Resource Event Agent (REA) Framework

The work system method was developed to address a void in established systems analysis and design approaches. The goal was to provide a set of ideas and a method that business professionals might use with or without the help of consultants or IT professionals in order to evaluate a system from a business perspective, think about system improvements, and communicate about realities faced by new or improved information systems. Successive versions of the work system method were developed based on direct and indirect feedback from hundreds of MBA and EMBA students writing papers about systems in their own organizations. The underlying ideas have been presented at ICIS, AMCIS, IFIP, and SIGSAND conferences, and in articles in CAIS, CIO Insight, EJIS, IBM Systems Journal, Decision Support Systems, and IRMJ. Basic ideas about work systems have been incorporated into IS, systems analysis, and process improvement courses at many universities This tutorial discusses motivation and definition of the work system method, T-reliant work systems as core of the IS field, the work system framework, the work system life cycle model, the service value chain framework, work system principles, continuous design variables in analyzing systems, and the latest version of the work system method and current work to extend the work system method.

Companies model their business processes either for documentation, analysis, re-engineering or automation purposes; usually using normalized business process modeling languages such as EPC or BPMN. Although these models explain how the processes should be performed and by whom, they abstract away their business rationale ( i.e. what is offered and why). Business modeling aims to answer the latter and different frameworks have been proposed to express the process in terms of value-chains. Ensuring alignment between both of these views manually is error prone and labor intensive. In this paper, we present a novel approach to derive a value-chain -expressed in REA -from a business process model expressed in BPMN. At the heart of our approach and our main contribution lies a set of nine general business patterns we have defined and classified as structural and behavioral patterns.

Resources-Events-Agents (REA) is the best known theoretical accounting enterprise database model, while SAP is the dominant enterprise resource-planning system. The purpose of this paper is to investigate some of the relationships between the underlying data models in REA and SAP. The criteria of Dunn and McCarthy [J. Inf. Syst. (1997) 31] for differentiating accounting systems (database orientation, semantic orientation, and structuring orientation) are used to structure a summary of those relationships. Although it is found that there are substantial similarities, SAP does have some implementation compromises that generally keep it from being fully REA. These compromises are based on the use of accounting artifacts and other, often, implementation-specific compromises. In addition, there are emerging differences between the two. A comparison between REA and SAP is important for a number of reasons. First, the tie between SAP and REA provides SAP with a theoretic basis. Second, the existence of a relationship between REA and SAP provides an important basis for the coverage of REA in the curriculum. Third, the opening of a dialogue between SAP and REA could spur further development of both.

The infrastructure of a corporate enterprise information system is concerned with acquiring, transferring, converting, and selling economic resources such as cash, inventory, and supplies. Accounting systems with individual computerized modules-such as payroll, accounts payable and receivable, job

The REA model was first conceptualized in a paper for the 1982 The Accounting Review as a framework for building accounting systems in a shared data environment, both within enterprises and between enterprises. The modelís core feature was an object pattern consisting of two mirror-image constellations that represented semantically the input and output components of a business process. The REA acronym derives from that patternís structure, which consisted of economic Resources, economic Events, and economic Agents. Simultaneous with its research publication, REA began to be used as a framework for teaching accounting information systems (AIS), originally at Michigan State University and then gradually at other colleges and universities. In its extended form, the REA model integrates the teaching of accounting transaction structures, commitment and business policy specification, business process engineering, and enterprise value chain construction. As of 2003, REA modeling is used in a variety of AIS courses and featured in a variety of AIS textbooks, both in the United States and internationally.

Representation and formalization of value models and constellations do not only affect companies' strategies. Even within the process level, the contribution of activities to the value chain has to be obvious to enhance understanding. One important aspect to reach correspondence between the strategic value-oriented business model level and business process level is consistency in modeling. Therefore, the quality of value models to users' perception and perceived impact to business processes has become obvious. Therefore, the paper's contribution is to evaluate the perceived quality of two value models, i.e. e³value and the Resource Event Agent (REA) model to a consistent modeling. Based on an experiment, it is shown that both models show a high user understanding. Understanding is not only limited to business models, but also on business processes. In conclusion, the results contribute to an integration of value models in current enterprise models.

