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Enterprise collaboration platforms are increasingly gaining importance in organisations. Integrating groupware functionality and enterprise social software (ESS), they have substantially been transforming everyday work in organisations. While traditional collaboration systems have been studied in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) for many years, the large-scale, infrastructural and heterogeneous nature of enterprise collaboration platforms remains uncharted. Enterprise collaboration platforms are embedded into organisations’ digital workplace and come with a high degree of complexity, ambiguity, and generativity. When introduced, they are empty shells with no pre-determined purposes of use. They afford interpretive flexibility, and thus are shaping and being shaped by and in their social context. Outcomes and benefits emerge and evolve over time in an open-ended process and as the digital platform is designed through use. In order to make the most of the platform and associated continuous digital transformation, organisations have to develop the necessary competencies and capabilities.
Extant literature on enterprise collaboration platforms has proliferated and provide valuable insights on diverse topics, such as implementation strategies, adoption hurdles, or collaboration use cases, however, they tend to disregard their evolvability and related multiple time frames and settings. Thus, this research aims to identify, investigate, and theorise the ways that enterprise collaboration platforms are changing over time and space and the ways that organisations build digital transformation capabilities. To address this research aim two different case study types are conducted: i) in-depth longitudinal qualitative case study, where case narratives and visualisations capturing hard-to-summarise complexities in the enterprise collaboration platform evolution are developed and ii) multiple-case studies to capture, investigate, and compare cross-case elements that contribute to the shaping of enterprise collaboration platforms in different medium-sized and large organisations from a range of industries. Empirical data is captured and investigated through a multi-method research design (incl. focus groups, surveys, in-depth interviews, literature reviews, qualitative content analysis, descriptive statistics) with shifting units of analysis. The findings reveal unique change routes with unanticipated outcomes and transformations, context-specific change strategies to deal with multiple challenges (e.g. GDPR, works council, developments in the technological field, competing systems, integration of blue-collar workers), co-existing platform uses, and various interacting actors from the immediate setting and broader context. The interpretation draws on information infrastructure (II) as a theoretical lens and related sociotechnical concepts and perspectives (incl. inscriptions, social worlds, biography of artefacts). Iteratively, a conceptual model of the building of digital transformation capabilities is developed, integrating the insights gained from the study of enterprise collaboration platform change and developed monitoring change tools (e.g. MoBeC framework). It assists researchers and practitioners in understanding the building of digital transformation capabilities from a theoretical and practical viewpoint and organisations implement the depicted knowledge in their unique digital transformation processes.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast-growing, technological concept, which aims to integrate various physical and virtual objects into a global network to enable interaction and communication between those objects (Atzori, Iera and Morabito, 2010). The application possibilities are manifold and may transform society and economy similarly to the usage of the internet (Chase, 2013). Furthermore, the Internet of Things occupies a central role for the realisation of visionary future concepts, for example, Smart City or Smart Healthcare. In addition, the utilisation of this technology promises opportunities for the enhancement of various sustainability aspects, and thus for the transformation to a smarter, more efficient and more conscious dealing with natural resources (Maksimovic, 2017). The action principle of sustainability increasingly gains attention in the societal and academical discourse. This is reasoned by the partly harmful consumption and production patterns of the last century (Mcwilliams et al., 2016). Relating to sustainability, the advancing application of IoT technology also poses risks. Following the precautionary principle, these risks should be considered early (Harremoës et al., 2001). Risks of IoT for sustainability include the massive amounts of energy and raw materials which are required for the manufacturing and operation of IoT objects and furthermore, the disposal of those objects (Birkel et al., 2019). The exact relations in the context of IoT and sustainability are insufficiently explored to this point and do not constitute a central element within the discussion of this technology (Behrendt, 2019). Therefore, this thesis aims to develop a comprehensive overview of the relations between IoT and sustainability.
