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Designing technologies for active and healthy ageing (AHA) requires a subtle understanding of end users (primary stakeholders) and healthcare professionals (secondary stakeholders). Often, their perspectives can be heterogeneous and contradictory. Identifying and negotiating them may be a challenge for designers. The purpose of this paper is to present our approach to understanding and negotiating contradictory stakeholder perspectives when designing AHA technologies for older adults.

The authors conducted an exploratory interview study with 15 community-dwelling older adults and 11 healthcare stakeholders, including doctors, health insurance agencies, policymakers and caregivers. The authors analyzed the interview material and negotiated contradictory perspectives.

Three major issues among stakeholders emerged: perspectives on AHA; perceived benefits and drawbacks of AHA technologies; and concerns about data privacy, control and trust.

The results show the heterogeneity and contradictions in stakeholder perspectives on AHA technologies and how these perspectives may be negotiated. This could help understand and facilitate long-term use of AHA technologies among older adults.

This study alerts researchers to contradictory perspectives among older people and healthcare stakeholders and the importance of involving them in the design of AHA technologies.

E-learning has gained much focus from educators and researchers, with many extolling e-learning over traditional learning. Despite this focus, implementation of e-learning systems often fails. The purpose of this paper is to consider a range of barriers, impacting the success of e-learning implementations, yet to the best of the authors’ knowledge no conceptual framework is able to consolidate existing research.

This paper undertook an in-depth review of literature concerning e-learning implementation barriers. Papers were extracted from established peer-reviewed journals and open sources. Articles not related to e-learning implementation barriers were discarded. A total of 259 papers were identified, published between 1990 and 2016. Hermeneutics and data-driven qualitative content analysis was used to define 68 unique barriers.

The 68 unique barriers were thematically grouped into four conceptual categories, i.e. Technology (T), Individual (I), Pedagogy (P), and Enabling Conditions (EC). These four categories led to the conceptualization of “TIPEC” framework, which highlights the key concepts hindering e-learning implementation and delivery. Results show that most articles only consider a narrow range of success barriers.

The proposed TIPEC framework acts as a guide for education practitioners, system developers, policy makers, and researchers. It provides stakeholders with a summary of e-learning barriers.

This paper fulfils an identified need for a conceptual framework that consolidates all current research related to e-learning implementation barriers.

The business intelligence (BI) literature is in a flux, yet the knowledge about its varying theoretical roots remains elusive. This state of affairs draws from two different scientific communities (informatics and business) that have generated multiple research streams, which duplicate research, neglect each other’s contributions and overlook important research gaps. In response, the authors structure the BI scientific landscape and map its evolution to offer scholars a clear view of where research on BI stands and the way forward. For this endeavor, the authors systematically review articles published in top-tier ABS journals and identify 120 articles covering 35 years of scientific research on BI. The authors then run a co-citation analysis of selected articles and their reference lists. This yields the structuring of BI scholarly community around six research clusters: environmental scanning (ES), competitive intelligence (CI), market intelligence (MI), decision support (DS), analytical technologies (AT) and analytical capabilities (AC). The co-citation network exposed overlapping and divergent theoretical roots across the six clusters and permitted mapping the evolution of BI research following two pendulum swings. This study aims to contribute by structuring the theoretical landscape of BI research, deciphering the theoretical roots of BI literature, mapping the evolution of BI scholarly community and suggesting an agenda for future research.

This paper follows a systematic methodology to isolate peer-reviewed papers on BI published in top-tier ABS journals.

The authors present the structuring of BI scholarly community around six research clusters: ES, CI, MI, DS, AT and AC. The authors also expose overlapping and divergent theoretical roots across the six clusters and map the evolution of BI following two pendulum swings. In light of the structure and evolution of the BI research, the authors offer a future research agenda for BI research.

This study contributes by elucidating the theoretical underpinnings of the BI literature and shedding light upon the evolution, the contributions, and the research gaps for each of the six clusters composing the BI body of knowledge.

