This research note explores the future research agenda for Capability-Based Management (CBM) and the capability concept, building on discussions from the International Workshop on the Foundations and Applications of Capabilities in Enterprises, Transformations, and ESG Initiatives (FACETE). The note identifies two primary subdomains for advancement: establishing a harmonized foundation for the Capability and Capability Map concepts, and refining CBM practices. Key topics include developing dynamic, context-aware definitions and models; formalizing relationships; and improving the discovery, identification, and scalability of capabilities. Additionally, the note emphasizes the importance of clarifying capability ownership within complex organizational ecosystems. By addressing these areas, the research note calls to academics to conduct research that can enhance both the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of CBM, fostering greater clarity and efficacy in strategy formulation and implementation, and managing the operational configuration of an organization.

The concept of capability, despite the fact of having gradually been established as a valuable construct for business analysis and design, remains vaguely defined and classified. A wide spectrum of diverse definitions and perspectives exists in the literature, and this has led to an equally wide and diverse spectrum of typologies based on different aspects and focal points. Synthesizing a variety of such perspectives, which is the aim of this paper, has the potential to improve the understanding around the concept of capability and enhance the means to communicate its value. A literature review has been performed in order to identify a set of existing capability typologies and classifications, and the elicited set has been synthesized and visualized in order to provide a basis for a capability ontology, derived from the existing perspectives in the literature.

The nature of modern organizations needs to be increasingly adaptive, since they are dealing with a constant demand to respond to stimuli derived from the dynamic environments they operate in. Changing their capabilities is a common response, and this makes capability management a vital aspect of organizational survivability. To date, there are no approaches specifically designed to address this specific situation. KYKLOS and Compass are two interlinked approaches of different complexity, a DSML and a canvas, developed to support capability change. As recently developed methods, they lacked formal demonstration and evaluation; therefore, the goal of this article is to present the demonstration and evaluation of the two approaches by their stakeholders, in particular, business and modeling experts. A case study in a Swedish company in the ERP system consulting domain that is undergoing changes in its sales and consulting capabilities related to evolving customer requirements has been used to demonstrate and evaluate the two approaches. The process consisted of two evaluation cycles. The first cycle concerned KYKLOS and used two categories of evaluators, the business experts and the modeling experts. While the modeling experts evaluated positively the method, the business experts had difficulties associated with its ease of use and adoption. This resulted in the development of Compass, which was evaluated by business experts during the second evaluation cycle. Compass was evaluated more positively in terms of the difficult aspects, but the challenge is ongoing and motivates further future research.

In the continuously and rapidly evolving operational landscape of modern organizations, capabilities are a valuable conceptual asset. Capability thinking and management facilitates the analysis of the value produced by an organization. As a result, capability management plays an essential role in assessing and enhancing an organization’s capabilities to align with dynamic contextual factors and internal needs. Within capability management, a variety of analysis types exists, focusing on different ways to explore and examine capability improvement potentials, like mapping, modeling, and maturity assessment, with several specific approaches associated to each type. However, existing approaches for capability analysis often focus on single perspectives while omitting to provide support for the capability aspects that need to be taken into consideration before the initiation of the analysis. This study aims to explore the potentials for the development of a framework for pre-analyzing capabilities, which can holistically add value to all types of capability analysis. A set of essential capability aspects, such as discovery, demarcation, size, and ownership, that need to be identified and clarified before the initiation of an analysis are suggested towards the development of a generic capability pre-analysis framework.

The increased complexity and frequency of regulations provided by the European Union creates a highly dynamic landscape for the organizations based within it. Implementing these regulations is a challenging task, especially in regard to their inherent complexity and specificity. The situation can be improved by Enterprise Modeling, yet, a domain-specific modeling framework cannot be developed before a structured set of requirements has been elicited for the artifact. In this study, a qualitative survey with semi-structured interviews has been conducted, splitting the focus between two specific acts, the DORA and EAA. The collected data have been subjected to thematic analysis, and the results have been used for the elicitation of a set of requirements, presented in the form of a goal model. Examples of the identified goals include regulatory clarity, resource allocation, training, and management support.

