Search results

Business Process Management (BPM) is key for successful organisational management. However, BPM techniques are often criticized for their inability to deal with continuous and significant change and uncertainty. Following recent calls to make BPM more agile and flexible towards change, this study presents the results of a systematic literature review (SLR) of agile concepts in BPM. Analysing and synthesising previous works and drawing on agility research in the field of IS, this paper introduces a framework for agile BPM. Integrating different components that define agility in the context of BPM, this framework offers a number of important implications. On the theoretical side, the authors argue that the concept of agile BPM departs in some important ways from traditional BPM research. This, in turn, points to various opportunities for future research. On the practical side, the authors suggest that emerging technologies, such as process mining, embody important features that help organisations to be more responsive to change. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To assess the state of the art of agility in the BPM research, the authors conducted an SLR. More specifically, the authors drew on the approach of vom Brocke et al. (2009, 2015), which consists of five steps: defining the scope of the review; conceptualising the topic; searching for literature; analysing and synthesising literature; and developing a research agenda.

This study presents the results of a systematic review of agile concepts in BPM. This study then proposes a resulting research framework that can be used to strengthen the concept of agile BPM and provides an agenda for research in this rapidly growing and increasingly necessary area of BPM.

In this paper, the authors establish a shared understanding of agile BPM and develop an agile BPM framework that represents the current state as well as implications for research and practice in agile BPM.

Online labour markets (OLMs) have recently become a widespread phenomenon of digital work. While the implications of OLMs on worker well-being are hotly debated, little empirical research examines the impact of such work on individuals. The highly competitive and fast-paced nature of OLMs compels workers to multitask and to perform intense technology-enabled work, which can potentially enhance technostress. This paper examines the antecedents and well-being consequences of technostress arising from work in OLMs.

The authors draw from person–environment fit theory and job characteristics theory and test a research model of the antecedents and consequences of worker technostress in OLMs. Data were gathered from 366 workers in a popular OLM through a large-scale online survey. Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the research model.

The findings extend existing research by validating the relationships between specific OLM characteristics and strain. Contrary to previous literature, the results indicate a link between technology complexity and work overload in OLMs. Furthermore, in OLMs, feedback is positively associated with work overload and job insecurity, while strain directly influences workers' negative affective well-being and discontinuous intention.

This study contributes to technostress literature by developing and testing a research model relevant to a new form of work conducted through OLMs. The authors expand the current research on technostress by integrating job characteristics as new antecedents to technostress and demonstrating its impact on different types of subjective well-being and discontinuous intention. In addition, while examining the impact of technostressors on outcomes, the authors consider their impact at the individual level (disaggregated approach) to capture the subtlety involved in understanding technostressors' unique relationships with outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to identify, classify and analyse temporality in information systems development (ISD) literature.

The authors address the temporality and ISD research gap by using a framework – which classifies time into three categories: conceptions of time, mapping activities to time and actors relating to time. The authors conduct a systematic literature review which investigates time in ISD within the Senior Scholars' Basket, Information Technology & People (IT&P), and top two information systems conferences over the past 20 years. The search strategy resulted in 9,850 studies of which 47 were identified as primary papers.

The results reveal that ISD research is ill equipped for contemporary thinking around time. This systematic literature review (SLR) contributes to ISD by finding the following gaps in the literature: (1) clock time is dominant and all other types of time are under-researched; (2) contributions to mapping activities to time is lacking and existing studies focus on single ISD projects rather multiple complex ISD projects; (3) research on actors relating to time is lacking; (4) existing ISD studies which contribute to temporal characteristics are fragmented and lack integration with other categories of time and (5) ISD methodology papers lack contributions to temporal characteristics and fail to acknowledge and contribute to time as a multifaceted interrelated concept.

This work has developed the first SLR on temporality in ISD. This study provides a starting point for ISD researchers and ISD practitioners to test commonly held temporal assumptions of ISD researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to examine contradictions (specifically tertiary and quaternary contradictions) that can disrupt the flow of work in contemporary systems development methods.