ABSTRACT: In this paper we propose REA ontology-based simulation models to facilitate firms' strategic planning processes. Managers often must assess complex business environments, changing competitive forces, and uncertain futures, and then make significant resource allocation decisions. Traditional quantitative planning and budgeting techniques often fail to consider nonlinear relationships, discontinuities, and uncertainty. Qualitative techniques can lack rigor and perpetuate biases. Using simulation modeling technology could specifically address those concerns, but there are few if any general simulation models of integrated business processes to support strategic planning processes. Basing simulation models for enterprise planning on the REA framework, an established enterprise domain ontology, would facilitate reuse of and learning from these models in a variety of business contexts. An ontology-based planning model would allow managers to assess the consequences of altern...

When an (accounting) database schema does not meet the requirements of a fmn, the schema must be changed. Such schema evolution can be considered as realizable via a sequence of operators. This research proceeds in the following three steps. First, we define a set of basic evolution schema operators and employ the evolution heuristics to guide the evolution process. Second, we explore how domain-specific knowledge can be used to guide the use of evolution operators to complete the evolution task. A well-known accounting data model is used here to guide the schema evolution process. Third, we discuss a tool built to implement the evolution operators, using the evolution heuristics and domain-specific knowledge.

Business models are economic models that describe the rationale of why organizations create and deliver value. These models focus on what organizations offer and why. Business process models capture business activities and the ways in which they are accomplished (i.e. their coordination). They explain who is involved in the activities, and how and when these activities should be performed. This paper discusses the alignment between business models and business process models. It proposes a novel systematic method for extracting a value chain (i.e. business model) expressed in the Resources, Events, Agents (REA) ontology from a business process model expressed in Business Process Model and Notation™. Our contribution is twofold: (1) from a theoretical standpoint we identified a set of structural and behavioural patterns that enable us to infer the corresponding REA value chain; (2) from a pragmatic perspective, our approach can be used to derive useful knowledge about the business process and serve as a starting point for business analysis.

Through a proof of concept in SWI-Prolog, this paper demonstrates a business transaction model by which the trading partners can derive their own, personal perspective from shared data. The demonstration is an innovative formalisation of the Resource-Event-Agent (REA) ontology as it allows for switching viewpoints in real-time between one trading-partner's perspective and that of a trading-partner with an opposing view (i.e., customer or supplier), or a trading-partner independent perspective (e.g. trusted third-party). The business transaction model is achieved by uniting REA with the Open-EDI Business Transaction Ontology (OeBTO). The resulting unified formalisation of the REA ontology (REA 2) also highlights implications for the future development of a) enterprise information systems (EIS) in the cloud, b) social-media-based EIS, c) blockchain EIS, and d) EIS interoperability across business paradigms. The EIS interoperability such as between traditional EIS (which typically uses a trading-partner perspective), and EIS for the collaborative economy (which typically uses a trading-partner independent perspective) is particularly highlighted as it becomes much more transparent than previously.

Recent Resource, Event, Agent (REA) research has focused on defining and theoretically justifying the ontology's contents. Here, we elaborate on more practical issues related to REA. First, we classify REA and its applications using ontology classification schemes and application frameworks. This analysis clarifies REA's application potential but also reveals weaknesses that may impede its operationalization. Next, we propose a new REA ontology specification that uses a Unified Modeling Language (UML) profile for graphically representing ontologies. This new specification is more complete and precise than previously available specifications, without compromising understandability. It can easily be transformed into a machine-readable representation for automatic processing, which is a prerequisite for the successful application of REA in business modeling, software engineering, knowledge representation, and interoperability creation. The paper ends with a proof of concept application in which a formal Ontology Web Language (OWL) specification of REA is fed into the Proté gé knowledge representation tool and subsequently used for the development of an enterprise schema.

The influence of information and communication technology (ICT) brings a shift from industrial economy to knowledge economy (k-economy). Schools and educational institutions are forced to follow the trend, aligned with their roles in educating and producing knowledgeable citizens. An integrated information system requires a good data modelling technique. REA (Resource-Event-Agent) data model is a solution for this situation, using semantic modelling and thus building value chain. This study intends to model the School Information System (SIS) using REA data modelling method, using a real case study to implement the model. Microsoft Access 2000 is used as both, the database and interface. It is not, at this stage, to compare with other techniques because this REA modelling is still under initial stage. The focus is more on the client server environment, and the next stage is to link the SIS to the Internet to take advantage of the REA semantic modelling.

