Papers by Alta Van der Merwe
Design Science Research as Research Approach in Doctoral Studies
AMCIS 2015 Proceedings, Puerto Rico, 13 - 15 August 2015. Due to copyright restrictions, the atta... more AMCIS 2015 Proceedings, Puerto Rico, 13 - 15 August 2015. Due to copyright restrictions, the attached PDF file only contains the abstract of the full text item. For access to the full text item, please consult the publisher's website
Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Advanced Technologies and Techniques for Enterprise Information Systems, 2009
An enterprise architecture (EA) framework is a conceptual tool that assists organizations and bus... more An enterprise architecture (EA) framework is a conceptual tool that assists organizations and businesses with the understanding of their own structure and the way they work. Normally an enterprise architecture framework takes the form of a comprehensive set of cohesive models or enterprise architectures that describe the structure and the functions of an enterprise. Generically, an architecture model is the description of the set of components and the relationships between them. The central idea of all architectures is to represent, or model (in the abstract) an orderly arrangement of the components that make up the system under question and the relationships between these components. It is clear within this context that the models within an enterprise architecture framework are complex. However, recent advances in ontologies and ontology technologies may provide the means to assist architects with the management of this complexity. In this position paper we want to argue for the integration of formal ontologies and ontology technologies as tools into enterprise architecture frameworks. Ontologies allow for the construction of complex conceptual models, but more signicant, ontologies can assist an architect by depicting all the consequences of her model, allowing for more precise and complete artifacts within enterprise architecture framework repositories, and because these models use standardized languages, they will promote integration and interoperability with and within these repositories. Gerber A. and van der Merwe A. (2009). Towards the Use of Formal Ontologies in Enterprise Architecture Framework Repositories. In Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Advanced Technologies and Techniques for Enterprise Information Systems, pages 114-124
Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development, 2011
The purpose of accounting is to gather financial data of a business or entity, to interpret this ... more The purpose of accounting is to gather financial data of a business or entity, to interpret this data and to report the results in financial statements to the different users thereof. The interpretation of financial data is regulated by financial accounting standards including a conceptual framework that were developed to facilitate the reporting of financial information of entities. Due to the history of standards development as well as the mechanisms used, inconsistencies in the standards, framework and interpretations are part of the common legacy accountants are confronted with every day. The development of unambiguous and principle based financial accounting standards is therefore a key initiative at present of international accounting standards bodies such as the FASB and the IASB. This paper is concerned with the question of how recently developed computer science technologies could assist in dealing with and eliminating inconsistencies and ambiguities within and between different financial accounting standards. In our research we developed a formal ontology for some of the basic elements, and in this paper we report on our findings as well as make some suggestions for a formal approach to the conceptual framework and financial accounting standards development.
African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2010
In a previous paper we reported on several personal and situational tensions which influence the ... more In a previous paper we reported on several personal and situational tensions which influence the use and value of a mathematics-friendly online discussion forum environment in pursuit of the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) of previously disadvantaged and advantaged mathematics teachers in the South African context of disparities. This paper builds on the preliminary contributions reported there by offering a strategic model that can be used by a Subject Advisor to firstly anticipate and secondly discover tensions that point at teachers' real forum needs, thereby ensuring an online CPD strategy that is concomitant to the community for which the online forum is offered. The model is explained by way of a narrative walkthrough which also illustrates the practical usefulness thereof. Implications for existing theory are also offered. In a rapidly expanding and increasingly accessible technological environment, this paper provides a timeous foundation, benchmarks and pointers for future implementations of online forum discussion environments aimed at the CPD of not only mathematics teachers, but teachers in general.
