bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Mining business rules from business process model repositories
Authors: Polpinij Jantima , Ghose Aditya , Dam Hoa Khanh 
Published: July 2015

Purpose
– Business process has become the core assets of many organizations and it becomes increasing common for most medium to large organizations to have collections of hundreds or even thousands of business process models. The purpose of this paper is to explore an alternative dimension to process mining in which the objective is to extract process constraints (or business rules) as opposed to business process models. It also focusses on an alternative data set – process models as opposed to process instances (i.e. event logs).

Design/methodology/approach
– The authors present a new method of knowledge discovery to find business activity sequential patterns embedded in process model repositories. The extracted sequential patterns are considered as business rules.

Findings
– The authors find significant knowledge hidden in business processes model repositories. The hidden knowledge is considered as business rules. The business rules extracted from process models are significant and valid sequential correlations among business activities belonging to a particular organization. Such business rules represent business constraints that have been encoded in business process models. Experimental results have indicated the effectiveness and accuracy of the approach in extracting business rules from repositories of business process models.

Social implications
– This research will assist organizations to extract business rules from their existing business process models. The discovered business rules are very important for any organization, where rules can be used to help organizations better achieve goals, remove obstacles to market growth, reduce costly mistakes, improve communication, comply with legal requirements, and increase customer loyalty.

Originality/value
– There has very been little work in mining business process models as opposed to an increasing number of very large collections of business process models. This work has filled this gap with the focus on extracting business rules.
Dynamic performance assessment of a supply chain process
Authors: Kumar Anup , Mukherjee Kampan , Adlakha Amit 
Published: July 2015

Purpose
– A variety of tools are available to measure supply chain efficiency, but there are a few methods available for assessing efficiency in dynamic environments. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA) with the help vector auto regression in measuring internal supply chain performance in dynamic environment.

Design/methodology/approach
– Two DEA models were developed – the static DEA that is traditional DEA methodology and the dynamic DEA. The models are further enhanced with scenario analysis to derive more meaningful business insights for managers in making benchmarking and resource planning decisions.

Findings
– The results demonstrate that lagged effects can lead to changes in efficiency scores, rankings, and efficiency classification. So, using static DEA models in dynamic environment can be potentially misleading. Using impulse response analysis it has been seen that shocks given to marketing strategy in MR affects more at each of the decision-making unit’s (DMU’s) compared to other variables, further the authors could also investigate the dependent variables (output) shocks to input variables.

Social implications
– Methodology can be applied to a wide range of evaluation problems in place of conventional DEA models. Results show that lagged effects can lead to substantial discrepancies in evaluation results. Biased evaluation results would easily lead to erroneous decision and policy making for the firm. Therefore the authors should always take a broader perspective in evaluating longitudinal performance by incorporating the effects into evaluation and decision-making processes. Future work of this study could look into the possibility of modeling in a stochastic supply chain environment. In addition, it will also be interesting to look into evaluating the stochastic DEA model in multiple time periods in order to examine whether there is any technological influence on the supply chain efficiency.

Originality/value
– The contribution of this study provides useful insights into the use of DDEA as a modeling tool to aid managerial decision making in assessing supply chain efficiency in dynamic environment.
Analysis of operating effectiveness of a cold chain model using Bayesian networks
Authors: Sharma Sanjay , Pai Sushanth Satheesh 
Published: July 2015

Purpose– Cold chain has become an integral part of the supply chain domain. The purpose of this paper is to consider all the significant factors in a single study. This will result into a better model to study the effectiveness of a cold chain because there has been absence of such an integrated study.Design/methodology/approach– The basis of the factors is justified by performing extensive literature review. Inter relations are drawn based on critical analysis of each factor and its implications on cold chain. Bayesian Network is used to develop the model.Findings– The end result is an established model, depicting the interdependencies of the factors. The model ultimately provides effectiveness of a given cold chain when the corresponding values of factors are put in.Practical implications– The findings will be helpful for government and non-government bodies to analyse the effectiveness of a cold chain. This can be used to increase the performance of different stages in the cold chain. From a business perspective, an investor can analyse the cold chains of various geographies in order to make an investment decision.Originality/value– The value lies in developing and introducing new factors which were not considered in the related literature previously. To identify the inter relations among the factors in order to build a causal model is another contribution of the present paper. This would assist in decision-making process with respect to any given cold chain. It can be applied to any cold chain as proposed model is not specific to a particular country or material.
Assessment model for organizational business process maturity with a focus on BPM governance practices
Authors: de Boer Fernanda Gobbi , Müller Cláudio José , ten Caten Carla Schwengber 
Published: July 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to propose an assessment model for process management maturity focussed on business process management (BPM) governance practices.

