近年來由於全球化、自由化及科技化時代的來臨，企業面對此嚴峻的挑戰，已逐漸瞭解僅僅將企業內部的作業流程最佳化，已經無法滿足企業快速回應市場的迫切需求，企業必需提升到與不同交易夥伴間在資訊以及作業流程上的整合。 然而在此整合的過程中，企業之所以得以和交易夥伴達到流程及資訊的成功整合，憑藉的就是「協同運作(Collaboration)」的機制。 在運用協同作業之下，企業得以對交易之上下游合作廠商在流程與資訊上整合，並根據企業資源的現況(包含內部資源與外部資源)作最佳化安排，並與上下游合作廠商、客戶的價值鏈相連，構成一個產業的價值鏈（value chain）。 證券市場整體的交易流程，或是整個證券市場的活動，其實就是一個產業的價值鏈的關係，從下單開始到完成後續的款券交割，需上、下游相關機構充分合作方能如期且精確的完成，任何一個環節發生問題或作業不順暢，均將影響整體市場的運作效率及成本效益。 在本研究所探討的國內投資法人交易對帳流程，可以發現當一個產業的作業流程充滿過多的人工作業、資料傳輸、資料格式轉換、甚至於需要多次的確認對帳的作業，整個產業的效率自然無法提升。然而若僅以個別資訊化之角度探討證券市場交易對帳流程之改善，其效益頂多只是將企業本身之人工作業方式改以利用電腦處理方案解決，整體交易對帳流程能夠減少之作業有限。產業真正需要的是建構協同運作機制，充分整合資訊，改變流程，才能提升產業的整體競爭力。 而證券市場價值鏈的組成份子眾多，建構協同運作時，如何形成共同願景、如何改善流程、如何消弭對虛擬組織的疑慮等等，實為證券市場協同運作的最大挑戰，也是本文探討的目的。

Le présent mémoire s'inscrit dans un projet de recherche mené au CRAI depuis 1998 intitulé « CoCAO » (Co-<br />Conception Assistée par Ordinateur). Ce projet a pour but d'analyser les pratiques de coopération lors de la<br />conception d'un projet architectural, puis de spécifier et développer un collecticiel à l'usage des acteurs du<br />projet. Cet outil est principalement destiné à les assister dans les activités coopératives de création de<br />documents. Nous pensons que ce type d'outil logiciel doit maintenant profiter à une large communauté de<br />professionnels du bâtiment, pour une utilisation quotidienne et dans le cadre de projets ordinaires.<br />C'est sur la première partie de ce projet, la spécification d'un outil informatique, que ce mémoire se penche. La<br />première partie informe le lecteur sur le contexte particulier de la production du cadre bâti. La deuxième partie<br />dresse un état de l'art d'abord des modèles de coopération pour les équipes d'ingénierie, puis de l'analyse des<br />collecticiels, et enfin, des collecticiels eux-mêmes. La troisième partie expose les résultats d'une expérimentation<br />menée avec trois étudiants en architecture sur un collecticiel généraliste ; nous en tirons des conséquences<br />concernant les exigences fonctionnelles d'un collecticiel adapté au contexte spécifique de la conception<br />collaborative. La quatrième et dernière partie formalise un modèle d'outil coopératif répondant à ces exigences<br />; enfin, une simulation de cette outil est donnée prenant appui sur une situation de projet réelle, l'aménagement<br />urbain accompagnant la première ligne de tramway à Nancy (France).

La croissance en taille et en complexité des logiciels actuels, ainsi que les contraintes du marché, rendent de plus en plus nécessaires les techniques d'ingénierie concurrente. Ces techniques servent à réduire les temps de développement en permettant à plusieurs développeurs de travailler simultanément sur les mêmes objets. Malheureusement, la concurrence pose de nombreux problèmes mal gérés par les systèmes de support à la collaboration qui existent aujourd'hui. Le contrôle de la concurrence est donc un défi pour les concepteurs d'environnements de génie logiciel. Cette thèse s'intéresse au support informatique des procédés collaboratifs de génie logiciel et, en particulier, au contrôle de la concurrence.<br />Notre proposition sera divisée en deux parties. Dans la première partie nous définissons un langage pour la modélisation des procédés de génie logiciel concurrents et nous expliquons les mécanismes qui permettent l'application dans la réalité des procédés ainsi définis. La deuxième partie propose un système dit d'augmentation de l'information contextuelle, qui prend avantage de l'existence des modèles de procédés, pour fournir aux utilisateurs une information pertinente pour leur travail.<br />La proposition est implémentée au sein du logiciel CELINE. Ce logiciel a été mis en service dans un environnement industriel au sein de deux équipes de conception de la société STMicroelectronics.