Resources-Events-Agents (REA) accounting model in particular with events accounting as proposed by Sorter (1969). In fact, REA accounting, database accounting, and events accounting are very different. Because REA accounting has become a popular topic in AIS research, it is important to agree on exactly what is meant by certain ideas, both in concept and in historical origin. This article clarifies the intellectual heritage of the REA accounting model and highlights the differences between the terms events accounting, database accounting, semantically-modeled accounting, and REA accounting. It also discusses potentially productive directions for AIS research.

The influence of information and communication technology (ICT) brings a shift from industrial economy to knowledge economy (k-economy). Schools and educational institutions are forced to follow the trend, aligned with their roles in educating and producing knowledgeable citizens. An integrated information system requires a good data modelling technique. REA (Resource-Event-Agent) data model is a solution for this situation, using semantic modelling and thus building value chain. This study intends to model the School Information System (SIS) using REA data modelling method, using a real case study to implement the model. Microsoft Access 2000 is used as both, the database and interface. It is not, at this stage, to compare with other techniques because this REA modelling is still under initial stage. The focus is more on the client server environment, and the next stage is to link the SIS to the Internet to take advantage of the REA semantic modelling.

Conceptual modelling (CM) involves analysts working with domain experts to create a representation of a domain called a conceptual model. We address two issues in CM research. The first deals with the semantics that conceptual models convey. We propose guidelines for how analysts can reflect the semantics of a "role" in a conceptual model using the extended entity relationship (EER) method. Roles are important in organizations, but analysts have little guidance about how to model them. The second issue is the extent to which readers' prior familiarity with the domain shown in a model affects their understanding of the model. We conducted a laboratory study to determine how domain familiarity affects users' understanding of conceptual models that represent roles. Our results indicate that conceptual models developed in accordance with our guidelines show roles more clearly but that the benefit of doing so depends on model readers' familiarity with the modeled domain. In particular, our guidelines will be most useful when users have moderate knowledge of the domain shown in the model. When users are very familiar with the domain, the guidelines do not seem to have much benefit. However, when users have very little knowledge of the domain, the guidelines do help to a certain extent.

The aim of this work focused on the content of the subject "Enterprise Ontology". We present our ongoing work on analysing literature about enterprise ontology models. The provision of this analysis is on the one hand a summary of some previously published papers according to the topic and at the same time a precise differentiation can be documented between each work. Our contributions are twofold: first, we show how to find appropriate literature according to specific criteria and second, we answer special research questions which belong to "Enterprise Ontology". Moreover, the results of the different authors presented in this paper are innovative visions about creating and implementing tools or ontological models. 2 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization (Gruber, 1995). The ontology includes definitions of concepts and an indication of how concepts are interrelated which collectively impose a structure on the domain and constrain the possible interpretations of terms (Uschold, 1995). The ontology is used to improve communication between either humans or computers. In the concrete, the ontology is used to assist in communication between human agents, to achieve interoperability among computer systems, or to improve the process and/or quality of engineering software systems (Jasper and Uschold, 1999). The combination of the computer systems of an enterprise, their connections to each other and the related exchange of information can be seen as the Enterprise Architecture (EA) (Stelzer 2010; Hanschke 2009; Meyer and Birsöz, 2009; Rosauer et al., 2004; Feldschmid, 2009). Therefore, if the Enterprise Architecture is defined in an ontology, communication problems in EA related tasks can be reduced. Ontologies provide a tool for communication and for formalization. Concretely, stakeholders of an enterprise can share exact and common interpretations of the Enterprise Architecture and its components. Furthermore, systems interoperability can be improved. This fosters internal system integration

The influence of information and communication technology (ICT) brings a shift from industrial economy to knowledge economy (k-economy). Schools and educational institutions are forced to follow the trend, aligned with their roles in educating and producing knowledgeable citizens. An integrated information system requires a good data modelling technique. REA (Resource-Event-Agent) data model is a solution for this situation, using semantic modelling and thus building value chain. This study intends to model the School Information System (SIS) using REA data modelling method, using a real case study to implement the model. Microsoft Access 2000 is used as both, the database and interface. It is not, at this stage, to compare with other techniques because this REA modelling is still under initial stage. The focus is more on the client server environment, and the next stage is to link the SIS to the Internet to take advantage of the REA semantic modelling.

