SpringerBriefs in Information Systems – serie

This book addresses the buying organizations' perspective on risks, relationships and success factors for accomplishing a successful IT Outsourcing (ITO). Today’s landscape in ITO is complex and these perspectives are important in ITO and therefore there is still a need for it to be further explored. Furthermore the studies concerned the risks, relationships and success factors in ITO need to be extended in more large companies from different countries to better understand how we could improve the ITO in these companies. In order to address this issue the authors of this book have performed different studies that span about 10 years concerning the risks, relationships and success factors in ITO in large companies in Sweden. The authors have focused on both theoretical and practical aspects concerning risks, relationships and success factors in ITO and they have used transaction cost theory, agency theory and core competency theory as main theories to support their research. The data concerning this study has been collected at two different times during the last 10 years with about five years' difference between them. In this way the performed research has enabled a comparison of the data collected on two different periods in time including of the related changes. The book will help researchers in ITO as well as practitioners like ITO decision makers in large companies to understand how to mitigate the ITO risks, improve their ITO relationships and identify the ITO success factors.

The main goal of this book is to explain the core ideas of process mining, and to demonstrate how they can be implemented using just some basic tools that are available to any computer scientist or data scientist. It describes how to analyze event logs in order to discover the behavior of real-world business processes. The end result can often be visualized as a graph, and the book explains how to use Python and Graphviz to render these graphs intuitively. Overall, it enables the reader to implement process mining techniques on his or her own, independently of any specific process mining tool. An introduction to two popular process mining tools, namely Disco and ProM, is also provided. In this second edition the code snippets have been updated to Python 3, and some smaller errors have been corrected.The book will be especially valuable for self-study or as a precursor to a more advanced text. Practitioners and students will be able to follow along on their own, even if they have no prior knowledge of the topic. After reading this book, they will be able to more confidently proceed to the research literature if needed.

This book presents ten essays that examine the potential of digital responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The essays explore new digital concepts for learning and teaching, provide an overview of organizational responses to the crisis through digital technologies, and examine digital solutions developed to manage the crisis. Scientists from many disciplines work together in the fight against the virus and its numerous consequences. This book explores how information systems researchers can contribute to these global efforts. The book will be of interest to researchers and scholars in the field of digital business and education.

This book connects the new world of digitalization with classic IT management. With the presence of software in objects, products and processes, most businesses will become software-defined businesses. Software development and software management are thus key to stay competitive in an environment that demands continuous innovation.  The authors provide a comprehensive introduction to continuous innovation, the DevOps concept and lay the foundations of an innovation-oriented IT management. The DevOps approach to continuous innovation, which combines lean and agile concepts with an automated tool chain, enables solutions that synergize fast (re)action through digital innovation on the one hand and long-term development cycles and stable operation on the other. A comprehensive case study of T-Systems MMS, a digital service provider from Deutsche Telekom in Germany, illustrates the use of this approach in practice.

This book aims to improve the understanding of smart service innovations. It contributes to evidence-based knowledge about service systems engineering and its embedding in service ecosystems, in particular how existing reference process models can be extended by considering actors, roles, activities and methods. At the same time, it aims to stimulate discussions on how methods from different disciplines can be used and combined for the development of various aspects of Smart Service Systems. Thus, the book offers support for practitioners to better organize and execute SSI projects and to develop internal competencies.

This book presents a digital transformation (DT) methodology for non-profit organizations (NPOs), integrating bibliometric analysis, thematic synthesis, strategic framework development, and empirical case studies. Differentiating itself from similar publications, the book captures the complexity of DT in mission-driven contexts, emphasizing the interplay between organizational identity, strategic logics, and stakeholder pressures. It also proposes multivariate analysis methods in order to identify opportunities for digital change across operational, cultural, and strategic dimensions. Key topics include the classification of DT pathways, strategic benchmarking against for-profit models, and the development of a recursive framework that links readiness, strategic intent, and organizational profiles. Drawing on case studies from UK-based NPOs, the book explores how digital tools are adopted, adapted, and contested in practice, highlighting tensions between innovation and mission alignment. While focused on the non-profit sector, the book’s frameworks and findings are relevant to all scholars and practitioners of digital innovation, organizational change, and public value creation.