This study uses Activity theory (AT) as a theoretical lens to: examine ISD flow as an interrelated activity system; and identify contradictions. AT is pertinent in the context of this study as rather than view contradictions as a threat to prematurely abandon the use of flow tools and metrics, it shows how contradictions can act as a motor for change and continuity. This study adopts a longitudinal single case study approach including face-to-face interviews with management and software development project teams, as well as direct observations and document analysis.

This study identifies tertiary and quaternary contradictions, and highlights the influence of contradictions on flow-based systems development.

This study provides a set of contradictions for researchers and practitioners. It shows that contradictions can be culturally or politically challenging to confront, and even when resolved, can have intended or unintended consequences.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study ISD flow from the perspective of interrelated activity systems and beyond its initial implementation phase.

To give an overview of the papers contained in this Special Issue.

Looks at how each of the papers reflects the theme of the Special Issue, “Complexity and IT design and evolution”.

The collection of papers in this Special Issue addresses complexity, drawing on multi‐faceted, multi‐theoretical lines of inquiry.

Frameworks from complexity science, institutional theory, social science, philosophy, and recent thinking in science and technology studies (STS) are used as theoretical lenses to conceptualize and analyze complexity in IS and to offer ways to mitigate it.

In the postpandemic era, organizations have planned a combination of on-site and virtual work to portray the “New Normal”. The authors aim to analyze the effect of virtual team (VT)-building strategies on virtual team performance and HR performance in the “New Normal” context. This study aims to explore the drivers and barriers to VT performance and its contribution to HR performance.

The study utilized the grounded theory approach. Semistructured interviews with 114 VT leaders of national and multinational companies in India were conducted and NVivo 8.0 software was used to analyze data.

VT-building strategies contribute to VT collaboration and subsequently to VT performance. It was found that VT-building strategies catalyze VT collaboration which is impacted by the drivers and barriers of VTs, affecting VT performance and HR performance.

The primary contribution of this work is the development of a framework that delivers important insights to VT leaders, talent managers, HR professionals and academicians.

This study uniquely examines the VT-building strategies and VT performance through the “New Normal” paradigm lens. This study proposes a conceptual model for VT performance and HR performance. It also provides the team-building strategies, drivers and barriers for VT performance. This work offers the roadmap to achieve VT performance and HR performance. This research also contributes to the human resource management literature by discussing the VT performance and HR performance in the “New Normal” paradigm. It provides insights to VT leaders, talent managers, HR professionals and academicians.

This paper aims to explore, for the first time, community perceptions of the relationship between age and social exclusion in rural areas of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The paper builds on learning from a previous baseline cross‐border rural ageing study and draws its methodology from a broader ecological multi‐level approach. The research was conducted through focus groups with community stakeholders, which were undertaken in ten communities in different rural settings (village, near‐urban, island, dispersed, and remote) in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

In total, four interconnecting thematic areas emerged as important in determining exclusion or inclusion for older people living in rural areas: place, economic circumstances, social provision, and social connectedness. Within these themes, various tipping points emerged as important for pathways into and out of exclusion, most notably local systems of social support and the mindset of older people themselves in relation to participation.

This research lays the foundations for understanding the lived experiences of older people on the island of Ireland and the pathways for their inclusion and exclusion in diverse rural areas, as seen through the lens of community stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to address the challenging issue of developing a quantitative approach for the representation of cultural significance data in heritage information systems (HIS). The authors propose to provide experts in the field with a dedicated framework to structure and integrate targeted data about historical objects' significance in such environments.

This research seeks the identification of key indicators which allow to better inform decision-makers about cultural significance. Identified concepts are formalized in a data structure through conceptual data modeling, taking advantage on unified modeling language (HIS). The design science research (DSR) method is implemented to facilitate the development of the data model.

This paper proposes a practical solution for the formalization of data related to the significance of objects in HIS. The authors end up with a data model which enables multiple knowledge representations through data analysis and information retrieval.

The framework proposed in this article supports a more sustainable vision of heritage preservation as the framework enhances the involvement of all stakeholders in the conservation and management of historical sites. The data model supports explicit communications of the significance of historical objects and strengthens the synergy between the stakeholders involved in different phases of the conservation process.