Business models are economic models that describe the rationale of why organizations create and deliver value. These models focus on what organizations offer and why. Business process models capture business activities and the ways in which they are accomplished (i.e. their coordination). They explain who is involved in the activities, and how and when these activities should be performed. This paper discusses the alignment between business models and business process models. It proposes a novel systematic method for extracting a value chain (i.e. business model) expressed in the Resources, Events, Agents (REA) ontology from a business process model expressed in Business Process Model and Notation™. Our contribution is twofold: (1) from a theoretical standpoint we identified a set of structural and behavioural patterns that enable us to infer the corresponding REA value chain; (2) from a pragmatic perspective, our approach can be used to derive useful knowledge about the business process and serve as a starting point for business analysis.

Autonomous agents are widely applied to automate interactions in robotics, e.g. for selling and purchasing goods on eBay, and in financial markets, e.g. in the form of quote machines and algorithmic traders. Current research investigates efficient economic mechanisms that fully automate the provisioning and usage processes of Gridbased services. On the one hand, consumers want to allocate resources on demand for their various applications, e.g. data sharing, stream processing, email, business applications and simulations. On the other hand, providers of Grid services want to govern business policies to meet their utilization and profit goals. The above-mentioned processes are not manually manageable, however, because decisions need to be taken within milliseconds. Therefore, such processes have to be automated to minimize human interactions. Hence, market mechanisms and strategic behavior play important roles when it comes to achieving automated and efficient allocation of Grid services. The paper begins by presenting a framework for automated bidding, providing a methodology for the design and implementation of configurable bidding strategies. Second, it presents a novel bidding strategy based on a reinforcement learning technique. This strategy is designed to automate the bid generation processes of consumers and providers in various market mechanisms. Third, the behavior and convergence of the strategy is evaluated in a centralized Continuous Double Auction and a decentralized on-line machine scheduling mechanism against selected benchmark bidding strategies.

REA (resources, events, agents) is an emerging mainstream ontology for the enterprise information architectures. However, the REA ontology is underspecified, which opens for the possibility of various interpretations of the concepts and for various incompatible modeling styles. This paper shows that introducing the concepts of ownership and other rights into the REA ontology enables creation of semantically precise application models.

Researchers in accounting data models proposed new accounting data models as a response to the drawbacks of double-entry bookkeeping. Two most prominent research results are: 'Grundrechnung' and the 'extended REA model'. These accounting data models have not been adopted in current ERP systems. ERP systems still consider double-entry bookkeeping as the accounting data model that provides data to support many other applications. Two questions are discussed in this paper. First, why are 'Grundrechnung' and the (extended) REA model not adopted in ERP data models? Second, what is the contribution of 'Grundrechnung' and REA model concepts for designing better ERP data models? The paper shows that some elements of of 'Grundrechnung' have been used implicitly in ERP data models, but that 'Grundrechnung' itself is not specific enough to deal with all complexities of an ERP system. Moreover, the requirement of data models being purpose-neutral has not been properly adopted in ERP. The extended REA model provides significant progress in the area of accounting 4 2. data models. However, also in the current REA model specific details still need further development before REA is fully suitable as foundation for an ERP data model. These details are described in the paper.

The influence of information and communication technology (ICT) brings a shift from industrial economy to knowledge economy (k-economy). Schools and educational institutions are forced to follow the trend, aligned with their roles in educating and producing knowledgeable citizens. An integrated information system requires a good data modelling technique. REA (Resource-Event-Agent) data model is a solution for this situation, using semantic modelling and thus building value chain. This study intends to model the School Information System (SIS) using REA data modelling method, using a real case study to implement the model. Microsoft Access 2000 is used as both, the database and interface. It is not, at this stage, to compare with other techniques because this REA modelling is still under initial stage. The focus is more on the client server environment, and the next stage is to link the SIS to the Internet to take advantage of the REA semantic modelling.

Service-oriented architectures are the upcoming business standard for realizing enterprise information systems, thus creating a need for analysis and design methods that are truly service-oriented. Most research on this topic so far takes a software engineering perspective. For a proper alignment between the business and the IT, a service perspective at the business level is needed as well. In this paper, definitions of "service" are analyzed, resulting in a set of models for the service concept. On the basis of this service architecture, a service design method is proposed and applied to a case from the literature. The design method capitalizes on existing value modeling approaches.

