bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Screening in High Standard
Authors: Agterberg Bas
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the innovation of television by looking at the development of high definition television (HDTV). It argues that the way that the interaction of technological, industrial, and political actors has been crucial in several stages of the development of this innovation. Central question is how industry, broadcasters, and consumers have debated and defined a medium and consequently redefine a medium through innovations. The complexity and the way actors have played a part within the changing media environment is analyzed by looking at the necessity for technological change of the television standard, by relating the media film and television in transition from analogue to digital and by studying case studies of political debates and policy in Europe and the United States.
Working at Home
Authors: Kennedy Tracy L.M.
Published: May 2011

This chapter explores the work-family interface by investigating home as a potential work space that must still accommodate the social and leisure needs of household members. By examining spatial patterns of household Internet location, this chapter investigates the prevalence of paid work in Canadian homes, illustrates how household spaces are reorganized to accommodate the computer/Internet, and examines how the location of Internet access is situated within sociocultural contexts of the household and how this might affect potential work-from-home scenarios. Data collected from a triangulation of methods—surveys, interviews and in-home observation—also illustrate the relevance of household Internet location from an organizational perspective. The relationship between individuals and business organizations is interactive and integrative, and the home workplace is complex and blurred with other daily social realities, which influence effective work-at-home strategies and potentially shapes productivity and efficiency.
Media Life Cycle and Consumer-Generated Innovation
Authors: Washida Yuichi , van der Graaf Shenja , Keeris Eva
Published: May 2011

This study examines the innovation in communication media, based on empirical survey results from five countries. First, the authors create a general framework of the media life cycle by exploring the replacement of communication media used in daily life. The shift from voice communications to mobile e-mailing is at the forefront of the media life cycle in the personal communication area. This framework also implies future media replacements in other countries. Second, by comparing two empirical surveys, done in 2002 and 2003, of communication means used among Japanese family relations, the authors discover that certain consumer clusters lead in the innovation of communication media. This framework and discovery can be useful to deal with the vacuum between conventional media studies and the latest information technology.
The KM Technological Infrastructure
Authors: Wickramasinghe Nilmini , Von Lubitz Dag
Published: May 2011

This book provides comprehensive coverage of all areas (people, process, and technology) necessary to become a knowledge-based enterprise. It presents several frameworks facilitating the implementation of a KM initiative and its ongoing management so that pertinent knowledge and information are always available to the decision maker, and so the organization may always enjoy a sustainable competitive advantage
Illustration and Validation of the Interactive IR Framework
Authors: Xie Iris
Published: May 2011

In order to illustrate and validate the planned-situational interactive IR model, I conducted an empirical study. This study was a pilot of a large-scale study, discussed in the summary of this chapter, that focuses on the investigation of how people seek and retrieve information in their research proposal writing process. The objective of the study is particularly concerned with whether multiple information-seeking strategies were applied and shifts in information-seeking strategies occurred in users’ information-seeking and -retrieving process. This study addressed the following research questions: 1. What are users’ levels of goals/tasks and their representation? 2. What are users’ personal information infrastructures? 3. What is the social-organizational context for users’ information seeking and retrieving? 4. What types of IR systems do users access and what types of influences do these systems have? 5. What are the types of information-seeking strategies employed by users? 6. Do users shift their current search goals and information-seeking strategies in the information-seeking and -retrieving process? If yes, how? 7. What are the factors that lead to different levels and types of shifts? This research helps us understand the nature of information seeking and retrieving, in particular, the nature of interactive IR. Applying emprical data to examine the major components of the planned-situational interactive IR model and their interactions effectively assists us to validate and illustrate this model. The major contribution of this study is that it investigates users’ dynamic information-seeking processes related to their work and search tasks instead of a snapshot of an information- seeking activity. The emprical data further enrich and enhance the interactive IR framework. In addition to this study, I also incorporate some related studies to validate and ilustrate the planned-situational interactive IR model.
Supporting Executive Intelligence Activities with Agent-Based Executive Information Systems
Authors: Ong V.
Published: May 2011

This chapter examines the theoretical underpinning for supporting executive intelligence activities and reviews conventional studies of executive information systems (EIS) over the last two decades in responding to the current executives’ information processing needs and the current Internet era. The reviews suggest the need for designing advanced EIS that are capable of responding and adapting to executive information. This chapter recognizes the necessity of revitalizing EIS with advances in intelligent technologies and Web-based technologies. Empirical studies were conducted to elucidate executives’ desires and perceptions of the prospect of agent-based technologies for supporting executive intelligence activities in the more integrated and distributed environment of the Internet. Based on the insights gained from empirical studies, this chapter concludes by presenting a three-level agent-based EIS design model that comprises a “usability-adaptability-intelligence” trichotomy for supporting executive intelligence activities.
Awareness and Assessment of Strategic Intelligence
Authors: Brouard F.
Published: May 2011

