Aligning business processes and work practices

Current business process modeling methodologies offer little guidance regarding how to keep business process models aligned with their actual execution. This paper describes how to achieve this goal by uncovering and supervising business process models in connection with work practices using BAM. BAM is a methodology for business process modeling, supervision and improvement that works at two dimensions; the dimension of processes and the dimension of work practices. The business modeling component of BAM is illustrated with a case study in an organizational setting

Business process and practice alignment meta-model

Business Process Modelling (BPM) is one of the most important phases of information system design. Business Process meta-models allow capturing informational and behavioural aspects of business processes. Unfortunately, standard business process meta-modelling approaches, such as the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) Meta-model, Quality-Oriented Business Process Meta-Model (QOBPM) and Transactional Meta-Model for Business Process (TMBP) focus just on process description, providing different business process models. According to these meta-modelling approaches, it is not possible to compare and identify related daily practices in order to improve business process models. This lack of information recognizes that further research in Business Process (BP) meta-model is needed to reflect the evolution/change on software processes. Considering this limitation in BP meta-modelling, this paper presents a comparative study of the most recognized business process meta-models approaches and introduces a new BP meta-model designed by Business Process and Practice Alignment Meta-model (BPPAMeta-model). Our intention is to present observed problems in existing approaches and propose a business process meta-model that addresses features related to the alignment between daily work practices and business process descriptions. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

The Euro changeover and price adjustments in Italy

By estimating a staggered price model over the period 1980q1-2010q2, this paper documents that, after the euro changeover, Italian retailers have increased the number of price adjustments, which has translated into a higher inflation rate, with a detrimental effect on the competitiveness of the Italian economy

The Role of Consciousness in Memory

Conscious events interact with memory systems in learning, rehearsal and retrieval (Ebbinghaus 1885/1964; Tulving 1985). Here we present hypotheses that arise from the IDA computional model (Franklin, Kelemen and McCauley 1998; Franklin 2001b) of global workspace theory (Baars 1988, 2002). Our primary tool for this exploration is a flexible cognitive cycle employed by the IDA computational model and hypothesized to be a basic element of human cognitive processing. Since cognitive cycles are hypothesized to occur five to ten times a second and include interaction between conscious contents and several of the memory systems, they provide the means for an exceptionally fine-grained analysis of various cognitive tasks. We apply this tool to the small effect size of subliminal learning compared to supraliminal learning, to process dissociation, to implicit learning, to recognition vs. recall, and to the availability heuristic in recall. The IDA model elucidates the role of consciousness in the updating of perceptual memory, transient episodic memory, and procedural memory. In most cases, memory is hypothesized to interact with conscious events for its normal functioning. The methodology of the paper is unusual in that the hypotheses and explanations presented are derived from an empirically based, but broad and qualitative computational model of human cognition