Mona Ashok
email: m.ashok@henley.ac.uk

Role of Digitisation in Enabling Co-creation of Value in KIBS Firms

Keywords: Absorptive Capacity, Co-creation of Value, Digitisation, Innovation, Internal Resource Commitment, Knowledge-intensive Business Services (KIBS)

The affordability, reliability, access and mass adoption of information and communication technological advances is a key trigger to digitisation. Digitisation significantly influences the global economy, as it impacts interpersonal and organisational relationships, disrupts organisational practices, and enables innovation. Digitization is transforming a firm's interation with its external partners (including users), through the use of digitally-enabled business processes, online chats, digital services, online tools/applications and automated systems. This paper focuses on the role of digitisation in innovation in services, because services account for a significant proportion of GDP and employment in developed economies. In specific, the paper explores the topic in the context of Knowledge-Intensive Business Service (KIBS) firms (that exhibit high levels of innovations as users, producers and diffusers of innovation). This conceptual paper explores how KIBS firms can maximise the value extracted from external knowledge/collaboration through digitisation (since KIBS firms demonstrate the highest degree of adoption of digital technologies) to enhance process innovation outcomes. Process innovation is chosen because it plays a fundamental role in delivering efficiency and market share. This paper proposes that digitisation will moderate the relationship between collaboration (breadth of external partners and depth of user engagement) and internal resource commitment to enhance the benefits derived from process innovation.

Introduction

The affordability, reliability, access and mass adoption of information and communication technological (ICT) advances have played a fundamental role in triggering digitization at five levels [START_REF] Keupp | The Strategic Management of Innovation: A Systematic Review and Paths for Future Research[END_REF]. At at economy level, ICT has improved connectivity, enabled market creation and digital-service introduction. At an individual level, ICT has lead to an explosion in the number of internet users, online/web activities and mobile application usage. At an industry and organization level, ICT has transformed the business processes and the interactions between firms and their external partners; substantial ICT investments have led to enhanced digital capabilities. Finally, at a client/buyer level, ICT has significantly increased online solution usage, self-service usage and evaluation of online experience.

In this paper, digitisation is defined as the transformation of the operations through digital communications and applications. Thus, digitisation "encapsulates the social transformation triggered by the mass adoption of digital technologies that generate, process and transfer information" [22, p.314]. Widespread digitisation of organisational operations and business models is reshaping the global economy; digitisation plays a key role in delivering operational efficiency and competitive advantage [START_REF] Barrett | Service innovation in the digital age: Key contributions and future directions[END_REF][START_REF] Kotarba | Measuring Digitalization -Key Metrics[END_REF]. The World Economic Forum's (WEF) [START_REF]WEF: Digital Transformation of Industries: In collaboration with Accenture[END_REF] white paper on digital transformation emphasises that digitisation has created unparalleled value propositions and changed the way we do business, however, it has introduced a major source of risk. The impact of digitisation is so substantial that 90 percent of organisations have acknowledged they have adjusted their operations considerably [START_REF] Vargo | Service-dominant logic: Continuing the evolution[END_REF]. OECD's Digital Economy Outlook [29] highlights that digital advances hugely impact the society and enable transformation; OECD indictors show that ICT investment in 2015 in the OECD area was 2.3 percent of GDP and 11 percent of total fixed investment. We now discuss the research context.

Services are a key source of growth in advanced economies, thus there is a growing academic and practitioner focus on services. OECD [START_REF]OECD: Value added by activity (indicator)[END_REF] indicators show that Services contributed, as percent of value added by activity, 73.72 percent in the European Union (2016), 78.61 percent (estimated) in the UK (2017), and 78.92 percent in the US (2015). Although, scholars argue there is a great deal to learn from innovation in services [START_REF] Frishammar | Antecedents and consequences of firms' process innovation capability: a literature review and a conceptual framework[END_REF], innovation theories and measures have historically focused on the manufacturing industry, thus creating a research gap. In this paper, services are defined as the application of specialised skills and knowledge for the benefit of another entity or the entity itself [START_REF] Vargo | Service-dominant logic: Continuing the evolution[END_REF]. Innovation is defined as "the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations" [31, p. 46]. However, services are heterogeneous, and the extent of innovativeness and the nature of innovations undertaken differ within the service sector [START_REF] Trigo | The Nature of Innovation in R&D and Non-R&D-Intensive Service Firms: Evidence from Firm-Level Latent Class Analysis[END_REF]. This paper, thus, focuses on one service sector: Knowledge-Intensive Business Service (KIBS), because KIBS firms are noted for their vital role in the knowledge-based economy, and are a key enabler, source, and user of innovation [START_REF] Consoli | Employment and skill configurations in KIBS sectors: A longitudinal analysis[END_REF][START_REF] Hertog | Knowledge Intensive Business Services as co-producers of innovation[END_REF]. KIBS are defined as, "economic activities which are intended to result in the creation, accumulation or dissemination of knowledge" [27, p. 18].

Similarly, innovations are heterogeneous. This paper focuses on process innovation, a source of competitive advantage. Process innovation is defined as the implementation of a new or significantly improved production or delivery method that is of value to the user; process innovation includes significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software [START_REF]Eurostat: Oslo Manual Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data[END_REF]. The implementation of process innovation is important, because it supports other innovations and provides several firm-level benefits: such as generating efficiency gains through cost controls and improved capability, and delivering value-add to the users through productivity gains and enhanced quality [START_REF] Frishammar | Antecedents and consequences of firms' process innovation capability: a literature review and a conceptual framework[END_REF]. Further, process innovation is fundamental in the KIBS context, because process-oriented and intangible knowledge flows are a defining characteristic of the KIBS provider and consumer relationship [START_REF] Campagnolo | Innovation, service types, and performance in knowledge intensive business services[END_REF][START_REF] Hertog | Knowledge Intensive Business Services as co-producers of innovation[END_REF]. Research shows that this relationship creates a self-sustaining cycle of innovation for both the KIBS provider and its users. Next, we introduce the key constructs used in the paper.

The need for both internal and external knowledge sources for innovation is emphasised in the literature. While internal knowledge flows are essential to learning and benefiting from new knowledge, the interaction between a firm and its environment is recognised to be significant for innovation as it enables the exploitation of external knowledge [START_REF] Cohen | Absorptive Capacity: a new Perspective on Learning and Innovation[END_REF][START_REF] Hippel | Democratizing innovation: The evolving phenomenon of user innovation[END_REF]. Collaboration with external partners is valuable because external feedback helps firms to effectively understand problems, develop solutions and make informed decisions. The continual exchange of knowledge with external partners also helps firms to develop the ability to collaborate in the long-term; in fact, the lack of this ability creates severe competitive disadvantages for firms.

This paper explores both the breadth of external collaboration and the depth of user collaboration, because KIBS firms show a higher propensity in engaging with external partners, especially customers to co-create value [START_REF] Hertog | Knowledge Intensive Business Services as co-producers of innovation[END_REF]. In this paper, collaboration is defined as the joint creation of value by a firm and its partners, and involves exchange, sharing and co-development [START_REF] Vargo | Service-dominant logic: Continuing the evolution[END_REF]. Therefore, co-creation of value implies that, "both the offeror and the beneficiary of service collaboratively create value" [39, p. 8]. User is defined as the individual who is the consumer and co-producer of value and who expects benefits from using a product or service [START_REF] Hippel | Democratizing innovation: The evolving phenomenon of user innovation[END_REF][START_REF] Vargo | Service-dominant logic: Continuing the evolution[END_REF].

Extensive literature shows that firms need to invest resources in developing absorptive capacity to maximise the benefits extracted from internal and external knowledge [START_REF] Cohen | Absorptive Capacity: a new Perspective on Learning and Innovation[END_REF]. Absorptive capacity is defined as the ability of a firm to integrate, internalise and exploit knowledge for financial gains [START_REF] Cohen | Absorptive Capacity: a new Perspective on Learning and Innovation[END_REF]. Whilst the concepts of absorptive capacity and learning from external knowledge sources are extensively researched, few studies have explored internal resources commitment (to develop absorptive capacity) [START_REF] Zahra | Absorptive capacity: A review, reconceptualization, and extension[END_REF] and its interplay with collaboration [START_REF] Ashok | Buyer (dis)satisfaction and process innovation: The case of information technology services provision[END_REF][START_REF] Ashok | End-user collaboration for process innovation in services: The role of internal resources[END_REF][START_REF] Ashok | How do collaboration and investments in knowledge management affect process innovation in services?[END_REF] in the context of innovation.