This chapter discuss the need for organizations to raise the level of awareness about strategic intelligence. It argues that improvement of awareness and scanning practices could be done by developing a diagnostic tool. The diagnostic tool is an expert system that makes the existing strategic intelligence practices and underlying processes more explicit and contributes to improved awareness of strategic intelligence practices. Furthermore, the author hopes that presenting a diagnostic tool will help increase the level of awareness and provide an assessment framework about strategic intelligence practices.
Knowledge Creation and Sharing
Authors: Bednar P. , Welch C.
Published: May 2011

Strategic intelligence involves examination of internal and external organizational environments. Of course people inhabited each of these environments. Whether they are customers, allies or employees, these are not standardized units but real human beings with personal histories, perspectives, and opinions. Recent research and practice have led to the development of relatively complex methods for inquiry which can be applied by human analysts and which recognize contextual dependencies in a problem situation. One such method, the strategic systemic thinking framework, is outlined in this chapter. The purpose of complex analysis in relation to strategic intelligence is not, in our perspective, decision-making—it is developing an ability to make informed decisions. Until software tools could not support recently complex methods, since the limitations of traditional mathematical algorithms constrained their development. We suggest a model, which lays the foundations for the development of software support and can tolerate the inherent ambiguity in complex analysis, based on paraconsistent (multivalued) mathematical logic.
Designing Layers in Hierarchical Fuzzy Logic Systems Using Genetic Algorithms
Authors: Mohammadian Masoud , Stonier Russel
Published: May 2011

In this paper the design and development of hierarchical fuzzy logic systems is investigated using genetic algorithms. This research study is unique in the way the proposed method is applied to the design and development of hierarchical fuzzy logic systems. The new method proposed determines the number of layers in the hierarchical fuzzy logic system. The proposed method is then applied to financial modelling and prediction. A hierarchical fuzzy logic system is developed to predict quarterly interest rates in Australia. The advantages and disadvantages of using hierarchical fuzzy logic systems for financial modelling is also considered. Good prediction of quarterly interest rate in Australia is obtained using the above method. The number of fuzzy rules used is reduced dramatically and prediction of interest rate is improved.
An Evolutionary Framework for Nonlinear Time-Series Prediction with Adaptive Gated Mixtures of Experts
Authors: Coelho André L.V. , Lima Clodoaldo A.M. , Von Zuben Fernando J.
Published: May 2011

A probabilistic learning technique, known as gated mixture of experts (MEs), is made more adaptive by employing a customized genetic algorithm based on the concepts of hierarchical mixed encoding and hybrid training. The objective of such effort is to promote the automatic design (i.e., structural configuration and parameter calibration) of whole gated ME instances more capable to cope with the intricacies of some difficult machine learning problems whose statistical properties are time-variant. In this chapter, we outline the main steps behind such novel hybrid intelligent system, focusing on its application to the nontrivial task of nonlinear time-series forecasting. Experiment results are reported with respect to three benchmarking time-series problems, and confirmed our expectation that the new integrated approach is capable to outperform, both in terms of accuracy and generalization, other conventional approaches, such as single neural networks and non-adaptive, handcrafted gated MEs.
An Agent Based Formal Approach for Modeling and Verifying Integrated Intelligent Information Systems
Authors: Dias da Silva Leandro , da Silva Oliveiro Elthon Allex , Almeida Hyggo , Perkusich Angelo
Published: May 2011

In this chapter a formal agent based approach for the modeling and verification of intelligent information systems using Coloured Petri Nets is presented. The use of a formal method allows analysis techniques such as automatic simulation and verification, increasing the confidence on the system behavior. The agent based modelling allows separating distribution, integration and intelligent features of the system, improving model reuse, flexibility and maintenance. As a case study an intelligent information control system for parking meters price is presented.
Towards a Design Process for Integrating Product Recommendation Services in E-Markets
Authors: Manouselis Nikos , Costopoulou Constantina
Published: May 2011