Conceptual framework for financial reporting: an introduction to the special issue by the guest editors
Accounting and Business Research, 2015
This Special Issue on the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting (the Framework) contains f... more This Special Issue on the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting (the Framework) contains four papers that were presented at the inaugural International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Research Forum, held in Oxford on 3 October 2014. The Forum was an initiative to bring together standard setters and academics to address a topic of considerable interest to both groups. Alan Teixeira, then Senior Technical Director of the IASB, provides his perspective on the Forum in his introduction to this issue. The Framework was selected as the topic for this Special Issue and the Research Forum because of its importance in guiding and supporting the process of setting accounting standards. In July 2013, the IASB responded to calls from constituents to restart the Framework project by releasing a Discussion Paper for comment. The development of conceptual frameworks to underpin financial reporting is a topic that has also engaged academic interest for many years. Accordingly, both the IASB and the Editor of Accounting and Business Research (ABR) were pleased to disseminate a call for academic papers on this topic in 2013. The call indicated that papers from a range of perspectives and using various research approaches would be welcome for the Special Issue. However, we particularly sought papers that would assist the IASB in its work on the Framework project. The authors of papers that progressed successfully through a first round of blind independent reviews at ABR were invited by the editors of the Special Issue to present their papers at the Research Forum, where each paper received feedback from an academic discussant and a practitioner discussant. The papers were then revised by the authors and returned to the original journal reviewers for further consideration for publication. The four papers in this Special Issue all address topics closely related to the Framework. Three papers consider topics within the Framework or the Discussion Paper (definition and recognition criteria, the qualitative characteristics of financial information and disclosure) and the fourth paper addresses an underlying issue relevant to the development of the Framework and standards, namely conservatism in accounting. The first paper by Brouwer, Hoogendoorn and Naarding evaluates the IASB’s efforts to develop a new Framework in light of the Board’s objective to establish a robust and consistent basis for standard setting. The authors investigate the impact of the definition and recognition criteria for assets and liabilities in the existing Framework and the Discussion Paper. They point to the effect of professional debate and negotiation on the development of IFRS. They also make several suggestions for Board activities to improve the coherence of standards with the new Framework and to explain the Boards’ reasoning regarding how it has used the Framework. In the second paper, Nobes and Stadler explore the role of the qualitative characteristics of useful financial information in managers’ decisions to change IFRS accounting policies. They
Web Engineering methodologies, tools and techniques are based on research from four decades of be... more Web Engineering methodologies, tools and techniques are based on research from four decades of best practices in Software Engineering. Over the past ten years, users with disabilities have entered the market with several initiatives from governments to protect the rights of this market and to make information and services more accessible to them. The Meraka Institute initiated a technological project that will make information more readily available to people with disabilities. This initiative, called the National Accessibility Portal ...
Seventh World Conference on Integrated Design and Process Technology (IDPT 2003), 2003
The purpose of this paper is to describe a methodology for requirements elicitation of traditiona... more The purpose of this paper is to describe a methodology for requirements elicitation of traditional higher educational environments in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the critical processes of this application domain. Such an understanding might be instrumental in the strategic planning and the realizing of e-learning implementations that are both successful in achieving learning goals, and are also completely integrated into all critical processes with positive acceptance from ...
South African Computer Journal
Technological disruption enabled by the internet revolution has resulted in an exponential increa... more Technological disruption enabled by the internet revolution has resulted in an exponential increase in the growth of new technologies and the resultant technology disruptions in the workplace. Disruptive technologies are changing the rules of competition in organisations. Most chief information officers agree that there could be significant value in utilising new technology to create a competitive advantage in an agile world; however, in practice, the adoption and implementation of newer technology occur relatively slowly. There is very little research on factors influencing strategic IT decisions from a perspective of disruptive technologies. The objective of this study was to investigate critical factors that guide strategic IT decision-making in an agile business context. Using a literature review, various factors that had an influence on strategic IT decision-making in organisations were identified. The factors were extended and confirmed with data from semi-structured interview...
