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Information explosion, globalisation and the reduction of trade barriers have led to the emergence of global production markets and broader access to a range of products for customers. For manufacturers this has led to managing fragmented networks to deal with more polarised markets with wider variety of products at reduced costs and shorter lifecycles in an increasingly competitive environment. This coupled with the pressure to create shareholder value calls for a dynamic approach in the design and management of their supply chains. Market responsiveness is ability to anticipate and react purposefully within appropriate timescale to changes in the market place in order to maximise shareholder value and customer value. The aim of this research is to develop a model for market responsiveness that will enable organisations to deal with the changing needs of the market. To achieve this aim the research methodology was designed to primarily collect qualitative evidence from three distinct supply chains within different industrial contexts. Contrasting across these contexts has helped to determine if the model is generic enough to be applicable in other contexts. The findings were that value gaps exist between interfaces within organisations and their supply chains. At such gaps value is either created, maintained or lost. Value gaps are the primary reasons why organisational tensions exist as the entities involved are focused on conflicting strategic objectives that lead to behavioural misalignment and ultimately poor response. Therefore the research concludes within a market responsiveness model within which there are frameworks for business performance management and managing the value execution point of which maximum shareholder value and customer value can be created.

Teams must constantly balance internally focused interactions through Adaptation and externally focused processes of spanning boundaries to facilitate change. This dynamic of team Adaptation has not been studied. In empirical studies on team Boundary Management or Adaptation, attention is given to laboratory based experiments and field studies of new product development teams in high-tech industries. This research focuses on continuous quality improvement (QI) teams which are comprised of a dynamic and shifting set of members otherwise attuned to their professional daily activities not directly related to the project. The teams of interest operate in highly institutionalized and regulated service industries of healthcare. The overarching research question in this study asks what factors influence team adaptation and how do teams effectively achieve internal and external balance in their QI projects, and to what extent does this contribute to project success. To answer this question, a developmental sequential mixed methods study is conducted that utilizes qualitative analytics through grounded theory based theme development and thematic analysis as well as quantitative analytics of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Structural Equation Modeling. The first study is a mixed methods design utilizing a grounded theory approach for theme development followed by QCA to articulate complex causal interactions among identified factors influencing Adaptation. The sample includes 23 physicians / physician leaders / and hospital administrators who provide 39 team project examples for evaluation. The second study is a Quantitative design utilizing factor analysis to discern factors identified in study one in order to assess internal and external factor effects on Adaptation. A survey resulted in 215 responses for analysis from an expanded sample of team members in institutionally structured organizations. The third study is a Qualitative design utilizing thematic analysis to expand an understanding of the dynamic nature of Boundary Management mechanisms and team Adaptation patterns. The sample includes 13 team members providing 15 team project examples from 15 hospitals some of which are high performing teams and others are not. This research reveals that effective quality improvement project teams demonstrate Adaptation versatility by using combinations of several strategies to connect to the surrounding organization. By doing so this research contributes to the team literature as it expands descriptions of Boundary Management and Adaptation; it combines factors that have not been previously studied together and finds them to contribute to Adaptation. It also focuses on teams in situ in a context with previously limited attention. For management practice, the study provides practical explanations for team Adaptation as a process that can be mindfully guided through mechanisms of Boundary Management.

A capital project represents a significant investment by a firm to create future economic benefits. Since the global economic recession begun in 2008, corporate owners have paid increased attention to business-project interfaces with the aim of improving alignment between business strategy and capital project development. Despite its importance, the business-project interface has not been quantitatively measured and no empirical evidence exists about its effects on performance outcomes. This dissertation intends to identify and quantify the business-project interfaces in the development of a capital project in terms of personnel involvement and task interaction, and to investigate its effects on performance outcomes and the value of best practices. To achieve these objectives, a conceptual framework for assessing the involvement and interaction on business-project interfaces was developed. Based on the conceptual framework, a questionnaire including quantitative measures for the assessment of personnel involvement and task interaction was designed. Supplemental survey responses were received for several industrial capital projects that had initially provided capital project data to the CII Benchmarking & Metrics database. The effects of the business-project interface in terms of cost, schedule, change, and business performance were documented. Data analyses show that project groups with high involvement by business personnel and high interaction between business and project units tend to show remarkably improved project performance. Furthermore, this dissertation presents confirmation that projects with high involvement of business unit personnel and intensive implementation of best practices tend to show superior project performance. The primary contribution of this research is to provide a quantitative assessment tool to assess the business-project interface and to document the interface throughout project life cycle. Another contribution is empirical evidence of the benefits on project performance from implementing best practices that were supported by management.