Online recommendation services (widely known as recommender systems) can support potential buyers by providing product recommendations that match their preferences. When integrated into e-markets, recommendation services may offer important added value, since they can help online buyers to save time and make informed purchase decisions, as well as e-market operators to respond to buyer product’s queries in a more efficient manner, thus attracting more potential buyers. On the other hand, the variety of intelligent recommendation techniques that can support such services may often prove complex and costly to implement. Towards this direction, this chapter proposes a design process for deploying intelligent recommendation services in existing e-markets, in order to reduce the complexity of such kind of software development. To demonstrate the applicability of this approach, the proposed process is applied for the integration of a wine recommendation service in a Greek e-market with agricultural products.
Mining Clinical Trial Data
Authors: Alvir Jose Ma. J. , Cabrera Javier
Published: May 2011

Mining clinical trails is becoming an important tool for extracting information that might help design better clinical trials. One important objective is to identify characteristics of a subset of cases that responds substantially differently than the rest. For example, what are the characteristics of placebo respondents? Who have the best or worst response to a particular treatment? Are there subsets among the treated group who perform particularly well? In this chapter we give an overview of the processes of conducting clinical trials and the places where data mining might be of interest. We also introduce an algorithm for constructing data mining trees that are very useful for answering the above questions by detecting interesting features of the data. We illustrate the ARF method with an analysis of data from four placebo-controlled trials of ziprasidone in schizophrenia.
Beyond Classification
Authors: Olecka Anna
Published: May 2011

This chapter will focus on challenges in modeling credit risk for new accounts acquisition process in the credit card industry. First section provides an overview and a brief history of credit scoring. The second section looks at some of the challenges specific to the credit industry. In many of these applications business objective is tied only indirectly to the classification scheme. Opposing objectives, such as response, profit and risk, often play a tug of war with each other. Solving a business problem of such complex nature often requires a multiple of models working jointly. Challenges to data mining lie in exploring solutions that go beyond traditional, well-documented methodology and need for simplifying assumptions; often necessitated by the reality of dataset sizes and/or implementation issues. Examples of such challenges form an illustrative example of a compromise between data mining theory and applications.
Re-Sampling Based Data Mining Using Rough Set Theory
Authors: Griffiths Benjamin
Published: May 2011

Predictive accuracy, as an estimation of a classifier’s future performance, has been studied for at least seventy years. With the advent of the modern computer era, techniques that may have been previously impractical are now calculable within a reasonable time frame. Within this chapter, three techniques of resampling, namely, leave-one-out, k-fold cross validation and bootstrapping; are investigated as methods of error rate estimation with application to variable precision rough set theory (VPRS). A prototype expert system is utilised to explore the nature of each resampling technique when VPRS is applied to an example dataset. The software produces a series of graphs and descriptive statistics, which are used to illustrate the characteristics of each technique with regards to VPRS, and comparisons are drawn between the results.
Dynamic Transshipment in the Digital Age
Authors: Yang S.
Published: May 2011

In recent years, e-retailing has become the growth engine for the retailing industry. A large online retailer usually has multiple distribution centers serving different geographical regions. This chapter explores how to handle transshipment among distribution centers in a geographically dispersed network. We investigate transshipment strategies in a continuous review system with dynamic demand. We present a dynamic program that identifies the optimal transshipment rule. However, the dynamic program is time consuming and might be difficult for practitioners to implement. Therefore, we propose three distinct heuristic decision rules for making transshipment decisions. By employing numerical experiments, we analyze simulated results through various combinations of demand rates and delivery costs. We provide comments and suggestions based on the comparative results generated from different decision rules. As a result, we identify a good heuristic rule, which can be conveniently implemented and used in practice to determine effective transshipment policies.
The Use of Collaboration Tools in Supply Chain
Authors: Bak O.
Published: May 2011

The supply chain environment today is a collaborative business environment in which the members of supply chains are interlinked with each other. Hence the collaboration extends in supply chains to inter- and intra-enterprise applications, the so-called collaboration tools, such as customer relationship management, supplier relationship management, e-business and employee-business integration. In order to achieve this collaboration, supply chains also realize the need to implement integrated collaboration tools, which integrate tightly their intra- and inter-supply chain processes. With new technologies like Web-enabled services, wireless applications, and software applications, the supply chain today needs frameworks that consider the requirements of collaborative supply chain scenarios. This chapter thus will introduce a framework to ensure that collaboration at all supply chain levels is considered at a very early stage of the project so that the integrated supply chain collaboration can be designed and implemented. A case study of an application of collaboration tools is presented. This framework was used successfully to design and implement a collaborative integrated-enterprise system for a manufacturing enterprise. However, collaboration in supply chain is only effective if the collaboration tools are integrated or used jointly by supply chain and their collaborative partners. Therefore, this chapter first explains the concept of collaboration tools and its importance in the supply chain, evaluates the requirements for supply chain management (SCM), and tries to ascertain the collaborative problem areas specifically within supplier and SCM relations.
Information Feedback Approach for Maintaining Service Quality in Supply Chain Management
Authors: Manjunath R.
Published: May 2011