Research Gaps and Business Needs

Several business problems underlie the lack of attractiveness of process innovation projects for KIBS firms [START_REF] Ashok | Buyer (dis)satisfaction and process innovation: The case of information technology services provision[END_REF][START_REF] Ashok | End-user collaboration for process innovation in services: The role of internal resources[END_REF][START_REF] Ashok | How do collaboration and investments in knowledge management affect process innovation in services?[END_REF]. Firstly, under tough economic conditions service firms find it easier to adopt cost-cutting strategies that seem to produce immediate results. Secondly, these firms seem to have limited competence in defining a supportive environment for process innovation. Thirdly, KIBS firms enjoy close working relationships with users; however, they seem to struggle to translate this engagement into value. Lastly, research on the impact of ICT on the absorption of digitised or non-digitised knowledge is lacking [START_REF] Roberts | Absorptive capacity and information systems research: Review, synthesis, and directions for future research[END_REF]. Further, investments in innovation (including process innovation) are always confronted by uncertainty [START_REF] Hippel | Democratizing innovation: The evolving phenomenon of user innovation[END_REF]. Research shows that a significant proportion (between 50 and 90 percent) of process innovation projects fail, or are abandoned after huge investments, or are implemented but fail to achieve the projected gains [START_REF] Abdolvand | Assessing readiness for business process reengineering[END_REF]. Thus, this paper provides a conceptual model (Figure 1) and propositions to maximise process innovation output: by exploiting the gains extracted from collaboration, understanding the role of digitisation, and studying the interplay of collaboration with commitment of internal resources (for the development of absorptive capacity).

2

Theoretical Background and Propositions

Impact of ICT Advances and Digitisation in the Global Economy

ICT remain crucial for organisational change [START_REF]CIPD: Landing transformational change: Closing the gap between theory and practice[END_REF]. This is because ICT advances have significantly reduced the cost of "generating, storing and reproducing information" [12, p. 217], and ICT plays a fundamental role in triggering digitization [START_REF] Keupp | The Strategic Management of Innovation: A Systematic Review and Paths for Future Research[END_REF]. Despite the advances in ICT, firms find it difficult to reap benefits from ICT investments. For example, in a survey of 1,200 CEOs, KPMG [START_REF]The growth imperative in a more competitive environment[END_REF] report that 72 percent of CEOs recognised that their organisations were struggling to keep up with new technology; 14 percent of the CEOs agreed that becoming more data driven was a critical challenge they expect to face in the next three years. Similarly, PwC's [START_REF]Global digital IQ survey[END_REF] Digital IQ Survey (based on 1,988 respondents from 51 countries) concluded that: although, 90 percent of the business leaders expected technological breakthroughs to influence their organisations, they acknowledged that their organisations lacked the competencies to transform successfully. Firms are further challenged because there is a need to leverage the ICT potential in order to foster innovation, economic growth, digital inclusion/acceptance and capabilities: as highlighted in the European Commission's Digital Agenda [START_REF] Kotarba | Measuring Digitalization -Key Metrics[END_REF][START_REF]WEF: Digital Transformation of Industries: In collaboration with Accenture[END_REF].

Scholars and practitioners agree that digitisation has transformed the global economy and society. Digitally enabled applications, solutions, services, innovation and business models are influencing business operations and markets (eCommerce) [START_REF] Barrett | Service innovation in the digital age: Key contributions and future directions[END_REF]29,[START_REF]WEF: Digital Transformation of Industries: In collaboration with Accenture[END_REF]. However, these transformations are challenging as they lead to a tension between existing and new ways of working. For example, OECD [29] report indicates that while 90 percent of businesses are connected to the internet, only 20 percent use digital technologies to sell products online. It is important to note that KIBS firms demonstrate the highest degree of adoption of digital technologies; evidence from the 2016 Community Innovation Survey (CIS) in Germany [START_REF] Behrens | Innovation activities of firms in Germany-Results of the German CIS 2012 and 2014: Background report on the surveys of the Mannheim Innovation Panel Conducted in the Years 2013 to 2016[END_REF].

Innovation in Services

The study of innovation in services is of great academic and practical interest. For several decades, the service sector has been a major source of growth in the developed economies. By the mid-1980s, this sector was contributing towards 50 percent of employment and output in such economies [START_REF] Barras | Towards a theory of innovation in services[END_REF]. Its influence has increased progressively, as shown in recent studies and OECD indicators [START_REF]OECD: Value added by activity (indicator)[END_REF].

Despite the sector's pivotal role in economic development, the understanding of innovation in services has lagged. Until the 1980s, it was presumed that this sector adopted supplier-driven innovations and was not very innovative; hence, the lack of focus on the study of innovation in services [START_REF] Salter | Innovation in Services: An Overview[END_REF]. Historically, innovation measures have largely ignored the characteristics of services, which include intangibility of output, the involvement of the user in service provision, the concurrence of production and consumption, and the difficulty in detecting the service quality changes [START_REF] Frishammar | Antecedents and consequences of firms' process innovation capability: a literature review and a conceptual framework[END_REF].

2.3

Need for Innovation in KIBS in the Context of a Knowledge Economy KIBS firms are not only innovative, but also motivate knowledge transfer and innovation in their client firms; they employ highly qualified personnel and are distinguished by the use of professional knowledge [START_REF] Consoli | Employment and skill configurations in KIBS sectors: A longitudinal analysis[END_REF][START_REF] Hertog | Knowledge Intensive Business Services as co-producers of innovation[END_REF]. KIBS firms are key hubs in the knowledge-based society, and are key contributors of economic value [START_REF] Campagnolo | Innovation, service types, and performance in knowledge intensive business services[END_REF][START_REF] Consoli | Employment and skill configurations in KIBS sectors: A longitudinal analysis[END_REF][START_REF] Doroshenko | Knowledge Intensive Business Services as Generators of Innovations[END_REF]. KIBS firms are estimated to represent 10 percent of the total value added in OECD countries, and 15 percent of the volume of market service businesses in Europe [START_REF] Doroshenko | Knowledge Intensive Business Services as Generators of Innovations[END_REF]. In 2015, KIBS firms accounted for 16 percent of total innovation expenditure in Germany.

KIBS firms play a central role in the economy: they work very closely with their users, often in multi-disciplinary teams, they enable learning in their customers, and they facilitate their client firms to translate new information and extract tacit knowledge from the partners [START_REF] Doroshenko | Knowledge Intensive Business Services as Generators of Innovations[END_REF]. This industry is rapidly growing and amongst the most innovative. Despite this importance, [START_REF] Hertog | Knowledge Intensive Business Services as co-producers of innovation[END_REF] reports that the industry is seldom the focus of research and policy guidelinesa research gap that underpins this paper.

The Strategic Role of Process Innovation, Especially in the Context of KIBS

A leading emphasis of the innovation literature is the study of product innovation and new product development, however process innovation, the other source of competitive gains, has received far lesser attention [START_REF] Gallouj | Innovation in services: A review of the debate and a research agenda[END_REF]. This is problematic because research shows that process innovation is intrinsic to organisational change and product (or service) innovation [START_REF] Robertson | Managing open incremental process innovation: Absorptive Capacity and distributed learning[END_REF]. Process change delivers hard-to-imitate competitive advantage, however few empirical studies have investigated the factors impacting process innovation at the firm-level [START_REF] Keupp | The Strategic Management of Innovation: A Systematic Review and Paths for Future Research[END_REF]. However, limited research on process innovation in services shows encouraging signs that when balanced with a portfolio of service types, process innovation increases KIBS firms' efficiency and market share [START_REF] Campagnolo | Innovation, service types, and performance in knowledge intensive business services[END_REF].

2.5

The Need to Collaborate and Exploit External Knowledge

Firms are unlikely to possess all the skills or capabilities to innovate in-house, and the sources of novel ideas are not restricted to the boundaries of a firm [START_REF] Huang | Openness in product and process innovation[END_REF][START_REF] Mina | Open service innovation and the firm's search for external knowledge[END_REF]. This is supported by extensive research; for example, the 2011 UK Innovation survey shows that on average firms allocate only 35 percent of the innovation expenditure for internal R&D, and the remainder is spent on other innovation activities [START_REF] Ukis | First Findings from the UK Innovation Survey[END_REF]. Innovation processes are becoming more open, with a stress on collaborative arrangements to access capabilities, to recombine knowledge and to share resources across organisational boundaries. Service providers are unlikely to rely solely on internal knowledge for innovation and they often depend on external knowledge and experience.

