Understanding Organizational Memory from the Integrated Management Systems (ERP)

Objectives. The study set out to develop fundamental methodological principles for the logical integration of information systems (IS) in organizations and to quantitatively assess the topological significance of the IS integration process.Methods. Methods based on expert systems were used for the logical integration of information in conjunction with data-mining approaches based on various IS. In order to quantitatively assess the topological significance of the IS integration procedure, graph theory methods were used. Discrete topology methods were also employed for calculating the topological invariants of the IS interconnection topology.Results. Issues and challenges involved in the integration of IS in large organizations are considered in terms of integration methods based on physical and logical principles. While IS integration approaches based on logical principles offer distinct advantages over physical integration approaches, new problems arising in the context of logical integration approaches require innovative solutions. The proposed scheme for the logical integration of IS includes an algebraic method for quantitatively assessing the topological significance of integration, comprising an important numerical indicator in the logical integration of IS. Methods based on learning expert systems, which represent a fundamental solution for organizing the logical integration of IS for intelligent data analysis, are reviewed.Conclusions. When integrating IS in organizations, it is advisable to use a logical integration approach that preserves the logic of existing information systems. The application of logical integration enables intelligent data analysis using various IS. The use of expert systems in logical integration enables the creation of a new logical layer for providing decision support within the organization.

Executive access to information systems in Australian public organizations

Many US companies adopted business process re-engineering (BPR) strategy to demonstrate the way culture influenced information technology (IT)-enabled organizational change and information systems. It was observed that many corporations improved their business performance after re-engineering their core processes. The BPR strategy used some of the specific cultural characteristics of American citizens to introduce IT-enabled organizational change and information systems. Specific cultural characteristics of the American citizens, such as innovativeness, individualism, self-reliance, a willingness to accept risk, and a desire for change helped them to adopt such a strategy and introduce changes. Several corporations in a number of other countries with diverse cultural traits also adopted the BPR strategy to introduce similar information technology (IT)-enabled organizational change and information systems.

Organizational memory information systems (OMIS) implement important aspects of organizational memory with the aim of enhancing organizational effectiveness. We propose a 3-layered framework for a dynamic OMIS. The framework consists of a pragmatic layer to support the actual activity, a conceptual layer to store the concepts inherent in that activity, and a process layer to store the experience of performing that activity. Both the conceptual and process layers represent organizational memory repositories in the form of respective models. The implementation of OMIS assumes that any activity is the instantiation of relevant conceptual and process models and includes the reuse of knowledge stored in association with those models. In this way, organizational memory is always mapped to current activity, and its adequacy is constantly evaluated. This provides the potential for the models to evolve as a direct result of the current activity. A partial implementation of this framework to support epidemiological research is illustrated.

One of the key roles of any information system is to enforce the business rules and policies set by the owning organisation. As for any important functionality, it is necessary to verify the implementation of any business rule carefully, through thorough testing. However, business rules have some specific features which make testing a particular challenge. They represent a more fine-grained unit of functionality than is usually considered by testing tools (programs, module, UML models, etc.) and their implementations are typically spread across a system (or perhaps some specific layer of a system). There is no convenient one-toone relationship between programs and business rules that can facilitate their testing. To the best of our knowledge, no tools, methods or guidelines exist for helping software developers to test the implementation of business rules. Standard testing tools can help to a certain extent, but they leave the rule-specific work entirely in the programmer’s hands. In this paper, we discuss the problems of testing business rules, and elicit the key features of a good test suite for a collection of business rules. We focus in particular on constraint business rules - an important class of rule that is commonly applied to the persistent data managed by the information system. We show how intensional database tests provide a suitable platform on which to implement business rule tests rapidly, and show how existing intensional test suites can be automatically adapted to test business rules. We have applied these ideas in a case study, which has allowed us to compare the relative costs of creating and executing these augmented test suites, as well as providing some evidence of their ability to detect faults in business rule implementations.

User satisfaction has increasingly played an important role in information systems (IS) organizations' effectiveness. Does an IS organization's ability to design and develop increasingly effective systems depend on its maturity? Does maturity depend on bringing in state-of-the-art technology? Is maturity related to the organizational structure of the Data Processing/Management Information Systems (DP/MIS) Unit? Is maturity related to spending increasing amounts of money on IS organizations? The importance of these questions and their answers to DP/MIS managers and users cannot be overemphasized. The research uses a field study of IS users and managers to answer these questions and other related issues. The study shows a weak but significant overall relationship between user satisfaction variables and maturity criteria defined by Nolan [25]. Further research based on the findings of the study is suggested as a means of improving the degree of relationship between maturity criteria and user satisfaction variables.

Case-based reasoning (CBR) methodology stems from research on building computational memories capable of analogical reasoning, and require for that purpose specific composition and organization. This main task in CBR has triggered very significant research work and findings, which are summarized and analyzed in this article. In particular, since memory structures and organization rely on declarative knowledge and knowledge representation paradigms, a strong link is set forth in this article between CBR and data mining for the purpose of mining for memory structures and organization. Indeed the richness of data mining methods and algorithms applied to CBR memory building, as presented in this chapter, mirrors the importance of learning memory components and organization mechanisms such as indexing. The article proceeds through an analysis of this link between data mining and CBR, then through an historical perspective referring to the theory of the dynamic memory, and finally develops the two main types of learning related to CBR memories, namely mining for memory structures and mining for memory organization.

