Towards Model-based Integration of Management Systems

With the shift towards sustainable business development, many companies implement function-specific management systems, which can be certified against the corresponding management system standards. The management of the different systems, in particular the management of their documentation, is a very time consuming and costly process. In this context, the paper addresses the issue of the integration of management systems. Based on a exemplary comparison of the common management system standards in the areas of quality management (ISO 9001), environmental management (ISO 14001), energy management (ISO 50001), and work safety management (OHSAS 18001), characteristic requirement patterns (hereafter referred to as integration types) are identified. With the help of these characteristics, design proposals for method fragments for the construction of a method for model- based integration of MS are presented. The patterns are demonstrated by extending an existing method for model-based energy management

Conceptualizing Design Knowledge in IS Research – A Review and Taxonomy of Design Knowledge Properties

Design science projects are of great interest in information systems (IS) research. Typically, design-oriented projects generate valuable design knowledge through the design and possible instantiation of artifacts. Although designing novel artifacts and accumulating design knowledge is common practice in IS, there is still limited shared knowledge about the distinctive characteristics of design knowledge to facilitate its accumulation. To address this issue, we develop a design knowledge taxonomy and contribute to a deeper understanding of design knowledge properties. The taxonomy is grounded on a systematic literature review, followed by a combination of empirical-to-conceptual and conceptual-to-empirical iterations. We evaluate the taxonomy by interviewing six domain experts and demonstrate its practical application and utility. Thus, the taxonomy consists of key dimensions and characteristics of design knowledge and contributes to a better scientific understanding of its characteristics. Practitioners can use the taxonomy as an instrument to further understand, design, and accumulate design knowledge

Governance in Hospitals - The Case of Business Process Alignment

Nowadays, health care organizations are situated in a highly competitive and selective market. They are forced to guarantee high quality and cost-efficient care. On the one hand, process management in health care is linked to the economical aspect, which means the reduction of time and cost efforts. On the other hand, it is also touched by the issue of governance of health care process according to the evidence medicine. The paper contributes to this second aspect. The research question is, how hospitals can be supported in building evidence based clinical processes. A method is presented, which is based on the two central instruments in this context, the Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) that aggregates evident medical knowledge, and the Clinical Pathway (CP) that describes the clinic-specific processes for defined patient groups. The paper demonstrates the role and potential conceptual modeling for clinical process governance using CPG and CPs

Existieren Wissensmanagement-Schulen? Eine Clusteranalyse von Wissensmanagement-Beiträgen aus den letzten 10 Jahren

Die Kommunikation in Forschungsgemeinschaften ist seit jeher ein vielschichtiger und komplexer Prozess. In den meisten Communities kommt es daher häufig zu Missverständnissen oder widersprüchlichen Auffassungen. Trotz seiner über 20-jährigen Historie ist besonders das Forschungsfeld Wissensmanagement mit einer Reihe von Schwierigkeiten und tiefgehenden Missverständnissen konfrontiert. Allem voran fällt die mangelnde Kumulativität der Debatte auf. Statt von einer interdisziplinär-synergetischen Betrachtung zu profitieren, liegt eine heterogene Landschaft an Grundbegriffen, Modellen, Theorien und Instrumenten vor, welche in ihren Aussagen teilweise unvereinbar und konkurrierend zueinander stehen – ein Hinweis auf die noch geringe wissenschaftliche Reife des Forschungsfeldes Wissensmanagement

Principles for Knowledge Creation in Collaborative Design Science Research

Design Science Research (DSR) advances the scientific knowledge base while at the same time leading to research results of practical utility. Several guidelines for DSR have been proposed to support researchers in their work. Collaborative forms of DSR require that knowledge be created across the boundaries of the research community and the practitioners\u27 community. Only little research, though, has been undertaken so far investigating the topic of knowledge creation in collaborative DSR settings. Answers to fundamental questions are still missing: What knowledge creation processes are used? What problems may occur during researcher-practitioner collaboration? This paper addresses the gap in literature by taking a knowledge creation perspective on DSR. Based on a literature review and findings from the field it proposes a set of principles for knowledge creation in collaborative DSR

Tool Support for Design Science Research—Towards a Software Ecosystem: A Report from a DESRIST 2017 Workshop