Companies have long sought to integrate existing Information Systems (IS) in order to support existing and potentially new business processes spread throughout their “territories” and possibly to collaborating organizations. A variety of designs can be used to this end, ranging from rigid point-to-point electronic data interchange (EDI) interactions to “Web auctions”. By updating older technologies, such as “Internet-enabling” EDI-based systems, companies can make their IT systems available to internal or external customers; but the resulting systems have not proven to be flexible enough to meet business demands. A more flexible, standardized architecture is required to better support the connection of various applications and the sharing of data. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is one such architecture. It unifies (“orchestrates”) business processes by structuring large applications as an ad-hoc collection of smaller modules called “Services”. These applications can be used by different groups of people both inside and outside the company, and new applications built from a mix of services (located in a global repository) exhibit greater agility and uniformity.Thus, SOA is a design framework for realizing rapid and low-cost system development and improving total system quality. SOA uses the Web Services standards and technologies and is rapidly becoming a standard approach for enterprise information systems integration.SOA adoption by enterprises has been identified as one of the highest business priorities by a recent Gartner study (Gartner 2007) and enterprises increasingly recognize the requirement for an increased “Service-orientation” and relevant comprehensive frameworks, which will not only help them position themselves and evaluate their SOA initiatives, but also guide them in achieving higher levels of SOA maturity. This in turn, will help enterprises acquire (and retain) competitive advantage over otherplayers in the market who are not (using SOA and thus they are not) so flexibly adjusting themselves to address new business requirements.This book proposes a new SOA Maturity Model (MM) using a Delphi-variant technique and this constitutes one of its distinguishing features because none of the relevant existing works utilized Delphi. Moreover, the fact that the proposed SOA MM supports inter-enterprise setups makes it even more distinct.The newly proposed SOA MM is then used to help the participating organizations position themselves in respect to SOA (current status), guide them to achieve higher levels of SOA maturity, and anticipate their SOA maturity in five years’ time.Furthermore, the “local” or “global” nature of the proposed SOA MM is investigated. This is checked firstly against selected expert panel participants and secondly against local business practitioners.

​This book introduces a process-oriented dynamic capability framework to study both, service innovation and Business Process Management (BPM). Results from applications in several case studies and surveys are reported. They reflect, e.g., capability development and maturity models. Based on these findings, a method to support service innovation is introduced. This method can help organizations in developing new service business models in a more effective and efficient way. In today's networked service society, service innovation becomes increasingly important. Reasons for this development can be found in the transformation of economies and in the growing importance of product-service systems. The concept of service innovation is related to Business Process Management (BPM) and shares several important traits. They both are process-oriented dynamic capabilities to adapt (service) processes to changing environments.

Since the peak of the world financial crisis in 2008, compliance management has gained more and more interest from practice and research. In particular the financial service industry is strongly regulated and has to follow specific laws, standards and guidelines. Considering the steadily increasing number of legal requirements in the design of information systems is a challenge to financial service providers. This book investigates the challenges of compliance management in financial industries and provides solutions for a compliant design of information models. From a business process perspective, an approach is presented that enables the automatic checking of business process models. From a supervisory reporting perspective a modeling technique is presented that allows for modeling regulatory data warehouse requirements as well as its analysis. Besides these two perspectives the author provides insights into the perceived relationship of Information Systems and Law.

This book examines how information systems research and education can play a major role in contributing to solutions to the Societal Grand Challenges formulated in “The Millennium Project” (millenium-project.org). Individual chapters focus on specific challenges, review existing approaches and contributions towards solutions in information systems research and outline a research agenda for these challenges. The topics considered in this volume range from climate change, population growth, global ICT availability, breakthroughs in science and technology and energy demand to ethical decision-making, policymaking, gender status and transnational crime prevention. It is the first book to present ideas on how the Information Systems discipline can contribute to the solution on this wide spectrum of grand societal challenges.

