Search results

The paper presents the implementation and classification of archival records according to business processes, a new field with many organizational and archival challenges. The purpose of the paper is to map the current situation, challenges, problems and topics for further investigation.

The paper is based on a wide benchmark study on information management in governmental agencies, municipalities and regions/country councils in Sweden.

There are many general similarities with process projects regarding management initiatives and roles. There is also a need for alignment between the business organizations, the business processes, and the archival descriptions. Unresolved issues occur in modeling, e.g. from whose perspective should the processes be described and on which level is the mapping useful. The business organizations require detail in order to analyze flaws improvements, while archivists ask for a static “frozen” description at higher levels. This may contradict the purpose of the archive – to provide useful information for the unknown future user.

Process based archival descriptions is a new field that broadens business process management. Projects are starting in several countries with challenges in the interaction between the business organizations and the archivists.

The purpose of this paper is to look at process initiatives in the Swedish social insurance administration, focusing on the problems of crossing functional boundaries, co‐ordinating processes over inter‐organisational boundaries and the issue of whether to aim for radical or incremental change.

The survey involved data collection including a study of internal documents and 16 individual personal interviews.

The organisation experiences collaboration problems when cross‐functional work and processes collide with the traditional and hierarchical command and control structures. These are not easily dismantled, meaning intensive work to change the culture and break functional mind‐sets. Furthermore the administration struggles with and can benefit from co‐ordination of processes over the inter‐organisational boundaries. Changes in the customer front‐line affect the rest of the organisation and its processes. The study has shown that both functional units and support processes deep inside the organisation, like the systems development process, are affected, and that deficiencies in the underlying structure and organisation are revealed. The process efforts so far are scattered, but it may be more important for organisations to deploy process change, as a continuous strategic initiative, rather than embarking on huge radical redesign programmes.

Little information regarding processes and the public sector exists, and problems likely to be encountered by other public organisations are pointed out. The survey also puts light on support processes – not only business processes – required for e‐government.

Evasive entrepreneurs innovate by circumventing or disrupting existing formal institutional frameworks. Since such evasions rarely go unnoticed, they usually lead to responses from lawmakers and regulators. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors introduce a conceptual model to illustrate and map the interdependencey between evasive entrepreneurship and the regulatory response it provokes. The authors apply this framework to the case of the file sharing platform The Pirate Bay, a venture with a number of clearly innovative and evasive features.

The platform was a radical, widely applied innovation that transformed the internet landscape, yet its founders became convicted criminals because of it.

Applying the evasive entrepreneurship framework to this case improves the understanding of the relationship between policymaking and entrepreneurship in the digital age, and is a first step toward exploring best responses for regulators facing evasive entrepreneurship.