| IT Governance: Spagat der Glokalisierung | Title in English: IT Governance - Handling Glocalization Article for the Analyst Corner of German weekly IT magazine Computerwoche. The article addresses global and local aspects of IT governance and how these can be balanced. |
| Die IT muss näher ans Business | Title in English: IT needs to get closer to the business Article for the German weekly IT magazine Computerwoche, issue 15/2007. The article provides practical hints for CIOs and IT-managers how to make the IT-organization part of business process initiatives. It outlines the critical issues and competence requirements for the different roles that IT can play in this context. |
| Business Process Management in the Pharmaceutical Industry | Book chapter, published in Layna Fischer ed. (2007), 2007 BPM & Workflow Handbook. Future Strategies, ISBN: 0-9777527-1-2. Published in association with the Workflow Management Coalition. The chapter outlines some basic characteristics of Business Process Management and discusses, on the basis of a short case study, how the principles of BPM can be applied in the pharmaceutical industry, more specifically how they were used in a large scale R&D improvement program at Altana Pharma (now Nycomed). |
| Applying Business Process Management for improving clinical operations processes | Joint work with Mathias Poensgen, Head Clinical Operations / Systems and Processes, Nycomed (Altana Pharma). Journal paper, forthcoming, 2008. The paper suggests Business Process Management as a useful approach to process improvement in clinical trial operations in the pharmaceutical industry. It discusses critical issues and provides hints regarding the most important aspects that need to be considered. |
| BPR
in the Pharmaceutical Industry File in .zip format. Use Save Target As ... to download. |
PhD-thesis / Doctoral dissertation (185 pages), Gothenburg Studies in Informatics, Report 26, April 2003, ISSN 1400-741X Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Bo Dahlbom, IT University Göteborg (Sweden) and Managing Director of the Swedish IT Institute Opponent: Prof. Dr. Elgar Fleisch, Institute for Technology Management (ITEM), St. Gallen University Review Board: DDr. Frank Douglas, Executive Vice President R&D, Aventis; Prof. Dr. Ole Hanseth, Dept. of Informatics, Oslo University; Prof. Dr. Flemming Norrgren, Chalmers University of Technology Abstract This thesis investigates the use of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) as a change approach in the Pharmaceutical Industry. The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing profound changes. New opportunities, e.g. in the field of bio-technology, price pressure from governments, insurances and through generic products have created a variety of dynamics in the industry. Today, pharma-companies are also closely monitored with regard to their R&D pipeline and their ability to execute efficient R&D projects. As a result, pharma-companies have been looking for approaches that would enable a substantial improvement of their R&D processes, among them Business Process Reengineering. During a study at Astra Hässle in Mölndal, a research subsidiary of Astra (now AstraZeneca), two change initiatives under the label of BPR were investigated and analyzed. The first one, FASTRAC, was a local project, aiming at improving research and development at Astra Hässle. CANDELA, the second initiative, was aiming at an overhaul of R&D at Astra corporate level. FASTRAC resulted in several IT initiatives, of which one was investigated in detail. This investigation identified several critical aspects of the implementation of a new data collection process and IT-solution for remote data capture (RDC). Furthermore, this thesis proposes measures that go beyond the concept of reengineering. It proposes a new conceptual model for clinical research and suggests a different way of technology use for supporting the clinical R&D process. It also describes organizational aspects of organizing R&D in alternative ways. |
| How many systems needs a man? | Paper for the Information Management Group's (IMG) journal, issue October 2001. Written together with Hubert Österle (CTO IMG and professor in Information Management at St. Gallen University). We also acknowledge the support from the members of IMG's Enterprise Portal Practice Team, especially Sven Pohland (now professor at the Berlin School of Economics) and Alexander Fahrnholz. Abstract The paper illustrates, in a pragmatic way, the issues being related to the use of Enterprise Portals, with a focus on supporting customer processes and delivering services through the portal. |
| From e-Business to Collaborative Business | In German: Vom e-Business zum Collaborative Business. Paper for the Information Management Group's (IMG) journal, issue May 2001. Written together with Hubert Österle (CTO IMG and professor in Information Management at St. Gallen University). Abstract In den Unternehmen hat eine hektische Suche nach dem Geschäftsmodell des Informationszeitalters eingesetzt. Neben traditionellen Fragestellungen wie beispielsweise Globalisierung und Strukturierung der Absatzkanäle, ist es mindestens ebenso wichtig, die Prozesse des Kunden soweit zu verstehen, dass ein Unternehmen neue Produkte und Dienstleistungen anbieten oder grössere Abschnitte des Kundenprozesses abdecken kann. |
| Global and Local Dynamics in Infrastructure Deployment: The Astra Hässle Experience | A book chapter, written together with Antonio Cordella, describing and analyzing the implementation of an information infrastructure for clinical R&D. An extended and improved version of Infrastructure Deployment: Global intent vs local adaptation. Published in Claudio Ciborra et.al. (2000), From Control to Drift: The Dynamics of Corporate Information Infrastructures, Oxford University Press. |