Sustainability
Organizations require the means to navigate Society 5.0. This is a knowledge-intensive society wh... more Organizations require the means to navigate Society 5.0. This is a knowledge-intensive society where a sustainable balance must be created for social good through a system that integrates cyberspace and physical space. With significant data, information and insight exchange based on knowledge in people and machines, organizations need to make sense of the notion that knowledge assets are the central structuring elements for sustainable development. By considering the key aspects of knowledge management (KM) in Society 5.0 as they relate to sustainable development, organizations may leverage their KM capability and learning agility to successfully address the unique requirements of the new society, environment and goals for sustainable development. In this research, automated content analysis was applied to identify key KM aspects using the Leximancer software. A total of 252 academic papers were analyzed, identifying 10 themes related to key KM concepts in Society 5.0 as they pertai...
Towards Different Enterprise Architecture Project Types
Industry 4.0 and Organisations: Key Organisational Capabilities
Responsible AI and Analytics for an Ethical and Inclusive Digitized Society, 2021
The fact-paced evolution of digital technologies, termed the 4th industrial revolution (4IR), inf... more The fact-paced evolution of digital technologies, termed the 4th industrial revolution (4IR), influence organisations to realise digital technology potential from a holistic point of view. In this context, organisational competitiveness rely on whether organisations’ business value-creation capabilities are adaptable and flexible. Scholars report that traditional business models struggle to keep up with the demands of this new digital economy and the purpose of this study was therefore to consider the 4IR key organisational capabilities that organisations require to ensure sustainability and to create business value. We identified 14 4IR organisational capabilities and operationalises these capabilities by mapping it to the dynamic capabilities sensing (strategic leadership, external drivers, data value), seizing (decision making, technology features, software services and solutions) and transforming (business model, process optimisation, product efficacy, organisation, customer) as defined by Teece. Three 4IR organisational capabilities namely employees, skills and expertise, and communication are relevant across all 3 dynamic capabilities. By applying the 4IR organisational capabilities, organisations will be able to consider the end-to-end impact of 4IR on the organisations and be able to address action plans to sustain value, or to create new business value.
Project management (PM) is the skill of planning and organisational effort set about to accomplis... more Project management (PM) is the skill of planning and organisational effort set about to accomplish a task or goal (Chai, Zhou, & Wang, 2007). PM is perceived as being one of the main ways in assuring the quality of a project and is critical in a collaborative environment, which is typically more difficult to control and manage (Wong, B., & Bhatti, 2009). Modern project management started between 1900 and 1950 ? during this time the advance was specifically on the shortening of the project schedule caused by technology advancement. After 1958 the rapid advancement of technology changed the way that PM was done until we are now in a period where the internet changed business practices in the mid 1990s and ?provided a fast, interactive, and customized new medium that allowed people to browse, purchase, and track products and services online instantly. Between 1995 and 2000, the project management community adopted internet technology to become more efficient in controlling and managing...
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2018
The role of information systems (IS) evolved from supporting basic business functions to complex ... more The role of information systems (IS) evolved from supporting basic business functions to complex integrated enterprise platforms and ecosystems. As a result, enterprises increasingly adopt enterprise architecture (EA) as a means to manage complexity and support the ability to change. We initiated a study that investigates the pivotal role of enterprise architecture management (EAM) as an essential strategy to manage enterprise change and within this larger context, specifically how the ArchiMate modeling language can be enhanced with capabilities that support EAM. This paper reports on the evaluation of an EA modeling tool (TEAM) which has been enhanced with EAM capabilities. The evaluation was performed by a focus group of enterprise architects that attended a workshop and applied the tool to an EAM case study. The evaluation results, requirements as well as a conceptualization for further development are presented and are of value for both, enterprise architecture researchers and enterprise architects.
