This thesis explores the role of modularity for achieving a better adaptation of learning technology to pedagogical requirements. In order to examine the interrelations that occur between pedagogy and computer science, a theoretical framework rooted in both fields is applied. During the twentieth century, the focus of pedagogical research and practice has gone from behaviourism, via cognitivism, to learning theory based on constructivism. Changes in learning objectives and an increasing cognitive complexity of learning tasks are likely to have contributed to this evolvement. This puts new requirements on the design and implementation of pedagogical instruction (instructional design) and its application to learning technology. Using instructional design together with technology requires the pedagogical process to be predetermined, which is partly contradicted by the nature of constructivism. Many constructivist approaches require social interaction and dynamic learning environments that can adapt to changes that are required by different pedagogical approaches. Those requirements have been met using modular approaches for content, i.e., learning objects, implemented in non-modular web-based virtual learning environments (VLE), like learning management systems (LMS). This thesis argues that modularity promotes adaptability and adaptivity, but that the current practice of using learning objects and LMSes is too restricted to fulfill the increasing needs for flexibility. The reasons are that the learning object concept is still too ill-defined to function as a component framework, and there are complex and unsolved issues regarding the representation of pedagogical instructions. This is especially complicated from a constructivist perspective where pedagogical instructions cannot always be assumed to be predetermined, which needs to be encountered for by technology. This thesis contributes to the research field by suggesting a modular approach that includes both digital learning content and VLEs. This was accomplished by suggesting a taxonomy and an abstract model for learning objects, which address both functional and technical properties. Furthermore, six action areas are suggested in order to enhance the technical quality of learning objects. Using the abstract model as a basis, the software architecture of learning objects was addressed in order to separate data, logics and presentation – including the separation of the representation of pedagogical process from the components that implement it. This facilitates the combination of modularity and representation of pedagogical instruction that utilizes machine-processable semantics, enabling the utilization of modularity at composition time as well as at run-time. This approach has resulted in a SOA-based architecture framework that has been used as blueprint for implementing two prototypes of modular VLEs, using different technology platforms. The objective was to verify the taxonomy, the abstract model, and the architecture framework. The experiments have shown that it is possible to incorporate learning content and the VLE into the same modular framework in order to provide the flexibility needed for learning technology to better adapt to changing pedagogical requirements. The experiments have also shown how pedagogical processes benefit from being represented using machine-processable semantics in being able to better utilize the flexibility offered by modularity in keeping the components of the VLE together by representing context and structure. This has been illustrated by adding semantic annotations that were used to dynamically connect pedagogical instruction to annotated learning objects, using machine-processable semantics. / QC 20100903

This thesis presents a new modelling method for information systems analysis and design, where the concept of service and the principles of service orientation are used for integrated modelling and reasoning about information systems architectures across organisational and technical systems boundaries. The concept of service enables cohesion of the intersubjective and objective modelling traditions by using a single type of diagram that facilitates detection of semantic inconsistency, incompleteness, ambiguity and discontinuity between the static and dynamic aspects of information systems specifications. The thesis is focused on three research topics, which are fundamental to the development of a new service-oriented modelling method. The first research topic concerns a pragmatic-driven specification of information systems. It clarifies answers to the research question: How can a conceptual modelling process be driven by pragmatic considerations? The second research topic provides a service-oriented modelling foundation for information systems analysis and design. It answers the research questions: How can the concept of service be used explicitly for the analysis and design of information systems and how can the static and dynamic aspects of information systems specifications be integrated at the conceptual level? The third research topic presents transition principles to implementation-specific design and answers the research question: How can service-oriented conceptual representations be aligned with implementation-specific design? The thesis contributes with a new knowledge to the area of conceptual modelling of information systems. The service-oriented modelling method consists of the modelling process, modelling language and techniques for the analysis and design of information systems on three levels of abstraction: pragmatic, semantic and syntactic. These three levels are necessary for a holistic understanding of enterprise architecture by stakeholders. The advantage of the service-oriented modelling method is that it can help to control traceability from information system design to original requirements. The method facilitates the semantic integration of the structural, behavioural and interactive aspects of information systems conceptual representations by using a single diagram type. The modelling language provides service-oriented constructs that are fundamental to building the major systems analysis patterns. The service-oriented modelling process contributes with seven steps of incremental design, which justifies various information systems components. The method provides the basis for a gradual and systematic way of modelling and an understanding of how pragmatic, semantic and logical information system requirements are linked together. The possibility to detect and eliminate undesirable characteristics of service-oriented diagrams can help to improve communication among stakeholders. Service-oriented specifications are computation-neutral and therefore they are more comprehensible for business analysis experts in comparison to implementation specific graphical representations of information systems. Finally, this thesis presents the challenges for future research, one of which is the development of the automated tools for the alignment of business models with implementation-specific information systems specifications.