Business frameworks offer great opportunities of communication between people for working on the enterprise system engineering processes, as well as for eliciting services that the enterprise can offer in collaboration contexts. However, these kinds of frameworks, such as Resource-Event-Agent and Open-edi, recently unified in Open-edi Business Ontology (OeBTO), lack formal representations. This fact considerably limits their use in system development, particularly in model-driven development methods where the efficiency of transformations is of great importance. In this paper we suggest a formalization of OeBTO using OMG's standard Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR), as a method for creating a service-centric business model. This makes it possible to provide the necessary formal logic foundation to allow automatic processing of the business model and its transformation to a system-level service model. An example from the bank loan business sector is used to argument the application of the method.

Abstract. Business modelling can be used as a starting point for business analysis. The core of a business model is information about resources, events, agents, and their relations. The motivation of a business model can be found in the goals of an enterprise and those are made explicit in a goal model. This paper discusses the alignment of business models with goal models and proposes a method for constructing business models based on goal models. The method assists in the design of business models that conform to the explicit ...

Business frameworks offer great opportunities of communication between people for working on the enterprise system engineering processes, as well as for eliciting services that the enterprise can offer in collaboration contexts. However, these kinds of frameworks, such as Resource-Event-Agent and Open-edi, recently unified in Open-edi Business Ontology (OeBTO), lack formal representations. This fact considerably limits their use in system development, particularly in model-driven development methods where the efficiency of transformations is of great importance. In this paper we suggest a formalization of OeBTO using OMG's standard Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR), as a method for creating a service-centric business model. This makes it possible to provide the necessary formal logic foundation to allow automatic processing of the business model and its transformation to a system-level service model. An example from the bank loan business sector is used to argument the application of the method.

Companies model their business processes either for documentation, analysis, re-engineering or automation purposes; usually using normalized business process modeling languages such as EPC or BPMN. Although these models explain how the processes should be performed and by whom, they abstract away their business rationale (i.e. what is offered and why). Business modeling aims to answer the latter and different frameworks have been proposed to express the process in terms of value-chains. Ensuring alignment between both of these views manually is error prone and labor intensive. In this paper, we present a novel approach to derive a value-chain-expressed in REA-from a business process model expressed in BPMN. At the heart of our approach and our main contribution lies a set of nine general business patterns we have defined and classified as structural and behavioral patterns.

Common task during developing software applications in specific domains is to identify application objects and their behavior. In this paper, we illustrate that the application objects can be derived from ontological categories for the domain, and the behavior can be modeled as aspects that cross-cut the application objects. We further describe that categories of aspects can be identified for the domain, and the software applications can be developed by merely configuring the object and aspects categories.

Researchers in accounting data models proposed new accounting data models as a response to the drawbacks of double-entry bookkeeping. Two most prominent research results are: 'Grundrechnung' and the 'extended REA model'. These accounting data models have not been adopted in current ERP systems. ERP systems still consider double-entry bookkeeping as the accounting data model that provides data to support many other applications. Two questions are discussed in this paper. First, why are 'Grundrechnung' and the (extended) REA model not adopted in ERP data models? Second, what is the contribution of 'Grundrechnung' and REA model concepts for designing better ERP data models? The paper shows that some elements of of 'Grundrechnung' have been used implicitly in ERP data models, but that 'Grundrechnung' itself is not specific enough to deal with all complexities of an ERP system. Moreover, the requirement of data models being purpose-neutral has not been properly adopted in ERP. The extended REA model provides significant progress in the area of accounting 4 2. data models. However, also in the current REA model specific details still need further development before REA is fully suitable as foundation for an ERP data model. These details are described in the paper.

REA (resources, events, agents) is an emerging mainstream ontology for the enterprise information architectures. However, the REA ontology is underspecified, which opens for the possibility of various interpretations of the concepts and for various incompatible modeling styles. This paper shows that introducing the concepts of ownership and other rights into the REA ontology enables creation of semantically precise application models.

ABSTRACT: In this paper we propose REA ontology-based simulation models to facilitate firms' strategic planning processes. Managers often must assess complex business environments, changing competitive forces, and uncertain futures, and then make significant resource allocation decisions. Traditional quantitative planning and budgeting techniques often fail to consider nonlinear relationships, discontinuities, and uncertainty. Qualitative techniques can lack rigor and perpetuate biases. Using simulation modeling technology could specifically address those concerns, but there are few if any general simulation models of integrated business processes to support strategic planning processes. Basing simulation models for enterprise planning on the REA framework, an established enterprise domain ontology, would facilitate reuse of and learning from these models in a variety of business contexts. An ontology-based planning model would allow managers to assess the consequences of altern...

