PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATIONAL CO-EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS AND IT: A COMPLEXITY PERSPECTIVE

The Business and IT Co-evolution (BITC) is a growing concern for researchers and practitioners alike. Extant literature on implementation and management of BITC is still in infancy and lacks especially empirical guidelines. This paper makes two contributions to the study of BITC. First, we summarize and systematically organize 10 BITC principles from prior literature to guide management efforts. Second, we build a system dynamics model based on the 10 principles to apply these principles as a means to improve the BITC management. The model embraces the emergent behaviors driven by the interactions of business and IT, and guides the BITC governance shaped by the principles. The development of this model forms a necessary step towards suggesting guidance how to implement BITC in companies. The paper also shows the capability of a system dynamic method to capture some of the holistic behaviors that emerge from implementing the 10 principles

Describing coevolution of business and IS alignment via agent-based modeling

The coevolution of business and IS alignment is a growing concern for researchers and practitioners alike. Extant literature on describing and modeling the coevolution is still in infancy, which makes it hard to capture the complexity and to offer reasonable decisions in the evolution of organizations. This paper focuses on the actors’ behaviors, and explores their emergent effects on the holistic alignment. We build an agent-based model to describe the complex alignment landscape and to improve the coevolution governance. The model embraces the emergent behaviors shaped by the interactions of business and IS agents, and guides the coevolution of alignment driven by the external changes. The development of this model forms a necessary step towards suggesting guidance how to analyze and implement coevolution in companies. The paper also shows the capability of an agent-based model to capture some of the emergent behaviors that emerge from bottom-level behaviors

A Co-evolutionary Perspective on Business and IT Alignment: A Review and Research Agenda

Business and IT Alignment (BITA) has received a growing attention during the last decades. Due to increasing environmental and organizational complexities, a co-evolutionary perspective has emerged recently to understand and to control the dynamics in BITA. The Business and IT Co-evolution (BITC) aims to coordinate business and IT through continuous adaptation and learning. A series of BITC studies have been conducted since the 2000s. This study provides an organized review of the current knowledge of this area. Its contribution is threefold: 1) organizing extant literature on BITC, 2) revealing knowledge gaps, and 3) proposing a research agenda

A Review of Software Reliability Testing Techniques

In the era of intelligent systems, the safety and reliability of software have received more attention. Software reliability testing is a significant method to ensure reliability, safety and quality of software. The intelligent software technology has not only offered new opportunities but also posed challenges to software reliability technology. The focus of this paper is to explore the software reliability testing technology under the impact of intelligent software technology. In this study, the basic theories of traditional software and intelligent software reliability testing were investigated via related previous works, and a general software reliability testing framework was established. Then, the technologies of software reliability testing were analyzed, including reliability modeling, test case generation, reliability evaluation, testing criteria and testing methods. Finally, the challenges and opportunities of software reliability testing technology were discussed at the end of this paper

Implementation of a radial disk ionization profile in the relxill_nk model

Very steep reflection emissivity profiles in the inner part of accretion disks are commonly found in the analysis of X-ray observations of black hole binaries and AGN, but there is some debate about their exact origin. While steep reflection emissivity profiles can be naturally produced by compact coronae close to black holes, the measured radial emissivity parameter can be further increased by the radial disk ionization profile when the theoretical model assumes a disk with constant ionization. In this paper, we implement the possibility of a radial disk ionization profile in the reflection model RELXILL_NK, which is a package designed to calculate reflection spectra of "deformed" Kerr black holes. We analyze a NuSTAR observation of the black hole binary EXO 1846-031, which was previously found to have a very high inner emissivity index. We find that the model with a radial disk ionization profile improves the fit, but the impact on the estimate of the black hole spin parameter and on the constraint of the deformation parameter is modest. However, we show that the analysis of future observations of Athena and eXTP will necessarily require models with a radial disk ionization profile to have accurate constraints of the deformation parameters.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. v2: refereed versio

Evaluation of MicroRNA 125b as a potential biomarker for postmenopausal osteoporosis

Purpose: To identify significant dysregulated miRNAs in postmenopausal  osteoporosis in Chinese women and to test whether any of these miRNAs have diagnostic potential as circulatory biomarkers for postmenopausal osteoporosis.Methods: Thirty osteoporotic patients and 30 non-osteoporotic healthy individuals were recruited, and blood and bone tissue samples were collected from them. miRNA expression profiling and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction  (qRT-PCR) were used to identify and substantiate dysregulated miRNAs in blood sera and bone tissue from osteoporotic patients. Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis was carried out to assess the diagnostic potential of significantly dysregulated miRNAs.Results: Based on profiling and qRT-PCR, miR-125b, miR-30 and miR-5914 were significantly upregulated in the blood sera and bone tissues of patients with postmenopausal osteoporosis. In all the experiments carried out, miR-125b showed the highest levels of upregulation both in the blood sera and bone tissue compared to other upregulated miRNAs in osteoporotic patients. ROC analysis indicate that the AUC of miR-125b was the highest amongst the upregulated miRNAs.Conclusion: miR-125b is the highest significantly upregulated miRNA in  postmenopausal osteoporosis. Furthermore, circulating miR-125b has the potential of a non-invasive biomarker for postmenopausal osteoporosis.Keywords: Postmenopausal osteoporosis, Profiling, Up-regulation, miR-125b,  Biomarke