Maintaining the service quality in a supply chain has become a challenging task with increased complexity and number of players down the line. Often several supply chains cross over the common resources, calling for the sharing of resources and prioritization. This leads to the definition of pre-specified service quality as seen by the end user of the supply chain. In this chapter, a feedback mechanism that conveys the status of the supply line starting from the tail end is discussed. The advantages of using a predicted and shifted slippage or loss rate as the feedback signal are highlighted. Based on the feedback, the source is expected to change the rate of transfer of the commodity over the supply chain. With this, the resources would get utilized effectively, reducing the stranded time of the commodity down the line. The service quality in terms of delay and loss rate gets improved.
The Effects of Human Factors on the Use of Web-Based Instruction
Authors: Chen Sherry Y.
Published: May 2011

Web-based instruction is prevalent in educational settings. However, many issues still remain to be investigated. In particular, it is still open about how human factors influenced learners’ performance and perception in web-based instruction. In this vein, the study presented in this chapter investigates this issue in a web-based instructional program, which was applied to teach students how to use HTML in an UK university. Sixty-one master’s degree students participated in this study.’ There is a number of interesting findings. Students’ task achievements were affected by the levels of their previous system experience. On the other hand, the Post-Test and Gain scores were positively influenced by their perceptions and attitudes toward the web-based instructional program. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Mind the Gap!
Authors: Madden Andrew D. , Baptista Nunes J. Miguel , McPherson M. A. , Ford Nigel , Miller Dave
Published: May 2011

The rapid incursion of ICT into the classroom has meant that, within a space of a few years, computers have moved from being peripheral to being an integral part of the learning environment. However, our perceptions of a technology are affected by the age at which we encounter it. This chapter draws on the findings of a number of research projects at the University of Sheffield. These findings are used to explore some of the ’generation gaps’ that arise from differing perceptions of learning technologies. The data discussed provide insights into the ICT-based generation gaps that currently exist between and within groups of students, teachers and parents. It is argued that a fundamental gap may exist between students differing in age by as little as five years. Results from a related project exploring Networked Information and Communication Literacy Skills (NICLS), are used to introduce a discussion on the nature of any skills gap that must be addressed in the light of these generation gaps.
Perspectives on 21st Century E-Learning in Higher Education
Authors: Rajasingham Lalita
Published: May 2011

This article explores a new higher education paradigm given the changing environment that will come with the advance of globalisation and the rapid development of the Internet. As economies evolve around a global network and the value of knowledge, societies rely on universities to help shape future education in an emerging knowledge society. As teachers and learners already find that they need to adapt to the presence of the Internet, university managers and administrators will need to adapt their structures, strategies, procedures and programs to deal with the processes of globalization. Based on international research, this article presents a vision, and a paradigm from which higher education might be constructed. The Sloan-C Five Pillars of Quality Online Education and new applications, HyperReality and Croquet are examined as potential platforms to reframe future developments.
Quality of Online Learning Applications
Authors: Liu Leping
Published: May 2011

The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of the design-quality of current online K-12 learning applications on student learning via three learning-related variables (student enjoyment, motivation, and anxiety level when using those online applications). Nine hundred online K-12 applications (WebQuests, online drills, games, tests and other applications) were evaluated in terms of four design factors (quality of information, design of information, quality of technology use, and design of technology use) in relation to the three learning-related variables. Three prediction models were generated and tested in this study. An intermediate effect was found between the design of online application and student learning, which may provide some insights for teachers when they integrate online applications into teaching and learning. The target audience of this paper may be school teachers, designers, or professionals who use online applications for education purposes.
Linking Knowledge to Competitiveness
Authors: Holsapple Clyde , Jones Kiku , Singh Meenu
Published: May 2011

