Search results

Process modeling guidelines are a valuable instrument for increasing the quality of process models. Since finding and selecting suitable guidelines are challenging, this paper aims to find and select suitable guidelines because they are scattered across the many studies of the literature. Also, not all of them are supported by empirical studies.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review to collect and analyze process modeling guidelines present in the literature and the empirical evidence that supports them.

The authors investigated a total of 793 articles and identified a total of 45 process modeling guidelines in five different categories. For each of these guidelines, the authors report empirical evidence together with corresponding measures, such as comprehension accuracy and error probability.

Compared to the prior literature reviews on process model quality and process modeling guidelines, this article extends current knowledge by analyzing the empirical evidence and variables associated with each guideline. This analysis provides guidance for practitioners and scholars on which guidelines to use while modeling a process and perform further research on.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to solving the complexity problem as increased complexity is a main reason why projects fail to reach their goals, and it is unclear what complexity is.

Conceptual development integrating theories of materiality, teleology, and complexity, decision-making theory, communication theory, coordination theory, and qualitative, quantitative and participatory approaches are used in this paper.

To understand complexity, it is necessary to develop a material-systemic process approach and to distinguish structured from unstructured complexity. The social actors construct a complex material-systemic process between themselves and nature to handle unwieldy outer nature. The material-systemic approach reveals how materiel life-world arenas are developed through increased complexity and specialization. Handling complexity is possible by materiality in general and structural material in special, the interplay between inner time (planning) and outer time (production), and between human subjects and an underlying coordination mechanism. It is a systematic organizational blockade that reproduces internal complexity as unstructured and incomprehensible complexity.

The practical models of organizing are tested to the highest degree in construction industry. It is a task to try and examine the models in other types of projects.

The paper offers a proposal to a theoretical solution to the complexity problem going back to the roots in Enlightenment and shows at the same time through practical models how increased complexity may be the most important productive force in future projects.

The purpose of this paper is to review empirical studies on process mining in order to understand its use by organizations. The paper further aims to outline future research opportunities.

The authors propose a classification model that combines core conceptual elements of process mining with prior models from technology classification from the enterprise resource planning and business intelligence field. The model incorporates an organizational usage, a system-orientation and service nature, adding a focus on physical services. The application is based on a systematic literature review of 144 research papers.

The results show that, thus far, the literature has been chiefly concerned with realization of single business process management systems in single organizations. The authors conclude that cross-system or cross-organizational process mining is underrepresented in the ISR, as is the analysis of physical services.

Process mining researchers have paid little attention to utilizing complex use cases and mining mixed physical-digital services. Practitioners should work closely with academics to overcome these knowledge gaps. Only then will process mining be on the cusp of becoming a technology that allows new insights into customer processes by supplying business operations with valuable and detailed information.

Despite the scientific interest in process mining, particularly scant attention has been given by researchers to investigating its use in relatively complex scenarios, e.g., cross-system and cross-organizational process mining. Furthermore, coverage on the use of process mining from a service perspective is limited, which fails to reflect the marketing and business context of most contemporary organizations, wherein the importance of such scenarios is widely acknowledged. The small number of studies encountered may be due to a lack of knowledge about the potential of such scenarios as well as successful examples, a situation the authors seek to remedy with this study.

In the process industries, it is essential to have a well-articulated manufacturing strategy within companies. However, to facilitate manufacturing strategy development, it is important to start with a good characterisation of the material transformation system and company production capabilities. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A grounded theory approach, with inspiration from configuration modelling, attempted to characterize the material transformation system as a set of variables. The variable development was based on a literature review and the knowledge base of five industry experts. Two exploratory mini-case studies were carried out, primarily to illustrate the use of the model, but additionally to test its industrial usability.

A set of 31 variables was developed, and related measures and scales were tentatively defined. Two mini-cases supported the usability of the model. The model, focussing on company generic process capabilities, is a conceptual taxonomy and the study’s theoretical contribution.

The lucidity of the definitions and scales for the variables are open to further refinement, and the limited discussions of variable relationships in this study are addressed in an agenda for further research.

The model can be deployed as a facilitative instrument in the analysis of company material transformation systems and may serve as a platform in further discussions on companies’ strategy development.

The model is a new instrument for analysing company generic process capabilities and an effort to build new theory rather than to test an existing one.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what kinds of capabilities are required by process industry companies as they move toward servitization. The authors proceed in two steps. First, the authors explore the capabilities needed in servitization with a qualitative multiple case study. Second, the authors link the identified capabilities to the servitization steps that were derived from prior literature.

Based on earlier servitization literature, the authors build a five-step servitization model for industrial companies. Then, drawing on the empirical study consisting of three focus group sessions with three case companies and 20 interviews in 14 case companies, the authors identify 14 servitization capabilities and link them to the servitization steps.

The study reveals how dynamic capabilities are required in servitization. In contrast to operational capabilities, which are geared toward enabling firms to make a living in the present, dynamic capabilities extend or modify operational capabilities in response to market changes. Based on the empirical study, the authors were able to identify dynamic capabilities for all five steps of servitization: identification of current services and customer needs, determination of a service strategy, creation of new business models and pricing logics, improvements in capabilities, and, ultimately, management services as a separate function.

