Abstract

Georgios Koutsopoulos
Georgios Koutsopoulos

The ongoing digital transformation of modern society results in dynamic environments that present changes, opportunities and threats for modern organizations. This is a driving force for constant organizational change and evolution, a situation that is associated with change in organizational capabilities. Capability design and analysis can be supported by Information Systems, whose design can be facilitated by Enterprise Modeling, and in particular, capability modeling. Several approaches exist for modeling capabilities; however, there can be improvements regarding capability change by modeling the necessary elements for depicting not only organizational capabilities in motion, but also the motivation for change.

The objective of this thesis is to set the basis for the provision of methodological and tool support for organizations whose capabilities are undergoing or need to undergo changes.

This thesis project follows the Design Science Research paradigm to proceed with the development of a method artifact. Initially, during the problem explication step, a literature review was performed that was followed by an analysis of the capability meta-models that exist in the literature, based on the introduction of a classification framework that facilitated the mapping of meta-model concepts to specific change functions. This activity resulted in the development of function-specific concept sets that were visualized and presented as concept maps. In addition, information for capability change was derived from the literature review, along with insight on the dimensions of capability and change, which was introduced as a new capability typology, structured and presented in a StateMachine diagram.

This information was used in the second step of the process, which concerns the elicitation of requirements for a meta-model, which is the main component of the method artifact, an activity that combined information from a case study conducted in a Swedish public healthcare organization, whose capabilities are undergoing changes. The combined sources resulted in a goal model, depicting the artifact goals.

Finally, moving to the artifact development step, a meta-model for capability change was developed. The thesis contributes by establishing the basis for the development of a method with the purpose of setting the basis for the development of a method and tool for supporting changing organizations.