Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

A conceptual framework for capability sourcing modeling

Companies need to acquire the right capabilities from the right source, and the right shore, at the right cost to improve their competitive position. Capability sourcing is an organizing process to gain access to best-in-class capabilities for all activities in a firm's value chain to ensure long-term competitive advantage. Capability sourcing modeling is a technique that helps investigating sourcing alternative solutions to facilitate strategic sourcing decision making. Our position is applying conceptual models as intermediate artifacts which are schematic descriptions of sourcing alternatives based on organization's capabilities. The contribution of this paper is introducing a conceptual framework in the form of five views (to organize all perspectives) and a conceptualisation (to formulate a language) for capability sourcing modelling

The creation of business architecture heat maps to support strategy-aligned organizational decisions

The realization of strategic alignment within the business architecture has become increasingly important for companies. Indeed, it facilitates business-IT alignment as a well-designed business architecture helps both to identify the appropriate requirements for IT systems and to discover new business opportunities that can be realized by IT. However, there is a lack of alignment techniques that support organizational (re) design decisions during the operation phase as the actual performance of business architecture elements is neglected. Capability heat maps provide a useful starting point in this respect as they focus on the creation of a hierarchy of prioritized capabilities, which are characterized by a performance measure. In this paper, these techniques will be extended to support strategy-aligned decisions within the business architecture. The identification of the relevant business architecture elements is based on state-of-the-art enterprise modelling languages, which enable the development of enterprise models on distinct layers of the business architecture. Strategic alignment between these elements will be realized by using prioritization according to the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), while performance measurement will enable the creation of a proper decision support system. Afterwards, the proposed heat map will be applied on a case example to illustrate its potential use. This results in the completion of a first build-and-evaluate loop within the Design Science methodology

TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF LEADERSHIP SUPPORT FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN URBAN MIDDLE SCHOOLS

This qualitative multi-site case study examined teachers’ perceptions of leadership support for their implementation of a learning management system (LMS) to facilitate blended learning in urban middle schools. Understanding teachers’ perceptions of leadership actions to encourage the implementation of new innovations will allow leaders to provide materials, resources, and support to effectively increase the incorporation of blended learning in classrooms. Qualitative data were collected through interview sessions with 10 middle school educators who taught at two dichotomous schools. The data was triangulated with artifacts and the research literature to provide an in-depth depiction of the perceptions and experiences of teachers who have used an LMS in classroom instruction. Findings showed that strong organizational infrastructures are needed for teachers to adopt an LMS for instruction. Additional findings included the need for ongoing and consistent coaching support for successful LMS implementation. The study also showed that teachers’ perceived administrators who incorporated the components of systems thinking as supportive instructional leaders. The case study findings revealed a need for additional research in the fields of systems thinking educational leadership, instructional coaching, and community responsiveness