To achieve this aim, this thesis utilises the methodology of Grounded Theory in combination with a comprehensive literature review. The analysed literature primarily consists of research contributions in the field of Information Technology (IT). Based on this literature, aspects, solution approaches, effects and challenges in the context of IoT and sustainability were elaborated. The analysis revealed two central perspectives in this context. IoT for Sustainability (IoT4Sus) describes the utilisation and usage of IoT-generated information to enhance sustainability aspects. In contrast, Sustainability for IoT (Sus4IoT) fo-cuses on sustainability aspects of the applied technology and highlights methods to reduce negative impacts, which are associated with the manufacturing and operation of IoT. Elaborated aspects and relations were illustrated in the comprehensive CCIS Framework. This framework represents a tool for the capturing of relevant aspects and relations in this context and thus supports the awareness of the link between IoT and sustainability. Furthermore, the framework suggests an action principle to optimise the performance of IoT systems regarding sustainability.
The central contribution of this thesis is represented by the providence of the CCIS Framework and the contained information regarding the aspects and relations of IoT and sustainability.
This thesis connects the endeavors of the winemaker’s intention in perfect and profitable wine making with an innovative technological application to use Internet of Things. Thereby the winemaker’s work may be supported and enriched – and enables until recent years still unthinkable optimization of managing and planning of his business, including close state control of different areas of his vineyard, and more than that, not ending up with the single grapevine. It is exemplarily shown in this thesis how to measure, transmit, store and make data available, exemplarily demonstrated with “live” temperature, air and soil humidity values from the vineyard. A modular architecture was designed for the system presented, which allows the use of current sensors, and similar low-voltage sensors, which will be developed in the future.
By using IoT devices in the vineyard, the winemaker advances to a new quality of precision of forecasted data, starting from live data of his vineyard. Of more and more importance, the winemaker can start immediate action, when unforeseen heavy weather conditions occur. Immediate use of current data enabled by a Cloud Infrastructure. For this system, an open service infrastructure is employed. In contrast to other published commercial approaches, the described solution is based on open source.
As an alone-standing part of this work, a physical prototype for measuring relevant parameters in the vineyard was de-novo designed and developed until fulfilling the set of specifications. The outlined features and requirements for a functioning data collection and autonomously transmitting device was developed, described, and the fulfilment by the prototype device were demonstrated. Through literature research and supportive orientationally live interviews of winemakers, the theory and the practical application were synchronized and qualified.
For the development of the prototype the general principles of development of an electronic device were followed, in particular the Design Science Research development rules, and principles of Quality Function Deployment. As a characteristic of the prototype, some principles like re-use of approved construction and material price of the building blocks of the device were taken into consideration as well (e.g. housing; Arduino; PCB). Parts reduction principles, decomplexation and simplified assembly, testing and field service were integrated to the development process by the modular design of the functional vineyard device components, e.g. with partial reference to innovative electrical cabinet construction system Modular-3.
The software architectural concept is based on a three-layer architecture inclusive the TTN infrastructure. The front end is realized as a rich web client, using a WordPress plugin. WordPress was chosen due to the wide adoption through the whole internet, enabling fast and easy user familiarization. Relevant quality issues have been tested and discussed in the view of exemplary functionality, extensibility, requirements fulfilment, as usability and durability of the device and the software.
The prototype was characterized and tested with success in the laboratory and in field exposition under different conditions, in order to allow a measurement and analysis of the fulfilment of all requirements by the selected and realized electronic construction and layout.
The solution presented may serve as a basis for future development and application in this special showcase and within similar technologies. A prognosis of future work and applications concludes this work.
Social Business Documents: An Investigation of their Nature, Structure and Long-term Management
(2018)
Business documents contain valuable information. In order to comply with legal requirements, to serve as organisational knowledge and to prevent risks they need to be managed. However, changes in technology with which documents are being produced introduced new kinds of documents and new ways of interacting with documents. Thereby, the web 2.0 led to the development of Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS), which enable employees to use wiki, blog or forum applications for conducting their business. Part of the content produced in ECS can be called Social Business Documents (SBD). Compared to traditional digital documents SBD are different in their nature and structure as they are, for example, less well-structured and do not follow a strict lifecycle. These characteristics bring along new management challenges. However, currently research literature lacks investigations on the characteristics of SBD, their peculiarities and management.