A key component of conceptual frameworks for Enterprise Architecture is a model of Business Architecture. This thesis sets out to investigate the subject, in search of definitions for and components of such a model. Whilst the term is frequently used and the concept is well accepted, definitions for a comprehensive, structured meta-model for the components of a Business Architecture are surprisingly poorly articulated. Artefacts commonly referred to include process and data models, although the notations for these are notoriously complex and provide no explicit alignment with the business strategy that they support. Although commonly used by business analysts and solution architects, these artefacts are not particularly accessible to business stakeholders for direct manipulation. This lack of direct control over the behaviour and governance of information systems is a contributing factor towards the perceived lack of system flexibility that business stakeholders often complain of. Following an analysis of conceptual modelling approaches and notations a semantic modelling notation and an ontology based approach were selected for the design of a strategically aligned meta-model that addresses this gap. The Model Driven Architecture from Object Management Group influenced the framework design and their Business Motivation Model for business strategy, established the basis for anchoring strategic alignment to the meta-model of business operations. Following a Design Science methodology, the CAPSICUM Framework proposes a comprehensive, semantic meta-model for Business Architecture. Inserted into a framework for an executable Enterprise Architecture, the framework explicitly aligns business strategy with the technical and platform designs of an information system and has been instantiated in four real-world situations. The results of these instantiations were evaluated by the participating organisations and a further survey based evaluation of the detailed meta-model designs was conducted with a panel of selected academics and practitioners with relevant subject matter expertise. The framework represents a core strategic business asset as a dynamic, parametric model of business operations. It facilitates traceability from business strategy to business operations as well as the underlying technical designs and platform deployments of an IT system. It provides a management dashboard for managing change and establishes the foundation for an executable business architecture.

This dissertation proposes two novel ideas to enhance the business strategy alignment to customer needs. The proposed business alignment clock is a new illustration to the relationships between customer requirements, business strategies, capabilities and processes. To line up the clock and reach the needed alignment for the enterprise, a proposed clock mechanism is introduced. The mechanism integrates the Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA) with the House of Quality (HoQ). The relationship matrix inside the body of the house is defined using multivariate data analysis techniques to accurately measure the strength of the relationships rather than defining them subjectively. A statistical tool, multivariate data analysis, can be used to overcome the ambiguity in quantifying the relationships in the house of quality matrix. The framework is proposed in the basic conceptual model context of the EBA showing different levels of the enterprise architecture; the goals, the capabilities and the value stream architecture components. In the proposed framework, the goals and the capabilities are inputs to two houses of quality, in which the alignment between customer needs and business goals, and the alignment between business goals and capabilities are checked in the first house and the second house, respectively. The alignment between the business capabilities and the architecture components (workflows, events and environment) is checked in a third HoQ using the performance indicators of the value stream architecture components, which may result in infrastructure expansion, software development or process improvement to reach the needed alignment by the enterprise. The value of the model was demonstrated using the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) process at the Industrial Engineering and Management Systems department at the University of Central Florida. The assessment of ABET criteria involves an evaluation of the extent to which the program outcomes are being achieved and results in decisions and actions to improve the Industrial Engineering program at the University of Central Florida. The proposed framework increases the accuracy of measuring the extent to which the program learning outcomes have been achieved at the department. The process of continuous alignment between the educational objectives and customer needs becomes more vital by the rapid change of customer requirements that are obtained from both internal and external constituents (students, faculty, alumni, and employers in the first place).