This study investigated the effect of organizational culture on firm performance in the restaurant industry. Despite the importance of organizational culture in the organizational functioning, empirical evidence for the organizational culture-performance relationship remains fragmented. The inconsistency in the literature was aroused from a lack of theoretical development, a negligence of industry-specific factors, a small sampling issue, and a lack of longitudinal examination. Therefore, this study proposed to use text analysis in measuring organizational culture and examined the organizational culture-restaurant performance with a consideration of moderating effect of service orientation, franchising, and economic condition. This study found that different organizational culture influences restaurant performance differently. Specifically, the result of this study reveals that: clan culture immediately increases restaurant productivity; adhocracy culture decreases restaurant growth; and hierarchy immediately decreases restaurant productivity. In terms of moderating role of service orientation, this study found that: that tangible service orientation positively moderates both hierarchy culture-profitability and hierarchy culture-productivity relationships. This result implies that tangible service orientation works better with the hierarchy culture in improving restaurant performance than intangible service orientation. As for the moderating effect of franchising on the organizational culture-performance relationship, this study found that franchising positively moderates the clan culture-profitability relationship and the clan culture-productivity relationship. This result implies that operational and economic benefit of franchising could be passed on to create synergetic effect with the clan culture and maximize the positive clan-productivity relationship while offset the clan-profitability relationship. Last, this study found that recession positively moderates the hierarchy culture-profitability relationship and the hierarchy culture-productivity relationship. Theoretically, this study contributes to the literature by: providing logical link between the organizational culture and firm performance; providing empirical evidence that reveals the performance implication of the organizational culture; and by using alternative organizational culture measurements based on text analysis of firms’ 10K filings. Practically, this study offers insightful implications for industry professionals in understanding the effect of organizational culture on restaurant performance.

Purpose: This purpose of this study is to deconstruct market orientation to explore how culture interrelates with conduct and value-creating innovation and its effect on performance. The authors suggest that market orientation is an organizational identity that can be built and managed for sustained competitive advantage.Design/methodology/approach: The authors use a split sample of 553 Canadian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in both the manufacturing and technical service sectors. Hierarchical moderated regression analysis is used to test the main hypothesis that culture moderates the relationship between conduct and innovation. Support for the respective hypotheses is determined by the statistical significance of each focal variable.Findings: The study finds that culture does in fact moderate the relationship between conduct and innovation but only in service firms, not in manufacturing firms.Research limitations/implications: Theoretical implications include establishing support for the main premise of the paper, namely, that market-oriented culture interacts with the behavioral component of market orientation influencing the firm’s ability to create value through innovation.Practical implications: Managerial implications include the refinement of the many conceptualizations of the innovation construct by establishing innovation as value-creating. It also provides insight on how firm culture relates to the systems and processes used to operationalize both a market and innovation conduct within the firm.Originality/value: This paper provides a unique insight into the marketing/innovation interface, specifically in the context of SMEs.