This dissertation uses document theory and documentary practice as theoretical lenses to investigate the new challenges of the long-term management of SBD in ECS. By using an interpretative, exploratory, mixed methods approach the study includes two major research parts. First, the nature and structure of Social Business Documents is addressed by analysing them within four different systems using four different modelling techniques each. The findings are used to develop general SBD information models, outlining the basic underlying components, structure, functions and included metadata, as well as a broad range of SBD characteristics. The second phase comprises a focus group, a case study including in-depth interviews and a questionnaire, all conducted with industry representatives. The focus group identified that the kind of SBD used for specific content and the actual place of storage differ between organisations as well as that there are currently nearly no management practices for SBD at hand. The case study provided deep insights into general document management activities and investigated requirements, challenges and actions for managing SBD. Finally, the questionnaire consolidated and deepened the previous findings. It provides insights about the value of SBD, their current management practices as well as management challenges and needs. Despite all participating organisations storing information worth managing in SBD most are not addressing them with management activities and many challenges remain.
Together, the investigations enable a contribution to practice and theory. The progress in practice is summarised through a framework, addressing the long-term management of Social Business Documents. The framework identifies and outlines the requirements and challenges of and the actions for SBD management. It also indicates the dependencies of the different aspects. Furthermore, the findings enable the progress in theory within documentary practice by discussing the extension of document types to include SBD. Existing problems are outlined along the definitions of records and the newly possible characteristics of documents emerging through Social Business Documents are taken into account.
Companies try to utilise Knowledge Management (KM) to gain more efficiency and effectiveness in business. The major problem is that most of these KM projects are not or rarely based on sustainable analyses or established theories about KM. Often there is a big gap between the expectations and the real outcome of such KM initiatives. So the research question to be answered is: What challenges arise in KM projects, which KM requirements can be derived from them and which recommendations support the goal of meeting the requirements for KM? As theoretical foundation a set of KM frameworks is examined. Subsequently KM challenges from literature are analysed and best practices from case studies are used to provide recommendations for action on this challenges. The main outcome of this thesis is a best practice guideline,which allows Chief Knowledge Officers (CKOs) and KM project managers to examine the challenges mentioned in this thesis closely, and to find a suitable method to master these challenge in an optimal way. This guideline shows that KM can be positively and negatively influenced in a variety of ways. Mastering Knowledge Management (KM) in a company is a big and far-reaching venture and that technology respectively Information Technology (IT) is only a part of the big picture.
In the last few years the Internet of things has gained increased attention from authors as well as companies due to its innovation potential. The rising interest in the Internet of Things has also affected the logistics, which currently suffers from the effects of the globalization and the ever-increasing competitive pressure. Thus, there are efforts to discover how the logistics can profit from the use of IoT concepts, ideas and technologies to help it overcome its challenges. This research study focuses on the identification of these efforts and the corresponding research for logistics processes. For that purpose the researcher explored current literature referring to this topic. The final outcome of this paper is a structured overview of the identified IoT use-cases, their corresponding technologies and devices and finally their affected stakeholders. Whether the expectations regarding the IoT implementation in logistics processes are met, how companies can profit from these use-cases and which problems potentially arise by using IoT devices and technologies in logistics are answered at the end of this paper.
With global and distributed project teams being increasingly common Collaborative Project Management is becoming the prevalent paradigm for the work in most organisations. Software has for many years been one of the most used tools for supporting Project Management and with the focus on Collaborative Project Management and accompanied by the emergence of Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS), Collaborative Project Management Software (CPMS) is gaining increased attention. This thesis examines the capabilities of CPMS for the long-term management of information which not only includes the management of files within these systems, but the management of all types of digital business documents, particularly social business documents. Previous research shows that social content in collaboration software is often poorly managed which poses challenges to meeting performance and conformance objectives in a business. Based on literature research, requirements for the long-term management of information in CPMS are defined and 7 CPMS tools are analysed regarding the content they contain and the functionalities for the long-term management of this content they offer. The study shows that CPMS by and large are not able to meet the long-term information management needs of an organisation on their own and that only the tools geared towards enterprise customers have sufficient capabilities to support the implementation of an Enterprise Information Management strategy.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of addressable, physical objects that contain embedded sensing, communication and actuating technologies to sense and interact with their environment (Geschickter 2015). Like every novel paradigm, the IoT sparks interest throughout all domains both in theory and practice, resulting in the development of systems pushing technology to its limits. These limits become apparent when having to manage an increasing number of Things across various contexts. A plethora of IoT architecture proposals have been developed and prototype products, such as IoT platforms, been introduced. However, each of these architectures and products apply their very own interpretations of an IoT architecture and its individual components so that IoT is currently more an Intranet of Things than an Internet of Things (Zorzi et al. 2010). Thus, this thesis aims to develop a common understanding of the elements forming an IoT architecture and provide high-level specifications in the form of a Holistic IoT Architecture Framework.