Breadth of External Collaboration. Wide-ranging innovation surveys provide empirical evidence of the importance of broad knowledge sources for innovation [START_REF] Ukis | First Findings from the UK Innovation Survey[END_REF]. In specific, openness to external knowledge sources is more likely to be prevalent in process innovation than product innovation [START_REF] Robertson | Managing open incremental process innovation: Absorptive Capacity and distributed learning[END_REF], however, empirical investigation of the impact of the breadth of external collaboration on process innovation is under-explored [START_REF] Huang | Openness in product and process innovation[END_REF]. Some studies, however, have shown a positive association between the breadth of external collaboration and a firm's ability to undertake process innovation [START_REF] Gadrey | New modes of innovation: How services benefit industry[END_REF], especially in the KIBS context [START_REF] Ashok | End-user collaboration for process innovation in services: The role of internal resources[END_REF][START_REF] Ashok | How do collaboration and investments in knowledge management affect process innovation in services?[END_REF]. This is because knowledge plays a central role in KIBS firms; they are known to recombine tacit and codified knowledge to develop value propositions and solve customer problems [START_REF] Consoli | Employment and skill configurations in KIBS sectors: A longitudinal analysis[END_REF][START_REF] Robertson | Managing open incremental process innovation: Absorptive Capacity and distributed learning[END_REF]. In doing so KIBS firms depend on both internal and external knowledge (sourced from external partners). Advancing on the discussion above: Proposition 1 (P1): The breadth of external collaboration will positively influence process innovation results in KIBS firms.

Depth of User Collaboration. [39's] seminal paper highlighted the service-dominant view of economic development. The service-dominant view is that firms offer a value proposition, but the consumer evaluates the value-in-use, thus the customer is always a co-producer of value. The collaboration between the consumer and a firm is a defining characteristic of service provision [START_REF] Salter | Innovation in Services: An Overview[END_REF], in which users are not passive consumers of services: in fact, they work jointly with the firms to innovate [START_REF] Hippel | Democratizing innovation: The evolving phenomenon of user innovation[END_REF][START_REF] Huang | Openness in product and process innovation[END_REF]. This co-operation is extremely beneficial for a service provider as users often pioneer new services, and because user-developed services diffuse faster than producer-developed services [START_REF] Van Der Boor | Users as innovators in developing countries: The global sources of innovation and diffusion in mobile banking services[END_REF] The provision of KIBS brings together the knowledge capital of the provider, and the needs, experiences and knowledge of the users to create unique solutions for the consumers' distinctive requirements [START_REF] Salter | Innovation in Services: An Overview[END_REF]. Thus, it is no surprise that KIBS firms are characterised by a highly interactive relationship with their users to solve problems; these firms rely on user knowledge much more than other service providers and manufacturing firms [START_REF] Doroshenko | Knowledge Intensive Business Services as Generators of Innovations[END_REF].

Proposition 2 (P2): User collaboration will positively influence process innovation results in KIBS firms.

The Commitment of Internal Resources in Extracting Value from Collaboration

The source of innovative ideas is not confined within the boundaries of a firm, but lie at the intersection of a firm and its environment [START_REF]Eurostat: Oslo Manual Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data[END_REF]. Thus, firms collaborate with external partners with a view to accessing new capabilities (ideas, knowledge, or practices). The process of accessing external knowledge sources enhances a firm's knowledge base and widens its future learning, technological and organisational innovation trajectories [START_REF] Leonard-Barton | Core Capabilites and Core Rigidities: A Paradox in Managing New Product Development[END_REF]. Diverse knowledge develops a firm's learning capability, and broadens the opportunities available in the future [START_REF] Doroshenko | Knowledge Intensive Business Services as Generators of Innovations[END_REF].

However, the benefits of new knowledge acquired because of collaboration are not automatic, but subject to a firm's actions [START_REF] Foss | Linking Customer Interaction and Innovation: The Mediating Role of New Organizational Practices[END_REF]. This is because firms face the problem of translating knowledge (both possessed internally and acquired from external partners) into organisational advantages. This translation is dependent on a firm's commitment of internal resources in developing absorptive capacity. Research shows that the investment of resources in developing the capability to learn from diverse sources is especially important for KIBS firms [START_REF] Ashok | End-user collaboration for process innovation in services: The role of internal resources[END_REF][START_REF] Ashok | How do collaboration and investments in knowledge management affect process innovation in services?[END_REF]. Thus, this paper proposes:

Proposition 3 (P3): Internal resources commitment will positively influence process innovation results in KIBS firms.

2.7

Internal Resources Mediate the Impact of Collaboration on Process Innovation [START_REF] Huang | Openness in product and process innovation[END_REF][START_REF] Mina | Open service innovation and the firm's search for external knowledge[END_REF] has argued that in the current economywhich is global, open, networked and technologically advanced -a firm's ability to reap profits from innovation is subject to the effective translation of consumer needs into value-propositions. Thus, gains from collaborative innovation are dependent on a firm's underlying processes, and are subject to its ability to appropriate value from external knowledge [START_REF] Mina | Open service innovation and the firm's search for external knowledge[END_REF]. Specifically, the gains from user collaboration are contingent on the translation of knowledge into organisational and individual learning [START_REF] Huang | Openness in product and process innovation[END_REF][START_REF] Mina | Open service innovation and the firm's search for external knowledge[END_REF][START_REF] Robertson | Managing open incremental process innovation: Absorptive Capacity and distributed learning[END_REF]. This premise is supported by a study that reported that the effect of customer collaboration on product innovation performance was indirect and fully mediated by organisational practices [START_REF] Foss | Linking Customer Interaction and Innovation: The Mediating Role of New Organizational Practices[END_REF]. Another wideranging survey of open innovation activities across UK firms found that collaboration was positively correlated with investment intensity [START_REF] Mina | Open service innovation and the firm's search for external knowledge[END_REF]. It can therefore be concluded that a firm's strategy towards the commitment of resources is important for the extraction of value from external knowledge.

The importance of the study of the interplay of internal resources and collaboration for innovation is evident in the absorptive capacity literature. Several literature review articles propose that absorptive capacity will mediate the impact of knowledge source (and collaboration processes) on a firm's performance (and competitive advantage) [START_REF] Zahra | Absorptive capacity: A review, reconceptualization, and extension[END_REF]. Although there is extensive interest in the study of firms' investments and collaborative practices for innovation, several research gaps exist. There is limited understanding of the interrelationship between a firm's collaborative (open) innovation practices and its capability to generate financial gains [START_REF] Lane | The reification of absorptive capacity: A critical review and rejuvenation of the construct[END_REF]. Some recent research, however, demonstrates the significance of internal resource commitment in extracting value from collaboration for process innovation in the KIBS context [START_REF] Ashok | Buyer (dis)satisfaction and process innovation: The case of information technology services provision[END_REF][START_REF] Ashok | End-user collaboration for process innovation in services: The role of internal resources[END_REF][START_REF] Ashok | How do collaboration and investments in knowledge management affect process innovation in services?[END_REF]. Building on the arguments above, this paper proposes:

Proposition 4A (P4A): The positive effect of breadth of external collaboration on process innovation will be mediated by the firm's commitment of internal resources in KIBS firms.

Proposition 4B (P4B): The positive effect of user collaboration on process innovation will be mediated by the firm's commitment of internal resources in KIBS firms.

Role of Digitisation in Enabling Co-Creation of Value in KIBS Firms

Digitisation has created new opportunities for KIBS firms, who are able to maximise the benefits extracted from collaboration with external partners by codifying knowledge [START_REF] Consoli | Employment and skill configurations in KIBS sectors: A longitudinal analysis[END_REF]. Existing indicators show that digitisation enables the interaction of the firm with its external partners, for example firms are reporting the benefits of using social technologies in interfacing with the network of external partners [START_REF] Kotarba | Measuring Digitalization -Key Metrics[END_REF][START_REF]WEF: Digital Transformation of Industries: In collaboration with Accenture[END_REF]. Telecommunications, digitally-enabled platforms, digitised back-and front-office business processes makes it easier for organisations to engage in open innovations. In the context of process innovation in services, there is growing evidence of end-to-end digitally-enabled business processes that integrate the service providers with their external partners [START_REF] Rai | Editorial notes-the growth of interest in services management: Opportunities for information systems scholars[END_REF].

