[pt] A melhoria dos processos de negócios é considerada importante para o suporte da competitividade e sustentabilidade das companhias, ganhando assim, destaque na comunidade acadêmica. Neste sentido, a obtenção de melhorias nos processos organizacionais pode ser obtida por meio do (re)desenho dos processos de negócios, o qual é considerado a etapa de maior valor agregado dos projetos de gestão de processos de negócios. Contudo, apesar da existência de uma literatura ampla a respeito da temática de (re)desenho de processos de negócios, as metodologias ou procedimentos estruturados que visam garantir o entendimento da transformação dos processos atuais as-is para futuros to-be ainda são escassos. Neste contexto, visando preencher esta lacuna presente na literatura, este estudo apresenta os achados empíricos e as lições apreendidas durante a realização de uma pesquisa ação com o objetivo de (re)desenhar os processos logísticos de uma empresa de produção cultural. O estudo empírico teve duração de nove meses. Um modelo conceitual de síntese de (re)desenho de processos de negócios organizacionais foi proposto a partir da literatura. Este modelo incorporou três camadas (i.e., organização, processos de negócios e implementação) e guiou a condução do estudo empírico. Diferentes fatores críticos de sucesso e barreiras foram identificados e analisados com foco nas dimensões organizacionais, sociais e técnicas, resultando em contribuições para pesquisadores da academia e para os especialistas da indústria em abordagens de (re)desenho de processos de negócios. / [en] The improvement of business processes is considered important to support companies competitiveness and sustainability, therefore, being highlighted in the academic community. In this way, the improvement of the organizational processes can be achieved through the business processes redesign, which is considered the most value-added phase in a business process management (BPM) project. However, despite the existence of an extensive literature on the subject of business processes redesign, methodologies or structured procedures that aim to understand the transformation from the as-is to the desired to-be processes are still scarce. Within this context, in order to fill this gap in the literature, this study presents the empirical findings and the lessons learnt from an action research with the objective of redesigning the logistic processes of a cultural production enterprise. The empirical study lasted nine months. A synthesis conceptual model for redesigning organizational business processes was proposed based on the literature. This model incorporated three tiers (i.e., organization, business processes and implementation) and provided guidance for conducting the empirical study. Different critical success factors and barriers have been identified and analyzed with a focus on organizational, social, and technical dimensions, resulting in contributions to scholars and to practitioners in redesigning business process approaches.

The value of information technology investments is becoming a topical issue for corporate governance under the recent regulations enacted in the US (Sarbanes Oxley Act, US Congress, 2002). Increasingly, it is becoming clear that the absence of a definitive approach to evaluating IT investments is an impediment to the governance of corporations. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) information systems are a key IT implementation that has been promoted in both vendor and practitioner communities alike as a panacea for informed enterprise performance management. This research sets out a methodology for the evaluation of ERP’s contribution to enterprise value. This issue is important because billions of dollars of corporate funds have been invested in these systems since the early 1990s. Shareholders and management require a justification of ERP based upon its proven contribution to enterprise and shareholder value.The study develops a theory for the value relevance of ERP information by showing how ERP meets the requirement of a management and organizational innovation. Such an innovation promotes enterprise operations, improves enterprise performance, supports value creation, and increases shareholder wealth. A model is presented for testing the value of ERP adoption. Empirical testing proceeds in two phases. The first phase develops a model for forecasting normal performance. Performance is shown to be a function of autoregressive earnings moderated by macroeconomic factors impacting operations. The latter are associated with the business cycle. The estimated coefficients of the model are used for predicting the earnings performance of the firm. The residuals of actual earnings less the predicted represent abnormal performance. This represents the unique improvement in performance over the prior year after adjusting for macroeconomic effects. The second phase tests the value relevance of ERP information. A returns–earnings model developed by previous research is adapted with ERP–earnings interaction terms representing the ERP system’s effect on performance. Two classes of tests are performed on the model: tests of performance relevance of ERP systems, and tests of value relevance. The former tests ERP performance across several accounting metrics identified as indicators of firm performance level change. The latter tests the market response to these changes in a bid to determine if, in the perception of the market, the changes in the performance level attained to by the firm are associated with ERP adoption. These tests are performed for each year of a 5–year period following adoption. The results of the tests of performance relevance show that ERP–adopter firms do not achieve significant abnormal earnings in years 1 and 2 of the test period. They realize significant, negative, abnormal earnings in year 3. In years 4 and 5, they attain significant, positive, abnormal earnings. The tests of value relevance show that the market responds significantly to ERP adoption in year 2 of the test, but not in other years. The early response immediately after the year of adoption would seem to indicate a significant early expectation from these systems. However, this does appear to translate into long–term value relevance for ERP.