Augmented Reality is technology that superimposes virtual content on the real world, typically shown through a see-through head mounted display (HMD) or handheld device. AR has successfully been used for many applications and provides new opportunities for remote collaboration and communication. With the growing availability of commercial HMDs such as Google Glass and the Oculus Rift, more possibilities in the field of AR have opened up. However, interaction with AR content shown on HMDs is still not very well explored. This master's thesis investigates the possibilities of a combined use of head mounted and hand held displays (HHD) for interaction in AR conferencing experiences. Prior research in communication, AR collaboration and HMD-HHD interaction is reviewed before presenting new interaction methods. Two different HHD interfaces and cuing methods were created to support file sharing in an AR conferencing application. A formal evaluation compared four different combinations of the interfaces and cuing methods. The results showed a significant difference between the different conditions where in particular one condition performed better than the others. The results were used to create a set of basic design guidelines for future research and application development.

Most organizations have traditionally been organized by function, and most coordination is intrafunctional rather than interfunctional. However, many organizations are finding that they must also manage processes - such as order fulfillment, new product development, and interorganizational supply chain management - that span their separate functional units and that integrate their activities with those of other organizations. These processes are essential to the well-being of organizations in a dynamic competitive environment.In response to this, organizations are deploying large-scale enterprise information systems in order to support operational, tactical, and strategic decision making, along with information management. However, deployment of such information systems has not realized the requisite benefits due to issues such as lack of interoperability among applications due to technological evolution, constant changes to the business processes, evolving organizational structures, inherent complexity in management of distributed knowledge and resources.To ameliorate such issues, a recent technological trend is the adoption of support tools such as Workflow Management Systems (WFMS) and groupware to support coordination between individual and group knowledge worker activities respectively. While WFMSs mostly deal with tasks involving very structured information, groupware tools deal with tasks involving unstructured information. Due to these differences, such tools are used in a fragmented manner, causing information loss. The overall guiding design principles that can be used by such process support systems are minimal, resulting in costly overheads for organizations.This dissertation deals with the problems highlighted above from a organizational process design standpoint. The goal of the dissertation is to provide process designers with guidelines and tools that can assist them in modeling flexible and adaptable processes. The following two research questions are central to the work described in this dissertation: (1) How can organizational processes be designed to be flexible andadaptable in dynamic environments? (2) How can collaborative activities be designed to facilitate integration with individual activities in organizational processes?In this regard, this dissertation reports on the development of a conceptual framework to support design of organizational processes considering both individual and collaboration tasks in a unified manner. A business process is modeled as a problem solving mechanism consisting of a series of steps (also termed as process model, process definition or plan), each of which may be an individual or group activity. The task of designing business processes is considered as the development of an effective plan to solve a business process problem by searching the design space. We employ declarative formalisms from recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) planning to support the task of process design. Similarly, we build on research in the field of Collaboration Engineering (CE), to propose an approach for collaborative task design. The feasibility and benefits of the approach are evaluated by prototyping intelligent build time tools for process design, and utilizing the same in the design of processes such as loan processing, and new drug discovery.

The importance of collaboration has been recognized for more than 2000 years. While recent improvement in technology creates vast opportunities for collaboration, effective collaboration remains challenging as ad hoc teams work across time, geographical, language, and technical boundaries, and suffer from process inefficiency. My dissertation addresses part of these challenges by proposing theoretical frameworks for business collaboration and process management. Case study is used as a research strategy for this thesis and it consists of three studies. The first study proposes a process modeling framework to support efficient process model design via model transformation and validation. First, we divide process modeling into three layers and formally define three layers of workflow models. Then, we develop a procedure for transforming a conceptual process model into its corresponding logical process model. Third, we create a validation procedure that can validate whether the derived logical model is consistent with its original conceptual model. The second study proposes a framework for analyzing the relationship between interaction processes and collaboration efficiency in software issue resolution in open source community. We first develop an algorithm to identify frequent interaction process structures referred to as interaction process patterns. Then, we assess patterns' impact through a time-dependent Cox regression model. By applying the interaction process analysis framework to software issue resolution processes, we identify several patterns that are significantly correlated with collaboration efficiency. We further conduct a case study to validate the findings of pattern efficiency in software issue resolution. The third study addresses the issue of suitability of virtual collaboration. Virtual collaboration seems to work well for some cases, but not for others. We define collaboration virtualization as the suitability for a task to be conducted virtually and propose a Collaboration Virtualization Theory (CVT) to explain collaboration virtualization. Three categories (i.e., task, technology, and team) of constructs that determine the suitability of collaboration virtualization are derived from a systematic literature review of related areas. In summary, this dissertation addresses challenges in collaboration and process management, and we believe that our research will have important theoretical and practical impacts on the development of collaboration management systems.

