A framework for increasing business value from social media

Organisations are investing heavily in various social media applications. Several case studies show that such undertakings may be promising at first glance, but often amount to little. More attention has to be paid to the factors that influence the business value of a social media application. The paper proposes a framework which argues that the business value of a social media activity depends on having a correctly identified purpose of its implementation (scope and targeted benefits), on the technological solution and also on user involvement (user groups, users’ motivation and skills). The framework is evaluated with a longitudinal case study of a wiki in a software development company where an assessment of the business value of the wiki at two different points in time was made. The case study shows how the interplay of components led to failure at one time point and success at the other

Journal Self-Citation XX: Citations and the Question of Fit

This paper reviews several reasons why a number of self-references in a journal paper may indicate the fit of a paper to the scope of a journal. It shows how the calculation of impact factors and their thoughtless use for promotion/funding can encourage unethical behavior of editors and reviewers. Those actions may considerably hinder the objectiveness of scientific research and compromise the quality of search engines, such as Google Scholar, that use the number of citations as an important source for ranking results

THE IMPACT OF PERSONALITY TRAITS AND DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE ON DECISION MAKING – A BEHAVIORAL EXPERIMENT

There is a critical need to better understand the nuances of decision making in today’s global business environment. The quality of decisions is importantly influenced by the personality traits and knowledge of the decision makers. We analyze the effect of those factors on confidence and quality of decisions taken in the context of supply chain management. Personality traits are defined through the Big Five personality traits model which has recently gained widespread reception. The data was gathered via an experiment in which a group of participants played an online supply chain simulation game where several decisions needed to be made during a span of one week. The results show that confidence in decision positively affects decision quality. Neuroticism and agreeableness negatively affect confidence in decision, while self-reported knowledge positively affects confidence in decision. Further work includes running more experiments in order to gain more data for verification of results and testing of additional hypotheses which could not be tested on the current data sample

SOA Adoption Phases - A Case Study

The paper argues that attitudes to SOA follow a typical hype cycle from Technological Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, and a Trough of Disillusionment to the more recent realization that SOA is a concept that may offer certain benefits but has several limitations. Themain research question studies how the attitude to SOA changes in various phases of the hype cycle, how the SOA implementation cycle and an increase in business process maturity (BPMa) are interconnected and which factors influence the transition between the hype cycle phases. The paper shows that an organization’s success with implementing SOA depends on its ability to match the SOA implementation with an increase in BPMa. The dual purpose of implementing SOA is shown in the first framework: to assure the coherence of IT assets and to assure business/IT alignment. In the second framework, the interconnection of SOA and BPMa and its role in transiting through the hype cycle phases is outlined. The findings are analyzed using a longitudinal case study of a large Slovenian company

Local Online Platforms – Surviving in a Global Market

Many companies are trying to change their existing business models and start with the digital initiative. Online business will continue to grow; however, in the digital world where almost every organization is present online, the critical success factors for surviving on the market are more than needed. The purpose of the research is thus to study the factors influencing the success/failure of local online platforms’ providers in competition with global providers. The fact that some local providers are even market leaders in a local environment while many others have failed implies that there exist some specific factors determining the success of global competitor in a local market. The study will present a valuable opportunity particularly for new companies or existing companies that are deciding about launching new online services in order to judge whether there is a potential for their service on the market and which factors they should consider before starting the competition with global market leaders

A Configuration Taxonomy of Business Process Orientation

Organizations strive to develop a variety of capabilities to improve and measure business processes. Researchers have used various maturity models to investigate the development of a business process orientation (BPO), and most have argued that such a development comes in stages. Current literature underestimates the interrelationships between BPO capabilities and fails to consider multidimensional or non-linear paths to maturity. To refine the features of maturity models, this study relies on configuration theory to uncover different archetypes for BPO development and quantitatively evaluate them by examining performance differences among archetypes based on a large-scale international dataset. The resulting empirical taxonomy with seven BPO archetypes establishes important performance differences between organizations at a similar maturity level. Besides strengthening the theoretical foundations of BPO and making maturity assessments more multifaceted, the results help organizations give their managerial efforts a focus by enabling comparison with peers in the same archetype and showing various paths for BPO improvement