Process-based composition of Web services is emerging as a promising technology for the effective automation of integrated and collaborative applications. As Web services are often autonomous and heterogeneous entities, coordinating their interactions to build complex processes is a difficult, error prone, and time-consuming task. In addition, since Web services usually operate in dynamic and highly evolving environments, there is a need for supporting flexible and correct execution of integrated processes. In this thesis, we propose a Petri net-based framework for formal composition and recovery policies in service-based business processes. We first propose an algebra for composing Web services. The formal semantics of this algebra is expressed in terms of Petri nets. The use of a formal model allows the effective verification and analysis of properties, both within a service, such as termination and absence of deadlock, and between services, such as behavioral equivalences. We also develop a top down approach for the correct (e.g., absence of deadlock and termination) composition of complex business processes. The approach defines a set of refinement operators that guarantee correctness of the resulting business process nets at design time. We then introduce Self-Adaptive Recovery Net (SARN), an extended Petri net model for specifying exceptional behavior in business processes. SARN adapts the structure of the underlying Petri net at run time to handle exceptions while keeping the Petri net design simple and easy. The proposed framework caters for the specification of high-level recovery policies that are incorporated either with a single task or a set of tasks, called a recovery region. Finally, we propose a pattern-based approach to dynamically restructure SARN. These patterns capture the ways past exceptions have been dealt with. The objective is to continuously restructure recovery regions within the SARN model to minimize the impact of exception handling. To illustrate the viability of the proposed composition and exception handling techniques, we have developed HiWorD (HIerarchical WORkflow Designer), a hierarchical Petri net-based business process modeling and simulation tool.

The focus of this study is to examine the factors that lead to growth in small firms in a Least Developed Country (LDC). The research is based on the manufacturing sector in Ghana. The main objectives of the research are to identify the key variables that lead to small firms' growth and to ascertain the critical barriers that impede growth. A research model which is developed out of an initial exploratory research and existing literature focuses on how the characteristics of the owner/manager, the characteristics of the firm and the business strategy variables interact to affect growth in employment. In addition factors that are perceived to have constrained the growth of the small firms during the study period are ascertained and discussed. To properly test the hypotheses developed a face to face interview survey involving 122 owner/managers of small manufacturing firms is conducted. This resulted in a range of variables that allowed for the construction of a comprehensive multivariate model of small firm growth. A resulting regression model provides about 68 percent of the explanation for the growth of the small firms sampled. It also indicates that the owner/manager characteristics variables offer the most powerful explanation to small firm growth. We find that the owner/manager's growth aspiration is the most influential factor in achieving growth. The other owner/manager characteristics variables that have positive influence on growth are level of education, prior industry experience and entrepreneurial family background. Owner/managers with local experience and/or with other business interests are less likely to achieve faster growth. Foreign owned/managed firms grow faster. Younger and smaller firms appear to grow faster. While firms with multiple ownerships tend to grow at a slower rate than firms owned and managed by one person. Business planning, marketing and export have positive and significant impacts on growth. Other business strategies such as innovations and staff training also have direct relationships with growth but not significant. Some of the main constraining factors to growth are cost of borrowing, lack of access to credit, high cost of inputs, lack of trust within the business community, high bureaucracy, late payments and lack of efficient support system. While the external environment plays important role in small firm growth and development, the behaviours, response and strategies pursued by individual owner/manager are significant factors that determine the rate at which a firm will grow. / Ghana Leasing Company Limited

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology / Department of Electromechanical Engineering

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology / Department of Computer and Information Science

I en omvärld som ställer allt högre krav på delaktighet kom ett uppdrag 2000-03-30 till Norrbottens Flygflottilj, F 21 som på nio månader skulle sätta upp ett nytt internationellt förband. Om förbandet kallas ut blir det första gången sedan sextiotalet som Sverige fullgör tjänst med krigsflygplan utomlands. Swedish Air Force Rapid Reaction Unit, SWAFRAP AJS 37 skulle ställas i 30 dagars beredskap Denna uppsats syftar till att beskriva och analysera den planeringsprocess som har genomförts på F 21 ur de traditionella perspektiven problemformulering, genomförande och utvärdering avseende detta nya förband. Undersökningen har genomförts som en fallstudie på F 21 och avgränsats till AJS 37. Planeringsprocessen har studerats genom intervjuer av chefer inom SWAFRAP organisationen. Studien pekar på att processer av detta slag är ytterligt komplicerade och kräver mera forskning om vi skall lyckas förstå alla ingående komponenter och deras interaktion. / In a world that creates higher and higher demands for international participation, a decision from the Swedish Headquarters came on 30 March 2000 to the wing F 21 that they were to establish a new unit. This unit was specifically to be able to deploy within thirty days to a base anywhere in Europe, in order to participate in peace keeping missions. The Swedish Rapid Reaction Unit, SWAFRAP AJS 37 was born. The main objective of my study is to describe and analyse the planning process that has taken place from the traditional perspectives of problem description, implementation and evaluation. The study has been done as a case study at wing F 21, and its scope has been limited to AJS 37. The study has been accomplished through interviews with commanders at different levels and within different specialities within the SWAFRAP planning process. The result indicates that a process like this is very complex and demands more research if we are going to understand all components and their interaction. / Avdelning: ALB - Slutet Mag 3 C-upps.Hylla: Upps. ChP 99-01

