This paper describes a design-based research study in which an online platform for teachers was designed and implemented over 3 years. The study uses a networked learning approach to support teachers in the transition from university into service. It addresses the question of how online communities of teachers can support the development of situational knowledge. The paper describes the potential and the challenges of designing and implementing learning networks for teachers. A major challenge identified is the need for design that supports trust and stability within large networks. Significant potential is identified through the reuse of knowledge and greater collegiality within the profession. The platform, TeachConnect, was developed as a collaboration between academics at eight Australian universities, to create a platform to support teachers across the boundary from preservice into the profession. The study presents results from design and implementation, and includes site usage statistics and coding of types of support present within the platform. The paper contributes design principles for online communities of teachers and raises theoretical questions about future online communities.

The workplace as we know it is undergoing profound change and the operational support mechanisms necessary to facilitate work activities are evolving along a number of distinct dimensions. An increasing number of these activities are inherently collaborative in nature yet we lack a fundamental understanding of the nature of the characteristics of the work that needs to be supported. The focus of this paper is to build an understanding of the key aspects of collaboration that are relevant to the operation of future work systems. This investigation aims to identify the fundamental dimensions underpinning multiparty work activities and to lay the foundations for a coordinative theory for managing flexible work – through IT artifacts and platforms that support the provisioning, facilitation and monitoring of collaborative activities involving the coordination of distributed and heterogeneous labour sources.

Financial service providers continually struggle to attract and maintain customer interest in their company-hosted virtual communities. These are expected to improve the low level of individual involvement and emotional attachment to financial products and services. Based on Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory, we argue that the content and type of user interaction associated with a created environment influences the level of user issue involvement, which embodies the user’s interest in and valuation of the content associated with a virtual community. In particular we examine whether the range of topics, types of contribution and responsiveness of interactions are contributors to the overall level of interest of users in virtual financial communities. Our results, derived from an inductive content analysis based on 8,855 posts from 1,447 users across three virtual financial communities, show that specific topics discussed in a virtual community can have a significant positive influence on a user’s overall topic interest. Moreover, a significant positive relationship was found between the type of contribution (e.g., questions, statements or answers) and the extent of a user’s topic interest. Furthermore, our results reveal that the timeliness of responses influences a users topic interest in a positive way. However, the overall number of responses related to a specific topic does not play a significant role in any of the communities analysed. This research contributes to a better understanding of virtual communities in the service industry and provides evidence of the importance of content as key driver for user involvement.

The abundance of decentralized, yet organized online communities hasve fundamentally changed the way business operates. These firms are often defined as being part of the “sharing economy” or “collaborative consumption”. Academic literature has heralded the disruptive power and profitability of these firms, however, existing business pedagogy fails to keep up with the change. For example, most descriptions of the business model retain a firm-to-customer dynamic. While traditional firms retain this model, collaborative consumption businesses are peer-to-peer networks and adopt community structures more similar to traditional online communities than traditional, pre-internet firms or those using pre-internet logic. With the dominant logic shift, the authors seek to redesign the business model as a community network; based on predetermined knowledge found in business model and online community literature With this shift of companies to communities, the authors call upon literature from design management, business model innovation and prototyping to redesign the business model. The result of this process is a design innovation tool, which frames the collaborative consumption business model as a three-tiered model. The business model retains little hierarchy compared to previous models, where all members are actors in a wide network.

This chapter contains sections titled: 7.1 Exception handling patterns, 7.2 Service interaction and correlation patterns, 7.3 Flexibility patterns, 7.4 Change patterns and change support features, 7.5 Scientific workflow patterns, 7.6 Workflow time patterns, 7.7 Workflow activity patterns, 7.8 Endword

Previous research in the area of business models has focused on their use in the context of an individual organization and has failed to incorporate considerations associated with a network of business partners in a candidate business model. Building on existing literature, this paper reports on an ongoing work which investigates the challenges associated with designing business models for wider business operation scenarios, commonly known as business networks, where there is a need to foresee and manage critical decision-making points. The research methodology combines literature review and interactive research including insights derived from participant discussions in a research workshop. The documented data captured during the workshop was used as an input for further refinement of the initial networked business model design constructs. The result is a conceptual framework that provides a set of interrelated design elements for business models in network environments. The design elements are the decision points for an organization where its networked operation has to be configured, operated, optimized and dynamically reconfigured. The framework was validated through a case study in the oil and gas industry with the aim of improving operational planning among business partners. This work is supported in part by ARC Linkage Grant LP140101062 (Transforming Banking Service Delivery Through Connected Communities) and ARC Discovery Grant DP140103788

This chapter contains sections titled: 2.1 Fundamental concepts, 2.2 Objectives of business process modeling, 2.3 History of process modeling, 2.4 Overview of popular techniques, 2.5 Analysis of process models, 2.6 Further reading

The notion of Connected Communities is evolving from widespread use of social media and networks and represents an emerging paradigm for online connectivity, collaboration and information usage where the basis of interaction is between individual human participants with shared motives in a specific context. Traditional BPM practices operate on the basis of a common frame of reference with regard to overall business strategy and the constituent activities, and makes similar assumptions with respect to human participants in those processes. This paper reviews the implications of digital connectedness between human actors in a process-oriented context, surveys potential community archetypes and outlines core characteristics of connected communities and their significance in a broader BPM context.

Online communities have fundamentally changed how humans connected and are now so common they are fundamental to the human experience. As the Internet developed for Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, the functionality of these communities has far exceeded initial expectations. These communities have shifted from simply places to share information to ways to access products and services that bridge the online and offline worlds. This shift has led to the disruption of many industries with the transportation industry being one such sector. Both private transport providers and public transport systems face competition from online communities who are able to link services providers and customers more effectively and innovatively. These types of communities fall under what has been popularised as collaborative consumption or the sharing economy. The aim of this study is to explore the role of Design-led Innovation in the creation of digital futures, specifically online connected communities for successful new mobility solutions. To explore this proposition multiple data collection methods are proposed;Content Analysis, ii) A Comparative Qualitative Study consisting of Qualitative Interviews and Focus Groups / Design Workshops and iii) An Action Research Cycle of Embedded Practice. The multidisciplinary nature of this study grounds this research in a novel position contributing to new knowledge in both the field of design, and also a deeper understanding of the larger fast-growing online community phenomena.