The study focuses on the improvements in planning effectiveness and information selection that may result from a change in information processing technology at the middle management level. The subjects selected for inclusion in this study are branch managers and insurance executives from eight of the largest property-liability insurers. Participants were asked to work with and evaluate the comparative benefits of two information sources, one representing current practice-and the other representing new information technology. The latter information system utilized a computer terminal and interactive data accessing and forecasting routines. A significant number of decision science techniques has been developed and operationalized over the past three decades. However, the frequency with which quantitative models or the output of such models have been utilized successfully by line managers in their decision-making activities has been low-especially in view of the potential contribution of the models [1, 7, 9, 12]. Therefore, an implementation gap between the tools and techniques developed and the incorporation of those tools and techniques into management decision-making processes has resulted. The seriousness of the problem has heightened with advances in computer technology which now have made available to the field manager a plethora of peripheral and remote on-line, real-time access devices. The field manager could now submit input via a terminal to quantitative models and receive the output of such models as part of an overall computer-based information system of the firm. Whether managers at various levels in an organization will utilize the expanding capabilities of the organization's information system in order to increase the profitability of their respective operations is a critical issue today. The concept of implementation, as used in this paper, refers to the installation and use of quantitative models and data bases as part of an overall computerized information and decision-support system. The output of the system can be in the form of representations of the operating environment, solutions to planning and/or control problems, or simply Robert J. Campbell is an Assistant Professor of Accountancy, Miami Univerity, Oxford, Ohio. He has published in Taxes-The Tax Magazine and Cost and Management.

Organizational memory and new product development performance: Investigating the role of organizational ambidexterity

Being a part of business process management (BPM) life cycle, business process modeling has found its place in information systems development (ISD) practices as well. At the same time, concepts of business vocabularies and rules are also the hot topics among BPM and ISD practitioners and academics. Nevertheless, in ISD, the integration of business process models with business vocabularies and rules is still not standardized and remains quite empiric. In this paper, basic aspects of the approach for business vocabularies’ extraction from business process models are presented. The approach is based on novel business level OMG standards “Business Process Model and Notation” (BPMN) and “Semantics for Business Vocabularies and Business Rules” (SBVR), thus contributing to OMG’s vision about Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) and to model-driven development in general.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.itc.42.2.2310

This chapter discusses the importance and role of e-security in business environments and networked systems. It presents some relevant concepts in network security and subscribers protection. It also introduces some basic terminology that is used throughout the book to define service, information, computer security, and network security. This chapter aims at providing self contained features to this book. Introduction Every organization, using networked computers and deploying an information system to perform its activity, faces the threat of hacking from individuals within the organization and from its outside. Employees (and former employees) with malicious intent can represent a threat to the organization's information system, its production system, and its communication networks. At the same time, reported attacks start to illustrate how pervasive the threats from outside hackers have become. Without proper and efficient protection, any part of any network can be prone to attacks or unauthorized activity. Routers, switches, and hosts can all be violated by professional hackers, company's competitors, or even internal employees. In fact, according to various studies, more than half of all network attacks are committed internally. One may consider that the most reliable solution to ensure the protection of organizations' information systems is to refrain from connecting them to communication networks and keep them in secured locations. Such a solution could be an appropriate measure for highly sensitive systems.

Personal competences of experienced employees are the most important knowledge assets of knowledge-work oriented enterprises. Thus, it makes perfect sense to start IT support for enterprise knowledge management with a system that facilitates finding of appropriate contact persons for business tasks which require specific knowledge, experiences, or skills. We propose such a competence knowledge base system (CKBS) which builds upon an ontology-based model of competence fields, the use of which allows (i) comprehensive multi-criteria organization and queries for personal competences, (ii) complex heuristic inferences for finding knowledgeable persons in spite of vaguely specified information needs, and (iii) easy integration of the CKBS into an overall organizational memory information system.

University information systems should flexibly and quickly adapt to variable requirements. This paper proposed an university information system implementation method based on business rule to achieves information systems adaptability. Based on steady business pool consisting of business granules and business objects, variable factors on the business object aggregate business granule operates are separated from information systems codes and stored as business rule, which is implemented through the corresponding business rule engines. Therefore, university information systems based on this method can adapt to variable requirements flexibly and quickly through configuring business rule. Experiments and examples are provided to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed method.

Automated business rules and requirements to enrich product-centric information

The main objective of the paper is to present the business rules as the encoded knowledge of corporate business practices. The paper introduces and represents business rules as a subset of business knowledge, and a rule- based Business activity meta-model as a repository where we capture, store, and manage business rules. The motivation and the goal of meta- model are to help establish an environment in which business knowledge can be captured and business rules can be traced from their origin in the business environment through to their implementation in information systems.