In reference to a service firm's relationship with its users, digitised interactions like: online chats (customer service), contact centre calls routed through automated systems, automated speech recognition have transformed the service provider-customer engagement [START_REF] Kotarba | Measuring Digitalization -Key Metrics[END_REF][START_REF]WEF: Digital Transformation of Industries: In collaboration with Accenture[END_REF]. Large-scale innovation studies have shown that the top three digital technologies diffused in German firms in 2016 are digital networks and linkages with customers, suppliers and digital networks in production and service provisioning [START_REF] Behrens | Innovation activities of firms in Germany-Results of the German CIS 2012 and 2014: Background report on the surveys of the Mannheim Innovation Panel Conducted in the Years 2013 to 2016[END_REF]; this strengthens the importance of digitisation for collaboration.

However, current evidence [29] indicates that ICT investments are unlikely to (independently) enable transformation or innovation. This is because a key building block of successfully implementing change is to reinforce new structures, processes and systems, while acknowledging the push-pull stress of new versus old knowledge. Thus, digitisation is expected to moderate the benefits derived from collaboration with external partners, including the value created with users, in order to maximise process innovation outcomes.Thus, this paper proposes that, Proposition 5A (P5A): Digitisation will moderate the effect of breadth of external collaboration on internal resources in KIBS firms.

Proposition 5B (P5B): Digitisation will moderate the effect of user collaboration on internal resources in KIBS firms.

Next Steps and Future Research Opportunities

This paper builds on current research and presents an enhanced conceptual model, based on research in [START_REF] Ashok | Buyer (dis)satisfaction and process innovation: The case of information technology services provision[END_REF][START_REF] Ashok | End-user collaboration for process innovation in services: The role of internal resources[END_REF][START_REF] Ashok | How do collaboration and investments in knowledge management affect process innovation in services?[END_REF]. This paper extends theory by incorporating the important concept of digitisation and it proposes the role of digitisation in enabling co-creation of value in KIBS firms. The author plans to empirically investigate the propositions by testing the model and drawing comparisons across two different KIBS sectors. The next steps thereby build on existing literature and provide an opportunity to develop academic and practitioner implications on the use of digitisation in the KIBS context.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Conceptual model, based on[START_REF] Ashok | End-user collaboration for process innovation in services: The role of internal resources[END_REF]


Paula Maia De Souza

Kamila Rios
email: kamila.rios@gmail.comfranco.garcia

Hora Rodrigues

Franco Eusébio

Vânia Paula

Almeida Neris

Towards a Semiotic-based Approach to the Design of Therapeutic Digital Games

Keywords: Therapeutic Games, Participatory Design, Organizational Semiotics, Evaluation, Games for Health, Health

Healthcare professionals may employ therapeutic games as playful activities to promote rehabilitation for their patients. However, despite the importance, currently the literature does not provide multidisciplinary approaches to support designing these games. To overcome this scenario, we propose a semiotic-based approach to aid stakeholders with different backgrounds on designing therapeutic digital games. The approach results from a study of the literature and reports of the experience of a multidisciplinary team on the creation of therapeutic games. It explores Participatory Design and Organizational Semiotics methods and artifacts to promote the Problem Clarification, Interaction Modeling, Design Materialization, and Evaluation as fundamental design practices of effective solutions. The approach was evaluated to design new therapeutic games and the results suggest that it helps the team on identifying therapeutic objectives and reaching them.

Introduction

The market for games is expanding to new areas including education, training and health. For the latter, therapeutic games may promote awareness and provide treatment for patients in efficient and potentially cheaper ways [START_REF] Cheung | Therapeutic Games And Guided Imagery: Tools for Mental Health And School Professionals Working With Children, Adolescents, And Their Families[END_REF]. However, due to their goal -healthcare --, these games require careful development. In special, for their success, it is essential to foster collaborative efforts from multiple stakeholders, including domain specialists (such as healthcare professionals), computer professionals, artists, and, at times, family, government, and patients themselves. Moreover, semantic, pragmatic and social issues should also be considered. The nature of therapeutic systems demands a sociotechnical approach to its design and development [START_REF] Neris | Design of Therapeutic Information Systems as Indicating Through Signs[END_REF].

Given the multiple variables involved to ensure success and quality of a therapeutic digital game, we believe a structured process, which recognizes the technical system as part of a whole information system, could assist designing, implementing, evaluating and easing the adoption of these games. However, as far as we know, there is no similar approach in literature. Thus, this paper presents a first step towards this structured process, describing an approach to create therapeutic games, based on Participatory Design (PD) [START_REF] Schuler | Participatory Design: Perspectives on Systems Design[END_REF] and Organizational Semiotics (OS) [START_REF] Liu | Semiotics in Information Systems Engineering[END_REF][START_REF] Stamper | Language and Computer in Organized Behaviour[END_REF]. OS is a discipline that explores the use of signs and their effects on social practices. In the OS approach, an organization and its information system are considered as a social system in which human behaviors are organized by a system of norms. An organization is understood as an information system in which people use signs for communication towards purposeful and coordinated actions. In this sense, any technological artifact, e.g. a software application, is embedded in a formal system that, by its turn, exists in the context of an informal system [START_REF] Liu | Semiotics in Information Systems Engineering[END_REF][START_REF] Stamper | Language and Computer in Organized Behaviour[END_REF].

For evaluation, the process was used in a new context and the results suggest it helps the team on identifying therapeutic objectives and supports to reach them.

Related Work

Mader et al. [START_REF] Mader | How to Analyse Therapeutic Games: The Player / Game / Therapy Model[END_REF] affirm that, even though therapeutic games might be very promising, they are still very complex to design and develop. Their reasoning is that therapeutic games present four main design challenges: creating a motivational game, exchanging information, therapeutic gameplay and defining the process. To ease the process, they proposed a model called Player/Game/Therapy (P/G/T). As an analytical tool, the main idea of P/G/T is to analyze each aspect of a therapeutic game independently and the relationships between pairs of them (i.e. player-game, therapy-player and therapygame). In the model, Player relates to patient, who assumes the role of player in a game.

The authors emphasize that it is important to gather general information about the patient, including her/his situation and skills to play, as this data are needed to design a game that is playable and enjoyable for the patient. The Game serves to define game basics (genre, platform and devices), brief description of its story, gameplay and world. Finally, Therapy describes the therapy elements which should be present in the game --including therapeutic goal, protocol and context. In addition, Mader et al. [START_REF] Mader | How to Analyse Therapeutic Games: The Player / Game / Therapy Model[END_REF] states that a limitation of their method is that patients are studied but not involved, and health specialists have the role of providing knowledge and validating the design. Thus, we believe that a PD approach could enrich the design and improve the overall effectiveness of the resulting game.

Cheng, Putnam and Guo [START_REF] Cheng | Always a Tall Order": Values and Practices of Professional Game Designers of Serious Games for Health[END_REF] conducted a survey, through detailed interviews, with 11 game designers. The author's intent was to understand how designers judge and perceive the success of games for health projects, how they think and act on the challenges, how they acquired domain knowledge and rated their games, and what tools they used to support their work. They found that most therapeutic game designers value and practice user-centered design principles (e.g. user focus, user testing from the start), and tended to place emphasis on initial user engagement and user search. Most of the designers mentioned using interviews with target players as being one of the first steps to approach a therapeutic game project. Participants also said they relied on iterative prototyping processes and game tests to refine their understanding of the domain and target users.

Cheng, Putnam and Guo [START_REF] Cheng | Always a Tall Order": Values and Practices of Professional Game Designers of Serious Games for Health[END_REF] report that incorporating serious content into an engaging gaming experience is an important but difficult aspect. In addition, maintaining successful stakeholder collaboration is also important, but challenging in serious gaming projects for health. They also report that user-centered efforts do not always help with some of the prominent challenges, such as communicating with subject matter experts and conducting enduring experiences for players. These findings indicate that more research is needed to help support designers of therapeutic digital games to overcome the challenges discussed by the respondents.

In this sense, we started working to provide a design approach to aid computer and healthcare professionals in creating therapeutic digital games co-developed by different stakeholders and supported by a sociotechnical view.

