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Restructuring a business process (BP) model may enhance the BP performance and improve its understandability. So-far proposed restructuring methods use either refactoring which focuses on structural aspects, social network discovery which uses semantic information to guide the affiliation process during its analysis, or social network rediscovery which uses structural information to identify clusters of actors according to their relationships. The purpose of this paper is to propose a hybrid method that exploits both the semantic and structural aspects of a BP model.

The proposed method first generates a social network from the BP model. Second, it applies hierarchical clustering to determine the performers’ partitions; this step uses the social context which specifies features related to performers, and two new distances that account for semantic and structural information. Finally, it applies a set of behavioral and organizational restructuring rules adapted from the graph optimization domain; each rule uses the identified performers’ partitions and the business context to reduce particular quality metrics.

The efficiency of the proposed method is illustrated through well-established complexity metrics. The illustration is made through the development of a tool that fully supports the proposed method and proposes a strategy for the application of the restructuring rules.

The proposed method has the merit of combining the semantic and structural aspects of a Business Process Modeling Notation model to identify restructuring operations whose ordered application reduces the complexity of the initial model.

A major problem of business process modelling languages that primarily express the flow of activities is the limited support for actor modelling provided by rigid swimlane concepts. Thus, the aim of this work is to present a general approach for actor modelling in business processes that supports different layers of abstraction, thereby increasing the expressiveness and avoiding inaccuracy and redundancy.

The proposed actor modelling approach supports task-based assignment of actors and roles based on deontic logic and speech act theory. The semantics of the approach is formally specified based on abstract state machines.

The new approach for actor modelling is more expressive and provides the possibility to reduce the structural complexity of the process flow as shown by a case study and a comparison of an ordinary business process modelling approach using swimlanes and the actor modelling approach based on the workflow resource patterns. In particular, the evaluation showed that important patterns such as separation of duties and retain familiar are only supported by the actor modelling approach.

The research is to some degree in the context of the business process model and notation as a representative of a business process modelling language using swimlanes.

Different gradations concerning the extent to which actor modelling is supported make the new approach outstanding for modelling activities, actors, and constraints in an expressive and legible way.

Technological entrepreneurship concerns the transformation of potentially viable technological opportunities into successful businesses. Absorptive capacity is argued to be essential for this transformation, since it can facilitate the prediction of new technology trends and the assimilation and application of new knowledge to produce new commercial outputs. The investigation of the relationships between absorptive capacity, technological entrepreneurship and their impact on Guangdong technology firms' performance is the purpose of this study.

In this aim a positive causal chain from absorptive capacity to technological entrepreneurship and from this latter to performance is tested through a mediation analysis, which uses an ordinary least squares regression‐based path analytical framework for estimating indirect effects on a sample of 113 Guangdong technology‐based firms.

Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that greater absorptive capacity leads to greater technological entrepreneurship, which in turn leads to greater performance. Therefore evidence is provided about both the mediating role of technological entrepreneurship and the role of absorptive capacity as its antecedent in relation to Guangdong‐based technology firms' performance.

A relevant but somewhat neglected relationship is examined using an integrative model in the Guangdong context. Moreover the study uses direct measures of absorptive capacity as a capability and provides a firm‐level operationalization of technological entrepreneurship. In so doing it also adopts state‐of‐the‐art analysis techniques and highlights the relevance of investments in soft factors for Guangdong technology firms' path towards excellence.

Diagnosing pain and pain inflicting diseases are crucial issues in the health care of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The purpose of this paper is to delineate possible peculiarities in pain perception, characterizing a syndrome-specific spectrum of pain causing diseases as well as particular features of pain expression in Rett syndrome (RTT).

A selective review of the literature on pain, dolorous disorders and diseases, molecular aspects of pain transduction, pain perception, and expression of painful conditions in RTT was undertaken.

RTT causing mutations in the methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MECP2) have an impact on various endogenous molecules modulating pain transmission. Individuals with RTT are specifically prone to numerous pathological states which can cause pain. By thorough observation/application of proper tools, it is possible to recognize painful states in persons with RTT.

This paper imparts empirical/evidence-based data on pain perception/transmission, possible syndrome-specific causes of pain and pain expression/assessment in RTT, with the objective of promoting the quality of clinical practice in this crucial issue.

The low‐ and medium‐speed diesel engine design changes that have taken place to date, and are predicted to continue for the foreseeable future, present the marine diesel lubricant with a difficult environment which is expected to become more severe with respect to both wear and cleanliness performance, on account of increasing specific power output and wider use of lower grade residual fuels. This article describes in some detail the main in‐house laboratory rig and engine techniques and procedures which have been developed by the Authors' company for assessing the important aspect of wear control; it highlights the special techniques used during shipboard testing for determining cylinder liner and piston ring wear and shows that the results from field testing correlate with those obtained from the in‐house tests used to develop the latest generation of superior quality marine diesel lubricants.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new Lean metric named Overall Task Effectiveness (OTE), which can help analyst to define target task times and to identify the hidden losses that account for most of the recorded time of manual assembly activities.