Based on a systematic literature review, requirements on a PPMS are identified in order to derive concrete demands and design features for such a system by using quality function deployment (QFD). The purpose of this paper is to formulate a proposal for design recommendations toward a holistic, customer-oriented Process Performance Measurement System (PPMS).

A literature review is used to identify customer demands and design features that characterize a PPMS. To determine the critical design features of a customer-oriented solution, the QFD method is applied.

The paper confirms that there is currently no published concept for an integrated, holistic PPMS. Therefore it provides a first approach to the formulation of a design recommendation based on the customer requirements and design features. A literature-based weighting facilitates a first identification of critical design features. The identified conditions specify the context which can be regarded as a prerequisite for the application of the system.

As a result of the investigation, two main issues were identified, which restrict the complete development of a House-of-Quality matrix and therefore require further research: First, no reliable relationships between the customer requirements and design features could be derived from the conducted content analysis and second, no correlations between the identified design features could be detected.

The paper provides a design basis for specific application systems and their information requirement analyses. It can also serve as an evaluation basis for existing software products in the market.

The connection of a literature review with the QFD procedure transfers a consolidated state of PPMS research into an applicable design recommendation and therefore supports rigor and relevance of the research.

The paper investigates differences in the success of business process management (BPM) initiatives and their connection with organizational culture. The purpose of this paper is to identify propositions on characteristics of BPM initiative that are favorable for its success according to dominant organizational culture. Therefore, the authors’ aim was to identify connections of organizational commitment to BPM and dimensions of business process orientation (BPO) with dominant organizational culture.

As a research design, the authors used a questionnaire to collect data on the BPM adoption practices of organizations in Austria, Croatia and Slovenia with more than 50 employees. BPM adoption was measured with BPO and organizational culture with Competing Values Framework (CVF). Non-parametric tests have been applied for the analysis. On this survey data, the authors conducted statistical tests to identify those factors that discriminate successful from unsuccessful BPM initiatives.

The study revealed empirical insights about characteristics of successful BPM initiatives in different organizational cultures. There are several statistically significant differences with respect to the success of BPM adoption. The chance of success appears to be higher: when the BPM initiative is rolled out in the entire organization if the organization has Clan, Market or Hierarchy culture; when the BPM is run on a continuous basis in Hierarchy culture and repeatedly in Adhocracy culture; when a top-down approach is used in organizations with Market or Hierarchy dominant culture; when the BPM initiative has a strategic role and formal responsibilities are defined in Clan and Hierarchy cultures.

The authors’ empirical findings provide the basis for the formulation of detailed propositions on the interaction of various factors and their impact on BPM adoption in connection to organizational culture. In this way, the authors’ contribution is situated in the inductive research cycle and informs theory building for BPM adoption.

This paper aims to fill the research and knowledge gap in knowledge management studies in Ghana. Knowledge acquisition is one of the unexploited areas in knowledge management literature, especially in the Ghanaian context. This study tries to ascertain the factors affecting knowledge acquisition in Ghanaian universities.

The study used the quantitative approach. The cross-sectional survey was adopted as the research design. A questionnaire consisting of Likert scale questions was used to collect data from the respondents. The items and the constructs were derived from the extant literature. The questionnaire was sent to 350 respondents, out of which 250 were returned fully completed. Data were quantitatively analysed using descriptive methods and factor analysis.

This study provides empirical evidence about the factors affecting knowledge acquisition in Ghanaian universities. Findings from the study show that programme content, lecturers’ competence, student academic background and attitude and facilities for teaching and learning influence knowledge acquisition in Ghanaian universities.

Although the study seeks to generalize the findings, this should be cautiously done, as some scholars have advocated for large sample size. Nonetheless, there are some studies that have used sample size less than the one used in this study.

The study takes notice of the need for Ghanaian universities to use modern facilities and infrastructures such as electronic libraries and information technology equipment and also provide reading rooms to enhance teaching and learning.

