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

Analyzing the influence of oblique incidence on quantitative backscattering tissue polarimetry: a pilot ex vivo study

Significance Among the available polarimetric techniques, backscattering Mueller matrix (MM) polarimetry provides a promising non-contact and quantitative tool for in vivo tissue detection and clinical diagnosis. To eliminate the surface reflection from the sample cost-effectively, the non-collinear backscattering MM imaging setup always has an oblique incidence. Meanwhile, for practical organ cavities imaged using polarimetric gastrointestinal endoscopy, the uneven tissue surfaces can induce various relative oblique incidences inevitably, which can affect the polarimetry in a complicated manner and needs to be considered for detailed study. Aim The purpose of this study is to systematically analyze the influence of oblique incidence on backscattering tissue polarimetry. Approach We measured the MMs of experimental phantom and ex vivo tissues with different incident angles and adopted a Monte Carlo simulation program based on cylindrical scattering model for further verification and analysis. Meanwhile, the results were quantitatively evaluated using the Fourier transform, basic statistics, and frequency distribution histograms. Results Oblique incidence can induce different changes on non-periodic, two-periodic, and four-periodic MM elements, leading to false-positive and false-negative polarization information for tissue polarimetry. Moreover, a prominent oblique incidence can bring more dramatic signal variations, such as phase retardance and element transposition. Conclusions The findings presented in this study give some crucial criterions of appropriate incident angle selections for in vivo polarimetric endoscopy and other applications and can also be valuable references for studying how to minimize the influence further

Discrepancy of coordinate system selection in backscattering Mueller matrix polarimetry: exploring photon coordinate system transformation invariants

In biomedical studies, Mueller matrix polarimetry is gaining increasing attention because it can comprehensively characterize polarization-related vectorial properties of the sample, which are crucial for microstructural identification and evaluation. For backscattering Mueller matrix polarimetry, there are two photon coordinate selection conventions, which can affect the following Mueller matrix parameters calculation and information acquisition quantitatively. In this study, we systematically analyze the influence of photon coordinate system selection on the backscattering Mueller matrix polarimetry. We compare the Mueller matrix elements in the right-handed-nonunitary and non-right-handed-unitary coordinate systems, and specifically deduce the changes of Mueller matrix polar decomposition, Mueller matrix Cloude decomposition and Mueller matrix transformation parameters widely used in backscattering Mueller matrix imaging as the photon coordinate system varied. Based on the theoretical analysis and phantom experiments, we provide a group of photon coordinate system transformation invariants for backscattering Mueller matrix polarimetry. The findings presented in this study give a crucial criterion of parameters selection for backscattering Mueller matrix imaging under different photon coordinate systems