Design/methodology/approach
– This investigation uses case studies.

Findings
– The BPM governance elements identified and analysis of the BPM maturity models previously used gave rise to the assessment model for organizational maturity in BPM developed for this study.

Originality/value
– The model allowed the authors to diagnose organizations’ current situation in terms of process management and provided a preliminary assessment of the next steps in the evolution of maturity for each of the factors analyzed.
National factor effects on firm competitiveness and innovation
Authors: Collins J. Markham , Troilo Michael L. 
Published: July 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this article is to investigate how national-level characteristics such as country wealth, a floating exchange rate and European Union (EU) membership influence firm-level perceptions of competition and firm-level innovation. Greater understanding of these relationships can promote more effective policymaking as well as add to the existing academic conversation regarding national factors and firm competitiveness.

Design/methodology/approach
– The authors’ data consist of a panel of 27 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia from 2002 to 2009 with a total of nearly 27,000 firms from the World Bank Enterprise Survey. The authors utilize a multinomial logistic regression to estimate firm-level perceptions of both domestic and foreign competition upon decisions to introduce new products and manage new product costs. The authors then estimate the probability of innovation (introduction of a new product/service, obtaining international quality certification) using a logistic regression. The marginal effects of the key explanatory variables for country wealth, floating exchange rate and EU membership are calculated.

Findings
– While EU membership heightens perceptions of competition, firms in the EU are less likely to introduce new products or services. On the other hand, a firm in an EU member country is more likely to obtain international quality certification than one that is not. Both country wealth and a floating exchange correlate with enhanced perceptions of competition and innovation as expected.

Originality/value
– The first finding regarding heightened perceptions of competition yet lower likelihood of introduction of new products/services among EU firms is surprising. Beyond adding to the empirical store of knowledge regarding the relationship of national factors to firm competitiveness, it suggests that more needs to be done with regard to innovation policy. The authors offer a general recommendation to employ more public–private partnerships for innovation among small and medium enterprises, as this has been effective in other parts of the world.
Employment performance in times of crisis
Authors: Kahl Julian , Hundt Christian 
Published: July 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this study is to elucidate the determinants of economic resilience at various levels of analysis. While the economic benefits of regional clustering are well-documented, the impact of external shocks on regional clusters has only recently gained attention. This study explores the antecedents of economic resilience, defined as sustained employment growth, prior to and during the global financial crisis within the German biotechnology industry.Design/methodology/approach– This study combines multilevel linear regression analysis with egocentric network analysis. This allows us to distinguish micro- and context-level effects in the analysis of economic resilience.Findings– The findings of this study indicate that while specialization at the network and context-level is conducive to firm growth prior to the crisis, these configurations seem to be particularly susceptible to external shocks. Conversely, diversity (diversified regional agglomerations and diverse networks) seems to be associated with economic resilience during the crisis. Moreover, we find that economic resilience is connected to adaptive capability at the micro-level, that is, the ability to expand and diversify a firms’ portfolio of network ties in the face of an external shock. Finally, we show that these adaptive processes are facilitated by geographical proximity among collaborating organizations.Originality/value– This study contributes to the existing literature by showing that the antecedents of economic resilience are located at multiple levels of analysis. An important implication of this study is that the examination of the resilience of regional clusters may thus be significantly enhanced by disentangling effects at the firm, network and regional (i.e. context) level.
Chinese M & A in Europe
Authors: Spigarelli Francesca , Alon Ilan , Mucelli Attilio 
Published: July 2015