An alternative classification structure of the losses is developed to divide them in two classes. In the first one the losses that are external to the project order are included, and in the other one those due to inefficiencies directly ascribable to the project order are considered. Starting from this classification structure of the losses, a novel Lean metric, inspired from the well-known Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), is developed to evaluate the effectiveness of a manual assembly task. A case study, which briefly explains the methodology and illustrates the capability of the corresponding metric, is provided.

This tool can be considered a suitable method to achieve simultaneously a dual purpose to establish time standards and to identify the hidden losses that account for most of the recorded time of manual assembly activities, estimating the impacts of potential corrective actions in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness.

OTE provides practitioners with an operative tool useful to highlight the points where the major inefficiencies take place in industries producing large complex items via manual assembly lines. Its practical application is demonstrated using a case study concerning a manufacturer of train wagons.

One distinctive, and contemporarily appealing, feature of OTE with respect to other analogous KPIs is that it provides a breakdown structure for process losses that simplifies the task of evaluating the current performances and, at the same time, individuates both the source of losses and the corresponding corrective actions.

Research on science communication in organizational contexts is scarce – even though many cases can be found where organizations from science and beyond communicate about science-related issues, or where organizational contexts have an impact on the communication of individual scientists and scientific organizations. Therefore, it is time for an “organizational turn” in science communication research, and for more scholarly emphasis on the specific cases that science-related communication in, from and about organizations presents. Such an approximation would benefit both science communication research and analyses of strategic and organizational communication.

This special issue of the “Journal of Communication Management” on “Communicating Science in Organizational Contexts” is a step in this direction: It compiles commentaries from leading scholars in the respective fields as well as research articles coming from various disciplines and conceptual as well as methodological paradigms. In the editorial, we assess overlaps between scholarship on science communication and strategic communication, respectively, based on a meta-analysis of journals in the field(s), develop a guiding heuristic for analyzing science communication in organizational settings, and introduce the contributions to the special issue.

The meta-analysis shows that overlaps between science communication research and scholarship on strategic communication are scarce. While organizations and their communication appear occasionally, and increasingly often, in science communication research, scholars of strategic communication only rarely analyze science communication.

The meta-analysis is limited to the publications of five scholarly journals over ten years. It still demonstrates the lack of research in the intersection of scholarship on science communication and strategic communication.

Scientific organizations are rapidly extending and professionalizing their strategic communication, and an increasing number of organizations beyond science communicate on science or science-related issues. Understanding science communication in organizational settings, therefore, is crucial for practitioners in both areas.

Analyzing science communication in organizational settings is of increasing importance – yet few studies exist that have done it, and the respective research fields devote not much attention to one another. The special issue is a first foray into this new, intersectional field.

Focusing on municipalities, this study aims to examine whether citizens’ engagement with local public administration activities on Facebook can have a positive effect on citizens’ trust.

Using data from 333 citizens and resorting to structural equation modelling, a conceptual model is tested.

The results show that communicating directly with citizens through social media can enhance the citizens’ involvement in social issues and their identification with their city council. The effect of citizen engagement on trust propensity is mediated by citizens’ identification with the city council and by citizens’ involvement in social issues.

The study provides a conceptual model that can be used by practitioners to improve practices that enhance citizen engagement and build trust in the local government. City councils should promote activities on social media that encourage identification and citizens’ involvement. Furthermore, the findings suggest that municipalities can increase trust by involving citizens in social issues.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the government social media phenomenon, highlighting and empirically testing the effect of citizen engagement on institutional trust. In doing so, a process to build citizens’ trust in their city council through social media is unpacked. The findings show that communicating directly with citizens through social media can enhance the citizens’ involvement in social issues and their identification with the city council. The important role of identification to build institutional trust is emphasized.

Interior design is a process which collaborates different approaches, strategies, methodologies and practices. This study is a social responsibility project which had been conducted under the supervision of the author and the authorities of The Educational Volunteers Foundation of Turkey (TEGV). The purpose of this project is to investigate how effective the integration of knowledge-based sessions and research-project development phases, while trying to increase students’ motivation. The project had been rejenerated twice, in 2014 and 2015 spring terms, during which the visual research method was photographing, computer modelling, interviews with authorities and children. In regard to the mission of the foundation, twenty-eight interior design students (in 2014 spring term) and seventeen students (in 2015 spring term) developed concept sheets, prepared design proposals, presented and submitted them to the authorities. This paper is a brief discussion and evaluation on the design process which may help to provide a base for similar social responsibility projects. Design proposals in the study may also help to identify new research questions such as whether/how changes in social, physical and cognitive concerns may influence the psychological reactions to educational activity centers and how such impacts may help enhance the affective quality in designs where necessary. In the project, each project team was asked to develop a concept map and to identify the most important words. It was recorded that all groups used “children” as the main keyword in their concept maps. Hence, the most frequently referred terms in the concept maps were grouped, analysed and interpreted, which can also be defined as the “concept map” of the project. Another concrete outcome of the study was the encouragement of students, they got involved in the design process equally. They were honoured by “TEGV social responsibility certificates” which supported their awareness and motivation to the design process as well.