Purpose – The purpose of this master thesis was to extend the understanding of the capabilities needed to enable the organizational transformation required throughout the servitization process. This research aims to identify what capabilities for servitization were important for the case company and understand how these capabilities were developed by adopting a dynamic capability perspective. Methodology – This research adopted a single-case study design to collect and analyze in-depth information about the interviewee’s experiences and perceptions about the case company’s servitization process. Findings – This research developed a holistic set of capabilities for servitization which were critical for the case company to enable organizational transformation within the context of product-oriented servitization. Four main capabilities for servitization were uncovered Strategic Alignment, Customer Relationship, PSS Innovation, and PSS Delivery. Moreover, a framework was created dividing the capabilities into higher- and second-order dynamic capabilities, hence explaining the importance of dynamic capabilities for the development of capabilities. Theoretical Implications – This study extended the understanding of capabilities for servitization by mapping them within the context of the case company. This research also displayed the role of high-order dynamic capabilities as the case company’s capacity to transform and manipulate the organization with the purpose to build second-order dynamic capabilities; therefore, denoting a capability hierarchy by which to distinguish between high- and second-order dynamic capabilities within the context of servitization. Managerial Implications – This research provides managers with a comprehensive collection of capabilities to take into consideration when formulating or executing strategy within the context of product-oriented servitization. Additionally, the distinction among high- and second-order dynamic capabilities for servitization may provide servitizating manufacturers with a new approach to map, organize and prioritize capability development based on the understanding of their function and related micro-foundations.

Hårdare kundkrav, utveckling av informations- och kommunikationsteknologi, samt ökad miljömedvetenhet driver tillverkande företag att tjänsteorientera verksamheten och strategier. Istället för att enbart leverera fysiska produkter strävar företag att utveckla bredare och konkurrenskraftiga erbjudanden. En strategi för att hantera hårdare omvärldskrav är utveckling av funktionsförsäljning som också är förknippat med begrepp som dematerialisering och service innovation.Funktionsförsäljning bygger på idén att företaget, genom att sälja funktioner, bestående av produkter, tjänster, information och kompetens, kanöka kundvärdet, öka företagets konkurrenskraft och skapa förutsättningar för miljöanpassade cirkulära produktionssystem. Det är en strategi som syftar till att förbättra såväl företagets externa som interna effektivitet. Forskare och praktiker har uppmärksammat den logiska grunden för funktionsförsäljning som affärs- och miljöstrategi. Få har emellertidstuderat vilka hinder som är förknippade med utveckling av denna strategi i produktorienterade företag i praktiken. Denna avhandling behandlar både logiken och de strukturella hinder som är förknippade med utveckling och implementering av funktionsförsäljning i produktorienterade företag.Dessutom uppmärksammas vilka stödjande strukturer som är nödvändiga för att strategin skall kunna realiseras. Avhandlingen vänder sig såväl tillakademiker som praktiker intresserade av affärsutveckling och affärs- och miljöstrategisk förändring och syftar i grunden till att skapa ökadförståelse för förnyelse och utveckling i företag och organisationer. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2004</p>

Supply chains in many industries are experiencing an ever-growing complexity. They involve many actors and, similar to intra-organizational processes, visibility is an important enabler for managing supply chains in an inter-organizational setting. It is the backbone of advanced sup-ply chain (event) management solutions, which serve to detect critical incidents in time and to determine alternative actions. Due to the numerous parties involved, distributed supply chains call for a modular system architecture that aims at re-using visibility data from standardized sources. Following the wide variety of supply chain configurations in many industries there are also many options to design such services. This paper sheds light on these aspects by conduct-ing a case study on EPCIS, a global service specification for capturing and sharing visibility data. Based on three implementations, it shows the main design options for a supply chain vis-ibility service, generic operator models as well as major potentials.:1. Introduction and motivation 2. Research questions and methodology 3. Literature analysis 4. EPCIS case study 4.1. Deutsche Post DHL 4.2. ThyssenKrupp 4.3. GS1 Germany 5. Discussion and findinds 5.1.Design options 5.2. Operator models 5.3. Potentials 6. Conclusions

