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Assigning business process activities to agents (human or automated) for their performance or supervision is a critical issue in business process management. Role‐based approaches are commonly used to specify work assignment policies, with roles defined as collections of capabilities and privileges required to perform job functions. The purpose of this paper is to address the activity assignment problem through a competency‐based approach. In this context, an ontology‐based competency model is developed to assist in identifying the competencies that exist in an organization and the competencies required, by workflow activities and in performing a competency gap analysis as a prerequisite for domain‐specific user development through competency‐based training.

An approach for developing a business process activity assignment policy based on an ontology‐based competency model is presented. This model is also used to define domain‐specific training courses that enable users meet the competency requirements of process activities. In broad terms, the approach consists of the following steps: identification of the competencies required in order to perform the various activities involved in each business process and definition of roles based on these competencies; identification of the competencies acquired in the organization and assignment of users to roles; performance of competency gap analysis to identify the missing user competencies for role playing and identification of user development needs; and development of competency‐based training scenarios intended to fill the user competency gaps.

An experimental implementation of the ontology‐based competency model proposed in the banking domain provided a fine‐grained role structure that was based on the competencies required by business process activities, and a user‐to‐role assignment that closely matched the competencies required for role playing, and brought forward missing user competencies that pointed to required user training needs.

The proposed ontology‐based competency model fulfils the need for a sustained work assignment approach based on user roles. To this end, roles and users are defined as collections of required and acquired competencies, respectively. A novel approach based on ontology‐based competency ontologies was also developed to fill required but missing user competencies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways that history curriculum has worked to legitimise dispossession through narratives that elide questions of Indigenous sovereignty, and which construct and consolidate white settler identity and possession.

The paper uses two case studies to compare history education documentation and materials at key moments where dominant narratives of settler legitimacy were challenged in public discourse: (1) the post-war humanitarian agenda of fostering “international understanding” and; (2) the release and educational recommendations of the 1997 Bringing them Home Report.

The paper shows that in two moments where narratives of settler legitimacy were challenged in public discourse, the legitimacy of settler possession was reiterated in history curricula in various ways.

This research suggests that the prevailing constructivist framework for history education has not sufficiently challenged criticisms of the representation of Aboriginal history and the history of settler-colonialism in the history syllabus.

The paper introduces two case studies of history curriculum and shows how, in different but resonant ways, curricular reforms worked to bolster the liberal credentials of the settler state.

Simulation is a powerful analytical technique that plays a role in the development of managers′ problem‐solving and decision‐making skills as well as those skills related to effecting organisational change and dealing with the dynamics of organisational behaviour. An overview is presented of simulation in the health services setting. Two specific hospital simulation applications concerning the design of a same‐day surgery unit and the reallocation of beds among services are described. Each examines the impact on managerial skills and how simulation enhanced those skills. Finally, the implications of using simulation as a strategy for management development are discussed.

This study aims to explore the lived experiences of skilled racial minority migrant (SRMM) women who hold management positions in the White Icelandic labor market and to understand how gender, race, ethnicity and migrant status intersect to shape experiences of privilege and disadvantage.

In this paper phenomenological methodology was applied to analyze in-depth interviews with twelve SRMM women. Iceland provides rich context of high gender and social equality, but limited recognition of ethnic and racial differences.

SRMM women's self-efficacy and agency allowed them to source strength from their background and experiences of challenges. Through reframing they adopted a mindset of resilience and determination, proactively redefined the context, turned negatively stereotyped identities into positive assets and engaged strategically with barriers based on gender, language or migrant status. In contrast, the subtle and covert nature of racial prejudice in the context of the invisible norm of Whiteness felt impossible to address.

The study provides insight into the experiences of SRMM women who have attained upper- and middle-management positions. The findings illuminate the overt and covert barriers that the women experience on their career journey in the context of a White labor market that emphasizes egalitarianism and gender equality but does not engage with ethnic or racial prejudice. They highlight the role of self-efficacy and agency in deploying strategies to negotiate intersecting barriers and how that agency is disadvantaged by the invisible norm of Whiteness.

Overwork and overcrowding in some periods was an important issue for the out‐patient department of a local hospital in Chia‐Yi in Taiwan. The hospital administrators wanted to manage the patient flow effectively. Describes a study which focused on the utilization of doctors and staff in the out‐patient department, the time spent in the hospital by an out‐patient, and the length of the out‐patient queue. Explains how a computer simulation model was developed to study how changes in the appointment system, staffing policies and service units would affect the observed bottleneck. The results show that the waiting time was greatly reduced and the workload of the doctor was also reduced to a reasonable rate in the overwork and overcrowding periods.