Studies looking at knowledge acquisition in Ghanaian universities are virtually non-existent, and this study provides empirical findings on the factors affecting knowledge acquisition in Ghanaian universities.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast two views, a transformative and a coordinative view, on business process management (BPM) in order to propose an integrated view.

The investigation has been made with the purpose of developing a synthesis of these two views working as thesis and antithesis. The core of such dialectic approach is to create a synthesis that transcends contradictions of the thesis and antithesis. Pros and cons in the two perspectives have been identified and an integrated process view has been proposed, as well as operationalised into modelling methods. The integrated process view comprises a number of definitions of different process types (business process, assignment process, transformation process and provision process).

The paper derives characteristics of the transformative as well as the coordinative view. These are used as the basis for pinpointing important characteristics of an integrative view. These characteristics put forward coordination in relation to transformation as well as assignment processes in relation to other types of processes (such as transformation processes and provision processes)

The proposed integrated view has practical implications in the work of modelling, analysing and designing business processes.

The value of the paper is that it presents a complementary view on business processes derived from two existing views. In the paper, coordination aspects are seen as superior to transformation.

Increased competition characterises the food sector worldwide, but the potential of e‐commerce (eC) to improve customer satisfaction in the food industries has not been thoroughly studied. Reports on the results of a survey of 48 information systems (IS) and marketing managers from food companies in Greece. Examines the eC management context and investigates how the Internet can offer new opportunities for improving customer satisfaction. The results show that there is potential for customer‐oriented eC applications across the value chain.

While several studies have indicated the critical role played by the ability of countries to exploit knowledge as an economic resource, it would appear that there have been very few studies conducted on understanding the practices adopted by governments in relation to exploring knowledge, particularly in Africa. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevailing knowledge management practices and technological solutions used by governments to support knowledge management.

To address the research objective of this study, semi-structured interviews and document analysis were used. The interviews were conducted with both senior and junior county officials from five counties in Kenya, with a total of 31 county officials participating. Further, various county documents were analysed both to seek convergence and corroborate the interview findings.

The study findings revealed that no systematic knowledge management practices existed in the county governments in Kenya, which were investigated. On the few occasions that the study did find evidence of knowledge management practices, these practices were isolated, informal, uncoordinated and rarely documented and/or communicated. Furthermore, the study found that there were inadequate policy frameworks in place to support knowledge management practices. The study also revealed a scarcity of relevant technological solutions tailored to support knowledge management practices.

It was, thus, hoped that this research would promote an understanding of the prevailing local circumstances that hinder the effective utilisation of knowledge management practices and systems. The study recommends that county governments develop the capabilities required for creating and sustaining an enabling knowledge management environment through frameworks and policies that foster knowledge management practices and systems. The findings have practical implications for the way in which county governments in Kenya and other developing countries may improve their knowledge management practices and adopt appropriate technological solutions to support such practices.

Much of the existing literature on knowledge management is focussed on exploring such practices in large businesses. Studies centred specifically on the analysis of knowledge management practices in county governments in Africa, and how technological solutions may be used to build such practices are conspicuously lacking in the relevant literature.

Digital transformation of organizations has major implications for required skills and competencies of the workforce, both as a prerequisite for implementation, and, as a consequence of the transformation. The purpose of this study is to analyze required skills and competencies for digital transformation using the context of robotic process automation (RPA) as an example.

This study is based on an explorative, thematic coding analysis of 119 job advertisements related to RPA. The data was collected from major online job platforms, qualitatively coded and subsequently analyzed quantitatively.

The research highlights the general importance of specific skills and competencies for digital transformation and shows a gap between available skills and required skills. Moreover, it is concluded that reskilling the existing workforce might be difficult. Many emerging positions can be found in the consulting sector, which raises questions about the permanent vs temporary nature of the requirements, as well as the difficulty of acquiring the required knowledge.

This paper contributes to knowledge by providing new empirical findings and a novel perspective to the ongoing discussion of digital skills, employment effects and reskilling demands of the existing workforce owing to recent technological developments and automation in the overall context of digital transformation.