Nowadays more and more enterprises transform into service-oriented infrastructure to sustain their competitive advantage. Although IT is an enabler of service-orientation, IT must align with business strategies to deliver expected value. In order to ensure the investment of service-oriented IT can improve the quality of customer service effectively, we aim to develop an IT-business alignment framework to assess the quality of alignment in the context of service-oriented enterprises. In our framework we propose three components of IT-business alignment: strategic alignment, operational alignment and social alignment. The strategic alignment is the degree to which the business process and information can support corporate service strategies. The operational alignment is the degree to which information systems fulfill the information and process needs of service orientation. The social alignment is the degree to which a common service climate is shared between IT and business units. Our data is collected from web questionnaires. The total data set constitutes a representative sample of n=300. Among all returned questionnaires, 96 were found to be complete and usable; this represented a response rate of 32 percent. From this research we get four conclusions: (1) Regardless of customer integration level, strategic alignment plays a significant role in improving customer service quality. (2) Strategic alignment is particularly influential to customer service quality when the enterprise is not service-oriented. (3) Operational alignment is not significant; however with the increasing of data integration level, enterprises increasingly emphasize the operational alignment. (4) Regardless of service-orientation; social alignment effectively helps enterprises make good customer service quality and retain customers. / Nowadays more and more enterprises transform into service-oriented infrastructure to sustain their competitive advantage. Although IT is an enabler of service-orientation, IT must align with business strategies to deliver expected value. In order to ensure the investment of service-oriented IT can improve the quality of customer service effectively, we aim to develop an IT-business alignment framework to assess the quality of alignment in the context of service-oriented enterprises. In our framework we propose three components of IT-business alignment: strategic alignment, operational alignment and social alignment. The strategic alignment is the degree to which the business process and information can support corporate service strategies. The operational alignment is the degree to which information systems fulfill the information and process needs of service orientation. The social alignment is the degree to which a common service climate is shared between IT and business units. Our data is collected from web questionnaires. The total data set constitutes a representative sample of n=300. Among all returned questionnaires, 96 were found to be complete and usable; this represented a response rate of 32 percent. From this research we get four conclusions: (1) Regardless of customer integration level, strategic alignment plays a significant role in improving customer service quality. (2) Strategic alignment is particularly influential to customer service quality when the enterprise is not service-oriented. (3) Operational alignment is not significant; however with the increasing of data integration level, enterprises increasingly emphasize the operational alignment. (4) Regardless of service-orientation; social alignment effectively helps enterprises make good customer service quality and retain customers.

Submitted by JOSIANE SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA (josianeso) on 2018-08-08T17:01:04Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Helen Tomaz Hexse_.pdf: 937975 bytes, checksum: 5701374a367386bfe656c2180d1b42b6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-08T17:01:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Helen Tomaz Hexse_.pdf: 937975 bytes, checksum: 5701374a367386bfe656c2180d1b42b6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-26 / Nenhuma / O propósito de uma organização é atender os interesses e necessidades de seus clientes e para que isso aconteça, ela precisa ser orientada para serviço. Portanto, precisa possuir um conjunto de políticas, práticas e procedimentos internos que a possibilitem entregar um serviço excelente. No momento em que o setor hoteleiro compreende que a sua sobrevivência e crescimento dependem da criação e oferta de experiências memoráveis para seus clientes, e percebem que a cocriação pode ser utilizada na tentativa de responder as variadas expectativas que eles possuem, a sua habilidade para cocriar e o seu comportamento de cocriação assumem papéis fundamentais para colocá-la em prática. Neste cenário, as avaliações on-line podem ser utilizadas com uma forma de compreender as opiniões, pensamentos e reações dos clientes sobre os serviços que se oferece. Servindo para analisar se o cliente realmente percebe a excelência nos serviços prestados. Diante deste contexto, este estudo tem como objetivo analisar os efeitos da orientação para serviço do hotel (i) na sua habilidade de cocriação, (ii) no seu comportamento de cocriação, (iii) nas avaliações on-line que recebem dos clientes e analisar o efeito que (iv) a habilidade