nach oben

Open Access 2019 | Open Access | Buch

Designing Digital Work

Concepts and Methods for Human-centered Digitization

verfasst von: Stefan Oppl, Christian Stary

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Über dieses Buch

Combining theory, methodology and tools, this open access book illustrates how to guide innovation in today’s digitized business environment. Highlighting the importance of human knowledge and experience in implementing business processes, the authors take a conceptual perspective to explore the challenges and issues currently facing organizations. Subsequent chapters put these concepts into practice, discussing instruments that can be used to support the articulation and alignment of knowledge within work processes. A timely and comprehensive set of tools and case studies, this book is essential reading for those researching innovation and digitization, organization and business strategy.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

PDF

Open Access

1. Introduction

Abstract

This chapter motivates the objective for introducing support measures and instruments for articulating, aligning, and enacting performative aspects of organizational work. It provides background information on supporting organizational actors to actively design their collaborative work processes. Of main interest are individual conceptualizations of work while ensuring syntactically correct and semantically valid work models to be processed by digital means. The chapter presents relevant framework constituents, namely humans, technology, and organization of work, while referring to the articulation and alignment processes by socio-technical means. From a dynamic system development perspective, learning support and human-centered representation of knowledge play a crucial role. Their major characteristics are discussed as common ground for the instruments presented in the subsequent chapters.

Stefan Oppl, Christian Stary

PDF Zum Volltext

Open Access

2. Elicitation Requirements

Abstract

This chapter discusses elicitation of knowledge in work process design and its requirements on socio-technical support instruments. It provides the conceptual underpinnings of the articulation and alignment processes of work process elicitation. We detail relevant insights from different disciplines such as social psychology, cognitive sciences, knowledge management, and computer-supported collaborative work. The individual mental model of accomplishing work tasks, as well as role awareness, is crucial for capturing situated and thus contextual work behavior. For aligning individual mental models, intangible information exchange, and implicit work knowledge needs to be externalized and combined with existing encoded work representations. Such an endeavor lays the ground for co-creating digital work settings and meta-cognitive potential for further developments, in particular, organization learning steps. This chapter provides a corresponding theory-based synthesis. It reflects on methodologically grounded designs of work support and organizational development processes.

Stefan Oppl, Christian Stary

PDF Zum Volltext

Open Access

3. Value-Oriented Articulation

Abstract

In this chapter, business enablers and resources are at the center of interest, as they are required to generate valuable assets for the market. Looking at those elements beyond a requirements engineering perspective to deliver products and services, human-centric value chain and their analysis can help in apprehending how an enterprise creates valuable elements through a set of core and support activities. Both are assumed to contribute to the sustainable existence of the producing organization in competitive and continuously changing environments, based on products or services for which customers are creating revenues. Representational carriers of work knowledge are business processes, as functional activities of work force transform goods and information. Value creation resides in the context-rich design and execution of work processes rather than the processed or created assets. Although value created in this way has a tangible component, a second component, the intangible part, is of equal importance. Both need to be externalized and represented for (re-)design. In this chapter, various methodologically grounded instruments are introduced, ranging from individual to collective elicitation, and tackling tangible and intangible transactions among concerned stakeholders.

Stefan Oppl, Christian Stary

PDF Zum Volltext

Open Access

4. Alignment of Multiple Perspectives: Establishing Common Ground for Triggering Organizational Change

Abstract

This chapter introduces methodological support for transitioning from existing to envisioned work processes via direct actor involvement. It suggests direct actor involvement in the alignment and validation of novel work practices, in particular when digital workflows or instruments are involved that fundamentally impact the modes of individual operation and collaboration. Alignment is required for consolidating various inputs for further processing. In particular, actively involving process participants in process modeling creates a challenge for consolidated digital work design. Process participants are not expected to have modeling skills and usually, they prefer to externalize their knowledge through diagrams that are as simple as possible in terms of both syntax and semantics (‘natural modeling’). Alignment leads to accommodation of novel perspectives on a work process according to the participants’ individual mental models, allowing their implementation in organizational practice after validation.

