Towards a City’s Systems Integration Model for Smart City Development: A Conceptualization

Abstract— Smart city development is a response to address the issues of urbanization and need for flexibility and agility in delivering services to citizens. City as a complex system of systems needs to be efficient, inter-operable, and integrated. Thus, similar to systems integration in enterprises, integration of city systems provides flexibility and access to real-time information for creation and delivery of efficient services. In addition, Business Process Change is essential for systems integration in smart city development. Similar to business process change in the private enterprises, there are a number of challenging dimensions in smart city development. This conceptualization research considers a city as a large-scale enterprise and attempts to design a business process centric model for city’s systems integration

Uncovering aspects that facilitate a continuous improvement culture within nonprofit organizations

The literature shows that organizational culture has a significant impact on implementing and sustaining continuous improvement initiatives, although there is a lack of research on how to achieve this impact. Therefore, this action research adopts a grounded theory approach to explore aspects of organizational culture that facilitate continuous improvement. Eighteen interviews in nine nonprofit organizations yielded data which, when analysed revealed forty emergent factors, classifiable into six core themes developed by the participants during two focus group discussions. These themes conceptualized by Schain's model of organizational culture

Developing an improvement culture within nonprofit organizations: a grounded theory case of Saudi Arabia

It has been confirmed that organizational culture (OC) has a significant impact on facilitating continuous improvement (CI), although it is not clear yet how this impact can be achieved. On the other hand, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) struggle mainly in sustaining resources and increasing the quality of the services they provide. Nonetheless, NPOs contribute remarkably to economies and civilisation. They deserve research attention, and studies done on CI suggest it to be holistically beneficial. Therefore, this paper has selected Saudi NPOs for their social setting to explore the influence of facilitating CI. The approach of grounded theory has been employed, using qualitative data, to construct a reality based on participant perspectives. The thirty-one interviews that were conducted at thirteen organizations revealed many lower level cultural aspects. These aspects were evolved, during five focus groups, into six higher-level themes. The findings can be used by leaders to create desired change

Investigating the role of organizational culture in facilitating continuous improvement within Saudi non-profit organizations

It has been confirmed that organizational culture has a significant impact on facilitating continuous improvement, although it is not clear yet how this impact can be achieved. On the other hand, nonprofit organizations struggle mainly in sustaining resources and increasing the quality of the services they provide. Several recent studies have confirmed the crucial role of organizational culture in implementing operational management approaches. However, answering the question of “how” is still awaiting a clear road map. Nonetheless, nonprofit organizations contribute remarkably to economies and civilisation. They deserve research attention, and studies done on continuous improvement suggest it to be holistically beneficial. Hence, this paper shows an empirical investigation that selected Saudi nonprofit organizations for their social setting to explore the influence of organizational culture on facilitating continuous improvement. The approach of grounded theory has been employed, using qualitative data, to construct a reality based on participant perspectives. The thirty-one interviews that were conducted at thirteen organizations revealed many lower level cultural aspects. These aspects were evolved, during five focus groups, into six higher-level themes. The findings can be used by leaders to create desired change

The evaluation framework for business process management methodologies

In an intense competition in the global market, organisations seek to take advantage of all their internal and external potentials, advantages, and resources. It has been found that, in addition to competitive products and services, a good business also requires an effective management of business processes, which is the discipline of the business process management (BPM). The introduction of the BPM in the organisation requires a thoughtful selection of an appropriate methodological approach, since the latter will formalize activities, products, applications and other efforts of the organisation in this field. Despite many technology-driven solutions of software companies, recommendations of consulting companies, techniques, good practices and tools, the decision on what methodology to choose is anything but simple. The aim of this article is to simplify the adoption of such decisions by building a framework for the evaluation of BPM methodologies according to a qualitative multi-attribute decision-making method. The framework defines a hierarchical decision-making model, formalizes the decision-making process and thus contributes significantly to an independent, credible final decision that is the most appropriate for a specific organisation

Urban Computing and Smart Cities: Towards Changing City Processes by Applying Enterprise Systems Integration Practices

For developing smart cities, it is necessary to integrate all components of a city as a system of systems. This is facilitated by urban computing as a technology to address the complexity of providing adequate services to citizens through various city sectors/systems. Since business processes across city sectors/systems should be aligned with the objectives of urban computing, Business Process Change (BPC) is also a significant prerequisite of city systems integration for Smart City Development (SCD). However, there is limited research on understanding of BPC and its challenges in SCD, while in the private sector, the BPC best practices for Enterprise Systems Integration (ESI) have already been recognised and implemented. By considering city as an enterprise, this research aims at providing an understanding of similarities and differences between BPC challenges in the two contexts: SCD and ESI. This study collects data through literature analyses, interviews, and document analyses and suggests that many BPC challenges in SCD have an equivalent from the ESI context. In addition, the findings provide new insights through some challenges that are only relevant to the SCD context, so-called unsolved challenges. Consequently, the study developed a comparison framework, which indicates that the learnings from ESI could be utilised for the SCD context, in order to address BPC challenges. This will assist city authorities in designing their SCD roadmap, prioritising BPC challenges based on the efforts employed for ESI, and thinking about addressing unsolved challenges; as well as smart city solution providers to develop solutions for changing city processes

THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT IN THE FUTURE OF WORK

Business process management (BPM) is a corporate capability that strives for efficient and effective work. As a matter of fact, work is rapidly changing due to technological, economic, and demographic developments. New digital affordances, work attitudes, and collaboration models are revolutionizing how work is performed. These changes are referred to as the future of work. Despite the obvious con-nection between the future of work and BPM, neither current initiatives on the future of BPM nor exist-ing BPM capability frameworks account for the characteristics of the future of work. Hence, there is a need for evolving BPM as a corporate capability in light of the future of work. As a first step to triggering a community-wide discussion, we compiled propositions that capture constitutive characteristics of the future of work. We then let a panel of BPM experts map these propositions to the six factors of Rosemann and vom Brocke’s BPM capability framework, which captures how BPM is conceptualized today. On this foundation, we discussed how BPM should evolve in light of the future of work and distilled over-arching topics which we think will reshape BPM as a corporate capability

A Framework for Addressing the Challenges of Business Process Change during Enterprise Systems Integration

Purpose- Enterprise Systems Integration (ESI) is necessary for today’s business environment to access real-time data and quickly respond to fluctuating market demand. Business Process Change (BPC) as a significant prerequisite of ESI encompasses various challenges that must be tackled by employing success factors, techniques, and approaches. This study focuses on BPC challenges and develops a conceptual framework for addressing BPC challenges in ESI. Design/Methodology/Approach- BPC challenges and their success factors were firstly identified through a literature analysis. Then, the findings from the literature were thematically analysed and qualitatively validated through 35 unstructured interviews for developing the conceptual framework. Findings- The findings from the literature suggested 17 BPC challenge along with their success factors. During the validation process, 15 BPC challenges were accepted by all interviewees, while most of the respondents disagreed with the two challenges of ‘consolidation of information system reengineering with BPR’, and ‘customisation’. Moreover, ‘risk’ was suggested as a BPC challenge by several interviewees. Thus, the study offered a modified list of BPC challenges that was empirically validated. Originality/value- The study proposes a conceptual framework for addressing BPC challenges in ESI that enables enterprises to design their systems integration roadmap, based on an understanding of BPC challenges and their success factors; as well as supporting solution providers to develop solutions for effective and efficient BPC. Furthermore, the framework will act as a basis for BPC and developing a similar framework for other related contexts, such as smart cities

How Do We Progress? An Exploration of Alternate Explanations for BPM Capability Development

Business process management (BPM) is a topic that has received immense attention in information systems research and practice. While the existing literature comprehensively covers BPM methods, techniques, and tools, the development of BPM capability in organizations remains under-researched. Existing studies mainly present maturity models with generic sequences of distinct stages that provide a rather simplistic perspective on BPM capability progress. Taking a process theory view and drawing from organizational change literature, we elaborate on alternate templates for explaining BPM capability development. By revisiting two case studies on BPM capability development, we analyze the explanatory power of four basic theories of capability development and thus advance existing approaches to explain BPM capability progress. Our analysis shows the general applicability of these theories and points to particular advantages, disadvantages, and application conditions. Using the four basic theories as alternate templates, we also offer a much more-detailed explanation of the mechanisms behind the episodes of BPM capability progress that we observed in the two case studies. In particular, the different theoretical templates allow one to better understand the influence of internal and external contexts on BPM capability progress

Influential Article Review - Using BPM Capacity Preparation and Process Development in Value-Based Operations

This paper examines operations management. We present insights from a highly influential paper. Here are the highlights from this paper: Business process management (BPM) is an important area of organizational design and an acknowledged source of corporate performance. Over the last decades, many approaches, methods, and tools have been proposed to discover, design, analyze, enact, and improve individual processes. At the same time, BPM research has been and still is paying ever more attention to BPM itself and the development of organizations’ BPM capability. Little, however, is known about how to develop an organization’s BPM capability and improve individual processes in an integrated manner. To address this research gap, we developed a planning model. This planning model intends to assist organizations in determining which BPM- and process-level projects they should implement in which sequence to maximize their firm value, catering for the projects’ effects on process performance and for interactions among projects. We adopt the design science research (DSR) paradigm and draw from project portfolio selection as well as value-based management as justificatory knowledge. For this reason, we refer to our approach as value-based process project portfolio management. To evaluate the planning model, we validated its design specification by discussing it against theory-backed design objectives and with BPM experts from different organizations. We also compared the planning model with competing artifacts. Having instantiated the planning model as a software prototype, we validated its applicability and usefulness by conducting a case based on real-world data and by challenging the planning model against accepted evaluation criteria from the DSR literature. For our overseas readers, we then present the insights from this paper in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German