An agile business process and practice meta-model

Business Process Management (BPM) encompasses the discovery, modelling, monitoring, analysis and improvement of business processes. Limitations of traditional BPM approaches in addressing changes in business requirements have resulted in a number of agile BPM approaches that seek to accelerate the redesign of business process models. Meta-models are a key BPM feature that reduce the ambiguity of business process models. This paper describes a meta-model supporting the agile version of the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM) for business process improvement, which captures process information from actual work practices. The ability of the meta-model to achieve business process agility is discussed and compared with other agile meta-models, based on definitions of business process flexibility and agility found in the literature. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

The Global People landscaping study: intercultural effectiveness in global education partnerships

The Context The Higher Education sector in the UK is experiencing a period of rapid and competitive internationalisation. The market for higher education, at undergraduate and post graduate levels, is now truly global: many potential students can make choices about study destinations between an enormous range of institutions in any of the five continents. The audience for research is also global, with a proliferation of domestic and international journals, a multitude of international conferences in every discipline and widely disseminated international indices, ranking universities in terms of their publication and teaching performance. In particular, the recent growth of the major Asian economies has re-shaped the profile of many UK universities both in the composition of their student bodies and also in the number, nature and importance of their overseas partnerships. This Study It is within this context that the Global People project has been established, with the objective of providing knowledge and resources that will support those in the UK Higher Education sector who work, or wish to work, in international collaborations. Phases 1 and 2 of the eChina Programme (see Section1, Introduction) generated a great deal of learning about managing international education projects and Phase 3 of the Programme, the Global People project, was instigated with the aim of capturing this emergent knowledge for the benefit of others. This current report is a Landscaping Study that argues for the value of developing intercultural competence in order to better understand, create and manage productive and enjoyable partnerships with educational institutions outside the UK. Our arguments are supported by data from a wide range of research in disciplines as diverse as applied linguistics and international management. Key Findings a) The need for cultural awareness and sensitivity to diversity has been well established from studies in a range of disciplines. The high risks of mishandling intercultural interaction have prompted the development of a substantial literature both on perceived cultural differences and on the competencies that might be acquired to deal with this challenge. Although this concern has been driven by the financial requirements of international business, the internationalisation of Higher Education has imposed similar requirements on universities engaging in international collaboration. The challenge for academics and project managers is, within limited resources, to develop effective ways of identifying and acquiring the competencies needed to be interculturally effective. b) Interest in the cultural values of Chinese society has never been higher as global interaction with China, through business, government, education and science expands exponentially. There is a real danger in generalising about any nation’s cultural values and especially one where society and economy are changing so rapidly. However, the recent literature on China – from a number of disciplinary perspectives – argues that the influence of traditional Confucian values on Chinese behaviour is still strong. This means that values such as propriety, trustworthiness and the desire for harmony are still reflected in behaviour that is more relationship-based, restrained and consensual than may be normal in Western business relations. Working with Chinese partners will still be facilitated by an understanding of the centrality of social networks to Chinese private and public life and interaction in working teams will benefit from an appreciation of the Chinese respect for hierarchy and reluctance to pass judgement openly on colleagues. c) The majority of the work done on the impact of culture on e-learning has focused on issues of content and materials design. Too frequently this has been a concern for adaptation of existing materials for a local audience, rather than collaborative development of new materials by an intercultural team. As a consequence, there is limited insight into the complexities of designing and delivering learning programmes in different cultural contexts. What the research does show is that learning styles and preferences can vary between cultures and that this is related to the varying pedagogies dominant in particular national cultures. Understanding the implications of this diversity of pedagogies and reconciling cultural differences remain substantial challenges for those adapting or designing online learning programmes across a variety of cultures. d) Research into the performance of international teams offers many insights into good management practice. Principles of team selection, development, leadership and collaboration are well-established in the literature on global management and multinational partnerships. These principles recognise the importance of organisational culture, occupational culture and team roles as additional dimensions to that of national culture in influencing behaviour in project groups. International collaborations are viewed as complex dynamic systems which move through a life cycle, with valuable opportunities for reflection, learning and performance improvement. The implementation of transparent, and mutually agreed, norms, procedures and objectives is regarded as crucial to effective collaboration. e) At the level of the individual, an extensive literature exists on the competencies required to be effective in intercultural interaction. There is an apparently high degree of consensus on the core competencies that should be acquired by the culturally effective individual. Chief among these are self-awareness, cultural knowledge, language proficiency, openness, flexibility and communication skills. However, in many cases there is, at best, limited data to support the theories put forward. There is also a lack of clarity in the use of terminology, with no guarantee that researchers are using terms in the same way. The more detailed, applied research has succeeded in teasing out the knowledge and skills that may be critical in successful interaction by further breaking down broad competencies (e.g. ‘openness’) into more detailed behaviours (‘openness to new thinking; positive acceptance of different behaviour). A Way Forward A major obstacle to accessing and utilising the current knowledge and guidance on intercultural effectiveness is its dispersion across a large number of disciplines and the consequent disparity of the conceptual models and terminology employed. A framework for understanding intercultural effectiveness in international projects has a very high potential value to a wide range of professionals engaged in cross-cultural collaboration. There is substantial learning to be gained from the insights of different research disciplines but these insights need to be brought together in a way that practitioners from any field can access them without specialist knowledge. These ambitions have materialised in the form of the Toolbook, which is specifically designed to be used as a self-explanatory guide, complete with tools to stimulate awareness-raising and to encourage reflection on available resources and current practices