A method for using business process models in the elicitation of user stories

Agile software development projects often manage user requirements with models that are called user stories. Approaches for eliciting user stories from customer’s existing documentation are missing. Furthermore, proper understanding of user story’s context requires an understanding of execution-order and integration dependencies among user stories, which are also missing. In this thesis we propose so-called BuPUS method which 1) facilitates elicitation of user stories from existing business process models, and 2) supports better understanding of execution-order and integration dependencies among user stories from customer’s existing documentation. The method associates user stories with corresponding BPMN’s activity elements, or with corresponding text-written use case model’s events. We defined three levels of association granularity: a user story can be more abstract, approximately equal to, or more detailed than its associated business process model’s event/activity element. In our experiments we evaluated these three levels. We run two experiments. We applied comprehension, problem-solving and recall tasks to evaluate the hypotheses which refer to understanding of the dependencies. On the other hand, we measured user story elicitation’s effectiveness with counting correctly defined user stories. The statistical results provide support for eight out of eleven of the hypotheses. The results of our first experiment show, that understanding of the execution-order and integration dependencies among user stories, when associated business process models are available, is significantly greater. In our second experiment, we compared text-written use case model and BPMN model. There appears to be greater understanding of the execution-order dependencies when using BPMN models, while there were no significant differences in understanding integration dependencies. Similarly, for the elicitation of user stories there are no significant differences when using either of the mentioned models

The role of business analytics capabilities in bolstering firms’ agility and performance

Many companies invest considerable resources in developing Business Analytics (BA) capabilities to improve their performance. BA can affect performance in many different ways. This paper analyses how BA capabilities affect firms’ agility through information quality and innovative capability. Furthermore, it studies the moderating role of environmental turbulence, both technological and in the market. The proposed model was tested using statistical data from 154 firms with two respondents (CEO and CIO) from each firm. The data were analysed using Partial Least Squares (PLS)/Structured Equation Modelling (SEM). Our results indicate that BA capabilities strongly impact a firm’s agility through an increase in information quality and innovative capability. We also discuss that both market and technological turbulence moderate the influence of firms' agility on firms' performance.Many companies invest considerable resources in developing Business Analytics (BA) capabilities to improve their performance. BA can affect performance in many different ways. This paper analyses how BA capabilities affect firms’ agility through information quality and innovative capability. Furthermore, it studies the moderating role of environmental turbulence, both technological and in the market. The proposed model was tested using statistical data from 154 firms with two respondents (CEO and CIO) from each firm. The data were analysed using Partial Least Squares (PLS)/Structured Equation Modelling (SEM). Our results indicate that BA capabilities strongly impact a firm’s agility through an increase in information quality and innovative capability. We also discuss that both market and technological turbulence moderate the influence of firms' agility on firms' performance

A method for using business process models in the elicitation of user stories

Agile software development projects often manage user requirements with models that are called user stories. Approaches for eliciting user stories from customer’s existing documentation are missing. Furthermore, proper understanding of user story’s context requires an understanding of execution-order and integration dependencies among user stories, which are also missing. In this thesis we propose so-called BuPUS method which 1) facilitates elicitation of user stories from existing business process models, and 2) supports better understanding of execution-order and integration dependencies among user stories from customer’s existing documentation. The method associates user stories with corresponding BPMN’s activity elements, or with corresponding text-written use case model’s events. We defined three levels of association granularity: a user story can be more abstract, approximately equal to, or more detailed than its associated business process model’s event/activity element. In our experiments we evaluated these three levels. We run two experiments. We applied comprehension, problem-solving and recall tasks to evaluate the hypotheses which refer to understanding of the dependencies. On the other hand, we measured user story elicitation’s effectiveness with counting correctly defined user stories. The statistical results provide support for eight out of eleven of the hypotheses. The results of our first experiment show, that understanding of the execution-order and integration dependencies among user stories, when associated business process models are available, is significantly greater. In our second experiment, we compared text-written use case model and BPMN model. There appears to be greater understanding of the execution-order dependencies when using BPMN models, while there were no significant differences in understanding integration dependencies. Similarly, for the elicitation of user stories there are no significant differences when using either of the mentioned models

The critical success factors of business process management

a b s t r a c t Although business process management ('BPM') is a popular concept, it has not yet been properly theoretically grounded. This leads to problems in identifying both generic and case-specific critical success factors of BPM programs. The paper proposes an underlying theoretical framework with the utilization of three theories: contingency, dynamic capabilities and task-technology fit. The main premise is that primarily the fit between the business environment and business processes is needed. Then both continuous improvement and the proper fit between business process tasks and information systems must exist. The underlying theory is used to identify critical success factors on a case study from the banking sector