Knowledge management (KM) initiatives are undertaken in order to improve organizational performance. The goal of such improvement is to make an organization more competitive in delivering value to its customers, employers, and stakeholders. However, without a plan that links KM activities to organizational performance, the time, effort, and money devoted to a KM initiative may yield little benefit. Thus, understanding this linkage is crucial to competitiveness of knowledge-based organizations. This chapter uses the knowledge chain model as the theoretical base for an empirical study of the linkage between KM activities and approaches to competitiveness. It finds that every one of the nine knowledge chain activities can be performed in ways that improve organizational competitiveness in any of four ways: enhanced productivity, agility, innovation, and reputation. Aside from offering empirical support for the knowledge chain model, the primary finding of this research is that each knowledge chain activity deserves to be considered as a possible means for implementing each of these four approaches to improving organization performance.
The Role of Context and Its Explication for Fostering Knowledge Transparency in Modern Organizations
Authors: Smolnik Stefan , Kremer Stefan , Kolbe Lutz
Published: May 2011

In order for a company to be oriented consistently toward its customers and their processes, it needs to customize its intracorporate processes and systems. The solution seems to be customer process-oriented portals that integrate companies’ systems and provide transparent access to information objects stored in these systems. A key problem in this regard is finding relevant information objects in systems that not only are growing but also also are being disseminated. An additional challenge is making knowledge available at the right time and at the right place. A company’s competitive advantage is rooted in this knowledge advantage as well as in the capability to transform this superior knowledge into market-driven business processes. The research questions addressed in this chapter are how the value of information objects is affected by the context in which it is considered and how associated contexts can be uncovered for given situations. We introduce a continuum of context explication comprised of the relationships among data, information objects, knowledge, and their contexts according to their degree and ease of context explication. The extremes of the continuum, therefore, would be data with no context to explicate and knowledge with rich, person-specific context. We conclude that discovering implicit meanings and expressing those meanings explicitly increase information objects’ potential values. In addition, we evaluate the full-text search, attribute-based search, and topic maps as approaches for knowledge discovery through customer process-oriented portals as well as providing patterns that indicate when to apply which approach. Two small case studies are presented of knowledge discovery through such portals. We conclude with suggestions for future research, based on our final deductions with respect to the study.
OABIS
Authors: Ram Sudha , Liu Jun
Published: May 2011

In recent years, business-rule management has become an important component of enterprise information systems. Business rules are guidelines for how an enterprise should conduct its business and provide better service to customers. Business rules are being widely deployed in supply chains to support real-time decision-making. The research reported in this chapter is aimed at designing a dynamically adaptable data-sourcing service for deploying business rules effectively in supply-chain management. Such a data sourcing service is important since execution of business rules requires data to be retrieved from various data sources spread across the enterprise, including the enterprise data warehouse. We propose an ontology-based approach to implement the data-sourcing service for business rules. Our approach captures semantics of business rules and provides an agent-enabled mechanism that dynamically maps business rules to individual database schemas in the supply chain.
Evolution and Mutation in Push Technologies
Authors: Kendall Julie E , Kendall Kenneth E.
Published: May 2011

PointCast was a magic carpet of content providers. Imagine that of all the information that users needed to complete their work would suddenly appear on their desktops. Although PointCast and other technologies did not survive the hype that surrounded their introduction, push technologies are now back in vogue. RSS feeds and podcasts are now part of many people’s daily lives. Software robots, called autonomous agents, are helping users download what they want from the Internet. The next helpful software agent will be more akin to a butler who anticipates all of the user’s needs today, tomorrow, and in the future. This agent will change as the user changes and is therefore referred to as an evolutionary agent. Evolutionary agents will also change because memes (or messages) one agent broadcasts to another will cause the evolutionary agent to mutate. In this chapter, we explore the social implications of meritorious and malevolent memes exchanged by evolutionary agents. We also discover that interactions occur among humans, evolutionary agents, and memes. Finally, we raise a series of questions for future research regarding genetic determination of evolutionary agents; if it is possible to predict whether a meme will be meritorious or malevolent; and whether it is desirable to legislate the evolution of agents that are evolved from malevolent memes. This chapter contributes to the awareness of the movement toward push technologies deploying evolutionary agents and the social implications their use entails.
An Intelligent Multi-Robot System Using Higher-Order Mobile Agents
Authors: Kambayashi Yasushi , Takimoto Munehiro
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a framework for controlling intelligent robots connected by communication networks. This framework provides novel methods to control coordinated systems using higher-order mobile agents. Higher-order mobile agents are hierarchically structured agents that can contain other mobile agents. By using higher-order mobile agents, intelligent robots in action can acquire new functionalities dynamically as well as exchange their roles with other colleague robots. The higher-order property of the mobile agents enables them to be organized hierarchically and dynamically. In addition to the advantages described above, higher-order mobile agents require minimum communication. They only need connection to be established when they perform migration.
A Generic Internet Trading Framework for Online Auctions
Authors: Yao Dong-Qing , Qiao Dong-Qing , Qiao Haibing
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, we introduce a generic Internet trading framework for online auctions. We present the requirements and service of the framework. A generic OR/XOR bidding language that can express different OR/XOR combinations is adopted for Web interfaces. The framework is implemented with free open-source technologies already successfully tested in industries. Researchers can use the platform to implement different electronic-market mechanisms, simulate the market behavior of their interests, and experiment with it. We also provide future directions for the framework design.
Conduting Feminist Gender Research in the Information Systems Field
Authors: Trauth Eileen M. , Kvasny Lynette , Greenhill Anita
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, we explore the methodological and epistemological implications of conducting feminist, gender research in the information systems field. These implications revolve around four core themes: that feminist research is situated in the margins; that current gender and IS research is not adequately problematized; that feminist research questions the legitimacy and appropriateness of positivist research; and that reflection on the personal characteristics of the researcher such as race, gender, sexuality, and class can inform feminist research. We propose four criteria for conducting feminist IS research: (1) engaging in researcher reflexivity; (2) challenging the hegemonic dominance, legitimacy, and appropriateness of positivist epistemologies; (3) theorizing from the margins; and (4) problematizing gender.
A Taxonomy of Stakeholders
Authors: Alexander Ian F.
Published: May 2011