Under 1990-talet ökade Regeringens krav på redovisning från myndigheterna. För att mot-svara dessa krav startades inom Försvarsmakten Projekt Resultatredovisning, Projekt Rv, som hade till uppgift att utarbeta en ny modell för verksamhetsledning. Projekt Rv resulterade i Handbok för styrning, värdering, analys och redovisning av Försvarsmaktens verksamhet, H SVAR.Samtidigt som Projekt Rv genomfördes presenterades en modell för verksamhetsledning i USA som benämndes Balanced Scorecard. Den byggde på principen att uppföljning och styr-ning skulle ske mot organisationens vision. Mått för att följa upp detta skulle balanseras inom fyra områden: finansiellt-, kund-, process- och lärandefokus. Dessa fokuseringar innebar också att balans fanns mellan dåtid, nutid och framtid.Denna uppsats jämför Försvarsmaktens verksamhetsledningssystem med Balanced Score-card. Utgångspunkt har varit Projekt Rv, H SVAR och en fallstudie vid två regementen om-fattande tillämpningen av H SVAR.Författaren visar att det finns vissa brister i Försvarsmaktens verksamhetsledningsmodell. För att komma tillrätta med dessa kan en väg vara att tillämpa den modell som Balanced Scorecard står för som grundläggande princip för Försvarsmaktens ledningssystem för förbandsverksamheten. / During the 90’s the Governments demands of account from the public admini-stration authorities increased. To withstand these demands from the Armed Forces the Actual Statement of Control Project was started which had the task to work out a new model for the Armed Forces management. The project re-sulted in the Manual for Control, Valuation, Analysis and Account of the Armed Forces, H SVAR.At the same time that the Actual Statement of Control Project was ongoing a model for management, which was named the Balanced Scorecard, was pre-sented in the USA. It was built on the fundamental that follow-up and man-agement should take place with the organization’s vision in focus. Measure-ments for this should be balanced in four fields: financially-, customer-, pro-cess- and learning focus. These focuses would also involve balance in the time dimension yesterday, today and tomorrow.This thesis compares the Swedish Armed Forces management system with the Balanced Scorecard. The starting-point has been the Actual Statement of Control Project, the Manual for Control, Valuation, Analysis and Account of the Armed Forces, H SVAR, and a case study at two regiments concerning the actual application of H SVAR.The author shows that some deficiencies in the Swedish Armed Forces management system could be taken care of through a initiation of the Balanced Scorecard as a fundament for the Armed Forces system for management. / Avdelning: ALB - Slutet Mag 3 C-upps.Hylla: Upps. ChP 99-01

M. Tech. Business Administration / Leveraging information technology (IT) is important to maximise business value. For this to be possible, companies must ensure that IT objectives are supportive of business objective. Business needs to take the responsibility in ensuring that IT capabilities support, enable, and, where appropriate, lead business strategy. Such alignment will maximize the effective, efficient and economical use of IT resources in a strategic context. One of many challenges facing organisations is that IT strategy appears to be separate from business strategy, maintaining a common direction with business strategy but at a distance. Furthermore business unit leaders do not consider IT as a key strategic enabler for them achieving their strategic business unit level objectives. This study established the perceptions of senior managers and executives of the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) regarding the alignment of IT strategy and the business strategy. It also determined which of the alignment factors (people, processes, organisational infrastructure, etc.) are most important for strategic alignment at the AGSA and how successfully they have been implemented.

M.Tech. Business Administration. Business School. / Involvement in the attorney's profession makes it clear that the training of attorneys does not make sufficient provision in the fields of management and accounting. This led to the research of a business plan model, and the question was raised whether it is possible to develop a standard business plan. As it appears that there is a gap in the syllabus of the training of attorneys, it is recommended that a thorough analysis of the training of attorneys be done. An empirical task analysis of the running of a practice will be the scientific way to determine which skills an attorney needs. A follow-up study should be done with a control group over an extended period. The once-off use of the business plan is not sufficient and should be adjusted and changed when necessary on a continuous basis.