The information systems (IS) field contains a rich body of knowledge on approaches, methods, and frameworks that supports researchers in conducting design science research (DSR). It also contains some consensus about the key elements of DSR projects—such as problem identification, design, implementation, evaluation, and abstraction of design knowledge. Still, we lack any commonly accepted tools that address the needs of DSR scholars who seek to structure, manage, and present their projects. Indeed, DSR endeavors, which are often complex and multi-faceted in nature and involve various stakeholders (e.g., researchers, developers, practitioners, and others), require the support that such tools provide. Thus, to investigate the tools that DSR scholars actually need to effectively and efficiently perform their work, we conducted an open workshop with DSR scholars at the 2017 DESRIST conference in Karlsruhe, Germany, to debate 1) the general requirement categories of DSR tool support and 2) the more specific requirements. This paper reports on the results from this workshop. Specifically, we identify nine categories of requirements that fall into the three broad phases (pre-design, design, and post design) and that contribute to a software ecosystem for supporting DSR endeavors

Strategies for Creating, Generalising and Transferring Design Science Knowledge – A Methodological Discussion and Case Analysis

Design Science Research has been well accepted as part ofInformation Systems Research. The discussion about the researchprocess and the structure of design theories has been going on forsome time. While research has been done on the relation betweendesign theories and other types of theories, not much has beensaid about how design knowledge can be re-used. Otherdisciplines refer to such re-use as “generalisation” and “transfer”.We define a three-level separation of design abstraction (short-,mid-, and long-range) and show how knowledge re-use strategiesoperate between and within them, as well as how they relate togeneralisation and transfer. Each strategy is supported by a casefrom an existing publication, showing that the types of designtheories and the research strategies can be found in practice. Weargue that these research strategies can provide guidelines toresearchers and reviewers for planning, performing and evaluationDesign Science Research

On the usage of theories in the field of Wirtschaftsinformatik : a quantitative literature analysis

The development of theories is a central goal of every scientific discipline. Hence, theory development is also of considerable importance to the field of Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI), which seeks to progress as a scientific discipline. WI is the discipline focussing on research and design of information systems conducted by the German-speaking community. WI has slightly different objectives, focusses on different methods and different desired results compared to the Anglo-American Information Systems (IS) research discipline. Although both disciplines deal with information systems as their main research object, Mertens et al. (2014) propose to consider both disciplines as halfsister disciplines (in German: Halbschwesterdisziplinen). Against the background of the growing importance of theory development in WI, a lot of WI research contributions use and reference existing theories and theoretical models for different purposes, e.g. to derive and test hypotheses or to justify design decisions in the context of information systems’ design and development. Often, these theories originate from related scientific disciplines like economics or psychology. However, as it is still not clear which theories are of particular importance to WI research, this report aims at presenting a detailed analysis of the current usage of theories in WI and addresses the following research questions: Which theories are used in WI research and where do they originate from? and How has the usage of theories developed over time? These questions were examined based on a systematic analysis of a broad amount of scientific literature. Thus, this report is supposed to make a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the theoretical foundations of WI. Our analysis shows that 1,160 WI articles from 2000 to 2011 do, in large part, reference the same theories as Anglo-American Information Systems (IS) research. These findings are discussed and implications are highlighted

eXtensible Business Reporting Language: Finanzberichterstattung zwischen Flexibilität und Automatisierbarkeit – Analysen und Lösungsansätze

Im Zuge der zunehmenden Digitalisierung von Unternehmens- und Finanzdaten war es ein Industriekonsortium, das auf Basis der eXtensible Markup Language (XML) die Sprache eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) entwickelte und damit die Finanzberichterstattung in ein neues Zeitalter versetzte. Internetbasiert, plattform-unabhängig, vergleichbar, transparent und in Echtzeit sollen Geschäftsdaten mittels der XBRL übertragen werden und zur Verfügung stehen. Die kumulative Dissertation untersucht dazu den Spannungsbogen zwischen Flexibilität und Automatisierbarkeit im Rahmen der XBRL-basierten Finanzberichterstattung. Neben der wissenschaftstheoretischen Auseinandersetzung mit Standards gibt die Dissertation einen systematischen Überblick von wissenschaftlichen Publikation zur XBRL-Forschung. Im Detail erbringt die Arbeit einen umfassenden und systematischen empirischen Nachweis zur Verwendung von erweiterten Berichtskonzepten sowie den empirischen Nachweis der Ausprägungen von einzelnen Konflikttypen in XBRL-basierten Finanzberichten und erweitert somit die bestehende wissenschaftliche Literatur um die gewonnenen Ergebnisse und Erkenntnisse. Die darauf aufbauende Methode steigert die Vergleichbarkeit der Finanzberichte und verwendet Techniken, welche Konflikte erkennen und diese nach Konflikttypen unterscheiden. Gleichzeitig werden die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Arbeit verdeutlicht und zukünftige Forschungsthemen aufgeführt