The environments within which modern organizations are operating are characterized by constantly increasing volatility and diversity, which act as a driving force that continuously presents opportunities and threats to the organizations. The result of this situation is that these environments have become so dynamic that the phenomenon of organizational change is slowly becoming the new constant, rather than being an exception as in earlier years. The challenges arising from the need to handle constant change and evolution naturally lead to changing organizational capabilities. Information systems, as one aspect of an organization, can provide efficient support for the design and analysis of capabilities, and enterprise modeling can facilitate the development of specialized methods for this task. Hitherto, a plethora of capability modeling methods exist, providing a wide spectrum of perspectives.

However, the support provided for managing the phenomenon of changing organizational capabilities remains limited, since existing methods have omitted to capture the elements necessary to depict organizational capabilities in motion and the motivations triggering such transitions. In addition, managing change requires more structured approaches, which should be methodologically supported and conceptualized.

The goal of this PhD thesis is to develop a capability modeling method, called KYKLOS, that can support organizational change by modeling the changing capabilities of organizations and all the relevant aspects of this phenomenon. This work followed the Design Science Research framework, and started by explicating the problem via a literature review of existing capability meta-models; this was followed by the elicitation of method requirements, drawn from both the existing literature and a case study conducted in the domain of public healthcare in Sweden. Based on these requirements, an initial meta-model was developed, which was then demonstrated using the same case study and evaluated by experts through interviews. This activity resulted in an extension to the initial version of the meta-model, which was then instantiated via a case study conducted in the domain of public arts and culture in Greece. In parallel, the compatibility of other modeling approaches was explored. An extended version of the meta-model was then converted to its final version, which was suitable for the implementation of the modeling language in a tool, using the ADOxx meta-modeling platform. Simultaneously with the development of the tool, the syntax, semantics and procedure of the modeling method were created. The complete method was demonstrated through a case study at a company providing ERP solutions and consulting in Sweden, and the results were used to evaluate the method by two groups representing the stakeholder roles.

The thesis contributes towards an improved management of change in organizations through the development of a method and complementary supporting tool, with the capability perspective as the focal point for the design and analysis of organizational change.

Knowledge Management encounters difficulties related to the speed and spread of information production during the modern era of digitization. This results in missing and unprocessed organizational information, which, naturally, leads to missing organizational knowledge, in other words, organizational ignorance. Managing organizational ignorance has been scarcely addressed. This paper suggests a combination of ignorance management with Enterprise Modeling, as a path towards the development of an approach for modeling organizational ignorance. A juxtaposition of knowledge states resulted in two introduced parts. The first part is a StateMachine diagram that introduces a model of the types of ignorance and the transitions among them, and the second part is a meta-model that introduces an integration of the domains of Knowledge Management and Enterprise Modeling.

In the continuously evolving landscape of healthcare technology, the evolution of robotics has revolutionized a wide spectrum of services. This situation created a variety of opportunities and challenges. One of the main challenges concerns the interaction of robots with human users and other robots, along with the safety aspect of such interactions. The current paper introduces a project aiming to tackle this challenge, initially via a literature review aiming to explore and structure the domain of robotic interactions in healthcare. Subsequently, the results are conceptualized in a domain meta-model, aiming to establish the foundation for an information system, based on a multi-view modeling approach, with the capabilities to support by documenting and facilitating safer interactions between healthcare robots and external agents. The current study focuses on the safety viewpoint of robotic interaction. The developed model is suitable for initiating the development of the abovementioned system that will use multi-view modeling principles. It is demonstrated in a use case derived from the associated ENDORSE EU project.

Enterprise Modeling is a discipline that facilitates understanding and analyzing complex organizational phenomena and domains. A variety of methods and tools exist, often optimized for specific domains. KYKLOS is a domain-specific method that has been developed to model the phenomenon of changing business capabilities. It is not uncommon for such methods to be complemented by tools which facilitate the user and often enhance the method with additional technical functionalities. In this paper, the homonymous tool is presented, which has been developed using the ADOxx meta-modeling platform and complements the previously developed method.