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The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of research into the precedence of the maturity factors, or key turning points in business process maturity (BPM) implementation efforts. A key turning point is a component of BPM that stabilizes within an organization and leads to the next maturity level.

Several years of data from over 1,000 companies in the USA, Europe, China, and Brazil that have completed a BPM assessment are analyzed to identify which components of BPM stabilize, when and in what order. Different analysis methods are employed in order to identify global commonalities and differences.

The paper identifies key turning points from several different perspectives using several different approaches and develops some conclusions common to all methods used in this research.

The relationship between the components (dependencies) is only suggested but not statistically analyzed. Several data sets are also on the low end of sample size for the methods used and some parts of the research used ad hoc selection of companies of arbitrarily distributed companies into different groups.

The results can be useful for leaders and teams that are attempting the journey to process maturity. The guide‐posts, milestones, and measures can help answer the question “Where am I on this journey and what is next?”

A plethora of maturity models has emerged that claim to guide an organization through the process of building levels of maturity that lead to competitive advantage. To date, there has been a lack of quantitative studies documenting these road‐maps. The paper provides global, quantitative evidence of the critical maturity components associated at each level of maturity.

This paper analyses migrations at neighbourhood level in relation to the persistence of deprived neighbourhoods. The research is based on a sample of deprived neighbourhoods located in the inner-cities of Brussels and six Flemish cities. Their migration pattern was analysed and compared to a sample of middle-class neighbourhoods which are also located in the inner city. More than one million migration movements covering a period of 14 years (1986-1999) were analysed according to age, nationality and family composition. This was the first time that data of this kind were available for research in Belgium. The main findings hint at a migration pattern that perpetuates deprived neighbourhoods. Residents of these neighbourhoods move more often and over a shorter distance then their counterparts in the reference neighbourhoods. Residents of a deprived neighbourhood also tend to move to another deprived neighbourhood. A clear difference is noted between the Belgian population and migrant groups such as Moroccans and Turks. Groups that are weaker from a socio-economic perspective tend to stay much more within the circuit of deprived neighbour-hoods, hereby perpetuating their existence. We also noted that once their economic situation has improved, the strongest households move out of the neighbourhood, leaving the rest of the population ‘trapped‘ behind. The article closes with a set of policy recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to foster a common understanding of business process management (BPM) by proposing a set of ten principles that characterize BPM as a research domain and guide its successful use in organizational practice.

The identification and discussion of the principles reflects the viewpoint, which was informed by extant literature and focus groups, including 20 BPM experts from academia and practice.

The authors identify ten principles which represent a set of capabilities essential for mastering contemporary and future challenges in BPM. Their antonyms signify potential roadblocks and bad practices in BPM. The authors also identify a set of open research questions that can guide future BPM research.

The findings suggest several areas of research regarding each of the identified principles of good BPM. Also, the principles themselves should be systematically and empirically examined in future studies.

The findings allow practitioners to comprehensively scope their BPM initiatives and provide a general guidance for BPM implementation. Moreover, the principles may also serve to tackle contemporary issues in other management areas.

This is the first paper that distills principles of BPM in the sense of both good and bad practice recommendations. The value of the principles lies in providing normative advice to practitioners as well as in identifying open research areas for academia, thereby extending the reach and richness of BPM beyond its traditional frontiers.

Considers the growth and development of the temporary worker within the workforce and looks at the advantages and disadvantages this brings. Cites common characteristics found in this area and provides a brief case study. Covers the legal implications and the importance of employee classification under Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines. Briefly outlines new developments in this area.

While the business process management (BPM) literature highlights the significance of aligning employee appraisals and rewards practices with business processes, little is known about the realization. The purpose of this paper is to concretize the impact of process-oriented appraisals and rewards on business process performance and to provide empirical evidence on how organizations actually align their appraisals and rewards practices with BPM.

A mixed-method approach has been employed by combining survey results with case studies to offer first-hand evidence. Survey data have been used to quantify the real impact of process-oriented appraisals and rewards. Next, case studies with 10 organizations have allowed us to gain deeper insight into organizational practices for making appraisals and rewards more process-oriented.

