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On the ontological expressiveness of conceptual modeling grammars for service productivity management

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Abstract

Conceptualizing, analyzing, and optimizing service productivity is imperative to build up and to sustain competitive advantage in today’s global service economy. However, service productivity is yet to be thoroughly conceptualized and supported by IT artifacts so as to design, compute, and interpret meaningful productivity models. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the ontological expressiveness of conceptual modeling grammars for service productivity management. Due to a lack of a complete ontology for service productivity management, we compile evaluation criteria by reviewing authoritative theory. Against these criteria, a selection of conceptual modeling grammars is analyzed by reviewing the grammars’ meta models for completeness. The analysis contributes two major insights. First, theory in productivity management appears equivocal and is too unspecific to guide the design of IT artifacts. Second, conceptual modeling grammars are subject to various ontological deficiencies with respect to service productivity management. Two core implications are identified. First, service productivity theories need to be refined as design theories in order to comprehensively inform the design of IT artifacts. Second, conceptual modeling grammars must be extended and aligned with each other.

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Acknowledgments

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funded this work in the scope of the research project ServDEA, promotion sign 01FL10015. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the project management agency German Aerospace Center (PT-DLR). Furthermore, we wish to thank the reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments to the final article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS), University of Muenster, Leonardo-Campus 3, 48149, Muenster, Germany

    Jörg Becker, Daniel Beverungen & Hans Peter Rauer

  2. Institute for Business Economics and Information Systems, University of Hildesheim, Marienburger Platz 22, 31141, Hildesheim, Germany

    Ralf Knackstedt

  3. Best Practice Consulting AG, Grevener Straße 89, 48159, Muenster, Germany

    Daniel Sigge

Authors
  1. Jörg Becker
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  2. Daniel Beverungen
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  3. Ralf Knackstedt
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  4. Hans Peter Rauer
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  5. Daniel Sigge
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hans Peter Rauer.

Additional information

A previous version of this paper is published as: Becker, J.; Beverungen, D.; Knackstedt, R.; Rauer, H.; Sigge, D.: Service Productivity Management—Status Quo and Directions for the Design of Conceptual Modeling Grammars. In: Proceedings of the 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-45). Maui, HI, USA, 2012.

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Becker, J., Beverungen, D., Knackstedt, R. et al. On the ontological expressiveness of conceptual modeling grammars for service productivity management. Inf Syst E-Bus Manage 12, 337–365 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-013-0219-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-013-0219-y

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