture) of the CLIL methodology framework were carefully considered in the study

Virtual Healthcare: A Literature Review in Business and Management Field

Virtual healthcare has evolved through different research and application steps, this study tries to systematize what has happened in this disruptive situation in management studies, consolidating lessons learned in last twenty years. A bibliometric analysis gives the opportunity to explore in a massive method what was written in 2020, including instant papers and preprints, trying to concentrate on new emerging topics and research fields