Due to the lack of understanding business processes, the goal of our research is a consistent modeling of business models and business processes. Consistency is necessary to visualize and enhance the contribution of business processes to the value chain. In respect to prior work of analyzing existing enterprise architectures, as well as the examination of existing business model representations, the paper presents the development and basic features of a reference model. Its goal is to provide a consistent modeling of businessand business process models. The reference model addresses an improved business processes management (BPM). Improvement lies in the value contextualization of business processes to show the contribution of business processes to the business models’ goals. Finally, the designed reference model builds the foundation of a further evaluation.

Abstract. Business modelling can be used as a starting point for business analysis. The core of a business model is information about resources, events, agents, and their relations. The motivation of a business model can be found in the goals of an enterprise and those are made explicit in a goal model. This paper discusses the alignment of business models with goal models and proposes a method for constructing business models based on goal models. The method assists in the design of business models that conform to the explicit ...

Through a proof of concept in SWI-Prolog, this paper demonstrates a business transaction model by which the trading partners can derive their own, personal perspective from shared data. The demonstration is an innovative formalisation of the Resource-Event-Agent (REA) ontology as it allows for switching viewpoints in real-time between one trading-partner's perspective and that of a trading-partner with an opposing view (i.e., customer or supplier), or a trading-partner independent perspective (e.g. trusted third-party). The business transaction model is achieved by uniting REA with the Open-EDI Business Transaction Ontology (OeBTO). The resulting unified formalisation of the REA ontology (REA 2) also highlights implications for the future development of a) enterprise information systems (EIS) in the cloud, b) social-media-based EIS, c) blockchain EIS, and d) EIS interoperability across business paradigms. The EIS interoperability such as between traditional EIS (which typically uses a trading-partner perspective), and EIS for the collaborative economy (which typically uses a trading-partner independent perspective) is particularly highlighted as it becomes much more transparent than previously.

Revenue Information System (RiS) is the product of a research project based on a case study on direct-selling sales point. This study is to determine the resources, events, and agents for Resource-Event-Agent (REA) data model as a technique of specifying and designing accounting information system and also to develop a system prototype based on the REA model. RiS is built based on the REA data model since it captures only essential aspects of economic phenomena. The idea is to build an information system application that supports business process in real-time and the REA data model is chosen to ease the understanding of the database. In this paper, the researchers described the approach and process in planning and performing the project transformation and conversion from the legacy information systems to the new updated information system. The researchers applied the REA model approach and process into a real case study of sales order and cash receipt systems. The result shows that ...

This work furthers the work in Transaction Agent Modelling (TrAM) by merging its conceptual catalogue based on the REA (Resources-Events-Agents) accounting model with Sowa's 1984 conceptual catalogue. The merged catalogue features in a preliminary implementation of TrAM using the Amine software tool, which also offers the model-checking support that is core to TrAM. This automated process demonstrates how Conceptual Graphs (CG) might lucidly interrelate the divergent conceptual catalogues of the myriad domains in which contemporary enterprise systems operate.

Digital forensics investigators face a constant challenge in keeping track with evolving technologies such as smartphones. Analyzing the contents of these devices to infer useful information is becoming more time consuming as the volume and complexity of data are increasing. Typically, such analysis is undertaken by a human, which makes it dependent on the experience of the investigator. To overcome such impediments, an automated technique can be utilized in order to aid the investigator to quickly and efficiently analyze the data. In this paper, we propose F-DOS; a set of ontologies that models the smartphone content for the purpose of forensic analysis. F-DOS can form a knowledge management component in a forensic analysis system. Its importance lies in its ability to encode the semantics of the smartphone content using concepts and their relationships that are modeled by F-DOS.

This paper presents the results of the controlled experiment that we have conducted in order to evaluate an approach to automated design of the initial conceptual database model based on the collaborative business process model. The source business process model is represented by BPMN, while the target conceptual model is represented by UML class diagram. The results of the experiment imply that the approach enables generation of the target conceptual model with a high percentage of completeness (>85%) and precision (>85%), which confirms the results of the initial case-study based evaluation.

Through a proof of concept in SWI-Prolog, this paper demonstrates a business transaction model by which the trading partners can derive their own, personal perspective from shared data. The demonstration is an innovative formalisation of the Resource-Event-Agent (REA) ontology as it allows for switching viewpoints in real-time between one trading-partner’s perspective and that of a trading-partner with an opposing view (i.e. customer or supplier), or a trading-partner independent perspective (e.g. trusted third-party). The business transaction model is achieved by uniting REA with the Open-EDI Business Transaction Ontology (OeBTO). The resulting unified formalisation of the REA ontology (REA2) also highlights implications for the future development of a) enterprise information systems (EIS) in the cloud, b) social-mediabased EIS, c) blockchain EIS, and d) EIS interoperability across business paradigms. The EIS interoperability such as between traditional EIS (which typically uses a ...