The Ontological Modelling of Fruit Fly Control and Management Knowledge
Fruit Fly Research and Development in Africa - Towards a Sustainable Management Strategy to Improve Horticulture, 2016
Fruit fly control and management in Africa has been the topic of several scientific investigation... more Fruit fly control and management in Africa has been the topic of several scientific investigations resulting in diverse sources of knowledge on the topic. Despite the existence of this knowledge, frequently it is not readily accessible to all targeted beneficiaries; this can be due to, for example, the remote locations of farms and the complexity of the knowledge. However, recent technological developments such as web technologies and networking allow for the engagement and participation of stakeholder groups in the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and these technologies can also be applied to fruit fly knowledge. In order to facilitate this stakeholder participation in fruit fly knowledge sharing, the relevant domain knowledge needs to be available in a format that can support stakeholder engagement, preferably through the Web. Fruit fly knowledge has not been modelled in this manner and this paper reports on an investigation to model and capture the relevant domain knowledge using ontologies. The objective of this work is thus the development of the domain ontology and its evaluation using a prototype stakeholder participation system for fruit fly control and management that was capable of utilising the ontology. We describe our findings on the use of ontology technologies for representation of fruit fly knowledge, the fruit fly ontology developed, as well as a prototype Web-based system that uses the ontology as a source of knowledge.
2011 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, 2011
Staying competitive in the 21 st century requires enterprise unity and integration, allowing for ... more Staying competitive in the 21 st century requires enterprise unity and integration, allowing for agility to accommodate swift changes in strategy as markets evolve and new opportunities emerge. The foundation for execution approach acknowledges the volatility of strategy and suggests the use of an operating model (OM), which is a commitment to a way of doing business. The OM creates a company-wide vision for process standardization and data centralization and guides decisions about how a company implements processes and IT infrastructure. Although the OM provides senior management with a powerful decisionmaking tool in evolving the current IT landscape, the selection of an appropriate OM requires additional guidance. This article elaborates on current OM deficiencies, requirements for enhancement and a new method, mechanisms and practices to enable an enterprise architecture practitioner to identify the required process reuse opportunities for a specific OM.
Enterprise engineering is an enterprise design methodology that uses a process to create an organ... more Enterprise engineering is an enterprise design methodology that uses a process to create an organised whole, while mastering complexity. Dietz proposes an organisation theorem that reduces complexity by representing the heterogeneous enterprise system as a layered integration of three homogeneous aspect systems: the ontological, infological and datalogical. The ontological aspect system represents the essence of enterprise operation and a starting point for engineering a complex enterprise. This paper applies one of the ...
The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web has revolutionised practices in business, gover... more The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web has revolutionised practices in business, government, health, and education amongst others. In education, the Internet and World Wide Web opened new doors for teaching and learning, thereby affording educators an opportunity to deploy new teaching, learning and administration strategies and affording learners a rich learning experience. In South African higher education institutions, course management systems (CMSs) have been adopted, and are becoming increasingly ...
To stay competitive, enterprises of today need to rely on a sound foundation for execution that i... more To stay competitive, enterprises of today need to rely on a sound foundation for execution that incorporates the infrastructure and digitised processes for automating a company's core capabilities. Once this foundation has been established, management could move their attention away from focusing on lower-value activities to innovative ways to increase profits and growth. The Business-IT Alignment Framework (BIAF) defines business-IT alignment in terms of a paradigm of alignment, three dimensions for alignment, and mechanisms and ...
Factors influencing BPM tools: The influence on user experience and user interfaces
Information Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Special Issue, 2010
Abstract: Business process management (BPM) tools are categorised as enterprise software, which o... more Abstract: Business process management (BPM) tools are categorised as enterprise software, which offers many layers of functionality in producing effective and optimised business processes. One of the most important components of successful business process management is the group of enterprise software users-those people who interact with the workflows at various points in order to enable a certain task or objective to be completed. Good user interface design offers considerable benefits to these users. When user ...
Proceedings of the 25th …, Feb 13, 2007
Tim Berners-Lee proposed a layered architecture for the languages of the Semantic Web in 2000 and... more Tim Berners-Lee proposed a layered architecture for the languages of the Semantic Web in 2000 and suggested an adapted architecture in 2003. The architecture was evaluated according to a list of layered architecture characteristics and in this paper, based on aforementioned evaluation; the authors propose an adapted layered architecture for the languages of the Semantic Web based on fundamental aspects for layered architectures in information systems
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Papers by Alta Van der Merwe