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A Systematic Literature Review to Understand Cross-organizational Relationship Management and Collaboration

An increasingly dynamic, unpredictable and challenging environment leads organizations to cross their own borders and establish partnerships to other organizations for remaining competitive. This cross-organizational relationship allows participating organizations to share resources with each other and collaborate to better handle an identified opportunity for joint work. However, besides having a mutual or compatible goal, it is common that these organizations face several challenges during the partnership. The present research aims to explore the cross-organizational relationship management. To this end, this paper outlines the systematic literature review performed to understand the collaboration and relationship establishment between different organizations and organize an ICT related body of knowledge about the topic. A discussion about the findings, challenges and open issues identified from the retrieved literature is also provided to guide further work.

The Failure of Success Factors: Lessons from Success and Failure Cases of Enterprise Architecture Implementation

Many Enterprise Architecture programmes fail to meet expectations. While much has been written about the factors influencing the success of EA programmes, there are few empirical investigations of the role of critical success factors (CSFs) in the success of EA programmes. This study condensed the very broad literature on CSFs for EA identifying six key CSFs that share a broad consensus in the literature. A qualitative case study was conducted to test the hypothesis that the six key CSFs would distinguish between the successful and the unsuccessful programmes. Analysis of the case study data reveals that three key CSFs associated with the use of EA tools did not distinguish between successful and unsuccessful cases while three key CSFs related to the process of EA programme implementation did so. The study concludes that success in EA programmes comes more from how architecture is practiced than what is practiced. The findings have important implications for EA suggesting that the methodological skills of architects need to be supplemented with an understanding of practice.

The Reinforced Enterprise Business Architecture (rebar) Ontology

Understanding organizations and their needs for new technology has never been more challenging than in today’s high-tech business world. Enterprise managers are required to coordinate with other departmental managers, direct their personnel and solve problems along the way. Communicating new designs to IT for needed applications may not be in the manager’s skillset. When the enterprise grows rapidly or tries to compete in new areas, a set of basic diagrams illustrating common workflows may no longer accurately reflect the complex environment. What is needed is a simple method for illustrating the enterprise as a whole, interoperable structure so managers and workers alike can describe their requirements in the unique vocabulary of their industry. REBAR offers a novel approach for using key strategic and operational business documents, written in natural language, as the basis for the formal enterprise ontology. Popular semantic web standards, including RDF, FOAF and DC, provide generic terms already designed to convey the subject–predicate–object structure of natural language in a social structure. The REBAR enterprise ontology extends these existing standards, thus evolving a socio-technical model of the functional organization distilled directly from existing enterprise documents. REBAR captures the essence of the unique enterprise in a graphical application that can be queried and dynamically recombined to illustrate details of complex workplace collaborations. An enterprise ontology should unite all defined departmental functions authorized by executive enterprise managers. Additionally, findings indicate the REBAR ontology has the potential to provide a reusable structure for linking core social business functions of the enterprise to other explicit enterprise knowledge, including policies, procedures, tech manuals, training documents and project metrics. The REBAR methodology offers evidence that the enterprise is more than the sum of its parts, it is the bridge unifying explicit and tacit knowledge during work projects across the entire enterprise.

Systematic literature review on enterprise architecture in the public sector

Enterprise architecture (EA) is an approach to improve the alignment between the organization’s business and their information technologies. It attempts to capture the status of the organizations’ business architecture, information resources, information systems, and technologies so that the gaps and weaknesses in their processes and infrastructures can be identified, and development directions planned. For this reason, EA has become a popular approach also in the public sector to increase their efficiency and ICT utilization. Yet researchers have largely ignored this context, and it seems that quite little is known about how EA is developed, implemented, or adapted in different countries and in the public sector. We thus conducted a systematic literature review to identify the major research topics and methods in studies focusing on public sector EA. We analyzed 71 identified articles from the past 15 years. Our analysis shows that the development viewpoint, case studies in developed countries, and local settings seem to form mainstream EA research in the public sector. Taken together, it seems that public sector EA is scattered, and there is no strong, single research stream. Instead the researchers conduct local case studies. This means the knowledge on EA development, implementation or adaptation, their challenges and best practices does not accumulate. There is consequently a need for more research in general, and targeted research in some specific segments.

Ecosystem-inspired enterprise modelling framework for collaborative and networked manufacturing systems

Rapid changes in the open manufacturing environment are imminent due to the increase of customer demand, global competition, and digital fusion. This has exponentially increased both complexity and uncertainty in the manufacturing landscape, creating serious challenges for competitive enterprises. For enterprises to remain competitive, analysing manufacturing activities and designing systems to address emergent needs, in a timely and efficient manner, is understood to be crucial. However, existing analysis and design approaches adopt a narrow diagnostic focus on either managerial or engineering aspects and neglect to consider the holistic complex behaviour of enterprises in a collaborative manufacturing network (CMN). It has been suggested that reflecting upon ecosystem theory may bring a better understanding of how to analyse the CMN. The research presented in this paper draws on a theoretical discussion with aim to demonstrate a facilitating approach to those analysis and design tasks. This approach was later operationalised using enterprise modelling (EM) techniques in a novel, developed framework that enhanced systematic analysis, design, and business-IT alignment. It is expected that this research view is opening a new field of investigation.

How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition

Information technology is revolutionizing products. Once composed solely of mechanical and electrical parts, products have become complex systems that combine hardware, sensors, data storage, microprocessors, software, and connectivity in myriad ways. These smart, connected products – made possible by vast improvements in processing power and device miniaturization and by the network benefits of ubiquitous wireless connectivity – have unleashed a new era of competition. Smart, connected products offer exponentially expanding opportunities for new functionality, far greater reliability, much higher product utilization, and capabilities that cut across and transcend traditional product boundaries. The changing nature of products is also disrupting value chains, forcing companies to rethink and retool nearly everything they do internally. Smart, connected products raise a broad set of new strategic choices for companies about how value is created and captured, how to work with traditional partners and what new partnerships will be required, and how to secure competitive advantage as the new capabilities reshape industry boundaries. For many firms, smart, connected products will force the fundamental question: What business am I in? This article provides a framework for developing strategy and achieving competitive advantage in a smart, connected world.