Rethinking green entrepreneurship - fluid narratives of the green economy

Green entrepreneurs have been seen as key drivers for a transition to a green economy. However, there has been limited in-depth qualitative empirical research with green entrepreneurs to date, focusing instead on typologies categorising certain ‘types’ of green entrepreneur. Moreover, the literature rarely situates such individual activities within broader concepts such as the green economy. In contrast, we suggest that current discourses of the green economy are important in contextualising the ways that green entrepreneurs make sense of themselves and their businesses. Green entrepreneurs are thus negotiating varying tensions between their business activities, environmental philosophies, and wider contexts at the intersection between the green economy and the mainstream economy. Drawing on evidence from 55 interviews, we explore the narratives employed by green entrepreneurs to situate themselves within/outwith the wider green economy – the recursive framing of mainstream and niche ‘green’ activities provides a sense of the tensions and politics at play in the development of the green economy. We thus offer a new and more dynamic view of the evolving nature of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ a green entrepreneur, rather than relying on the fixed categories espoused in previous typologies. We conclude that it is important that policy makers recognise the complex and contentious nature of green entrepreneurship, and that it is essential to view the green economy as a diverse constellation of myriad actors rather than corporate reinventions of business as usual

Governance of Offshore IT Outsourcing at Shell Global Functions IT-BAM Development and Application of a Governance Framework to Improve Outsourcing Relationships

The lack of effective IT governance is widely recognized as a key inhibitor to successful global IT outsourcing relationships. In this study we present the development and application of a governance framework to improve outsourcing relationships. The approach used to developing an IT governance framework includes a meta model and a customization process to fit the framework to the target organization. The IT governance framework consists of four different elements (1) organisational structures, (2) joint processes between in- and outsourcer, (3) responsibilities that link roles to processes and (4) a diverse set of control indicators to measure the success of the relationship. The IT governance framework is put in practice in Shell GFIT BAM, a part of Shell that concluded to have a lack of management control over at least one of their outsourcing relationships. In a workshop the governance framework was used to perform a gap analysis between the current and desired governance. Several gaps were identified in the way roles and responsibilities are assigned and joint processes are set-up. Moreover, this workshop also showed the usefulness and usability of the IT governance framework in structuring, providing input and managing stakeholders in the discussions around IT governance

Combined automotive safety and security pattern engineering approach

Automotive systems will exhibit increased levels of automation as well as ever tighter integration with other vehicles, traffic infrastructure, and cloud services. From safety perspective, this can be perceived as boon or bane - it greatly increases complexity and uncertainty, but at the same time opens up new opportunities for realizing innovative safety functions. Moreover, cybersecurity becomes important as additional concern because attacks are now much more likely and severe. However, there is a lack of experience with security concerns in context of safety engineering in general and in automotive safety departments in particular. To address this problem, we propose a systematic pattern-based approach that interlinks safety and security patterns and provides guidance with respect to selection and combination of both types of patterns in context of system engineering. A combined safety and security pattern engineering workflow is proposed to provide systematic guidance to support non-expert engineers based on best practices. The application of the approach is shown and demonstrated by an automotive case study and different use case scenarios.EC/H2020/692474/EU/Architecture-driven, Multi-concern and Seamless Assurance and Certification of Cyber-Physical Systems/AMASSEC/H2020/737422/EU/Secure COnnected Trustable Things/SCOTTEC/H2020/732242/EU/Dependability Engineering Innovation for CPS - DEIS/DEISBMBF, 01IS16043, Collaborative Embedded Systems (CrESt

Enterprise Architecture Management: Toward a Taxonomy of Applications

Despite the growing interest in enterprise architecture management, researchers and practitioners lack a shared understanding of its applications in organizations. Building on findings from a literature review and eight case studies, we develop a taxonomy that categorizes applications of enterprise architecture management based on three classes of enterprise architecture scope. Organizations may adopt enterprise architecture management to help form, plan, and implement IT strategies; help plan and implement business strategies; or to further complement the business strategy-formation process. The findings challenge the traditional IT-centric view of enterprise architecture management application and suggest enterprise architecture management as an approach that could support the consistent design and evolution of an organization as a whole

Reducing the "Information Gap" Between Synchronous and Asynchronous Co-operative Design Phases

This paper aims to describe a particular role of annotations as co-operative artefacts in engineering design. In co-operative processes, where achieving a shared understanding between the participants from different domains is crucial, sharing the decisions and argumentations which lead to a solution is as important as sharing the solution itself. In our case study, we describe what we call an "information gap" between the asynchronous phase, when individual decisions are made, and the design review, when the solution is evaluated, and collective thinking influences the decisions. Then, within a conceptual design scenario, we show how semantic annotations can create a shared environment to help to reduce this gap, where all actors are able to elicit domain-specific constraints and engage discussions on design solution during the asynchronous phase.semantic annotation; engineering design; design communication; collaborative tool

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Toward big data and analytics governance: redefining structural governance mechanisms

Big Data and Analytics (BDA) enable innovative business models and, simultaneously, increase existing business processes’ efficiency and effectiveness. Although BDA’s potential is widely recognized, companies face a variety of challenges when adopting BDA and endeavoring to generate business value. Researchers and practitioners emphasize the need for effective governance to delineate data and analytics’ roles and responsibilities. Existing studies focus either on data or on analytics governance, even though both approaches are closely interlinked and depend on each other. Our study aims to integrate these two distinct research perspectives into a unified view on structural mechanisms for BDA. Using design science research, we iteratively develop data and analytics roles, clarify their responsibilities and provide guidelines for their organizational assignment. Our study contributes to advancing research on data and analytics governance and supports practitioners managing BDA

Integrated product relationships management : a model to enable concurrent product design and assembly sequence planning

The paper describes a novel approach to product relationships management in the context of concurrent engineering and product lifecycle management (PLM). Current industrial practices in product data management and manufacturing process management systems require better efficiency, flexibility, and sensitivity in managing product information at various levels of abstraction throughout its lifecycle. The aim of the proposed work is to manage vital yet complex and inherent product relationship information to enable concurrent product design and assembly sequence planning. Indeed, the definition of the product with its assembly sequence requires the management and the understanding of the numerous product relationships, ensuring consistency between the product and its components. This main objective stresses the relational design paradigm by focusing on product relationships along its lifecycle. This paper gives the detailed description of the background and models which highlight the need for a more efficient PLM approach. The proposed theoretical approach is then described in detail. A separate paper will focus on the implementation of the proposed approach in a PLM-based application, and an in-depth case study to evaluate the implementation of the novel approach will also be given

THE IMPACT OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES ON ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE EFFECTIVENESS: A CASE STUDY

We study how differences between organizational subcultures influence the effectiveness of the Enterprise Architecture (EA) function for steering the enterprise. In this paper, we contribute findings from a case study in a governmental organization. We derive seven propositions concerning the relation between cultural differences and EA effectiveness. For one, we suggest that cultural differences among the architects have a negative impact on the architects’ communication towards the management. In addition, our data suggest that the influence of cultural differences is indirect: communication defects and disagreement within the architecture board act as important intermediary factor