The application of business process methods in the domain of disaster response management (DRM) is seen as promising approach due to the similarity of business processes and disaster response processes at the general structure and goals. But up to now only a few approaches were able to handle the special characteristics of the DRM domain. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify the existing approaches and analyze them for the discussion of general requirements for applying methods and tools from business process management to DRM.

A structured literature review covering a wide field of information system-related publications (conferences and journals) is used to identify and classify general requirements discussed as the state of the art.

The work in this paper resulted in a suitable classification of requirements for the development of process-oriented DRM approaches deduced from the existing work. This was used to outline and analyze the current research landscape of this topic and identify research gaps as well as existing limitations.

Although the review of the state of the art is based on a wide set of publication databases, there may exist relevant research papers which have not been taken into consideration.

The elaborated requirements provide value for both the research community and practitioners. They can be considered to develop new or improve existing DRM systems and, thus, to exploit the potentials of process-oriented IT in supporting DRM in the case of disaster.

The purpose of this paper is to present a business process reengineering (BPR) framework of process and data integration with patient journey as the basis for process evaluation and the improvement of patient-flow.

A BPR framework is developed using a mixed-method research design, which incorporated a case study to demonstrate a healthcare scenario with associated processes and data elements, using process models based on event-driven process chain methodology as well as patient and data models, based on unitary structuring technique. The framework includes key processes including patient booking and rebooking, and associated inputs, outputs, and control parameters. In this case, the framework is demonstrated through application to computed tomography (CT) services in a hospital to improve patient-flow, with numerical simulation of CT data collected over time.

The framework supports flexible patient scheduling and the associated planning of healthcare operations and logistics – this in turn helps to improve patient-flow. Furthermore, mathematical modelling and simulation precisely reveal the impact of booking and rebooking on the performance of the CT department.

This innovative framework has potential value for other services, within and beyond the hospital setting.

The proposed framework of process modelling, data, and patient journey addresses the lack of a holistic approach to monitoring and evaluating service performance in hospital settings. Patient journey modelling is an integral part of process and data models that can be implemented in an integrated system environment such as an enterprise resource planning system for real-time monitoring of patient-flow under dynamic conditions.

The purpose of this study is twofold: exploring new queue-based variables enabled by process mining and evaluating their impact on the accuracy of waiting time prediction. Such queue-based predictors that capture the current state of the emergency department (ED) may lead to a significant improvement in the accuracy of the prediction models.

Alongside the traditional variables influencing ED waiting time, the authors developed new queue-based predictors exploiting process mining. Process mining techniques allowed the authors to discover the actual patient-flow and derive information about the crowding level of the activities. The proposed predictors were evaluated using linear and nonlinear learning techniques. The authors used real data from an ED.

As expected, the main results show that integrating the set of predictors with queue-based variables significantly improves the accuracy of waiting time prediction. Specifically, mean square error values were reduced by about 22 and 23 per cent by applying linear and nonlinear learning techniques, respectively.

Accurate estimates of waiting time can enable the ED systems to prevent overcrowding e.g. improving the routing of patients in EDs and managing more efficiently the resources. Providing accurate waiting time information also can lead to decreased patients’ dissatisfaction and elopement.

The novelty of the study relies on the attempt to derive queue-based variables reporting the crowding level of the activities within the ED through process mining techniques. Such information is often unavailable or particularly difficult to extract automatically, due to the characteristics of ED processes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the principles of talent management (TM) can be leveraged to enhance an organization's knowledge management (KM) initiatives.

This paper critically reviews the literature pertaining to the emerging concept of TM and specifically that which focuses on “smart talent management” i.e. the fusion of TM and KM concepts. The authors offer insights as to how TM can benefit KM and then discuss these insights with a focus group of KM practitioners.

The fusion of the two concepts has so far only been considered by human resource scholars who have tended to examine how learnings from the field of KM can be leveraged to advance TM. The authors confront the issue in reverse and identify five KM concerns – identifying key knowledge workers, knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, developing knowledge competencies, and knowledge retention – which they argue can be advanced through the application of TM principles. Their focus group confirms that these KM concerns can benefit from the integration of TM principles, but some more than others.

The fusion of TM and KM has so far only been considered from a HR perspective. This paper examines the fusion of the two concepts from a KM perspective. Five specific KM concerns which can benefit from the integration of a TM approach are detailed and then validated by a focus group of KM practitioners.