The Internet-of-Things Meets Business Process Management: Mutual Benefits and Challenges

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of connected devices collecting and exchanging data over the Internet. These things can be artificial or natural, and interact as autonomous agents forming a complex system. In turn, Business Process Management (BPM) was established to analyze, discover, design, implement, execute, monitor and evolve collaborative business processes within and across organizations. While the IoT and BPM have been regarded as separate topics in research and practice, we strongly believe that the management of IoT applications will strongly benefit from BPM concepts, methods and technologies on the one hand; on the other one, the IoT poses challenges that will require enhancements and extensions of the current state-of-the-art in the BPM field. In this paper, we question to what extent these two paradigms can be combined and we discuss the emerging challenges

Designing transition paths for the diffusion of sustainable system innovations. A new potential role for design in transition management?

Copyright @ 2008 Umberto AllemandiIt is a shared opinion that the transition towards sustainability will be a continuous and articulated learning process, which will require radical changes on multiple levels (social, cultural, institutional and technological). It is also shared that, given the nature and the dimension of those changes, a system discontinuity is needed, and that therefore it is necessary to act on a system innovation level. The challenge now is to understand how it is possible to facilitate and support the introduction and diffusion of such innovations. Bringing together insights from both Design for sustainability and Transition management literatures, the paper puts forward a model, called Transition model of evolutionary co-design for sustainable (product-service) system innovations, aimed at facilitating and speed-up the process of designing, experimentation, niche introduction and branching of sustainable such innovations

Technology Transfer Versus Transformation

Research defines technology transfer from the viewpoint of business processes and personnel skills (Rogers, Takegami & Yin, 2001). The focus is on action to adapt and embrace an existing technology to gain efficiency (Gilsing et al., 2011). We examine this phenomenon as innovation based on the ability to transfer existing needs, desires, behaviors, and expectations to new technology. We find technology is adopted when transfer opportunities become manifest and each transfer builds upon its predecessor to create transformation in the long term. This relationship between transfer and transformation gradually builds technology adoption across chasms of the S-curve technology innovation curve

Design thinking and innovation: synthesising concepts of knowledge co-creation in spaces of professional development

This paper explores how design thinking connects to concepts of knowledge creation and innovation. A case study of a knowledge sharing network in the social services sector is used to illustrate how design thinking supports Ba, the spaces for knowledge creation. Further exploration of the four enabling conditions for Ba resulted in delineation of two distinct types: relational and structural. Relational enablers support three groups of enabling conditions: interaction, shared values and communication. It is proposed that design thinking aligns well with relational enabling conditions for Ba to create the ideal spaces for knowledge creation. The group of structural enablers can assist or obstruct change and relate to the culture and management approaches of an organization, which may or may not be assisted by design thinking. However, to ensure that design thinking is not undermined, and innovation is achieved, the presence of an appropriate structural enabler is critical for success

Government as a social machine - the implications of government as a social machine for making and implementing market-based policy

This is the second of two reports from the Government as a Social Machine project. The first report gave an overview of the evolution of electronic/digital government, and explored the concept of 21st century government as a \u27social machine\u27. This report identifies seven social machines developed by governments in Australia and New Zealand. These social machines harness digital technologies in order to deliver more effective and efficient services, develop better business practices, and enable better accountability and transparency. The report gives an overview of each social machine in context, describing the social need that is being met and the community that has developed it, and begins to unravel some of the socio-political consequences that might arise from the use of these social machines within the public policy context. These reports are not intended to be comprehensive (further educational materials are being developed as part of the ANZSOG Case Library), but they are intended to begin a conversation amongst those studying or practicing in public policy as to how governments can better understand, manage and employ these evolving social machines for better governance and social benefit

Collaborative method to maintain business process models updated

Business process models are often forgotten after their creation and its representation is not usually updated. This appears to be negative as processes evolve over time. This paper discusses the issue of business process models maintenance through the definition of a collaborative method that creates interaction contexts enabling business actors to discuss about business processes, sharing business knowledge. The collaboration method extends the discussion about existing process representations to all stakeholders promoting their update. This collaborative method contributes to improve business process models, allowing updates based in change proposals and discussions, using a groupware tool that was developed. Four case studies were developed in real organizational environment. We came to the conclusion that the defined method and the developed tool can help organizations to maintain a business process model updated based on the inputs and consequent discussions taken by the organizational actors who participate in the processes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio