The Role of Gender in Business Process Management Competence Supply

While Business Process Management (BPM) was originally focused on Information Technology as a key factor driving the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational processes, there is now a growing consensus among practitioners and academics that BPM represents a holistic management approach that also takes such factors as corporate governance, human capital, and organizational culture into account. Studies show that the BPM practice faces a shortage of competence supply that stems from a shortage of qualified BPM professionals. At the same time, there is a distinct underrepresentation of women in technology-related fields; it has been suggested that gender stereotypes are one of the reasons for this underrepresentation. The goal of this research paper is, thus, to better understand the role of gender in the BPM competences supply. In this study 10,405 LinkedIn profiles of BPM professionals were analyzed using a text mining technique called Latent Semantic Analysis. Twelve distinct categories of supplied BPM competences were identified and it was investigated how far gender biases exist among BPM professionals. The nature of BPM-related competences is discussed, together with the differences in their presentation by male and female professionals, which indicate potential existence of gender stereotypes. Further, it is discussed how the apparent underrepresentation of women among BPM professionals can be addressed to close the competence gap in the field. The study contributes to both the call for research on human capital in the BPM field, and the calls for research on gender and gender stereotypes in technology-related fields

Mitigating response distortion in IS ethics research

Distributed construction of conceptual models may lead to a set of problems when these models are to be compared or integrated. Different kinds of comparison conflicts are known (e.g. naming conflicts or structural conflicts), the resolution of which is subject of different approaches. However, the expost resolution of naming conflicts raises subsequent problems that origin from semantic diversities of namings – even if they are syntactically the same. Therefore, we propose an approach that allows for avoiding naming conflicts in conceptual models already during modelling. This way, the ex-post resolution of naming conflicts becomes obsolete. In order to realise this approach we combine domain thesauri as lexical conventions for the use of terms, and linguistic grammars as conventions for valid phrase structures. The approach is generic in order to make it reusable for any conceptual modelling language

Sourcing and automation decisions in financial value chains

Online research maps are websites that present information about certain research activities in a structured manner. Institutions like universities, states, or individual researchers use them as knowledge base to identify and communicate “who knows what” and “where can the respective information be found”. Furthermore, these items are used as a research marketing measure, stressing the importance of this kind of portal. However, research maps differ in their range of functionalities, their respective naming, their target audience and so on. Thus, it is an exhausting task identifying and choosing the right set of functionalities. Our goal is to offer a template for the creation of common practice online research maps. For this purpose, we present a reference model and describe its development process. As preliminary measure, 66 research maps have been carefully analysed with respect to the formerly mentioned aspects. Derived from the results of our analysis, common practice was identified and used as basis for developing a reference model for online research maps. For development purposes, an existing language for describing internet portals was chosen and adapted to suite the requirements of describing research maps. The reference model presented in this article was then evaluated in a multi-methodical procedure

MODELLIERUNG INTEGRIERTER PRODUKTION UND DIENSTLEISTUNG MIT DEM SCOR-MODELL – BESTEHENDE ANSÄTZE UND ENTWICKLUNGSPERSPEKTIVEN

Unter dem Begriff hybride Wertschöpfung wird derzeit vielfach das Phänomen diskutiert, dass Unternehmen sich zunehmend veranlasst sehen, ihren Kunden integrierte Problemlösungen anzubieten, die sowohl aus Sach-, als auch aus Dienstleistungen bestehen. Diese Entwicklung stellt Unternehmen, die traditionell entweder auf Produktion oder Dienstleistung spezialisiert sind, vor die Herausforderung, Wertschöpfungsketten bzw. -netze zu gestalten, in denen die Ressourcen und Kompetenzen zur Erbringung hybrider Leistungsbündel integriert werden. Dieser Beitrag diskutiert in einer ausführlichen Literaturanalyse Positionen zu der Frage, inwieweit sich das für das Supply Chain Management verbreitete SCOR-Modell für diese Aufgabe eignet und zeigt mittels eines Kopplungsansatzes eine Entwicklungsperspektive für die Referenzmodellierung hybrider Wertschöpfung auf

Understanding the Digital Companions of Our Future Generation

The main protagonist in Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel is Klara, an artificial friend whose existential goal is to be children’s companion. Some aspects of this fictional narrative have begun to gradually enter our daily lives. Products reminiscent of Klara are available abundantly on the market: smart toys, adaptive learning applications, and companion robots. Children can relate to these products and perform activities together with them. Preliminary research has shown fundamental differences between existing technologies and these emerging children’s digital companions. However, we still do not know much about their benefits and risks. This paper explores different and even contradicting perspectives on the phenomenon. We present the discussion from four perspectives - temporality, use, trust and ethics, and sociotechnical design - and conclude the paper with an agenda for interdisciplinary IS research. The agenda points to the needs for a psychological, medical, engineering, and temporal research community to understand this emerging sociotechnical phenomenon and design its future for the better

What is it about humanity that we can't give away to intelligent machines? A European perspective

One of the most significant recent technological developments concerns the development and implementation of ‘intelligent machines’ that draw on recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. However, there are growing tensions between human freedoms and machine controls. This article reports the findings of a workshop that investigated the application of the principles of human freedom throughout intelligent machine develop- ment and use. Forty IS researchers from ten different countries discussed four contemporary AI and humanity issues and the most relevant IS domain challenges. This article summarizes their experiences and opinions regarding four AI and humanity themes: Crime & conflict, Jobs, Attention, and Wellbeing. The outcomes of the workshop discussions identify three attributes of humanity that need preservation: a critique of the design and application of AI, and the intelligent machines it can create; human involvement in the loop of intelligent ma- chine decision-making processes; and the ability to interpret and explain intelligent machine decision-making processes. The article provides an agenda for future AI and humanity researchpublishedVersio

Fractional div-curl quantities and applications to nonlocal geometric equations

We investigate a fractional notion of gradient and divergence operator. We generalize the div-curl estimate by Coifman-Lions-Meyer-Semmes to fractional div-curl quantities, obtaining, in particular, a nonlocal version of Wente's lemma. We demonstrate how these quantities appear naturally in nonlocal geometric equations, which can be used to obtain a theory for fractional harmonic maps analogous to the local theory. Firstly, regarding fractional harmonic maps into spheres, we obtain a conservation law analogous to Shatah's conservation law and give a new regularity proof analogous to H\'elein's for harmonic maps into spheres. Secondly, we prove regularity for solutions to critical systems with nonlocal antisymmetric potentials on the right-hand side. Since the half-harmonic map equation into general target manifolds has this form, as a corollary, we obtain a new proof of the regularity of half-harmonic maps into general target manifolds following closely Rivi\`{e}re's celebrated argument in the local case. Lastly, the fractional div-curl quantities provide also a new, simpler, proof for H\"older continuity of $W^{s,n/s}$-harmonic maps into spheres and we extend this to an argument for $W^{s,n/s}$-harmonic maps into homogeneous targets. This is an analogue of Strzelecki's and Toro-Wang's proof for $n$-harmonic maps into spheres and homogeneous target manifolds, respectively