Systems engineers have often paid too little attention to the nature of the so-called “users” of products under development. These are better called Stakeholders, as many roles are involved, and few of those are in direct contact with the developed products. A simple and robust conceptual framework for classifying development stakeholders – a taxonomy – is proposed. The taxonomy is product-centric, with concentric ‘Circles’ denoting broad categories of stakeholder. Within these, generic ‘Slots’ describe typical classes of stakeholder; these are subdivided into ‘Roles’ which are expected to vary at least in name with the domain. Examples are given, and a popular template is reanalysed using the framework. The taxonomy has immediate value in identifying and validating stakeholder roles in requirements elicitation. This helps to ensure that key viewpoints on requirements are not missed. That in turn reduces the risk of instability and failure during development.
Rhetoric, Practice, and Context-Sensitivity in Sociotechnical Action
Authors: Pellegrino Giuseppina
Published: May 2011

Sociotechnical action, as interpreted in this article, comprises a wide array of elements which shape technological artefacts as socio-material and linguistic devices. Concepts grounded in different theoretical streams are used to account for the ambiguous and multiple process of technology construction. Categories of ‘interpretative flexibility’, ‘inscription’, work-around’, ‘misunderstanding’, are reviewed and used in this account. Starting from the implementation of an intranet-based Knowledge Management System in a 100 staff British firm, different courses of action in technology implementation and appropriation are analysed. Interpretations performed by different actors can rise misunderstanding, failure and innovation in processes of negotiation and are strongly oriented by power issues. The gap between rhetoric of public discourse and practice situated in specific organizational contexts is argued to be crucial in framing expectations and patterns of sociotechnical action. Ambiguity and multiplicity of the Knowledge Management System studied (the Compass) illustrate how the mutual constitution of the social and the technical makes technology a ‘context sensitive’ artefact.
Concerns with "Mutual Constitution"
Authors: Mutch Alistair
Published: May 2011

The case for ‘analytical dualism’ as a means of approaching sociotechnical action is presented as an alternative to accounts which tend to conflate agency, structure and technology. This is based on the work of Margaret Archer, whose work is in turn located in the traditions of critical realism. Her commitment to analytical dualism, which stresses both the importance of time in analysis and the emergent properties of structure, is argued to give a firmer purchase on the notion of context than the alternatives based on, for example, the work of Giddens and Latour.
Linguistic Rule Extraction from Support Vector Machine Classifiers
Authors: Fu Xiuju , Wang Lipo , Hung GihGuang , Goh Liping
Published: May 2011

