6th Enterprise Engineering Working Conference (EEWC 2016)

May 30 – June 3, 2016 – Funchal, Madeira Island, Portugal

Modern enterprises face a strong pressure to increase agility and competitiveness, to operate on the global market, and to engage in manifold alliances. However, many strategic initiatives in enterprises fail, meaning that enterprises are unable to gain success from their strategy. One of the identified reasons for such failures is the lack of coherence and consistency among the various components of an enterprise. At the same time, the need to operate as a unified and integrated whole is becoming increasingly important. Currently, these challenges are dominantly addressed from a functional or managerial perspective, as advocated by the management and organization sciences, and as implemented by traditional programs in business schools. Such knowledge is indeed necessary for managing an enterprise, but it is insufficient for bringing about changes in a fully systematic and integrated way. To do that, one needs to take a constructional or engineering perspective.

In addition, both organizations and software applications are complex systems, prone to entropy. This means that in the course of time, the costs of bringing about similar changes increase in a way that is known as combinatorial explosion. Entropy can be reduced and managed effectively through modular design based on atomic elements.

Lastly, the individual persons in an enterprise, in cooperation, are ultimately responsible for the effective and efficient operation of the enterprise. They are also collectively responsible for the evolution of the enterprise, in order to meet new challenges. We believe these responsibilities can be borne in a much more effective way if members have an appropriate knowledge and an effective awareness of the enterprise given by a sound engineering approach put forward by a full-fledged scientific discipline.

Mission

The CIAO! Enterprise Engineering Network (CEEN) is a community of academics and practitioners who strive to contribute to the development of the discipline of Enterprise Engineering (EE), and to apply it in practice. The aim is to develop a holistic and general systems theory based understanding on how to (re)design and run enterprises effectively.

The ambition is to develop a consistent and coherent set of theories, models and associated methods that: enable enterprises to reflect, in a systematic way, on how to realize improvements; and assist them, in practice, in achieving their aspirations.

In doing so, sound empirical and scientific foundations should underlie all efforts and all organisational aspects that are relevant should be considered, while combining already existing knowledge from the scientific fields of information systems, software engineering, management, as well as philosophy, semiotics and sociology, among others.

In other words, the (re)design of an enterprise and the subsequent implementation of changes should be the consequence of rationalised decisions that: take in account the nature and reality of the enterprise and its environment; and respect relevant empirical and scientific principles.

Enterprises are taken to be systems whose reality has a dual nature by being simultaneously, on one hand, centrally and purposefully (re)designed; and, on the other hand, emergent in a distributed way, given the fact that, its main agents, the humans that are the ‘pearls’ of the organization, act with free will, in a creative and in a responsible (or sometimes not) way.

We acknowledge that, in practice, the development of enterprises is not always a purely rational/evidence-based process. As such, we believe the field of EE aims to provide evidence-based insights into the design and evolution of enterprises and the consequences of different choices irrespective of the way decisions are made.

The origin of the scientific foundations of our present body of knowledge is the CIAO! Paradigm (Communication, Information, Action, Organisation) as expressed in the Enterprise Engineering Manifesto and the paper: The Discipline of Enterprise Engineering. In this paradigm, organisation is considered to emerge in human communication, through the intermediate roles of information and action. Based on the CIAO! Paradigm, several theories have been developed, and still are being proposed. They are published as technical reports.

The CEEN welcomes proposals of improvements to our current body of knowledge, as well as the inclusion of compliant and alternative views, always keeping in mind the need to maintain global systemic coherence, consistency and scientific rigour of the entire EE body of knowledge, as a prerequisite for the consolidation of this new engineering discipline. Yearly events like the Enterprise Engineering Working Conference and associated Doctoral Consortium are organized to promote the presentation of EE research and application in practice, as well as discussions on the contents and current state of our body of theories and methods.

Topics of interest to this working conference include, but are not limited to:

• Business Process Management
• Business Process Modeling and Simulation
• Business Rules
• Business Rules Management
• Collaborative, Participatory, and Interactive Modeling
• Component-Based System Development
• Domain Ontologies
• Domain Reference Ontologies
• Enterprise Architecture
• Enterprise Design and Implementation
• Enterprise Governance
• Enterprise Modeling and Simulation
• Enterprise Ontology
• Information System Architectures
• Information System Ontologies
• Information Systems Design
• Information Systems Development
• Modeling (cross-enterprise) Business Processes
• Ontology Implementation
• Reference Models for (cross-enterprise) Business Processes
• Service Oriented Architecture
• Service Oriented Design

Publication

The EEWC proceedings will be published in the Springer LNBIP series: “Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing“.

Submission

We are looking for papers on current or recently finished research initiatives/projects as well as papers from practitioners. Based on our motivating experience of the previous working conferences, the 6th EEWC is planned to be a real working conference, providing ample time for profound discussions following the paper presentations. Namely, a 40 minutes slot is normally reserved for each paper.

Papers should be submitted in PDF format. The results described must be unpublished and must not be under review elsewhere. Submissions must conform to Springer’s LNBIP format and should not exceed 15 pages, including all text, figures, references and appendices. Submissions not conforming to the LNBIP format or exceeding 15 pages will be rejected without review. Information about the Springer LNBIP format can be found at Springer LNBIP web page mentioned above. Three to five keywords characterizing the paper should be indicated at the end of the abstract.

For submissions (of an abstract and/or a file with your paper) please go to our Easychair conference web page, sign-up or sign-in and submit your abstract and/or upload your paper taking in account the dates specified in this Call for Papers.

Important note: Since the review process is double-blind, please make sure that your names and affiliations are not listed in the paper submitted for review!

*If you come across this Call For Papers after this date and you would still like to submit a paper, that is still possible until the paper submission deadline but please submit an Abstract as soon as possible.

** Special optional social activities will be organized in these days, soon to be available in the Social Program section.

Advisory Board

Antonia Albani, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
Jan L.G. Dietz, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Conference co-Chairs

Robert Pergl, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
Jorge Sanz, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Program co-Chairs

David Aveiro, University of Madeira, Portugal
Antonia Albani, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland

Organization co-Chairs

David Aveiro, University of Madeira, Portugal
Duarte Gouveia, University of Madeira, Portugal

Program Committee