Purpose– This paper aims to examine the global competitiveness of an emerging market multinational (EMM) from China through the case of a major European acquisition, in Italy, in the heavy construction industry. Country- and firm-specific factors are considered. Horizontal integration in this oligopolistic industry changes the industry dynamics, with significant implications for its players.Design/methodology/approach– The paper follows case study methodology and triangulates data through a literature review, an examination of available company data and interviews of key personnel. Firm- and country-specific factors, both advantages and disadvantages, including the business environment in the construction industry, globally and regionally, are analyzed.Findings– The paper identifies several key success factors at the firm level, including the integration of research and development, marketing and sales; the development of extensive communication and trust among the managers of both companies; the exploitation of the Chinese market as a source of demand; and the shifting of selected production lines to the Chinese market.Research limitations/implications– The traditional models of country-specific advantages/disadvantages and firm-specific advantages/disadvantages are augmented by examining the host market and industry task environments. Host country-specific factors for successful integration include favorable local conditions, both in terms of endowments and institutions, and an industrial cluster with supporting firms and services.Practical implications– Following the case study, managers can refer to the key success factors to emulate “best practices”. The paper concludes with a heuristic developed by the Chairman of Zoomlinon, Chunxin Zhan, underlining five principles for a successful EEM acquisition: understanding, sharing, responsibility, compliance and coordination.Originality/value– This paper develops a deep case study analysis and provides useful theoretical and practical implications with reference to Chinese acquisition in the Western markets.
Internationalization of Indian software firms through establishment of global development centers
Authors: Jain Naveen Kumar , Pangarkar Nitin , Yuan Lin , Kumar Vikas 
Published: July 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the inter-firm variation in the opening of international global development centers (GDCs), in a high commitment entry mode, by Indian software firms as a function of their past performance, degree of internationalization, possession of a valuable resource in the form of CMMI Level 5 certification and rivals’ establishment of GDCs.Design/methodology/approach– The authors draw on the organizational learning theory, the resource-based view and the strategic behavior theory to analyze the variation in the number of GDCs opened by 32 leading Indian software firms between 2000 and 2009.Findings– The authors find that strong past performance of Indian software firms leads to the establishment of a greater number of GDCs. The authors further demonstrate that non-financial resources, such as the possession of CMMI Level 5 certification, positively moderate the above relationship.Research limitations/implications– The research is conducted in the context of a single industry and a single home country. The authors also focus on a subset of firms (large, listed firms) in the industry. The authors recommend future research to examine other knowledge-intensive industries.Practical implications– An increasing number of Indian software firms and other emerging market firms wish to locate close to their overseas customers by choosing a high commitment entry mode. The research suggests that, prior to internationalizing, managers should build up critical and relevant resources through deployment of high commitment entry modes.Originality/value– The research has many unique aspects including a rigorous model development, a robust empirical approach as well as an interesting empirical context. The authors believe that the results will be useful to academics and practitioners alike.
Determinants of foreign direct and indirect investment in the MENA region
Authors: Al-Khouri Ritab 
Published: July 2015

Purpose– This study aims to examine the factors affecting the foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign portfolio investment (FPI) flows among the 16 economies comprising the Middle East and North African (MENA) region.Design/methodology/approach– Panel data for the period 1984-2012 are used, and the generalized method of moment (GMM) technique is implemented.Findings– The results support the agglomeration effect, which indicates that countries which have already had FDI attract more FDI in the future. Economic risk affects FDI significantly and negatively, whereas trade openness has a significant and positive impact on FDI. Of the political risk factors considered, three of them, namely, law and order, ethnic tension and internal conflict, significantly affect FDI. The results on FPI show that the lag in FPI and the degree of openness play a significant role in attracting FPI into the MENA region. In addition, stock market capitalization, as well as the return on investment affects the FPI flow positively. The study also reveals a negative government structure impact on FPI, whereas, surprisingly, religious tension in the MENA region affects FPI positively.Originality/value– This research examines, simultaneously, the factors that determine not only FDI but also FPI flow. It uses a powerful econometric technique which avoids common estimation problems such as endogeneity, heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation. Policymakers in the MENA region recognized the need for outside capital as a major catalyst of development, economic growth and modernization. Therefore, it is essential to know the factors that would lead to a surge in capital flow to these countries.
A new M
&
A methodology: five lessons in anticipating post-merger resource interactions and challenges
Authors: Chatterjee Sayan , Brueller Nir N. 
Published: July 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to develop a taxonomy of M
&
A that can be used to understand which type of M
&
A is likely to succeed. The taxonomy also allows managers to identify the integration imperatives that is so critical to success in M
&
A.