Classification decisions from linguistic rules are more desirable compared to complex mathematical formulas from support vector machine (SVM) classifiers due to the explicit explanation capability of linguistic rules. Linguistic rule extraction has been attracting much attention in explaining knowledge hidden in data. In this chapter, we show that the decisions from an SVM classifier can be decoded into linguistic rules based on the information provided by support vectors and decision function. Given a support vector of a certain class, cross points between each line, which is extended from the support vector along each axis, and an SVM decision hyper-curve are searched first. A hyper-rectangular rule is derived from these cross points. The hyper-rectangle is tuned by a tuning phase in order to exclude those out-class data points. Finally, redundant rules are merged to produce a compact rule set. Simultaneously, important attributes could be highlighted in the extracted rules. Rule extraction results from our proposed method could follow SVM classifier decisions very well. We compare the rule extraction results from SVM with RBF kernel function and linear kernel function. Experiment results show that rules extracted from SVM with RBF nonlinear kernel function are with better accuracy than rules extracted from SVM with linear kernel function. Comparisons between our method and other rule extraction methods are also carried out on several benchmark data sets. Higher rule accuracy is obtained in our method with fewer number of premises in each rule.
Network Quality of Service for Enterprise Resource Planning Systems
Authors: Lo Ted Chia-Han , Gutiérrez Jairo
Published: May 2011

The research reported in this chapter studied the relevance of the application of network quality of service (QoS) technologies for modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, explored the state-of-art for QoS technologies and implementations, and finally provided a framework for the provision of QoS for ERP systems that utilise Internet protocol (IP) networks. The motivation for conducting this research has been the fact that, to date, there is a dearth of literature on the realisation of network QoS for mission-critical ERP systems. Nor have the current implementations of QoS been studied with the objective of developing a practical framework, based on the knowledge and experiences of the practitioners, to allow a structured approach for the provision of QoS for modern ERP systems. Due to the intent and the nature of the research, an interpretivist research paradigm underlies the work and informed a qualitative research method. Based upon the research problem and the context of research, a case study research method has been selected. Four individual cases—including both leading ERP vendors and network technology vendors—were conducted. The primary data collection was done using semi-structured interviews and this data was supplemented by an extensive array of secondary material. The case data collected was then analysed using qualitative data analysis strategies derived from the existing literature. Cross-case analysis confirmed that the traditional approaches for ensuring the performance of ERP systems on IP networks do not address network congestion and latency effectively, nor do they offer guaranteed network service quality for ERP systems. Moreover, a cross-case comparative data analysis was used to review the pattern of existing QoS implementations and it concluded that while QoS is increasingly being acknowledged by enterprises as an important issue, its deployment remains limited. The findings from the cross-case analysis ultimately became the basis of the proposed framework for the provision of network QoS for ERP systems. The proposed framework focuses on providing a structured, yet practical approach to implement end-to-end IP QoS that accommodates both ERP systems and their Web-enabled versions based on state-of-art traffic classification mechanisms. The value of the research is envisioned to be most visible for two major audiences: enterprises that currently utilise best-effort IP networks for their ERP deployments and ERP vendors.
Mining Walking Pattern from Mobile Users
Authors: Goh John , Taniar David
Published: May 2011

Mining walking pattern from mobile users represents an interesting research area in the field of data mining which is about extracting patterns and knowledge out from a given dataset. There are a number of related works in knowledge extraction from mobile users, but none have previously examined the situation of how mobile users walks from one location of interest to another location of interest in the mobile environment. Walking pattern is the proposed method where it examines from the source data in order to find out the two-step, three-step and four-step walking patterns that are performed by mobile users significantly and strongly through location movement database using measure of support and confidence. Performance evaluation shows the tendency for the increased number of candidate walking patterns with the increase in location of interest and steps. Walking pattern has proven itself to be a suitable method in finding knowledge from mobile users.
Buyer-Supplier Relationships in Business-to-Business E-Procurement
Authors: Nath Ravinder , Angeles Rebecca
Published: May 2011

This study explores the resource dependency and relational exchange theories to understand firms’ participation in e-procurement and seeks to determine the degree to which the resource dependency theory variables—supply importance, supply complexity, supply market dynamism, and availability of alternatives—affect information exchange and operational linkages, the relational exchange theory variables. Data was gathered from the Institute for Supply Management and the Council of Logistics Management members using the survey technique. Supply importance and supply complexity primarily predict information exchange and operational linkages. Study findings reconfirm the important impact of environmental and market uncertainty on firm responses as echoed in past studies.
Managing Corporate E-Mail Systems
Authors: Duane Aidan , Finnegan Patrick
Published: May 2011