Magistro baigiamasis darbas skirtas aptarti vietos savivaldos ir biudžetinių įstaigų bendradarbiavimo teorinius ir teisinius aspektus, tiriant Anykščių r. savivaldybės ir rajone veikiančių biudžetinių įstaigų atvejį. Siekiant įgyvendinti šio darbo tikslą- ištirti praktinį teorinių ir teisinių bendradarbiavimo principų įgyvendinimą Anykščių r. savivaldybėje ir nustatyti veiksnius, turinčius įtakos bendradarbiavimo plėtrai rajone- buvo analizuojama mokslinė ir teisinė literatūra. Praktiniai bendradarbiavimo aspektai Anykščių r. atskleisti naudojant interviu metodą. Tyrimo metu apklausta 10 Anykščių r. savivaldybės darbuotojų ir 10 rajone veikiančių biudžetinių įstaigų darbuotojų. Autorė analizuoja vietos savivaldos ir bendradarbiavimo vietą viešosios politikos kontekste. Sujungdama viešojo administravimo ir naujosios viešosios vadybos principus, autorė tiria kokie veiksniai ir kokios sąlygos būtinos, norint užtikrinti sėkmingus bendradarbiavimo rezultatus. Akcentuojant tai, kad Lietuva ES nare tapo jau nuo 2007 m., darbe atskleidžiama teisniai, bendradarbiavimą vietos savivaldoje reglamentuojantys, aspektai. Analizuojami tarptautiniai, nacionaliniai ir Anykščių r. savivaldybės išleisti teisės aktai, vertinamas jų adekvatumas vienas kitam. Tyrimo metu gauti duomenys rodo, kad bendradarbiavimo praktikoje Anykščių r. ypatingai pasigendama teorinės bendradarbiavimo apibrėžties, teisinio reglamentavimo ir skatinimo sistemos vykdyti bendradarbiavimo projektus. Buvo patvirtinta... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The subject of the master's thesis is about the budgetary institutions and municipal cooperation analyzed in theoretical and legal aspects by studing the case of Anyksciai district. In order to achieve the objective of the work - to analyze theoretical and legal principles of cooperation in Anyksciai district and to identify the factors affecting the development of cooperation in the area - were analyzed the scientific and legal literature. Practical aspects of cooperation in Anyksciai district were disclosed by use interview method. The study surveyed 10 employees in Anyksciai municipal and 10 budgetary institutions employees operating in the area. The author analyzes the cooperation and local government place in the context of public policy. Combining the public administration and new public management principles, the author examines the factors and conditions which are necessary to ensure the successful results of the cooperation. The emphasis on the fact that Lithuania became an EU member since 2007, author Analyzes the international, national and Anyksciai municipalities to issue laws, evaluates the adequacy of one another. The study showed that in Anyksciai district particularly lack theoretical definition of cooperation, legal and regulatory framework to promote co-operation projects. It was confirmed the hypothesis that the legal regulation and also the incentive system would promote the initiation of cooperation projects. The results show that Anyksciai municipal... [to full text]

This thesis explores the innovation and development of the Canadian wine industry. The main objectives are to present the key development factors, innovation, and collaborations, with particular emphasis on collaborations with higher education institutes. It also empirically assesses the extent to which there are differences among the wine producing regions of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. The empirical analysis is based on a firm-level survey of 146 firms. The results show that the Canadian wine production is highly innovative and knowledge intensive. Despite that the wine industry in Canada has developed differently according to its regional context, the pattern of innovation is rather similar among firms.

Three experiments examine how collaboration influences visual search performance. Working with a partner or on their own, participants reported whether a target was present or absent in briefly presented search displays. The search performance of individuals working together (collaborative pairs) was compared to the pooled responses of the individuals working alone (nominal pairs). Collaborative pairs were less likely than nominal pairs to correctly detect a target and they were less likely to make false alarms. Signal detection analyses revealed that collaborative pairs were more sensitive to the presence of the target and had a more conservative response bias than the nominal pairs. This pattern was observed when the search difficulty was increased and when the presence of another individual was matched across pairs. The results are discussed in the context of task sharing, social loafing and current theories of visual search.

Multi-agency collaboration is often advocated as a means of tackling cross-cutting areas of public services and viewed as a solution to service fragmentation, with local agencies on the receiving end of government exhortations to collaborate. Yet there is relatively little research examining the effectiveness of policy tools and mechanisms aiming to stimulate local collaboration. This thesis examines the influence and dynamics of vertical and horizontal coordination tools, investigating their potential to enhance collaboration in local public service delivery networks and to reduce negative externalities. A theoretical framework is employed which synthesises models of policy implementation and bureaucratic decision-making. The empirical research is conducted in relation to organisations working with the homeless in England, and the research methods include a survey of Local Authorities and interviews with civil servants and frontline professionals. While governmental attempts to foster collaboration are partially effective, there are weaknesses with some of the policy tools employed, and limits to State control. Local actors’ collaborative decision-making is influenced more by ‘bottom-up’ than by ‘top-down’ factors. Moreover, the competitive context in which service providers operate leads them to pursue strategies to promote their own organisational interests rather than working towards a dominant common interest. The strategies employed are broadly in line with a bureaucratic politics perspective, and include failure to share information, possessiveness over client outcomes and projecting an image of success rather than sharing problems. Nevertheless, formal collaborative mechanisms do have the potential to alleviate externalities associated with fragmented systems. With strong local management and appropriate central facilitation, they can help to meet client needs and to counter fragmentation, ultimately leading to better services.