Design Science Research (DSR) is used in this thesis to develop the architecture framework based on the pertinent literature. The development of the Holistic IoT Architecture Framework includes the identification of two new IoT Architecture Perspectives that became apparent during the analysis of the IoT architecture proposals identified in the extant literature. While applying these novel perspectives, the need for a new component for the architecture framework, which was merely implicitly mentioned in the literature, became obvious as well. The components of various IoT architecture proposals as well as the novel component, the Thing Management System, were combined, consolidated and related to each other to develop the Holistic IoT Architecture Framework. Subsequently, it was shown that the specifications of the architecture framework are suitable to guide the implementation of a prototype.
This contribution provides a common understanding of the basic building blocks, actors and relations of an IoT architecture.
The Internet of Things (IoT) recently developed from the far-away vision of ubiquitous computing into very tangible endeavors in politics and economy, implemented in expensive preparedness programs. Experts predict considerable changes in business models that need to be addressed by organizations in order to respond to competition. Although there is a need to develop strategies for upcoming transformations, organizational change literature did not turn to the specific change related to the new technology yet. This work aims at investigating IoT-related organizational change by identifying and classifying different change types. It therefore combines the methodological approach of grounded theory with a discussion and classification of identified change informed by a structured literature review of organizational change literature. This includes a meta-analysis of case studies using a qualitative, exploratory coding approach to identify categories of organizational change related to the introduction of IoT. Furthermore a comparison of the identified categories to former technology-related change is provided using the example of Electronic Business (e-business), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. As a main result, this work develops a comprehensive model of IoT-related business change. The model presents two main themes of change indicating that personal smart things will transform businesses by means of using more personal devices, suggesting and scheduling actions of their users, and trying to avoid hazards. At the same time, the availability of information in organizations will further increase to a state where information is available ubiquitously. This will ultimately enable accessing real time information about objects and persons anytime and from any place. As a secondary result, this work gives an overview on concepts of technology-related organizational change in academic literature.
Coordination and awareness mechanisms are important in systems for Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and traditional groupware systems. It has been a key focus of research into collaborative groupware and its capability to enable people to efficiently collaborate and coordinate work. Until now, no classification of the mechanisms has been undertaken to identify commonalities and differences in coordination and awareness mechanisms and to show their significance in collaborative environments. In addition, there is a little investigation of coordination and awareness mechanisms in new forms of groupware such as socially enabled Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS). Indeed, both in science and in practices, ECS incorporating social software have become increasingly important. Based on the combination of traditional groupware and social software, ECS also include coordination and awareness mechanisms that may simplify collaboration, but these have not yet been investigated.
Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to identify coordination and awareness mechanisms in the academic literature to provide a general overview of those mechanisms examples. Additionally, this thesis aims to classify the mechanism examples. Based on a deep literature analysis, concepts described in literature are chosen and applied with the intension to analyse the mechanisms and to reach a classification. Based on the classification of the identified mechanisms their commonalities and differences are examined and described to gain a better understanding of them. For illustration purpose, examples of coordination and awareness mechanisms and their application are portrayed. The mechanisms examples refer to the classification groups derived. The selection of the mechanisms for the visualization is based on significant differences in their functionality. Subsequently, the selected mechanisms, more based on traditional groupware, are checked to a limited extend whether they can be found in socially enabled ECS. The collaborative platform of IBM Connections serves as a practical example of ECS incorporating social software. IBM Connections is used at the University of Koblenz to run the platform "UniConnect". On the platform it is investigated which of the identified mechanisms examples of the literature are applied in IBM Connections and which additional mechanisms are created by users. This work is the first step in the study of coordination and awareness mechanisms in socially-enabled ECS. In addition, it is expected to detect new mechanisms which are used while the social factor to collaborative work is new.
The purpose of this thesis is to examine and collect coordination and awareness mechanisms examples in literature to analyse them. Additionally, the purpose is to provide a first overview of mechanisms and to classify them by investigating their commonalities. Beside this thesis should give incentive for further investigations to investigate coordination and awareness mechanisms in socially integrated ECS.