This book links knowledge management literature and information systems research to explore the process of knowledge preservation within a community of practice. It contributes to existing literature in different ways. First, it provides a conceptualization of the “community knowledge preservation” process. In contrast to previous knowledge management research, knowledge preservation is thus viewed as a process in its own right rather than an integral part of knowledge creation and sharing. Furthermore, the book also investigates how communities of practice preserve knowledge, by identifying the main mechanisms and tools enabling members to select, store and actualize the explicit and tacit forms of collective knowledge. More in general, the book presents guidance on how to use communities of practice to ensure the preservation of knowledge in development processes, for individuals and organizations alike.

This book examines the link between change and project management and how creating a closer alignment between these two methodologies can yield greater benefits and mitigate elements of failure of information systems (IS) projects. This study explores the underlying challenges and practicalities of closer integration of the two disciplines and asserts that such a successful change goes beyond the simple training of project managers in the practitioner context. Instead, it requires organizations to conceptualize the necessary challenges to realize the potential benefits of this recommended integrated approach. The integration of both project and change management has been advocated in existing research, but the challenges of moving from a current position of separate methodologies, different standards bodies and in some cases totally separate organizational structures, is a step change for many organizations. Change initiatives where good change management practices are implemented, can increase the probability of successful organizational change. The tasks of leading and sustaining change can be complex and often entail the interplay of multiple factors involving action by people at every level of the business. This book offers a guide that identifies the barriers and major challenges that may arise in the development of the closer integration of change and project management. With a better understanding of these issues, organizations can avoid such pitfalls when establishingtheir own integrated approach.

This book examines the effectiveness of communication between chief information officer (CIO) and chief executive officer (CEO) and its impact on the role of information technology (IT) in an organization. The book is empirically based on interviews with CIO/CEO pairs from twelve organizations in the manufacturing and retail industries. It examines how CIOs and CEOs can achieve effectiveness in their communication, including insights into antecedents and consequences of communication effectiveness. Based on the interview data the authors develop a CIO/CEO communication model with which CIOs and CEOs can gain new insights into the efficiency of their interactions, likely resulting in higher levels of shared understanding regarding the role of IT in their organization.

This book reviews latest research on the effectiveness of the chief information officer (CIO) in organizations and its impact on IT success. It presents a model of six different roles, in which a contemporary CIO can act: technology provider, strategic supporter, business thinker, innovation driver, integration advisor, and relationship manager. The book analyses the effectiveness of the CIO role based on four antecedents: CIO personal competence, CIO hierarchical position, the management environment, and the IT infrastructure of the organization in which the CIO operates. Altogether the literature review synthesizes the results of highly fragmented work related to CIO role effectiveness reported in 98 studies published during the past three decades. The book contributes to information systems literature by integrating what is known about the scope and responsibilities of CIO organizational roles in the present management context, and by guiding research and practice in revealing how and why CIOs can achieve effectiveness in the six roles. The book concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the study and potential avenues for future research.

This book provides an understanding of the core pillars of trust and reputation systems in electronic business settings. It presents the main existing methods and evaluates them from a managerial point of view. The book outlines the necessary technological environment without entangling the reader in too much technical detail. An implementation roadmap on a strategic and tactical level is given as well as guidance on linking trust and reputation management to existing information systems. Existing standards and solutions like recommendation systems, web services, semantic and big data technologies are put into context to prevent subverting efforts using false ratings, faked identities and other security issues. An outlook into recent and future developments completes the book.

In recent decades, organizational stress researchers have repeatedly called for more longitudinal studies. This book argues that tools and devices that have been developed for the private or organizational domains could be helpful when it comes to studying longitudinal phenomena, as they offer unobtrusive measurement and are frequently employed by many individuals in daily life. In particular, the book examines lifelogging, a research field that addresses the computer-based collection of individual experiences.Further, it highlights areas in organizational stress research that benefit from insights in the lifelogging literature and provides a summary of tools that can be used for stress measurement. It also offers an overview of the latest research and current developments on lifelogging and organizational stress for researchers interested in self-measurement of stress-related effects and for organizational stress researchers.