Business & Information Systems Engineering最新文献

Smart contracts can be used to support the execution of cross-organizational business processes involving mutually distrusting participants. Model-driven engineering is often used to generate such contracts and requires an appropriate blockchain-enabled process modeling language. Although artifact-centric languages are recommended in this context to support the business objects, lifecycles and cross-organizational process dimensions, most approaches rely on activity-centric languages such as BPMN. The few artifact-centric ones lack integrated support for one or more of these dimensions. To address this issue, in this paper we apply the design science research methodology. The authors propose a set of requirements for artifact-centric and blockchain-enabled business process modeling languages. It is used to evaluate existing work and present the design and demonstration of the B-MERODE language as an improved solution. The models created with the language can be formally verified and used as input to automatically generate smart contracts supporting the required process dimensions.

Given cities’ rising environmental problems and increasing food insecurity, innovative organizational endeavors such as urban agriculture present a chance for additional ecosystem services and food production. However, urban spaces are hostile as they jeopardize the availability of air, water, or soil. While digital innovations enable the management of scarce resources in traditional agricultural contexts, little is known about their applicability in urban agriculture endeavors. This study proposes a multi-layer taxonomy focusing on digital technologies, data, and different approaches in urban agriculture, as well as 20 organizational readiness factors derived with academics and practitioners from the smart urban agriculture domain. Combining both perspectives, the study sheds light on the nature of smart urban agriculture and ways to leverage its economic, ecological, and social value.

Process mining is advancing as a powerful tool for revealing valuable insights about process dynamics. Nevertheless, the imperative to employ process mining to enhance process transparency is a prevailing concern for organizations. Despite the widespread desire to integrate process mining as a pivotal catalyst for fostering a more agile and flexible Business Process Management (BPM) environment, many organizations face challenges in achieving widespread implementation and adoption due to deficiencies in various dimensions of process mining readiness. The current Information Systems (IS) knowledge base lacks a comprehensive framework to aid organizations in augmenting their process mining readiness and bridging this intention-action gap. The paper presents a Process Mining Maturity Model (P3M), refined through multiple iterations, which outlines five factors and 23 elements that organizations must address to increase their process mining readiness. The maturity model advances the understanding of how to close the intention-action gap of process mining initiatives in multiple dimensions. Furthermore, insights from a comprehensive analysis of data gathered in eleven qualitative interviews are drawn, elucidating 30 possible actions that organizations can implement to establish a more responsive and dynamic BPM environment by means of process mining.

While blood is crucial for many surgeries and patient treatments worldwide, it cannot be produced artificially. Fulfilling the demand for blood products on average days is already a major challenge in countries like South Africa and Ghana. In these countries, less than 1 % of the population donates blood and most of the donations come from first-time donors who do not return. Sufficient new, first-time and even lapsed donors must be motivated to donate regularly. This study argues that blood donation behavior change support systems (BDBCSS) can be beneficially applied to support blood donor management in African countries. In this study, the design science research (DSR) approach is applied in order to derive generic design principles for BDBCSS and instantiate the design knowledge in prototypes for a blood donation app and a chatbot. The design principles were evaluated in a field study in South Africa. The results demonstrate the positive effects of BDBCSS on users’ intentional and developmental blood donation behavior. This study contributes to research and practice by proposing a new conceptualization of blood donation information systems support and a nascent design theory for BDBCSS that builds on behavioral theories as well as related work on blood donation information systems. Thus, the study provides valuable implications for designing preventive health BCSS by stating three design principles for a concrete application context in healthcare.

Bank clients’ expectations for enhanced service experiences have increased with the digitalization of banking services and the rise of FinTech. However, despite the availability of online banking services, many clients still prefer personal financial advice due to the personal interaction involved. There has been a growing interest in IT-supported advisory services to meet this demand, aiming to improve customer experience and reduce the cognitive burden on advisors. While previous studies have shown the positive effects of advisory-support systems, they also highlighted downsides such as unnatural interactions, technology’s domination of the interaction space, and impaired impression management. This paper investigates the potential of pen-and-paper user interfaces to resolve the relationship/decision-making tension in advisory services. It evaluates the design of an artifact called bankNotes with eight bank advisors and 24 clients in a within-subject study by drawing on a rich data set consisting of interviews, surveys, and video analysis of the encounters. The results indicate that bankNotes was well-received by advisors, who embraced both existing pen-and-paper practices and new practices facilitated by the system. The clients also benefitted from the system: using bankNotes improved customer orientation, shared understanding, and overall service quality. This research provides valuable insights into the design of advisory support systems that prioritize customer satisfaction and support the needs of both advisors and clients in the banking sector.

The field of healthcare is characterized by constant innovation, with gender-specific medicine emerging as a new subfield that addresses sex and gender disparities in clinical manifestations, outcomes, treatment, and prevention of disease. Despite its importance, the adoption of gender-specific medicine remains understudied, posing potential risks to patient outcomes due to a lack of awareness of the topic. Building on the Innovation Decision Process Theory, this study examines the spread of information about gender-specific medicine in online networks. The study applies social network analysis to a Twitter dataset reflecting online discussions about the topic to gain insights into its adoption by health professionals and patients online. Results show that the network has a community structure with limited information exchange between sub-communities and that mainly medical experts dominate the discussion. The findings suggest that the adoption of gender-specific medicine might be in its early stages, focused on knowledge exchange. Understanding the diffusion of gender-specific medicine among medical professionals and patients may facilitate its adoption and ultimately improve health outcomes.