· · · Institutional Repository

This thesis investigates the extent to which a network-centric based crisis information management system ensures information quality (IQ) and system quality (SQ) in crisis situations.

Market pressure for cost-efficiency is forcing, and the implementation of XBRL is enabling, accounting firms to optimize their business processes to become more cost-efficient. While the manufacturing industry has benefited much from available BPM methodology for becoming more agile, leaner, cost-effective and customer-focused, it is still unsure how BPM should be applied in the services industry and especially in knowledge-intensive organizations for benefiting from digitalization and standardization. A case study research is performed to investigate how, and which, BPM principles can best be applied for the utilizing digitalization and standardization in knowledge-intensive organizations in the financial services industry. The case study research entails a process analysis, simulation and improvement of a business process from an accounting firm. The research suggests that existing BPR principles and Lean Management offer concrete support for improving these types of business processes using XBRL, but that it is difficult to quantitatively validate these improvements. To improve the possibilities for adequate quantitative validation of process improvements, future research should be focused upon identifying measurable indicators for the efficiency and quality of knowledge-intensive business processes (in the financial services industry).

The term Social Web is often used to describe a wide range of websites. So much so, that the term has become meaningless to many. This research shows what makes a website social and which functionalities these websites can be expected to offer to users. This is achieved by formulating a definition of the Social Web, a categorization of the different websites that are part of it and an analysis of the functionalities, plug-ins and API’s provided by ten websites that have been shown to be representative of the Social Web. We furthermore use this analysis to improve data ownership and data interoperability on the Social Web through the use of a distributed data storage method and an ontology capable of representing all information that is commonly found on the Social Web. Following that, a design is made in which these two improvements are incorporated, showing that a Social Web using these improvements is technically feasible and interesting for use in practice.