The current study is exploratory in nature and the number of empirical observations is limited to 14 industrial companies operating in the process industry.

Most importantly, in servitization, companies need dynamic capabilities to transform their operating capabilities in sales and marketing as well as in quantifying and communicating the value created for customers.

The study is the first one to make a link between the capabilities needed and the various stages of servitization and also the first to study the specific context of process industry companies.

Within the literature of global mindset there has been much discussion of antecedents. Few attempts have been made, however, to analyze the outcomes of a global mindset. Our chapter undertakes a thematic analysis of global mindset antecedents and outcomes in the 1994–2013 literature. Adopting an inductive approach and borrowing methods from international business and managerial cognition studies, we map, assess, and categorize 42 empirical and 10 theoretical studies thematically. We focus on the antecedents and outcomes at individual, group, and organizational levels. We conceptualize corporate global mindset as a multidimensional construct that incorporates global mindset at the individual level and is dependent on a robust communications infrastructure strategy for its cultivation throughout the organization. Our study categorizes antecedents and outcomes by level and identifies the gaps in global mindset outcomes and firm performance for future researchers to address.

The purpose of this study is to develop a framework of strategies to achieving customer order flexibility in and related to the order-to-delivery (OTD) process. The purpose is also to investigate how companies prioritize various strategies to achieve customer order flexibility.

Based on a literature review, pre-tests and conceptual reasoning, a conceptual framework of strategies related to the order-to-delivery process was developed. The strategies were linked to the order quantity and delivery lead-time flexibility dimensions. This structure resulted in six groups covering enabling as well as remedial strategies. An empirical interview study of ten customer–supplier relationships was conducted.

The interviews identified additional strategies, thereby expanding the framework. The enabling strategies with the highest median values were “have continuous contact with the customer's purchaser” and “use safety stock of raw materials/semi-finished products”. The remedial strategy with the highest median was “re-plan/re-prioritize the order backlog”. In the delivery sub-process, it was more common to apply remedial strategies for delivery lead-time than for order quantities.

The developed framework is a contribution to the literature on operational flexibility in and related to the OTD process. It complements existing knowledge by taking a supplier perspective.

Suppliers can use the framework as a tool to understand and systematically achieve better customer order flexibility in and related to the OTD process. Customers can use the framework as a checklist for supplier evaluation and supplier development.

Few identified studies include empirical data on customer order flexibility.

This study aims to present insights on the relationship between perceived software process improvement (PSPI) and information technology (IT)-enabled knowledge management (KM). Moreover, the study provides an understanding of the mediating effect of critical success factors (CSFs) for effective IT-enabled KM on the previously mentioned relationship.

The respondents in the study involved employees in the software engineering (SE) organizations in national capital region in India. The structured equation modeling technique carried out through IBM.SPSS.Amos.v21-EQUiNOX was used to develop and evaluate the proposed framework. The proposed hypothesis testing has been carried out by path analysis using SPSS process macro.

The findings of the empirical study reveal that a significant relationship exists between the variables under investigation. Moreover, it was observed that CSFs act as a mediator between PSPI and IT-enabled KM. The identified factors are associated with various aspects as managerial, infrastructure, financial, systems and processes for IT-enabled KM. IT acts as a moderator between KM and PSPI and facilitate the various phases of KM as knowledge creation, storage and retrieval, sharing and application of knowledge.

The present study introduces a framework for identifying and applying the CSFs that influence the KM initiatives for PSPI in an SE organization. The practitioners can use the CSFs for assessing the performance (strengths and weaknesses) in process of software development and KM practices. Researchers can use the resultant framework proposed in the empirical study for PSPI, IT-enabled KM, and in academia, the framework supports to organize the study of IT-enabled KM for PSPI.

The general comprehension of the relationship between IT-enabled KM and PSPI for Indian SE organizations is scarce in the literature. Following, the analysis expands the earlier research by exploring the mediating role of the CSFs and the moderating effect of IT for KM and PSPI relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to show if business process standardization (BPS) has an impact on business process performance and should be considered as both a valid business process management (BPM) measure and a regular driver of process success.

An empirical analysis based on data from 156 firms is used to evaluate the hypothesis that process standardization positively impacts business process time, cost, and quality.

First, the paper proposes a model and empirical operationalization to analyze the impact of process standardization on process performance. Second, empirical analysis shows that BPS has a decisive impact on process performance (R²=61.9 percent). Precisely, there is a significant impact on process time, cost, and most notably on quality. The results indicate that the impact is strongest in services firms and varies subject to a firm's strategy type.

The results suggest that BPS should regularly be considered a prime action item and major tool in a firm's BPM toolbox.

The paper is among the first to empirically show the vital impact of process standardization on performance. For academics and practitioners interested in BPM and the value impact of processes, the results suggest adding process standardization as a regular argument into research on and management of business processes.