Sustainable Business Models for Services Using Semantic Web Components: Insights from the Field

• Published in: Software Business. From Physical Products to Software Services and Solutions pp. 26 - 30
• Main Authors: Tate, Mary, Furtmueller, Elfi
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2013
• Series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing
• Subjects: Action Design Research; HRIS; Semantic Web; Services
• ISBN: 9783642393358; 3642393357
• ISSN: 1865-1348; 1865-1356
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-39336-5_3

Semantic web technologies for Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) are yet to fulfil their full potential. In this paper we reflect on an e-recruiting service development project using semantic web technologies. We use a modified Action Design Research (ADR) lens to organize insights from an innovative, entrepreneurial service offering. The results show that achieving sustainable business models for e-recruiting services based on semantic web components is non-trivial. It requires a rich and continuous interplay between theoretical knowledge (semantic web, service management, and subject-area knowledge); technical knowledge and expertise in building semantic web components; and the community of applicants and recruiters, who use and extend the sematic web components into new service offerings. We further find that the complex, interactive, adaptive, multi-disciplinary and iterative nature of HRIS projects creates challenges in communicating between the stakeholders, and in extracting and presenting theoretical contributions.