The survey proves that process-oriented employee appraisals and rewards positively affect performance if different employee levels are involved. The case studies reveal similarities and differences in alignment efforts across organizations, based on pattern-matching and a multidimensional analysis, resulting in four alignment patterns.

The findings extend knowledge about appraisals and rewards within a business process context by providing a quantification and pattern refinement, which specifically advance a BPM-facilitating culture.

Managers and executives benefit from the recommendations for a gradual BPM adoption to improve the success of their business processes and their people-related practices.

The authors offer one of the first in-depth, cross-disciplinary studies that intend to bridge between the disciplines of BPM and human resource management (HRM).

The purpose of this paper is to design a model-based bilateral teleoperation method to improve the feedback force and velocity/position tracking for robotic-assisted tasks (such as palpation, etc.) under constant and/or varying time delay with environment dynamic property. Time delay existing in bilateral teleoperation easily destabilizes the system. Proper control strategies are able to make the system stable, but at the cost of compromised performance. Model-based bilateral teleoperation is designed to achieve enhanced performance of this time-delayed system, but an accurate model is required.

Viscoelastic model has been used to describe the robot tool-soft tissue interaction behavior. Kevin-Boltzmann (K-B) model is selected to model the soft tissue behavior due to its good accuracy, transient and linearity properties among several viscoelastic models. In this work, the K-B model is designed at the master side to generate a virtual environment of remote robotic tool-soft tissue interaction. In order to obtain improved performance, a self perturbing recursive least square (SPRLS) algorithm is developed to on-line update the necessary parameters of the environment with varying dynamics.

With fast and optimal on-line estimation of primary parameters of the K-B model, the reflected force of the model-based bilateral teleoperation at the master side is improved as well as the position/velocity tracking performance. This model-based design in the bilateral teleoperation avoids the stability issue caused by time delay in the communication channel since the exchanged information become position/velocity and estimated parameters of the used model. Even facing with big and varying time delay, the system keeps stably and enhanced tracking performance. Besides, the fast convergence of the SPRLS algorithm helps to track the time-varying dynamic of the environment, which satisfies the surgical applications as the soft tissue properties usually are not static.

The originality of this work lies in that an enhanced perception of bilateral teleoperation structure under constant/varying time delay that benefits robotic assisted tele-palpation (time varying environment dynamic) tasks is developed. With SPRLS algorithm to on-line estimate the main parameters of environment, the feedback perception of system can be enhanced with stable velocity/position tracking. The superior velocity/position and force tracking performance of the developed method makes it possible for future robotic-assisted tasks with long-distance communication.

Well-founded measurements are of high value because a better connection between business process management (BPM) and maturity models (MMs) improves an organization’s performance. Although MMs are appropriate tools for organizations to manage their business processes and, therefore, enjoy popularity, most of these models suffer from their foundation, validation and/or capability coverage. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue by providing metrics to measure and manage business processes.

A high-standard and multistaged procedure was followed to systematically develop and validate the measurement instrument involving international academics and practitioners across four continents. Different rounds were used for item identification, item selection, item revision, instrument preparation (pretest and pilot) and instrument application using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The instrument measures 4 main capability areas, 13 subareas and 62 items. The work explains how to conduct BPM assessments in a more theoretically sound way and reports on the instrument’s development to show high levels of construct validity, content validity and reliability.

The author provides a rigorous and more evidence-based instrument, facilitating the BPM discipline’s need of empirical research.

The author proposes parameters to configure the instrument.

Serving as a reference framework, the instrument strengthens BPM’s empirical and theoretical foundations. Since the instrument is free for scholars and practitioners, the author illustrates the research streams and business situations in which the instrument can be applied (in full or in part). This paper paves the way for transforming the instrument into an optimization MM with advice or improvement paths, bridging the gap between theory and practice.