As the criticality of e-mail for electronic business activity increases, adhoc e-mail implementation, prolonged management neglect and user abuse of e-mail systems have generated negative effects. However, management’s ability to rectify problems with e-mail systems is hindered by our understanding of its organisational use. Research on e-mail systems is often dated and based on quantitative methodologies that cannot explain the interaction between various controls in organisational settings. Updating our understanding of the organisational aspects of e-mail systems utilizing qualitative methods is necessary. This chapter presents a multiple case study investigation of e-mail system monitoring and control. The study examines the interaction between key elements of e-mail control identified by previous researchers and considers the role of such controls at various implementation phases. The findings reveal eight major elements to be particularly important in monitoring and controlling e-mail systems within the organisations studied. These are: (1) form a cross-functional e-mail system management team; (2) implement and regularly update e-mail management software; (3) formulate a detailed and legally sound e-mail policy; (4) engage in structured e-mail system training; (5) create and maintain ongoing awareness of e-mail policy; (6) engage in a process of hybrid feedback and control-based e-mail monitoring; (7) firmly enforce discipline in accordance with the e-mail policy; and (8) conduct regular reviews and updates of the e-mail management programme.
Is P3P an Answer to Protecting Information Privacy?
Authors: Ashrafi Noushin , Kuilboer Jean-Pierre
Published: May 2011

Increasingly the Internet is used as a common tool for communication, information gathering, and online transactions. Information privacy is threatened as users are expected to reveal personal information without knowing the consequences of sharing their information. To that end, research groups, both from academia and industry, have embarked on the development of privacy enhancement technologies. One such technology is platform for privacy preferences (P3P). Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), P3P has a number of prominent stakeholders such as IBM, Microsoft, and AT&T. Yet there is little general knowledge on what P3P is and the extent of its deployment by e-business organizations. This study is exploratory in nature and aims at addressing these questions; in particular, we look at P3P both as a new technology and as a standard. We use our empirical data on top-500 interactive companies to assess its adoption.
Challenges and Opportunities for Web Services Research
Authors: Zhang Liang-Jie
Published: May 2011

Web services are becoming a major research topic for computer scientists, engineers and business consulting professionals. In this preface, I would like to outline the challenges of the current Web services research topics from the modeling, interoperability, and mathematical foundations points of view. Then I will introduce some research opportunities and possible future directions for moving Web services forward via some illustrative ideas such as business semantic computing as well as killer application driven Web services research approaches. For the business semantic computing aspect I will present some example application domains such as federated Web services discovery, dynamic Web services composition and extended business collaboration.
Architectural Foundations of WSRF NET
Authors: Wasson Glenn , Humphrey Marty
Published: May 2011

State management has always been an underlying issue for large scale distributed systems, but it has only recently been brought to the forefront of Grid computing with the introduction of the Web services resource framework (WSRF) and its companion WS-notification. WSRF advocates standardized approaches for client exposure to and potential manipulation of stateful services for Grid computing; however, these arguments and their long term implications have been difficult to assess without a concrete implementation of the WSRF specifications. This chapter describes the architectural foundations of WSRF.NET, which is an implementation of the full set of specifications for WSRF and WS-notification on the Microsoft .NET framework. To our knowledge, the observations and lessons learned from the design and implementation of WSRF.NET provide the first evaluation of the WSRF approach. A concrete example of the design, implementation and deployment of a WSRF-compliant service and its accompanying WSRF-compliant client are used to guide the discussion. While the potential of WSRF and WS-notification remains strong, initial observations are that there are many challenges that remain to be solved, most notably the implied programming model derived from the specifications, particularly the complexity of service-side and client-code and the complexity of WS-notification.
Web Services Identification
Authors: Jain Hemant , Zhao Huimin , Chinta Nageswara R.
Published: May 2011

Web services technology has been envisioned as an important trend in application development and integration. It allows pre-built applications/application components wrapped as Web services to interact with each other through standardized interfaces and to from larger application systems. This chapter describes a formal approach to Web services identification, which is a critical step in designing and developing effective Web services. The approach takes an analysis level object model, representing a business domain, as input and generates potential Web service designs, in which the classes in the object model are grouped into appropriate Web services based on static and dynamic relationships between classes. An initial hierarchical grouping of classes is derived using a maximum spanning tree algorithm or a hierarchical clustering algorithm. A set of managerial goals for evaluating alternative designs is derived based on business strategy of Web service fabricator. Since the managerial goals are conflicting, a multiobjective genetic algorithm has been designed to search for alternative nondominated solutions, from which a preferred solution can be selected. The approach has been implemented in a Web services identification tool and used for designing Web services in an auto insurance claims domain.