| Strategic aspects of cinical R&D in a continuously changing environment | Paper for the IRIS23 conference (2000). Co-authored by Hans Glise, Elof Dimenäs (both AstraZeneca) and myself. Abstract The basis for successful R&D in the pharmaceutical industry is rapidly changing and the currently predominant strategies are challenged. Conventional wisdom is questioned and many companies are seeking to find new ways of organizing and working. This paper brings forward strategic assumptions to be considered for clinical R&D. |
| People, Organization, Strategy and Technology in the Pharmaceutical Industry | The PharmaPOST project was an industrial research project, involving AstraZeneca R&D Mölndal (formerly Astra Hässle) and the Viktoria Institute. The project was sponsored by NUTEK (the Swedish Board for Industrial and Technical Development), within the MTO research programme. In brief, the project was concerned with investigating and developing new and innovative forms of clinical R&D in the pharmaceutical industry and spans over three areas: Organization, Information Technology and Knowledge Management.
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| When Knowledge Management is not enough: Managing Capabilities in the Pharmaceutical Industry | Paper draft. Not finalized (some missing references) , but conceptually finished. Abstract The paper addresses Knowledge Managment and discusses, why the concept is not fully sufficient, since it does not emphasize the aspect of making knowledge actionable. Consequently, we need to extend it into "Capability Managment". |
| Consulting approaches to business process improvement | Most large consulting firms have developed their own approaches to business process improvement. I have compiled summaries of four of them - Andersen Consulting, Bain, Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey - and conducted a brief analysis of their common aspects and differences. |
| Markets, Hierarchies and Networks in the Talk society | A paper authored by Antonio Cordella and myself for the "Festschrift" for Bo Dahlbom's birthday. (We won't tell which one.) Since the Festschrift has been published as a book, the file is print-protected and only readable on-screen due to copyright reasons. The paper has also been published as a chapter in the following book: Ljungberg, Fredrik (ed.), Informatics in the Next Millenium, Studentlitteratur (Lund, Sweden), 1999. |
| Infrastructure deployment: global intent vs local adaptation | Paper for the IFIP 8.7 conference in Helsinki, December 1998. Written together with Antonio Cordella, a fellow researcher. Published in the proceedings of the conference. An Italian version has been published in the book Infraglobe: Infrastrutture e gestione della conoscenza nelle imprese globali, edited by Claudio Ciborra. (Etas Libri, Milano, 1998) Abstract This paper deals with the understanding of information and organization infrastructure implementation and deployment. The analysis is based on a case study at Astra Hässle, a pharmaceutical R&D company, investigating the use of a global infrastructure for clinical trials. The infrastructure in use obviously differs from the organizational process and IT-use designed ex-ante. The reason for this deviation is found in the tension between global design and local dynamics. Using the concept of organizational and technological inscription, an analytical framework has been developed. The schema provides a combination of four scenarios, based on different inscription levels, and allows the characterization of different ways of conceiving infrastructure and its deployment. |
| The Impact of Information Technology on Transaction and Coordination Cost | Paper for the IRIS20 conference. Written together with Antonio Cordella, a fellow researcher. Published in the proceedings of the conference. Abstract Coordinating work among individuals and groups belongs
to the essential tasks of managing organizations. The arise of various
kinds of teams support technology, such as groupware and workflow technology,
can improve the coordination of work in different ways: automating existing
routines, shaping new communication patterns and organizational structures,
or reducing the need for coordination itself. |
| BPR - sic transit gloria mundi or What else is new in management | Paper for the VITS research conference
in Borås, 20 Nov 96. Published in the proceedings of the conference. Abstract Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has lost a lot of the attention it attracted during the recent years. This paper will briefly address possible reasons for this phenomenon, and then introduce one of the new current trends in the management field that recently have gained a considerable attention, namely CMM - the Capability Maturity Model. |
| BPR working papers | Draft version of three (quick and dirty) working papers for a company in the paper industry. They were compiled together with a company employee during a brief case study in the company. |
| Supplier-Retailer Collaboration in Supply Chain Management: Putting EDI to work | Download the corresponding slides. Abstract In the current era of global markets, increasing competition and changing customer demands, there is a growing awareness that the conventional ways of managing supply chains do not meet the requirements imposed by a dynamic environment. Therefore, strategies are required that allow industries to manage their supply chains in a more cost-efficient and effective way. These requirements do not only reflect the need for new forms of collaboration among suppliers and retailer within industries' value adding chains, but introduce information technology (IT) as a powerful enabler for turning these concepts into practice. In the following, the potentials of supplier-retailer collaboration (SRC) will be outlined regarding the opportunities of employing IT, and merely Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in various forms. Note: This article was originally published in April 1996. Today, the title would probably contain CPFR (Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment), because this is what the article is about, but this term did not exist at that time. Nevertheless, I think the content is still relevant, especially since it has a focus on business and processes, rather than technology. |