Stefan Oppl, Christian Stary

PDF Zum Volltext

Open Access

5. Acting on Work Designs: Providing Support for Validation and Implementation of Envisioned Changes

Abstract

This chapter introduces methods to enable to act on the results of articulation and alignment processes. As such, it outlines paths towards sharing and anchoring new work practices in organizations. The proposed methodologically grounded interventions allow to qualitatively validate novel work practices and to agree on strategies for their organization-wide roll-out. Drawing from current practice-oriented research in organizational development, Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW), and knowledge management, this chapter also includes an account on supporting technology that could be used to aid method deployment.

Stefan Oppl, Christian Stary

PDF Zum Volltext

Open Access

6. Enabling Emergent Workplace Design

Abstract

This chapter offers a synthesis of the conceptual and methodological considerations of the previously presented frameworks and instruments. It adjusts the methodological concepts for eliciting, representing, and processing work knowledge for practical use. Based on elementary modeling constructs we provide a unifying framework that guides the design of organizational interventions when enabling the emergence of novel digital workplace designs and work practices. According to the architecture, support systems for organizational learning enable augmenting processes with work-relevant knowledge, including the execution of specified behavior representations. Overall goal is developing consensually shared workflow designs—developed for and by the actual set of people executing a workflow. The structured procedure allows a generalized architecture based on a common organizational memory and dedicated components for articulation, informed alignment through organizational learning support, and process prototyping.

Stefan Oppl, Christian Stary

PDF Zum Volltext

Open Access

7. Putting the Framework to Operation: Enabling Organizational Development Through Learning

Abstract

This chapter instantiates the proposed framework for developing consensually shared workflow designs. It shows how the framework can be put to operation using instruments that have been successfully deployed in practice. These instruments enable articulation and alignment of work process knowledge, allow its representation and transfer within organizations, and facilitate acting on these representations for validation and implementation in diverse organizational settings. We here adopt an organizational learning perspective and situate the presented socio-technical instruments along a multi-perspective learning chain informed by the components of the framework. It thus offers instruments supporting the articulation and alignment of work process knowledge, its multi-faceted representation and flexible manipulation, as well as support for processing the resulting models for validation and refinement. Using the framework as a coherent lens on the requirements on support and the respective features of the instruments allows to offer an integrated view, which demonstrates digital work design support in organizational practice.

Stefan Oppl, Christian Stary

PDF Zum Volltext

Open Access

8. Case Studies

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates the use of the proposed framework for digital work design and the embedded methods. It shows the mutual interplay of its components for articulating work knowledge, organizational learning, knowledge processing, and preserving design-relevant knowledge. The case studies describe the impact that could be generated through digital design support. The healthcare case demonstrates how meaningful work-model entities evolve in the course of articulation and guide aligned re-structuring of work. It stems from a complex planning process in clinical health treatment requiring the structured elicitation of contextual knowledge from all stakeholders involved to develop working procedures in time-critical situations. The CoMPArE/WP (Collaborative Model Articulation and Elicitation of Work Processes)-case has its focus on alignment when bridging from intuitive or semi-structured models to techno-centric (formal) models that can be executable for some workflow engine. The education case targets educator knowledge involving domain knowledge, didactic competence, and social skills. Finally, the Me2Me2You-case addresses mental model alignment of interaction behavior for executable workflow support from a cascaded interaction perspective.

Stefan Oppl, Christian Stary

PDF Zum Volltext

Open Access

9. Epilogue

Abstract

The design of digital work systems requires stakeholder involvement in generating relevant work knowledge. It starts with articulation, and proceeds with sharing and aligning this knowledge in more or less structured design spaces. Once the ultimate goal is to develop executable processes in evolving systems, such as cyber-physical environments, specifications require stakeholders to become skilled in programming (concepts) for automated model execution. In this chapter, we demonstrate that models can be created on an abstract, implementation-independent level, while still being executable. The so-called ground models serve as boundary objects for iterative prototyping and interactive validation of specific process scenarios or situations. Remaining on this level of description allows tracing diagrammatic models while running their code, thus reducing system complexity to manageable components and architectures.

Stefan Oppl, Christian Stary

PDF Zum Volltext

Backmatter

PDF

Titel: Designing Digital Work
verfasst von: Stefan Oppl
Christian Stary
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-12259-1
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-12258-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12259-1