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The purpose of this paper is to create actionable knowledge, thereby supporting and stimulating practitioners to improve processes in the financial services sector.

This paper is based on a case base of improvement projects in financial service organizations. The data consist of 181 improvement projects of processes in 14 financial service organizations executed between 2004 and 2010. Following the case‐based reasoning approach, based on retrospective analysis of the documentation of these improvement projects, this paper aims to structure this knowledge in a way that supports practitioners in defining improvement projects in their own organizations.

Identification of eight generic project definition templates, along with their critical to quality flowdowns and operational definitions. An overview of the distribution of improvement projects of each generic template over different departments and the average benefit per project for each department. The generic templates give people with knowledge about the process under improvement the ability to use their knowledge effectively in the form of an improvement project.

Due to increasing international competition, financial service organizations must continuously improve in order to secure a competitive advantage. This paper turns continuous improvement from an abstract concept into something tangible and achievable, by giving practitioners with local knowledge tried and tested templates to identify promising themes for process improvement, and to make effective project definitions.

Many companies in the publishing industry are facing the task of developing new business models and becoming more efficient and effective in execution. Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is a unified framework for systematically developing efficiency and quality improvements; it can help realize significant results and breakthrough improvements in the publishing industry, as demonstrated with many projects from a Dutch multinational publishing company. The purpose of this paper is to facilitate the process of defining LSS projects in publishing, because lack of a clear definition is an important cause for project failure.

The paper discusses and categorizes 49 project definitions based on two elements: the critical to quality flowdown and the corresponding set of operational definitions and shows how this simple categorization and subsequent standardization of approaches can help LSS teams simplify the definition phase.

The strategy presented in this paper provides seven standard LSS project definitions (“generic templates”).

Project leaders can use the templates presented in this paper as an example and as a guide in the project definition phase. This helps them to formulate crystal‐clear project definitions, which have explicitly stated goals and a solid business rationale.

This chapter explains how cocreation can be supported by establishing platforms, which provide knowledge, resources, and opportunities for local actors to come together in cocreation arenas. Platforms make it easy for local actors to connect, interact, and engage in productive joint activity. The chapter provides an overview of different types of platforms and describes their distinctive organizing logic, which includes mediating the relationship between different stakeholders, scaffolding their joint action, and leveraging their capacity for change. The chapter identifies important platform dynamics, such as attractor and amplifier effects, synergy, scaling, and social learning, that enable them to successfully support cocreation. Finally, the chapter discusses how platforms themselves can be designed to enhance these dynamics.

A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a complex manufacturing system and it demands a robust control software for its scheduling, planning and control functions. This paper describes the development of an agent‐based infrastructure for the control of a cellular FMS. The FMS in this project is a flexible assembly cell (FAC), comprising two assembly robots and a conveyor system. The aim is to establish a multi‐agent control system with good expandability and to be able to cope with dynamic changes in the FAC. The proposed agent‐based FAC control system comprises a collection of agents implemented in a distributed control network. The approach of the agent design is based on the object‐oriented modelling technique. According to the proposed control architecture, a standard agent template has been designed for the establishment of individual agents in the agent‐based system.

Shows how Scotland’s Robert Gordon University is currently attempting to address the recommendations of the Dearing Report in respect of detailed programme specifications, and of the Partington Report regarding benchmarking of levels of student achievement, in the course of implementing a university‐wide course modularisation programme. Describes how the university has developed a set of generic level learning outcome templates which specify the levels that students should attain in the four areas identified by Dearing (knowledge and understanding; key skills; cognitive skills; and subject‐specific skills) at the various stages of undergraduate and taught‐postgraduate courses. Explains how course teams are using these generic templates to produce “contextualised” versions for their own courses, and are then using the resulting contextualised level learning outcomes as benchmarking guidelines when writing the individual module descriptors for these courses. Describes how this work is being facilitated throughout the university.

Reviews traditional measures of service quality. Argues that the constraints imposed by such measures mean that they can do little more than facilitate single loop learning. Outlines and evaluates an alternative generic approach, the template process, which operates within a process consultancy framework. Illustrates the application of the template to understanding service encounters through an exploration of the provision of funding for social housing. Highlights the ability of the template process to enable double loop learning. Discusses the implications of this for learning about service encounters and taking action.

The purpose of this study is to discover the learning mechanisms and temporal dynamics of implementing systems (Six Sigma) as it unfolds over time.