Methodology to Formalize the Approach

Aiming to acquire relevant requirements, our methodology employed a literature review and an interview with researchers who created a therapeutic game in an ad-hoc way. These requirements supported us to create and formalize an initial approach, which we evaluated and improved by applying it to a new therapeutic context.

In the review of the literature, we searched for papers that reported the design of therapeutic digital games in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and Scopus databases. Although several studies described the use or the creation of therapeutic games, most results did not report using any specific methodology for designing therapeutic games. Section 2 summarized the works considered relevant. Among the lessons learned from these works, it is possible to highlight: the importance of involving stakeholders in all stages of therapeutic game design, and the importance of considering relationships between player, game and therapy.

In addition to the literature review, a non-structured interview (carried out as a playful activity using cards, questions and answers) was carried out with researchers from the computing and health domains, who developed the game "Jogar Também Faz Bem!" (Play makes good as well!) to support depression treatment. The game won the best demonstration award at the XV Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems [START_REF] Nishikawa | Se Divertir e Aprender Fazem Bem! Demonstração de Um Jogo Para Apoiar o Tratamento Da Depressão[END_REF]. We interviewed the project coordinator, three PhD students (two from the healthcare area, one from the computing), a master's student (computing area) and four undergraduate students (three from the computing area, one from healthcare). The aim was to collect lessons learned from their experience on developing a therapeutic game. These results are described in Section 4.

From the literature review and the study of the "Jogar Também Faz Bem!" game, it was possible to propose a four stage approach to the design of digital therapeutic games. For evaluation, the approach was instantiated in another therapeutic context.

Analyzing the Design of a Therapeutic Game for the Depression

Our non-structured interview with the "Jogar Também Faz Bem!" researchers started mapping the origin of the game. According to the researchers, an employee of a public hospital which provided treatment to patients with depression contact the research group from a nearby city university aiming to acquire software to support the rehabilitation of their patients. At the time, a literature search performed by the researchers indicated a lack of formal methodologies and approaches regarding digital therapeutic games development, especially aimed for mental health problems.

Therefore, those researchers decided to adopt Baranauskas and Bonacin's view for a design process [START_REF] Baranauskas | Design-indicating through signs[END_REF] and instantiate then to the therapeutic context [START_REF] Neris | Design of Therapeutic Information Systems as Indicating Through Signs[END_REF]. Baranauskas and Bonacin explore a combination of PD [START_REF] Schuler | Participatory Design: Perspectives on Systems Design[END_REF][START_REF] Muller | PICTIVE-an Exploration in Participatory Design[END_REF] and OS [START_REF] Liu | Semiotics in Information Systems Engineering[END_REF][START_REF] Stamper | Language and Computer in Organized Behaviour[END_REF] practices, considering design as a social process of expressing meaning, communicating intentions and constructing knowledge, to be carried iteratively and interactively by designers and a group of stakeholders in a participatory style. A complete discussion on why Baranauskas and Bonacin's view was adopted can be found in [START_REF] Neris | Design of Therapeutic Information Systems as Indicating Through Signs[END_REF].

Figure 1 shows the Semiotic Onion, an OS artifact, instantiated by Neris and Rodrigues [START_REF] Neris | Design of Therapeutic Information Systems as Indicating Through Signs[END_REF] to attend the therapeutic information system. Fig. 1. Semiotic Onion considering signs to Therapeutic Systems [START_REF] Neris | Design of Therapeutic Information Systems as Indicating Through Signs[END_REF].

According Neris and Rodrigues [START_REF] Neris | Design of Therapeutic Information Systems as Indicating Through Signs[END_REF], in the therapeutic system scenario, the particularities of each patient should consider a holistic view, including his/her personal information, family and close people history, healthcare professionals, and academic and demographic studies. In the formal layer, it is important to identify the health procedures and protocols which also underline the therapeutic objectives. Finally, in technical level system flexibility and data logging aspects need to be addressed. Flexible features can be implemented considering cognitive and physical aspects of the patients that are important to be respected during the interaction.

Aiming to map patients' medical profiles and needs with design requirements for the game, the researchers used OS artifacts with the Personas technique proposed by Cooper [START_REF] Cooper | The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity[END_REF]. The result of the use of artifacts from OS and Personas was called Personas Enrichment Process (described in section 5) [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF]. The enrichment was carried out in a participatory way: hospital professionals contributed to propose, improve, and evaluate the created personas.

In order to identify suitable mechanics and genre for the game, the researchers employed a participatory practice exploring the PICTIVE technique [START_REF] Muller | PICTIVE-an Exploration in Participatory Design[END_REF]. In this new activity, the group of computer professionals provided images for healthcare professionals with illustrations of characters and scenarios of digital games. These professionals analyzed the images and were asked to choose the ones which better matched their patients' interests and could better suit the therapeutic practice.

Considering the multidisciplinary nature of game creation, the researchers found it could be useful to foster communication and collaboration among stakeholders with different backgrounds. To benefit from domain knowledge of every stakeholder, they defined an Interaction Modeling Language for Therapeutic Applications [START_REF] Garcia | Uma Linguagem de Modelagem de Interação Para Aplicações Terapêuticas[END_REF]. The language adopted graphical symbols to promote collaborative design by computer, health, and artists professionals alike, trying to reduce communication and technical barriers required. Moreover, given the therapeutic nature of the game, the researchers considered it was important to allow healthcare professionals to track the progress of patients over several sessions. Thus, they introduced collecting (logging) interaction data of patients' interactions within the game, and evaluation activities to test their cognitive abilities.

Initial functional prototypes of the game to patients and hospital professionals were delivered. Healthcare professionals could generate reports summarizing the collected data to examine if their patients improved over the playing sessions. Besides the builtin game evaluation, playtest with patients also started featuring the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) [START_REF] Bradley | Measuring Emotion: The Self-Assessment Manikin and the Semantic Differential[END_REF] evaluation as a post-section questionnaire for self-assessment of a patient's emotional state. The feedback collected after a playtest session was positive.

Next, a healthcare student of the researchers' group analyzed the game in a new context, using it as an entertainment resource for elderly patients on hemodialysis at a specialized hospital. Despite the difficulties of application, due to the hemodialysis process, the patients appreciated the game. However, for researchers, this was an opportunity to improve the game's accessibility. For this, they incorporated accessibility and usability improvements in the game, including: spoken instructions, transcription in Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS), and alternative input schemes (mouse, keyboard, controller).

An Approach to the Design of Therapeutic Games

With the results from Section 2 and Section 4, we started defining an approach to support designing therapeutic applications. The approach was divided into four stages (see Fig. Design Problem Clarification aims to understand the use context of the game. Therapeutic games are in a multidisciplinary context; thus, it is useful to explore PD practices to benefit from the knowledge of all stakeholders. In special, healthcare professionals knowledge is essential to discover and understand therapeutic requirements. Stakeholders must work together to determine suitable ways to address these requirements into gameplay. A possible approach to achieve that is exploring the following steps: brainstorming, Personas Enrichment Process, elicitation of therapeutic objectives, elicitation of requirements, and PICTIVE (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Design Problem Clarification.

The application of the brainstorming technique is the event that initiates the flow of this stage, followed by the Personas Enrichment Process (see Fig. 4) [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF].

Fig. 4. Personas Enrichment Process [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF].

In Step 1 of the Enrichment Process, a multidisciplinary team uses the Stakeholder Analysis Chart (see Fig. 5a) [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF][START_REF] Stamper | Analysing the Cultural Impact of a System[END_REF] to identify people and institutions related to the system.

Step 2 employs the Evaluation Frame (see Fig. 5b) [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF][START_REF] Stamper | Analysing the Cultural Impact of a System[END_REF] added to other artifacts, to identify clinical profiles of patients, medical procedures, patients' relationship with other interested parties, and problems involved in creating the application alongside possible solutions. In Step 3, the fictional characters idealized by healthcare professionals become Personas representing real people. Researchers with computer background should aggregate information from the literature (public health data) to detail the individuals with relevant information. Afterwards, healthcare professionals should evaluate the correctness of the Personas, approving them provided they are suitable (Step 4) [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF].

After the validation of the created persons, the therapeutic objectives and the requirements that the game must attend must be raised. It is understood by therapeutic objective, the objective of the game in treating a certain pathology and in how to help in the improvement of this pathology.