Design/methodology/approach
– Grounded research and thick description of business situations.

Findings
– This paper identifies the importance of analyzing the nature of the resource interactions that deliver value. If deal makers keep our advice in mind they should truly be able to improve the batting average above the historical norms.

Research limitations/implications
– Even though we have studied a large number of M
&
A, this is not a typical lot sample quantitative study. It is possible to test the taxonomy on a large sample study if the M
&
A can be coded in to distinct groups.

Practical implications
– When considering a merger or an acquisition, managers should be able to identify the type of M
&
A that corresponds to one of the categories in our taxonomy. This would allow managers to consider the general imperatives suggested in our paper for success. These general imperatives can then be modified for the unique situation faced by the manager.

Social implications
– No direct implication except that societal resources will be used efficiently.

Originality/value
– There are other typology/taxonomy in the literature. However, none to our knowledge uses the resource interaction lens.
Downregulated expression of LBH mRNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from patients with systemic lupus erythematosus
Authors: Chang Yan , Sheng Yujun , Cheng Yuyan , Lin Yan , Zhu Zhengwei , Wen Leilei , Yang Chao , Yang Lulu , Liu Lu , Zhou Fusheng , Zheng Xiaodong , Zhang Shengquan , Cui Yong , Yang Sen , Zhang Xuejun 
Published: July 2015

AbstractWe performed a gene expression study to explore whether expression levels of LBH contribute to the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and are associated with the genome‐wide association study‐identified SNP (rs7579944 and rs906868) and the SLE Disease Activity Index (SLEDAI). Fluorescent quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction was used to examine the expression of LBH mRNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from 62 SLE patients and 69 controls. The expression levels of LBH mRNA in patients with SLE were significantly decreased compared with those in normal controls (P < 0.001). No significant differences were found between LBH mRNA expression levels and SLEDAI scores, SNP rs7579944 and rs906868. This study suggests that decreased expression of LBH mRNA may be correlated with the pathogenesis of SLE.
Diplomacy as world disclosure: A fractal theory of crisis management
Authors: Bjola Corneliu 
Published: July 2015

This article: Introduces the concept of world disclosure to diplomatic studies; Advances a new logic of diplomatic action that combines pre-reﬂective and reﬂective modes of reasoning; Explains why international crises are deﬁned by fractal not linear patterns; Suggests a world disclosing method for making sense of and managing international crises. Drawing on Heidegger’s concept of ‘world disclosure’, the article advances an original analytical framework for studying diplomatic crisis management. It argues that international crises are not linear but fractal developments characterised by a set of self-similar events that repeat themselves at micro and macro scales in an endless loop unless stopped. As interpretations of fractal conditions are shaped by both pre-reﬂective and reﬂective considerations, diplomatic resolutions of crises require ‘authentic’ disclosures that challenge the epistemic framework that allows crises to reproduce. Examples from recent crises, especially the one in Ukraine, are used to empirically illustrate the main theoretical points.
The British Political Tradition and the Material-Ideational Debate
Authors: Marsh David , Hall Matthew 
Published: July 2015

This article: Critically discusses recent material on the British Political Tradition (BPT) using broader discussions of the relationship between material relations, institutions and ideas as a frame for that discussion. Argues that the BPT has played a key role in shaping the institutions and processes of British politics and that it provides a key element of the context in which any attempt at change occurs. Operates as a path-dependency which constrains, but does not prevent, change; Argues that there are three path-dependencies not one, an institutional one, a discursive one and a political-economic one. Makes significant contributions to our understanding of British politics and to debates about historical institutionalism and path dependency. Recently there has been a revival of interest in debates about the British political tradition. In part, this is a reflection of the ‘ideational turn’ in Anglophone comparative politics. However, this ideational turn immediately raises two of the most important meta-theoretical debates in social science; the relationships between institutions and ideas and the material and the ideational. In our view, anyone who suggests that political traditions shape political outcomes has to take a position on these debates, although they are rarely addressed. This article seeks to address that omission. We argue that, while the predominant ideas about democracy and political practice in the UK, what we term the British Political Tradition, do affect the institutions and processes of government, these ideas exist in a dialectical relationship with those institutions and, more broadly, with the material context within which the tradition, and indeed the institutions, operate(s).