| The Future: Proceedings of the 19th IRIS | Proceedings of the 19th Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia, Göteborg, Sweden, in August 1996. Published as editor together with Bo Dahlbom, Fredrik Ljungberg, Urban Nuldén, Jan Stage and Carsten Sörensen. No download. |
| Strategies for Balancing the Competence-Gap | Paper for the ENTER94 conference in Innsbruck, Austria, Jan 94. Published in the proceedings of the conference. Abstract Information Systems are invading our lives and our society with a more and more accelerating speed, but a lot of systems do not fulfill the expectations focused on them. Many times the needs for rationality motivate investments in sophisticated technical solutions, developed by experts, without any consideration to the people that are going to use them. This situation leads to a gap between the existing and the required competence of individuals being part of the information systems. The more sophisticated technical systems we get, the more serious are the requirements for human competence to use them. This report discusses some aspects causing the competence-gap. and strategies to balance it, with a special focus on human issues in system development and implementation processes. |
| Towards a theoretical framework for Business Process Reengineering | MSc-thesis in Information Systems, in the report-series "Studies in the use of information technology", ISSN 1400-00-91. Written in May, 1994. Abstract Business Process Reengineering is the latest buzzword within the field of change management. The concept is supposed to enable radical improvments in several critical measures, such as costs, cycle-times aso., by organizing the corporation around value adding business processes, and supporting them with current IT. Despite the claims of the concept's advocates, several aspects of the approach appear to be conventional wisdom built on theories that have been existing for a long time, rather than revolutionary new thing. The thesis briefly describes the concept of BPR, and relates it to existing theories within the areas of organization theory, marketing, and informatics. |
| From Structure to Process | Paper for the ENTER95 conference in Innsbruck, Austria, Jan 95. Published in the proceedings of the conference, Springer Verlag, ISBN 3-211-82669-6. Abstract Organization design has for a long time been dominated by a functional perspective on organizations, considering them as hierarchies of authority and control. Current concepts, such as total quality (TQM, TQC) and reengineering (BPR) can be seen as an effort to overcome the traditional functional approach and to focus on the processes performed within the organization rather than on its structure. However, when looking at the results of total quality implementations and reengineering projects one can conclude, that the basic idea about organizations as being a structure rather than a set of processes is not actually replaced. Functional departments are replaced by teams, hierarchy levels are removed, but designing structures still appears to be the main emphasis of organization design. This paper is not primarily intended to provide proven research findings, but to present a vision of a process-based organization concept, considering the organization as being a set of dialectic, hierarchical, integrated processes, and to receive feedback on the feasibility of the concept. |
| Turning Bureaucracies into Process Networks | Paper for the BIS Strategic Decisions
Business Process Workflow Conference in Orlando, Florida, Feb 95. Abstract Even though the process approach to organization design gains increased popularity, there is still a lack of methodologies for managing the migration process from functional, hierarchical organizations to process networks. While current change management approaches, such as BPR, often emphasize an organizational redesign "from scratch", i.e. a total disregard of the current structure, combined with the design of a new, idealized organization, many organizations have considered this radical redesign as being inapplicable and require methodologies for managing a migration from bureaucratic structures to a dynamic, process based organizational form. This paper will discuss the challenge of turning bureaucracies into process networks, potential gains and pitfalls will be identified, and a methodology will be introduced. |
| Client not disclosed | IT & Organization in the military - necessary evil or opportunity This short paper briefly discusses the principles of organizational governance in military organizations and new forms of organizing by using information technology and (post-)modern organizational principles - intrapreneurship, autonomous teams, networks, etc. |
| Government investigation (in Swedish) |
The Swedisch government conducted a public investigation regarding the needs and requirements for a national IT-infrastructure. I have been participating in a hearing and written a short paper about acess requirements. |
| Corporate Computing / Computer Sweden (in Swedish) |
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| Short notes &
ideas (in Swedish) |
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