For the identification of the dynamics and genre of the game it is advisable to apply the PICTIVE technique [START_REF] Muller | PICTIVE-an Exploration in Participatory Design[END_REF], this being the last event in the flow of the clarification stage. As a result of this step we have the mechanics, aesthetics, narrative, technology. The techniques, artifacts and processes suggested for this step were described in Section 4. [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF][START_REF] Stamper | Analysing the Cultural Impact of a System[END_REF].

Fig. 5a. Stakeholder Analysis Chart

Fig. 5b. Evaluation Frame and other artifacts [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF][START_REF] Stamper | Analysing the Cultural Impact of a System[END_REF].

The next stage is Interaction Modeling. Considering that therapeutic applications involve a multidisciplinary team, all stakeholders can benefit from an easy-to-understand language --preferably requiring minimal computer-specific knowledge. For this reason, it is advisable to use a Domain Specific Modeling Language (DSML) for the design, such as the Interaction Modeling Language [START_REF] Garcia | Uma Linguagem de Modelagem de Interação Para Aplicações Terapêuticas[END_REF].

Next comes the stage Design Materialization, consisting of sketching, prototyping and/or defining an initial version of the application based on the chosen DSML. For this stage, exploring PD and prototyping techniques and tools can be useful: screen sketches and prototypes allow drafting the game look and feel before implementing high fidelity prototypes, fostering participation of stakeholders without computer backgrounds and promoting faster design iterations. To enable more people to use the system, it is necessary to consider aspects of universality for the design in a therapeutic context. For instance, health conditions may hinder movement or restrict the use of an arm/hand (as in the case of patients undergoing dialysis).

Finally, due to the critical nature of the therapeutic domain, any proposed solution should be evaluated by healthcare and computer science professionals --this is the goal of the Evaluation phase. Evaluation should, thus, happen at all stages of development: from the initial modeling and prototypes to the final product. Evaluation should consider gameplay, accessibility, emotional aspects and therapeutic purposes of the game.

Approach Evaluation

To evaluate the approach described in Section 5, a group of professionals from another Brazilian public university carried out an extension project in partnership with a public hospital specialized in treatment of childhood cancer. The project aimed to design a digital therapeutic game to support the rehabilitation of children under treatment for cancer [START_REF] Rodrigues | Lessons Learned in Designing a Digital Therapeutic Game to Support the Treatment and Well-Being of Children with Cancer[END_REF].

In Stage 1 from this approach, the professionals conducted meetings with a hospital's therapist and used participatory practices to discover the domain and the target audience, to clarify requirements for the game, and to identify the gender and characteristics desirable for the interaction with the game to be developed for children in treatment.

The professionals instantiated the Personas Enrichment Process [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF] and used its artifacts to identify stakeholders. By using the Stakeholder Analysis Chart [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF][START_REF] Stamper | Analysing the Cultural Impact of a System[END_REF] they identified the patients, the family, healthcare professionals and researchers, as well as the hospital and the government, as the main stakeholders in the development of the therapeutic game for the cancer treatment [START_REF] Rodrigues | Lessons Learned in Designing a Digital Therapeutic Game to Support the Treatment and Well-Being of Children with Cancer[END_REF]. By applying the Evaluation Frame artifact [START_REF] Rodrigues | Personas-Driven Design for Mental Health Therapeutic Applications[END_REF][START_REF] Stamper | Analysing the Cultural Impact of a System[END_REF], they identified the clinical profile of the children being treated for cancer in that hospital (from newborns to people with 35 years old, with Leukemia, Osteosarcoma or Central Nervous System (CNS) tumor), medical procedures used in them (e.g. chemotherapy and radiation therapy), the patient's relationship with other interested parties (including healthcare professionals and the very protective caregivers), problems involved in creating and using the game (e.g. side effects in the use of 3D format, etc.), and possible solutions to these problems (e.g. use of 2D format). From these participatory practices, three main Personas were identified [START_REF] Rodrigues | Lessons Learned in Designing a Digital Therapeutic Game to Support the Treatment and Well-Being of Children with Cancer[END_REF]. The collected data was enriched with information from the Literature regarding childhood cancer, including INCA (Brazil's National Cancer Institute) registration data about child and adolescent cancer in Brazil [START_REF]Coordenação de Prevenção e Vigilância de Câncer[END_REF]. An occupational therapist of the specialized hospital evaluated and validated the resulting Personas [START_REF] Rodrigues | Lessons Learned in Designing a Digital Therapeutic Game to Support the Treatment and Well-Being of Children with Cancer[END_REF].

According to the researchers, Stage 1 allowed to identify that each of the three Personas created has different needs, which imply in requirements regarding the flexibility of the game. Some possibilities for the game include features to improve self-esteem (e.g. in pre-teen patients who are in an age of discovering their body) and promote positivism, clarifying the treatment and entertaining children and caregivers. The instantiation of Stage 1 also helped researchers to identify the importance of illustrating in the game, in playful ways, changes that occur in the children's body due to the treatment [START_REF] Rodrigues | Lessons Learned in Designing a Digital Therapeutic Game to Support the Treatment and Well-Being of Children with Cancer[END_REF].

In Stage 2, the modeling language was used to model scenarios and interactions for supporting treatment cancer in the therapeutic game. This stage, however, has not yet (at the time of writing) been completed its cycle and, thus, has not yet been evaluated by hospital professionals. Nevertheless, according the researchers [START_REF] Rodrigues | Lessons Learned in Designing a Digital Therapeutic Game to Support the Treatment and Well-Being of Children with Cancer[END_REF], part of scenarios foreseen for the game already was modeled. The scenarios illustrate, for instance, the materialization of some peculiar aspects and flexibility pointed out by professionals, among them, the flexibility of parts of the game to meet different user profiles and different therapeutic objectives.

In Stage 3, members of the computer science team created prototypes of the scenarios already modeled. One of these prototypes represent game screen with the hospital room where the healthcare professional (from different areas) explains patient care and caregivers from her/his perspective of her/his area of practice (e.g. Occupational Therapy, Medicine, Nutrition, etc.). The prototypes should validate suitability of modeled interaction and allow hospital professionals to evaluate game creation modeling and flow. However, the researchers point out that, as in Stage 2, the evaluation with the professionals of the artifacts generated in Stage 3 of the approach has not yet occurred, because the modeling of the scenarios is still under development.

About the design approach, the evaluation group emphasize that, following the first steps, it was possible to involve healthcare professionals in the creation of a game that also supports their activities as therapists. According to the researchers, in addition to involving the stakeholders in the process, the artifacts used for collecting requirements provide more reliable information to the domain in study and may allow more adhesion to the proposed therapeutic application.

Conclusion and Future Works

To turn digital therapeutic games into tools supporting professional healthcare practices, we need to support the design of effective solutions with methods and techniques. Ideally, a semiotic-based approach to the design of therapeutic games aiming to guide involved stakeholders into game creation could, potentially, help the creation of more effective solutions.

Combining results from the literature with studies carried out by a research group that had developed a therapeutic game to aid depression treatment, this paper presents initial steps towards an approach to support the design of therapeutic games. The approach describes a four stages process to guide the development.

An instantiation of the approach was conducted in a different therapeutic context to evaluate it. Preliminary results pointed by the evaluators suggest positive aspects in the involvement of healthcare professionals as co-producers of the solution in question. Domain-specific features, and therefore, peculiar therapeutic aspects, should not, and cannot, be conceived entirely by computer professionals if aiming for effective therapeutic solutions. Rather, it is important to allow as many stakeholders as possible to contribute their designs. For this, PD may be useful, as it promotes co-creation of the therapeutic solution --which is characterized as serious by the Literature and has the responsibility of helping in therapeutic treatments.

Although the preliminary results of the validation conducted are positive, the design approach must be applied in new contexts in order to further evaluate and improve the process.

2 ): 1 )

 21 Design Problem Clarification, 2) Interaction Modeling, 3) Design Materialization, and 4) Evaluation.

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Stages of the Design Approach.

Acknowledges. The authors would like to thank the healthcare professionals and administrators of HEM-Marília and HA-Barretos, and healthcare and computer science researchers from UEMG -Frutal and UFSCar for their effective collaboration. CAPES for financial support.


