The enterprises simulation in second life. The case of Perting ltd

The design and evaluation of IT-systems are usually supported by different usability criteria. Our hypothesis is that criteria are predominantly formulated as supporting interaction between a user and an IT-system. We are claiming that there is a need for criteria formulated at higher levels such as communication and business processes. One example of a criterion formulated at the interaction level is “Visibility of system status” and one example of a criterion formulated at the business process level is “Quality of work”. If criteria is formulated and used on the interaction level only, the impact on design and evaluation can only take place at this level. This choice will also mean that you are only able to speculate whether the IT-system is supporting higher levels. We are not saying that criteria belonging to the interaction level are unimportant; rather we are saying that there is a need for formulating complementing criteria that resides on the communication and business process level

Augmenting the distribution of goods from warehouses in dynamic demand environments using intelligent agents

Warehouses are being impacted by increasing e-commerce and omni-channel commerce. Future innovation may predominantly involve automation but many warehouses remain manually operated. The golden rule of material handling is smooth product flow, but there are day-to-day operational issues that occur in the warehouse that can impact this and order fulfilment. Standard operational process is paramount to warehouse operational control but inflexible processes don’t allow for a dynamic response to real-time operational constraints. The growth of IoT sensor and data analytics technology provide new opportunities for designing warehouse management systems that detect and reorganise around real-time constraints to mitigate the impact of day-to-day warehouse operational issues. This paper presents an intelligent agent framework for basic warehouse management systems that is distributed, is structured around operational constraints and includes the human operator at operational and decision support levels. An agent based simulation was built to demonstrate the viability of the framework

Exploring the Social Networks of Online Investors

Online trading has now become the prevalent form of stock market investing. With a large percentage of investors now online, understanding how they make use of social media to share and gather information is of major interest to service providers, regulators, researchers and to investors themselves. Previous studies have explored public online investor networks such as stock forums, but few studies have investigated investors’ private online social networks. This paper reports on a qualitative study that interviewed 26 online investors about the various forms of social networks they participate in. Some online investors continue to rely on their private, offline networks of family and friends for information and advice. Other investors have taken their social networks online, but these online networks are still private. While investors do participate in public stock forums, it was also found that private social networks exist within these public virtual communities. Forum members get to know other members outside of the forums and form personal relationships. Such private social networks are not visible to outsiders

The Coevolution of Organizational Routines and IT Systems in IT-enabled Organizational Transformation

This paper proposes a conceptual framework to study the phenomenon of IT-enabled Organizational Transformation (IT-enabled OT) as a coevolution process of organizational routines and a new IT system to understand IT-enabled OT in a holistic and integrated manner by investigating how actors perceive, interpret, appropriate and enact the new IT system in their work routines. It allows the examination of the reciprocal interactions between different aspects of organizational routines and a new IT system. The framework emphasizes appropriation where the actors use the new IT system in a different manner than intended by its designers, and enactment where the logic of the new IT system is locally adopted through planned as well as unplanned actions. The conceptualization of IT-enabled OT as a coevolution process of organizational routines and a new IT system enhances our understanding of how change unfolds in the organization during the implementation and use of a new IT syste

Names and Faces: a staff dashboard to support student learning engagement

This paper describes the in-progress development and preliminary evaluation of a dashboard to support student-centred higher education. The dashboard, known as Names and Faces, aims to provide easy access to the data teaching staff need to proactively foster student engagement, and to improve the student’s overall university experience. Names and Faces brings together data from disparate systems, and provides a highly visual interface that meets the needs of a wide range of teaching staff. Importantly, the prototype has been developed by academic staff in collaboration with other academics using an iterative prototyping approach. 48 academic staff have used the prototype over two semesters, identifying new data sources and interfaces to be incorporated in future iterations. This project contributes to the development of improved information support for student-centred education, but also to academic information systems in terms of data integration, usability, and user-centred design

A Success Story in Teaching Real World ICT to IS Students: A Case Study in using Portable Storage Devices

Teaching Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to Information Systems (IS) students has too often drawn its pedagogy from Computer Science Education. This paper illustrates by way of a case study a set of very successful techniques and a philosophy of, perhaps, an IS pedagogy. We show that it is possible to expose IS students to some quite rigorous educational experiences that are particularly well suited in preparing them for their future employment and their careers as IS professionals. This paper discusses the use of portable and removable hard disks as “virtual computers” and “virtual servers”, as an aide in the pursuit of providing practice of the ICT theory

Learning Observation – Introducing the Role of a Meta-Observer

Observation is a key skill in performing analysis and evaluation activities during development and maintenance of an information system. This paper looks at how this skill can be learnt by investigating the research question: “Can observation learning be improved by introducing a meta-observer?”. This research consists of using a simulation of a real life situation of an observation scenario embracing three different roles: a user, an observer and a meta-observer. The user, while performing a task, is encouraged to ‘think aloud’ by the observer. The meta-observer’s task is to observe the observer and to provide feedback. Findings in terms of strengths and problems concerning the role of the meta-observer are presented

Investigating the Formation of Information Security Climate Perceptions with Social Network Analysis: A Research Proposal

Over the past years, a large amount of studies has advanced knowledge that explains how individuals react to information security cues and why they are motivated to perform secure practices. Nevertheless, those studies predominantly set their focus on the adoption of secure practices at an individual level; therefore they were unable to analyse such adoption at the higher level. As a consequence, the formation and dissemination processes of information security perceptions were overlooked despite their importance. Understanding those processes would inform methods to distribute effectively desirable information security perceptions within the workplace, while potentially explaining why in some cases implementation of information security measures was not successful at changing the employees’ beliefs and behaviours. The first part of this paper reviews the concept of information security climate that emerge from the individual’s interactions with the work environment, which has been under researched and investigated inconsistently. The second part begins with discussing the influence mechanisms that could disseminate information security climate perceptions, then suggests the adoption of social network analysis techniques to analyse those mechanisms. As a result, the paper forwards an integrated framework about information security climate perceptions, as well as proposes a research agenda for future investigations on how those perceptions could be formed and disseminated within the workplace

Who influences information security behaviours of young home computer users in Vietnam? An ego-centric network analysis approach

This study aims to explore the social roles of the people who can influence young home computer users (HCUs) in Vietnam, as well as the interactions that make those people influential. Since HCUs are considered the weakest link in the security chain and cyber-threats can attack organisation’s information systems indirectly via these HCUs, it is therefore necessary to identify their sources of security influence for designing effective intervention. To this end, the ego-centric network analysis approach was employed to analyse the personal networks of security influence of 116 HCUs, comprising 548 influential sources in total. Close relationships such as family members, partners, friends, and colleagues were predominantly nominated as capable of influencing HCUs’ security behaviours. Furthermore, these sources influence the HCUs by possessing the power bases of expert, reward, and coercive, as well as holding legitimate positions that make them influential

Understanding the Formation of Information Security Climate Perceptions: A Longitudinal Social Network Analysis

Business process capture is a first step in the larger endeavour of business process management. In this paper we view business process capture as a knowledge conversion process. We explore the conversion of knowledge when business analysts capture information about business processes from domain experts. We identify seven process capture activities in a thematic analysis of comments made by business analysts in response to open-ended questions in an online survey. The seven activities are involving, simplifying, tailoring, training, combining, confirming, and engaging soft skills. We show how these activities involve the transfer of tacit and explicit knowledge between the business analyst and the domain expert and how the transfer conforms to the SECI modes of knowledge conversion, well known in the research domain of knowledge management. The paper contributes a SECI-based knowledge conversion model of business process capture and insight for business analysts about business process capture activities