While much research exists on methods and tools to support business processes, little research exists on the interrelationship with cultural and structural aspects. The purpose of this paper is to explore the chronological sequence in which culture and structure are important, as evidenced in 13 non-profit organisations that are changing towards a process-oriented way of working.

The authors use a positivist case study methodology with pattern-matching to falsify or confirm three theoretical perspectives that claim to explain the phenomena of organisational structure and culture, and their impact on business processes. The competing perspectives are: process lifecycle theories, organisational design theories and cultural and motivational theories.

The case studies cover six scenarios based on a recurrent sequence of changes and perceived outcome. The (theoretical and empirical) relationships between business processes, a process-oriented culture and a process-oriented structure are then combined in a process capability success model.

Although limited to the non-profit sector, the findings agree that the process lifecycle is insufficient. Cultural and motivational theories prevail over organisational design theories to explain and predict process success.

From the process capability success model, a roadmap for (un)successful business process management (BPM) is derived with best practices and advice on the sequence of process improvements.

While the relevance of culture and structure has been touched in research before, the aspect of chronological sequence and pattern-matching sheds new light on the topic. The case studies performed also help to evidence how important it is to believe in process-oriented developments for organisations that want to apply BPM.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the validity of Weller's b-ω flamelet model for practical swirl-stabilized combustion applications.

Swirl-stabilized premixed flame behavior is investigated utilizing an atmospheric combustor test rig. Swirl number of the flow is 0.74 with a cold flow Reynolds number of 19,400 based on the hydraulic diameter at the inlet pipe. Operating condition corresponds to an equivalence ratio of 0.7 at a thermal load of 20.4 kW. Reacting flow was seeded with TiO₂ particles, and velocity distribution at the center plane was measured utilizing particle image velocimetry. These results serve as a validation dataset for numerical simulations. An open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code library (OpenFOAM) is used for numerical computations. These unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) computations were performed at the same load condition corresponding to experimental data. Parallel numerical simulations were carried out on 128 processor cores. To resolve turbulence, Menter's k-ω shear stress transport model was utilized; flame behavior, on the other hand, was described by Weller's b-ω flamelet model. A block-structured all-hexahedral mesh was used.

It is observed that two counter-rotating vortices in the main recirculation zone are responsible for flame stabilization. Weak secondary recirculation zones are also present at the sides above the dump plane. Flame front location was inferred from Mie scattering images. Experimental findings show that the flame anchors both on the tip of the center body and also at the rim of the outlet pipe. Numerical simulations capture the complex interactions between the flame and the turbulent flow. These results qualitatively agree with the flame structure observed experimentally.

Swirl-stabilized combustion systems are used in many practical applications ranging from aeroengines to land-based power generation systems. There are implications regarding the understanding of these combustion systems.

Better understanding of combustion systems contributes to better performing turbine engines and reduced emissions with implications for the entire society.

The paper provides experimental insight into the application of a combustion model for a flame configuration of practical interest.

This study aims to explore the controllability of risk culture, identify and categorize risk culture controls used in firms and explore how industry and ownership structure affect the use of different risk culture controls.

This explorative study is based on 32 semi-structured interviews with 37 participants who are heads of risk management or top managers in German firms from different industries with different ownership structures.

Interviewees perceive risk culture to be largely controllable. The authors identify a wide spectrum of risk culture controls, ranging from leadership and motivational controls to risk competence controls; in each category, the authors find value-, symbol- and clan-based controls. Leadership controls were most extensively discussed by the interviewees. The use of risk culture controls varied based on industry and ownership structure.

Due to the explorative character of the approach, the authors cannot claim representativeness for the results. The study is limited to one point in time and to a German sample. The findings imply that companies should select risk culture controls according to their own context and that implementation requires support by the top and middle management.

The authors respond to the call for more organizational studies on risk management that consider cultural paradigms (Arena et al., 2010; Mikes, 2011; Power, 2009). The study systematically identifies risk culture controls used in corporate practice and categorizes them. It provides tentative evidence of the relevance of context-specific factors for the use of risk culture controls.