Frank Harmsen - Böcker

the virtually unlimited possibilities of modern information and communication technology. Future enterprises will therefore have to operate in an ever more dynamic and global environment. They need to be more agile, more adaptive, and more transparent. In addition, they will be held more publicly accountable for every e?ect they produce. These challenges are traditionally addressed by black-box thinking-based knowledge, i.e., knowledge concerning the function and the behavior of ent- prises, as contained in the organizational sciences. Such knowledge is su?cient, and perfectly adequate, for managing an enterprise (within the range of c- trol). However, it is de?nitely inadequate for changing an enterprise. In order to bring about changes, white-box-based knowledge is needed, i.e., knowledge concerning the construction and the operation of enterprises. Developing and applying such knowledge requires no less than a paradigm shift in our thi- ing about enterprises, since the organizational sciences are dominantly oriented toward organizational behavior, based on black-box thinking.

The PRET working conferences are set up as a one-day event in such a way that it attracts an audience from both industry and academia. PRET 2010 was a continuation of the PRET 2009 working conference, which was organized as the industrial track at the 2009 CAiSE conference. The PRET 2010 working conference was organized as part of theenterpriseengineering week, and was co-located with PoEM 2010 and TEAR 2010 in Delft. The statement that modern-day enterprises are in a constant state of ?ux is in 2010 even more true than it was in 2009. The markets are in a state of confusion and seem to have no direction at all, as they are swinging back and forth depending on often contradictory signals and economic forecasts. As a consequence, enterprises, be they private businesses, government departments or other organizations, are taking their measures. Restructuring, divesting, - proving performance and merging are among the usual transformationactivities thatenterprisesconducttoprovideanswerstotheever-challengingdemandsthat are put on them. In addition to the tricky economic situation, developments like globalization, rapid technologicaladvancement, aging and the changing mindset of customers contribute to a situation in which nothing is certain anymore and in which change is the only constant. PRET approaches these developments and the impact they have on ent- prises from a holistic enterprise engineering perspective.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the Third Working Conference on Practice-Driven Research on Enterprise Transformation (PRET), held in Luxembourg, on September 6, 2010, as the industrial track of the 13th IEEE Conference on Commerce and Enterprise Computing (CEC 2011). The third edition of PRET marks a close collaboration between academia and practice. With the specific purpose of mutual learning and crossfertilization, top practitioners from industry were invited to submit case studies. To give them enough space for presentation, only four academic papers were accepted. These papers were submitted with a length of 25 pages to enable a more detailed coverage of the related research and to stimulate further discussions during the conference. The topics covered are Enterprise Architecture, Business and IT Alignment, and Business Process Management and Evaluation.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 4th Working Conference on Practice-Driven Research on Enterprise Transformation (PRET), held in Gdańsk, Poland, on June 27, 2012, as the industrial track of the 24th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2012).Restructuring, divesting, improving performance, and merging are among the usual transformation activities that enterprises conduct to provide answers to the challenging demands put on them. To foster the much-needed debate between researchers and practitioners on these topics, the number of papers accepted for PRET is kept low, providing the authors and the audience with ample time to engage in discussions about both the practical implications of results and the theoretical underpinnings of phenomena observed in industrial practice. This year, five papers were selected after careful review, and each paper is between 20 and 25 pages long, to allow for the presentation of details.The topics covered include enterprise architecture, business and IT alignment, and business process management and evaluation.