The data come from a European engineering company that was implementing a Six Sigma-based quality management system (QMS) over a seven-year period. The analysis is based on an event-sequence reconstruction of the implementation process as it unfolded over time and discovers four different learning mechanisms that emerged: programmatic, persistent, adaptive and dialectical learning mechanisms. The research follows a process design study, where the authors study how the process unfolds over time.

Much of the literature on implementing management systems suggests that implementation follows a prescribed sequence of “turn-key” steps. However, the findings show that only 40% of all events were driven by prescribed “turn-key” generic practices, while 56% of events required constructing new practices via adaptive and dialectical learning. Moreover, the implementation process did not proceed in a linear programmatic fashion, but instead followed a punctuated equilibrium pattern, which alternated between periods of incremental change and major organizational change. The study also found that implementation required changing many complementary organizational structures and practices that were interdependent with the management system (i.e. Six Sigma). By understanding the implementation process, managers can better assess the time and effort involved, better adapt the system to their situated context and predict critical junctures where implementation could break down.

This research complements the few studies that have examined the process of implementing management systems. Most studies examine factors or conditions that result in implementation success (the what of implementing systems), but few examine the process of implementation and the learning that takes place during implementation (the how of implementing systems), which is a complex nonlinear process that involves different modes of learning.

The objective of this research is to provide practitioners with inter-industry applicable rules and guidelines for the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) project definition phase. This research resulted in 13 inter-industry generic project definitions that are divided by four performance dimensions: quality, dependability, speed and cost efficiency.

A total of 312 previously executed LSS improvement projects in a broad variety of industries at black belt or master black belt level are analyzed. All these projects have followed the LSS methodology and are characterized by the use of critical to quality (CTQ) measurements and the structured improvement method of define, measure, analyse, improve and control for operations improvement.

This research resulted in 13 inter-industry generic project definitions that are divided by four performance dimensions: quality, dependability, speed and cost efficiency. Three factors that have stood out in this research are; the difficulty to capture the performance dimension flexibility in LSS project definitions, the strong focus on internal organizational benefits in defining CTQs for LSS project definitions and the unclear alignment of LSS project definitions to existing strategic objectives of the company.

This research established useable generic LSS project definitions including generic CTQ’s measures, applicable to multiple industries. These generic LSS project definitions provide useful guidance in the initial LSS project phase, helping to decompose strategic focal points into clear and measurable project objectives.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the link between national business system (NBS) and innovation decisions at the firm level by offering sequentially ordered sense-making mechanisms that enable the formation of firm-specific knowledge repositories and knowledge-processing capabilities.

This study engages in an extensive scale development effort to collect representative data about the NBS in the Pakistani setting, complemented by relevant validity and reliability tests. The overall theoretical model was tested on 214 firms by means of a structural equation modeling approach, using partial least-squares algorithms.

The results statistically supported the role of firm-level knowledge repositories (intellectual capital) and knowledge exploration and exploitation capabilities (absorptive capacity) as sequential mediators in the association of NBS and firm-level innovation. Besides, bridging networks of lateral ties among Pakistani businesses are found to be more effective than bonding networks of vertical ties in encouraging radical innovations.

This study significantly extends the literature about the NBS approach. It provides specific sense-making mechanisms (i.e. priming, triggering and editing) about how abstract institutional templates constituted at the business system level are translated into firm-level actionable sets by the help of intangible resource repositories and processes that guide knowledge exploration and exploitation.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new theoretical model (the generic regulation model (GRM)) which is aimed for e‐government development. There is a need for such a generic model in order to describe and analyse the regulation that occurs in the interaction between governmental agencies and citizens.

This new model has evolved through an action research project/practical inquiry in e‐government. The project area was personal assistance to disabled persons. The practical inquiry has comprised generation and application of the GRM model (as a kind of empirical grounding) and also some initial theoretical grounding.

In the e‐government project there was a need to conceptualize the relations between different governmental agencies and clients. As a response to this need a generic model and a corresponding situational model were developed. The generic model consists of three layers: legislation as general regulation; application of legislation for issuing decisions ( = individual rules), i.e. specific regulation; and application of general and individual rules in regulated practices. The paper also gives an epistemological account of the evolution of the new GRM model. GRM is considered to be a practical theory and it has evolved through a design‐oriented practical inquiry.

The paper presents this new GRM. The GRM model should be adequate to apply in many e‐government situations, since there are often regulation issues at stake. The GRM model should be used in the design and evaluation of e‐government applications.