John Effah
email: jeffah@ug.edu.gh

Prince Kwame Senyo
email: pksenyo@ug.edu.gh

Stephen Opoku-Anokye
email: stephen.opoku-anokye@henley.ac.uk

Business Intelligence Architecture Informed by Organisational Semiotics

Keywords: Organisational Semiotics, Business Intelligence, Knowledge Hierarchy, Forma-Informa-Performa, Semiotic Framework First Section

This study draws on organisational semiotics and design science methodology informed by abductive reasoning to develop a business intelligence (BI) architecture. Organisational semiotics research has so far paid limited attention to BI in general and its architecture in particular. Moreover, BI research in information systems (IS) focuses largely on either technical or social activities. Organisational semiotics offers frameworks and model which can be used to develop a BI architecture with combined technical and social views. This study therefore develops a BI architecture based on knowledge hierarchy, semiotic framework, and semiotic activity hierarchy. The paper uses a manufacturing company's BI experience as a case study to inform and evaluate the proposed architecture. The study's contribution stems from its development of the organisational semiotics informed BI architecture and its implications for research and practice.

Introduction

Following technological advancement in data infrastructure as well as tools and techniques for analytics and data mining, business intelligence (BI) has increasingly attracted research attention in information systems [START_REF] Chen | Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact[END_REF]. Recent conceptualizations view BI as the ability to acquire and apply actionable knowledge to make decisions [START_REF] Leismeister | Collective Intelligence[END_REF]. As a multidisciplinary concept, BI lacks a consensual definition [START_REF] Grossmann | Fundamentals of Business Intelligence[END_REF][START_REF] Olszak | Toward Better Understanding and Use of Business Intelligence in Organizations[END_REF]. However, in information systems, BI refers to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for data gathering and storage to generate actionable knowledge for decision making [START_REF] Negash | Business intelligence[END_REF][START_REF] Olszak | Approach to building and implementing Business Intelligence systems[END_REF]. BI has generally been viewed as a process [START_REF] Negash | Business intelligence[END_REF]. However, this study argues that beyond being a process, BI can also be an output as actionable knowledge. Thus far, organisational semiotics research on BI remains limited. The few studies on the subject have focused largely on data visualization [START_REF] Liu | Semiotics in visualisation[END_REF][START_REF] Liu | [END_REF], which is only a component of the final stage of the BI process. As a result, not much is known about BI process in organisational semiotics. A recent study on information architecture [START_REF] Tan | An organisational semiotics inspired information architecture: Pervasive healthcare as a case study[END_REF] makes a case for increasing the scope of BI research in organisational semiotics. The current study responds to such a call by developing a semiotic informed BI architecture.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 reviews related works on knowledge hierarchy and BI systems. Section 3 presents semiotic framework and semiotic activity hierarchy as the study's theoretical foundation. Section 4 presents BI experience of a manufacturing firm's human resource intelligence system as a case for developing and evaluating the BI architecture. Section 5 develops the BI architecture based on the related works, the theoretical foundation and the case study through an iterative process. Section 6 discusses the results of the study. Finally, Section 7 provides the conclusion with suggestions for future research.

2

Related Works

The Knowledge Hierarchy

Knowledge hierarchy [START_REF] Ackoff | From data to wisdom[END_REF][START_REF] Rowley | The wisdom hierarchy: representations of the DIKW hierarchy[END_REF], also called information hierarchy or wisdom hierarchy, represents the structural and functional relationships between data, information, knowledge and sometimes wisdom [START_REF] Boell | What is "Information" Beyond a Definition?[END_REF][START_REF] Rowley | The wisdom hierarchy: representations of the DIKW hierarchy[END_REF]. Figure 1 shows the knowledge hierarchy and its layers.

Fig. 1.

Knowledge Hierarchy [START_REF] Rowley | The wisdom hierarchy: representations of the DIKW hierarchy[END_REF] Like knowledge itself, concepts within the hierarchy lack consensual definitions across disciplines. Table 1 however offers generic definitions as used in information systems [e.g., [START_REF] Boell | What is "Information" Beyond a Definition?[END_REF][START_REF] Rowley | The wisdom hierarchy: representations of the DIKW hierarchy[END_REF]. Data refers to symbolic facts captured and stored in media; information constitutes statements with meanings; knowledge refers to true statements that are socially believed and verified; while wisdom refers to applied knowledge judged to be right and socially acceptable.

The functional perspective shows the hierarchy as dynamic interactions between the elements. Thus, data undergoes processing to derive information, which is analyzed to generate knowledge, which is judged or assessed to get wisdom. Knowledge hierarchy has been applied with semiotic framework in organisational semiotics research [e.g., 2]. However, its relationship with BI remains limited. The current study therefore Wisdom Knowledge Information Data adapts the knowledge hierarchy to derive an intelligence hierarchy as part of the process for developing the BI architecture.

Business Intelligence Systems

Business intelligence systems [START_REF] Olszak | Approach to building and implementing Business Intelligence systems[END_REF] refer to a collection of technologies and techniques for capturing, preparing and transforming data into knowledge for decisions. Figure 2 shows a framework for BI system and related components. A key limitation of the intelligence system is the failure to conceptualise and incorporate intelligence as a fundamental component of the model. Thus, the model uses BI only as a process and not as an output that emerges at some point of the intelligence process. In simple terms, not all knowledge may be useful for decision making. To address this limitation, this study draws on the BI system to develop the organisational semiotics informed BI architecture in Section 4.2.

Organisational Semiotics

Organisational semiotics draws on signs to study information and communication systems in organisational context [START_REF] Liu | Semiotics In Information Systems Engineering[END_REF][START_REF] Liu | Organisational Semiotics for Business Informatics[END_REF]. A sign refers to whatever that stands to someone for something [START_REF] Liu | Requirements reengineering from legacy information systems using semiotic techniques[END_REF]. The current study draws on the semiotic frameworks and semiotic activity hierarchy as a combined theoretical foundation for the BI architecture.

Semiotic Framework

The semiotic framework (also called semiotic ladder) hierarchically structures sign systems into technical and social layers as shown in Figure 3. The technical layers comprise the physical, empirical and syntactic. First, the physical constitutes the material and digital components of signs. Second, the empirical concerns observable properties of signals as signs in transmission through a communication medium such as speed, capacity, efficiency and errors. Third, the syntactic concerns rules and standards regarding the physical composition and structure of a sign. The social layers comprise the semantic, pragmatic and social effects. The semantic deals with meanings that signs convey. The pragmatic relates to the intentions as well as use and effects of signs in communication [START_REF] Liu | Semiotics In Information Systems Engineering[END_REF]. The social concerns change that communication and use of signs effect in the real world. Such effects include changes in the status quo that results from social activities such as agreements, norms and decisions. The next section presents semiotic activity hierarchy based on the semiotic framework.

SOCIAL LEVEL

Social Effects (commitments and functions) behavioural and social effects of sign use in real world

Semiotic Activity Hierarchy

The notion of semiotic activity is introduced in this study as layers of formative, informative and performative activities based on the semiotic framework as shown in Figure 3. The formative activity involves the physical, empirical and syntactic layers for composition and transmission of signs as data; informative activity relates to interpretation and communication of signs as information; finally, performative activity informs the use of actionable knowledge to make a decision that effect changes in the real world.

Fig. 4. Semiotic Activities Hierarchy

The layers of activities are based on the notions of forma, informa and performa as patterns of signs systems developed by Dietz [START_REF] Dietz | The deep structure of business processes[END_REF] and related to the semiotic framework by Beynon-Davies [START_REF] Beynon-Davies | Formatics. In: Americas Conference on Information Systems[END_REF] as semiotic acts. According to Dietz [START_REF] Dietz | The deep structure of business processes[END_REF] forma refers to material or physical composition of a sign; informa deals with content and meaning of signs; while performa deals with communication and use of signs for making decisions for social actions.

Case Study

This section presents the BI experience of a multi-site manufacturing company in the UK, MSMC (pseudonym) involving human resource and diseases data warehousing and mining. In 2010, the company implemented a BI solution with a data warehouse for consolidating and restructuring operational data including that of human resources; metadata layer for providing meaningful data views from the data warehouse and marts; and presentation layer for reporting and analytics, including pre-built reports, ad-hoc queries and analysis as well as BI visualization.

In 2011, the Human Resource (HR) Director had a requirement to know monthly trends of sickness among the workforce across all sites. To do this, the BI team extended the existing data warehouse to include disease outbreak data in areas of the various sites. Subsequent data mining activities established associations between the health data and music festival data. Hence, additional data on music festivals were incorporated into the data warehouse and the HR data mart. The following section shows the semiotic activities that occurred at various stages of the BI architecture.

