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Information Systems (IS) have long become leading enablers of organisational transformation and operational improvements, extensively helping in managing and improving end-to-end business processes through use of advanced and evolving technologies. As organisations relentlessly moved towards Business-to-Business (B2B), integrating processes both internally and with partners became a heavily researched subject. One notable B2B solution is the Inter- Organisational Information System (IOIS). IOIS is a logical IS, shared amongst business partners, whereby their exchange of information and the trust it requires, are rationalised in order to allow business processes to flow as if they were within the same organisation. IOIS has been widely endorsed by businesses due to its efficiency and reliance mostly on existing infrastructure. As B2B relationships grew in size and complexity, and as the market shifted from static partnerships to dynamic relationships where associations are no longer permanent, IOIS also grew in complexity. Besides the need for agility, the increase in efficiency and security requirements engendered the proposition of Inter-Organisational Middleware System (IOMS) as a specific integration component inside IOIS. IOMS is responsible for the technical bridging between various heterogeneous systems, effectively allowing information to cross organisational frontiers. Beyond its technical contribution, IOMS has remarkably grown into proactively managing parts of business processes that flow through it, adding more efficiency through tasks like data validation, information management, and reporting. While the technical aspects of IOMS are well accepted, organisations still tend to lack acknowledgement of its importance as a core business system. This has led to failure to allocate proper resources and strategies for the management of IOMS processes, culminating in the generation of the problem of legacy processes for a relatively new concept. When these legacy processes can no longer be managed and updated using standard or vendor tools and methods, they become effectively Unupgradable. An Unupgradable Legacy Process (ULP) in IOMS is notoriously difficult to manage or reengineer, and it requires extensive and costly resources just to remain functional. The situation becomes more exasperating when multiple ULPs are entwined. The topic of ULPs in IOMS is increasingly identifiable in practice, and has been witnessed by the researcher throughout the fourteen years of involvement in over eight hundred IOIS and IOMS implementation projects. Through the numerous roles held in these projects, diverse lenses were developed to observe different facets of the ULP problem, which culminated in the realisation that the problem needs to be investigated in a structured, rigorous, academic way. However, the subject is yet to attract significant research interest, and this can be attributed not only to the recency of the IOMS domain, but also to the combined technical, practical, and business process knowledge required from the researcher. This is a classic problem of interest divergence between academics and professionals, and while bridging such a gap is a well-documented challenge, methodologies like Action Research (AR) and Design Science Research (DSR) have long been hailed as fitting for addressing such issues. Borrowing from the two approaches, the research proposes the Insider Action Design Research (IADR) methodology as an approach for practitioners to conduct research in a manner pertinent to their practical organisational problems. IADR is multi-methodological by design, and enables the creation and evaluation of relevant artefacts through actionning multiple feedback-based cycles of observation, theory building, experimentation, system design, and implementation. Using IADR to guide its course, the research aims to answer the question of how organisations can approach upgrading ULPs in their IOMS in a standardised way. The research has three overarching goals: (1) assimilate existing knowledge and address the gaps; (2) propose solutions to contain the creation of ULPs in IOMS; and (3) put forward mechanisms to address existing ULPs in IOMS. Apart from the proposition of IADR, the aim of the research is to (1) investigate and comprehend concepts around business integration and how to enable it, (2) understand, define, and delimit the domain of IOMS and its ULPs, (3) evaluate the impact of existing project management methods on process change in IOMS, (4) study what constitutes a successful change in organisational context, (5) propose an IOMS-specific framework for governing process change in IOMS, (6) design IOMS-tailored architectural pattern and architecture for managing processes and technologies, (7) propose a set of roadmaps for upgrading ULPs in IOMS, (8) implement various research artefacts in real-case scenarios, and (9) rigorously evaluate outcomes both from academic and industrial aspects. The evaluation process is based on Hevner et al.’s methodology for assessing DSR artefacts, and includes the collective application of multiple complementary evaluation methods, supported by a continuous and prompt return of feedback into IADR cycles. While each research artefact is promoted as independent and individually implementable, their interweaving nature is reflected in the fact they are holistically conceived and implemented, and simultaneously evaluated. The implementation, and evaluation of these artefacts were executed in the context of two large international organisations with complex IOMS, large B2B capabilities, and significant IOIS investments. Research findings were published and presented in renowned conferences for further feedback, culminating in the publication of eleven papers. |
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