Semantic Web Based Integration of Knowledge Resources for Expertise Finding

This article discusses the challenges of expertise data integration and expert finding in modern organizations using an illustrative case study of a concrete research-intensive establishment, the Mihajlo Pupin Institute (MPI). It presents how the latest semantic technologies (Ontologies, Web services, Semantic Wiki) could be used on the top of the commercial ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software (SAP®) and the open-source ECM (Enterprise Content Management) software (Alfresco) to ensure meaningful search and retrieval of expertise for in-house users, as well as the integration into the Semantic Web community space. This article points out the necessary adjustments in enterprise knowledge management infrastructure in the light of uprising initiatives for standardization of the Semantic Web data.

Environments for Virtual Enterprise Integration

The Virtual Enterprise model relies on dynamically reconfigurable collaborative networks, with extremely high performances, strongly time-oriented while highly focused on cost and quality, in permanent alignment with the market, and strongly supported by information and communication technology. Networking and reconfiguration dynamics are the main characteristics of this model, which claim for enabling and supporting environments, assuring cost-effective integration in useful time and preventing the risk of leakage of private information about products or processes. Some existing technologies and Internet-based environments can partially support this organizational model, but the reconfiguration dynamics can only be assured by environments able to manage, control, and enable virtual enterprise creation/operation/reconfiguration. Several environments are introduced in the article, and particular focus is given to the Market of Resources, an environment coping with the requirements of the Virtual Enterprise model.

Identifying and Managing Stakeholders in Enterprise Information System Projects

identify and manage stakeholders engaged in the project. This article argues that this activity should go beyond the traditional ideas about user participation and management involvement. Also suppliers, customers, government agencies, business partners and the general public can have a clear interest in the ways that the system will be designed and implemented. This article proposes to apply identification, analysis and intervention techniques from organization and management disciplines in the IS field to enhance the changes for the successfulness of enterprise information system implementations. Some of these techniques are combined in a coherent method that may help implementers of complex IS projects to identify and categorize stakeholders and to consider appropriate ways of involvement during the various stages of the project.

People-Oriented Enterprise Information Systems

Current notations and languages do not emphasize the participation of users in business processes and consider them essentially as service providers. Moreover, they follow a centralized approach as all the interactions originate from or end in a business process; direct interactions between users cannot be represented. What is missing from this approach is that human work is cooperative and cooperation takes place through structured interactions called conversations; the notion of conversation is at the center of the language/action perspective. However, the problem of effectively integrating conversations and business processes is still open and this chapter proposes a notation called POBPN (People-Oriented Business Process Notation) and a perspective, referred to as conversation-oriented perspective, for its solution.

Motivations and Trends for IT/IS Adoption

Over the past few decades, information systems and technologies have taken on a wide variety of roles within organizations, ranging from operational support to the strategic support of the company. Therefore, there have been significant changes in the motives for their adoption that are vital to understand to guarantee that investment is properly managed. With the purpose of identifying and characterizing the motivations currently behind the adoption of information technologies in large Portuguese companies, which systems the companies have been implementing, in which systems they intend to invest in short-term, and what is the current role of information technology within the organization, we carried out a study with the participation of several chief information officers. The findings of this study reveal that the reasons for adoption and the role that information systems and technologies play is evolving in Portuguese companies and that the adoption of certain types of systems like Enterprise Resource Planning systems is now consolidated, whereas the adoption of other systems like Business Intelligence systems should increase significantly in the near future.

Industrialism

The chapter discusses the wealth generation mechanisms of the industrialism from its intrinsic cultural start, associated with the western-world stile. The prospected remarks single out several characterising features, in opposition to the east-Asia habits and cultural marks. Among other points, noteworthy remarks lead to prise complexity, instead of exploiting the reductionism. This is recognised as the robot age sign, opposed to the industry age patterns. The all discussion does not provide full solutions, rather suggests looking at the industrialism founding motivations (up to the cultural backing), in view to devise worthy alternatives.

Enterprise Information Systems

Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) provide a platform that enables small organizations and distant collections of organizations to better integrate and coordinate their operations. We provide a theory of organizations and review two case studies beginning to use EIS-type architectures that form common information infrastructures to be more responsive, flexible and agile first for a system of medical organizations and second for a small college. The system of organizations is a distributed collection of military medical department research centers (MDRC) whose mission is to train physicians how to conduct and publish research; and the small college is providing a liberal arts education (Future College). Both MDRC and Future College (pseudonyms) are reorganizing their operations. We review theory for our approach, the two case studies, field evidence, computational models, and future prospects.

Exploring Enterprise Information Systems

The concept of an Enterprise Information System (EIS) has arisen from the need to deal with the increasingly volatile requirements of modern large-scale organisations. An EIS is a platform capable of supporting and integrating a wide range of activities across an organisation. In principle, the concept is useful and applicable to any large and SMEs, international or national business organisation. However, the range of applications for EIS is growing and they are now being used to support e-government, health care, and non-profit / non-governmental organisations. This chapter reviews research and development efforts related to EIS, and as a result attempts to precisely define the boundaries for the concept of EIS, i.e., identifying what is and what is not an EIS. Based on this domain analysis, a proposal for using goal-oriented modelling techniques for building EIS is constructed; the proposal is made more concrete through illustration via an example.

Modern ICT Technologies In Business Administration

In this chapter, we present the DERN project and discuss a set of complementary methodologies that have been used to promote intra-enterprise training in the area of modern business administration technologies and corporate capacity building.

Enterprise Modelling in Support of Organisation Design and Change

Enterprises (business organisations) are increasingly operating under uncertain conditions arising from: governments that introduce new regulations; a market place which is shaped by ongoing change in customer requirements; change in capital markets that orient overall market directions; an advancing base of technology; and increasing competition which can arise from a growing number of sources (Monfared, 2000). Consequently, organisations are expected to change rapidly in response to emerging requirements. Classical theories and more recently ‘method-based’ organisation (re)design and change approaches have been proposed and tried with varying degrees of successes. This chapter contribution discusses the role of enterprise and simulation modelling in support of organisation (re)design and change. The capabilities and constraints of some widely acknowledged public domain enterprise modelling frameworks and methods are reviewed. A modelling approach which integrates the use of enterprise modelling (EM), causal loop modelling (CLM), and simulation modelling (SM) is described. The approach enables the generation of coherent and semantically rich models of organisations. The integrated modelling approach has been applied and tested in a number of manufacturing enterprises (MEs) and one case study application is described.