This study develops a multilevel conceptual model linking employment relationships and psychological empowerment with individual innovation. To test this model, we use survey data on 82 job functions and 934 employees from a large Flemish service organization. The results highlight the role of variables at the job-level. The first job-level context variable concerns employment relationships. The findings show that employment relationships with high job requirements and/or offered inducements affect psychological empowerment, which in turn is related to individual innovation. The second job-level context variable concerns job complexity. The findings show that job complexity operates as a cross-level moderator of the link between psychological empowerment and individual innovation. These findingsunderscore recent claims that multilevel linkages and the job-level context matter in explaining individual innovation in service organizations.

This paper presents two ‘building block’ patterns for constructing conceptual data models for enterprises. These patterns compose a structuring framework for positioning existing conceptual data modeling patterns, facilitating their use and integration in models. The first ‘building block’ pattern is based on the REA enterprise ontology and captures common concepts of enterprise reality. The second pattern is based on the UFO foundational ontology and captures common abstraction mechanisms used in conceptual data modeling. The paper demonstrates the use of the proposed patterns by analyzing a catalogue of conceptual data modeling patterns, which presents a digest of patterns frequently observed in practice. The paper also illustrates how the proposed patterns can guide modelers in integrating patterns from this catalogue in conceptual data models for enterprises.

This paper discusses student satisfaction and course experiences of first year undergraduate students in an introductory financial accounting course where team learning was implemented during tutorials. Course experiences and satisfaction, as perceived by students in the team learning condition were compared to those in a traditional lecture-based control condition. A post-experimental questionnaire, with open and closed-ended questions, was administered. Students reported significantly higher levels of satisfaction in the team learning condition and a more positive course experience compared to students in the lecture-based condition. The increased time-spent on accounting in the team learning condition resulted in increased learning as evidences by higher grades on the final exam in the team learning condition. An analysis of open-ended questions revealed that both learning conditions fit for particular students. High pre-class preparation was considered a strength of the team lea...

Digital forensics investigators face a constant challenge in keeping track with evolving technologies such as smartphones. Analyzing the contents of these devices to infer useful information is becoming more time consuming as the volume and complexity of data are increasing. Typically, such analysis is undertaken by a human, which makes it dependent on the experience of the investigator. To overcome such impediments, an automated technique can be utilized in order to aid the investigator to quickly and efficiently analyze the data. In this paper, we propose F-DOS; a set of ontologies that models the smartphone content for the purpose of forensic analysis. F-DOS can form a knowledge management component in a forensic analysis system. Its importance lies in its ability to encode the semantics of the smartphone content using concepts and their relationships that are modeled by F-DOS.

This paper presents the results of the controlled experiment that we have conducted in order to evaluate an approach to automated design of the initial conceptual database model based on the collaborative business process model. The source business process model is represented by BPMN, while the target conceptual model is represented by UML class diagram. The results of the experiment imply that the approach enables generation of the target conceptual model with a high percentage of completeness (>85%) and precision (>85%), which confirms the results of the initial case-study based evaluation.

Researchers in accounting data models proposed new accounting data models as a response to the drawbacks of double-entry bookkeeping. Two most prominent research results are: 'Grundrechnung' and the 'extended REA model'. These accounting data models have not been adopted in current ERP systems. ERP systems still consider double-entry bookkeeping as the accounting data model that provides data to support many other applications. Two questions are discussed in this paper. First, why are 'Grundrechnung' and the (extended) REA model not adopted in ERP data models? Second, what is the contribution of 'Grundrechnung' and REA model concepts for designing better ERP data models? The paper shows that some elements of of 'Grundrechnung' have been used implicitly in ERP data models, but that 'Grundrechnung' itself is not specific enough to deal with all complexities of an ERP system. Moreover, the requirement of data models being purpose-neutral has not been properly adopted in ERP. The extended REA model provides significant progress in the area of accounting 4 2. data models. However, also in the current REA model specific details still need further development before REA is fully suitable as foundation for an ERP data model. These details are described in the paper.