de cocriação possui no comportamento de cocriação. Para tanto, primeiramente, realizou-se uma etapa exploratória, onde 6 hotéis foram entrevistados com o objetivo de auxiliar na validação das escalas a serem utilizadas, na medida em que as entrevistas possibilitam um maior conhecimento sobre os construtos estudados e em como eles se encaixam no setor hoteleiro. Após, foi realizada uma survey com 155 hotéis do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul a fim de investigar os aspectos apresentados anteriormente. A técnica de estatística utilizada para análise dos dados foi a Modelagem de Equações Estruturais (MEE). Os resultados mostram que a orientação para serviço influencia positivamente na habilidade de cocriação, no comportamento de cocriação e na avaliação on-line. Destaca-se que a variância explicada atingiu índices importantes no momento em que a orientação para serviço explica 88,8% da habilidade de cocriação, 56% do comportamento de cocriação e 33,3% da avaliação on-line que hotéis recebem de seus clientes. Por outro lado, a habilidade de cocriação não apresentou efeito no comportamento de cocriação. Assim, os hotéis devem buscar uma maior orientação para serviços, a fim de alcançar maiores níveis de cocriação e melhores avaliações on-line. / The aim of an organization is to satisfy the needs and desires of the customer. For this, the organization must have service orientation. Therefore, the organization needs a basic set of organizational policies, practices and procedures to be able to deliver service excellence. When the hospitality industry understands that their future survival and growth depends upon creating and offering unique and memorable experiences for their customers, and realized that co-creation can be adopted to try to respond to customer expectations, their ability to co-create and their willingness to co-create will be the key to put co-creation in practice. Faced with this scenario the on-line reviews can be used as a way to comprehend the personal thoughts, reactions and opinions of the clients about the services that the organization offers. With this, is possible to analyze if the client really perceived an excellence in the services provided. Then, this research aims to analyze the effects of hotel service orientation (i) in their ability to co-create, (ii) in their willingness to co-create and (iii) in on-line reviews, and (iv) analyze the effect of ability to co-create have on willingness to co-create. Therefore, an exploratory study was made with 6 hotels, an attempt to get a better knowledge of how the studied constructs fits on the hotel sector to assist on the scales validation. Afterwards, a survey was realized with 155 hotels in the State of Rio Grande do Sul in order to investigate the aspects presented previously. The statistic technique used was Structural Equation Model (MEE). The results have shown that service orientation influences ability to co-create, willingness to co-create and on-line reviews positively. The explained variance has reached important indexes since service orientation explained 88,8% of ability to co-create, 33,3% of willingness to co-create and 33,3% of on-line reviews that hotels received by clients. On the other hand, ability to co-create has not presented influence on willingness to co-create. Thus, hotels should search a major service orientation to reach high levels of co-creation and better on-line reviews.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) together with Enterprise Architecture (EA) has became a main essence on the way to improve an alignment between business and IT representatives. The result of this alignment should be an increased efficiency of delivering IT projects in the company. Last decade it was the number one declined word in many companies. But most of them found out that SOA did not bring them expected results. The thesis deals with the methodology of building information systems and information and communication technology (IS/ICT) in SOA environment. It is a part of the research plan of the Department of Information Technologies of University of Economics in Prague. The main objective of the thesis is to extend the methodological framework MeFIS2 to add methodical pattern "Building IS in service-oriented architecture environment". In the analytical part of the thesis are presented and analyzed selected methodologies and standards focused on service orientation with aim to assist in the implementation of SOA into companies. A large amount of such methodologies and standards have been unveiled what leaded to a confusing information labyrinth. It's one of the reasons why standardization organizations gradually began to issue additional standards and methodologies to assist in the proper implementation of SOA into companies. The main part of work is to extend methodological framework MeFIS, so that it can be used to create a methodological pattern for building IS/ICT in SOA environment. The result of this section is to achieve the main goal to create a methodological pattern "Building IS in service-oriented architecture environment". In the practical part is the proposed methodological pattern applied in the real case study in the environment of telecommunication operator.