SEMIOTIC ACTIVITES

Performative Stageactivities based on actionable knowledge for decision making and generating social effects

Informative Stageactivities and outputs based on semantic and pragmatic layers involving information use in communication Formative Stage: activities and outputs physical, empirics and syntactic layers involving data

Formative Activities

The physical implementation of the data store layer of the BI solution included a consolidation and restructuring data warehouse (CRDW). The techniques used at the formative stage involved the use of extract, transform and load (ETL) tools to collect data from operational and external sources including HR data, transforming the data through restructuring and cleaning and loading data into the warehouse.

The HRM system primarily supported the operations of the HR Department. As such, it was developed to capture and store employee related data across the organisation, including data on sickness and sick leave. The organisation's policy on sick leave allows employees to self-certify if the sickness period is not more than 7 days in a single period or 10 days in total for a whole year. Within these periods, self-certified sick leave does not require a note from a medical practitioner or evidence of visit to a medical centre. As part of the formative activities, data were collected by the recording of sick leave taken using the organisation's Human Resource Management (HRM) System. Also, the data were extracted from the HRM System and loaded into an Organisationwide integrated data warehouse. This was done to consolidate data on sick leave and from other sources, and to prepare the data for reporting and analytics.

Beyond the internal sources, ETL tools were used to capture and load NHS data on disease outbreaks and music festivals related to areas close various sites of the company. In sum, the BI formative activities made data available for the informative and performative activities.

Informative Activity

At the informative stage, a metadata set was setup with a prebuilt report for the monthly sickness trend to meet the information requirements of the HR director. In January 2012, the monthly trends report up to December 2011 highlighted August as the month with over 50% of recorded employee sickness, which had been consistent for the past 6 years. A further analysis of SiteX (pseudonym) of the company highlighted the 3rd week of August as accounting for over 75% of all reported employee sicknesses across the same 6-year period. Moreover, over 85% of all reported sickness in August for the 6-year period were self-certified, of which 90% were from one particular manufacturing site.

Performative Activity

Beyond the employee sickness data, health data from the National Health Service were analysed to identify any possible disease outbreaks in August, especially, the 3rd week. However, none was found. Analysis of data from the two water companies for the residential areas within commutable distance or 2-hour drive from SiteX also revealed no reported contamination in the periods concerned. However, a search of local activities in the immediate surroundings of SiteX identified a music festival that starts on the 2nd weekend of August. Further investigations showed the festival has been running for over 50 years and has become very popular over the last 15 years. Further analysis revealed that over 70% of the people who attend this music festival as between the ages of 20 and 37 years.

Combining this external data from the organisers of the music festival with the internal HR data. Mining of the combined data revealed a strong correlation between the festival start date and the sick leave taken over the last 15 years. Also, the data revealed an exponential increase of sick leave taken during the 3rd week in August from 15 years ago to 6 years ago where it plateaued. Armed with this information, the senior management team decided to change the policy on self-certified sick leave from 7 days to 2 days in any single period.

Business Intelligence Architecture

This section presents the organisational semiotic informed BI architecture, which was developed through design science methodology informed by abductive reasoning [START_REF] Tan | Information Architecture for Healthcare Organizations: the case of a NHS Hospital in UK[END_REF].

The process began with the third author's observation of challenges that were associated with lack of a BI model to support the case organisation's decision and policy evaluation on sick leave. Following this, the study drew on the conventional knowledge hierarchy to develop an intelligence hierarchy as shown in Figure 5.

Fig. 5. Intelligence Hierarchy

As Figure 5 shows, the notion of intelligence replaces knowledge and wisdom. In this study, intelligence is considered as a form of knowledge that supports decision making and therefore actionable; hence the decision to use it to substitute knowledge and wisdom. In relation to the semiotic activity hierarchy, formative activity generates data, informative activity generates information while performative activity in the form of data mining generates intelligence to support decision making.

Subsequently, the study drew on the intelligence hierarchy and the semiotic framework with activity hierarchy to develop an initial BI architecture, which was validated and refined with the case study. Thus, the BI architecture process followed an iterative process whereby the BI experience in the case study served as a guide and evaluation criteria for refinement. Figure 6 shows the final architecture that emerged from the iterative process.

Intelligence

Information

Fig. 6. Business Intelligence architecture

The architecture shows 4 layers and 3 stages with their output and supporting activities, techniques and tools. The interconnecting lines show how the various components are intertwined to generate the required intelligence to support decision making for organisational activities. The intelligence generation process begins from the formative stage where the platform layer relies on the tool and technique layers to generate data as output. This stage supports the informative stage to generate information as output. Finally, the performative stage generates intelligence as output, in the form of actionable knowledge for organisational decision making

Discussion

The case study shows the three stages of BI process and output as well as supporting techniques and tools of the proposed architecture. The formative activity corresponds to the data warehouse and ETL as tools, extraction and consolidation of internal as well as external data as techniques and the accumulated data as the output. In relation to the semiotic framework, the formative activity relies on the technical platform: physical, empirics and syntax. The informative activity relates to metadata and reporting of monthly trend reports on sick leave. The underlying technique was analysis and reporting with OLAP, general query and ad-hoc query tools as supporting technologies. In terms of the semiotic framework, the informative activity relates to semantics and pragmatics in terms of sense-making and communication of information.

Finally, the performative activity involved the use of intelligence knowledge to make a decision by changing the policy on sick leave. The supporting technique involve data mining and data visualisation while the underlying tools were data mining and visualization software. In relation to the semiotic ladder, the performative activity relies on the social world effects.

The three activities show a clear distinction between data, information and intelligence in the architecture. Data is considered as symbolic facts that are accumulated to support informative and performative activities. Informative activity produces meaningful messages to provide answers to known questions through analytics as in the case of the HR director. Intelligence however presents actionable knowledge based on unknown and unexpected patterns, relationships, and associations as was the case with the sick leave and the music festival period. However, in practice, the three are not independent but highly related as demonstrated by the various intersecting line of the architecture.

Existing BI studies [e.g., [START_REF] Negash | Business intelligence[END_REF][START_REF] Sahay | Real time business intelligence in supply chain analytics[END_REF] largely portray the concept from a technical perspective and pays less attention to the social dimension. Also related organisational semiotic studies discuss some part of the subject in relation to knowledge management [e.g., 2] but does not link to BI. Our study therefore comes as the first to use organisational semiotics to develop a BI architecture with clear distinction between data, information and intelligence and their relationships at the semiotic, tools, techniques output and activity levels.

Conclusion

The purpose of the study was to develop a BI architecture based on the organisational semiotics framework. The study therefore presents a BI architecture founded on the organisational semiotic framework, intelligence hierarchy, semiotic activity framework based on formative, informative, and performative activity levels. Viewing intelligence as an actionable knowledge for decision making, the study contributes to organisational semiotics research by extending it to the domain of BI. It also contributes to BI research by basing the architecture on semiotic principles and frameworks. For contribution to practice, the findings present a clearer BI process that intelligence analysts, developers and users can draw on to identify relevant technologies, techniques and activities that are required to develop and deploy a BI system in an organisational setting. In addition, the architecture presents a clearer network between data, information and intelligence to inform practices on how to develop such a system.

The limitation of the study stems from its exploratory nature and single case illustration in a human resource intelligence system. Given that BI does not focus on a single domain or problem area as does decision support systems, future research will evaluate the architecture in a multi-domain environment such as supply chain and customer relationship management

Fig. 2 .Figure 2

 22 Fig. 2. Business intelligence system[START_REF] Olszak | Approach to building and implementing Business Intelligence systems[END_REF]

Fig. 3 .

 3 Fig.3. Generic semiotic framework: Adapted from[START_REF] Mingers | Guidelines for Conducting Semiotic Research in Information Systems[END_REF]

  Pragmatic (use and effects in communication) intentions and effects of social communication of signs Semantic (meaning) Sense making of signs in relation to interpretant and referents TECHNICAL LEVEL Syntactical (rules for composition) Required rules, grammar and standards sign composition Empirical (transmission) technical communication and transmission of signs as signals Physical (material nature) embodiment, format and storage medium of physical and digital signs 3.2

Table 1 .

 1 Definitions of knowledge hierarchy concepts

	Element	Meaning
	Wisdom	judgements that are socially desirable
	Knowledge	beliefs that have been socially verified to be true
	Information	meanings derived from processed data
	Data	Symbolic facts that have been captured

Data