bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
An Agent-Based Approach to Designing VO
Authors: Saoud Narjès Bellamine-Ben
Published: May 2011

Large advances and rapid changes in informatics, telecommunication, and groupware technologies added to rapid increases in information spread, knowledge sharing, and communication speed, enable people/ groups/organizations feel “closer” to each other, not only by belonging to this “small wired village” but also by sharing virtually and almost permanently huge amounts of data and information; time and distance scales shrunk. Therefore, new forms of organizations are emerging to collaborate at international levels more effectively and efficiently. The networked organization and the virtual ones are such examples.
Bumerang
Authors: Videira Tavares António José
Published: May 2011

The peer-to-peer (p2p) systems have promising characteristics to the sharing of digital resources—digital contents, processing power, bandwidth, and storage—in a free and equal way, among the members in a community of equals (peers) (Androutsellis-Theotokis & Spinellis, 2004; Barkai, 2001; Fattah, 2002; Milojicic et al., 2002; Oram, 2001; Schoder, Fischbach, & Schmitt, 2005). A member of a community could decide when and what he wants to share, knowing that to obtain something of his interest, he should offer something in return, and that the success of his community depends in some way on his own contribution and participation. This property is very interesting in academic environments and very reaching and diversified in collaboration forms, expression ways, and formal or informal relationships.
A Case Study On Inter-Organizational Systems and Power
Authors: Boonstra Albert
Published: May 2011

The objective of this article is to show by means of a case study how attempts to develop and implement inter-organizational systems (IOS) can be perceived as power battles, reflections of interests of stakeholders and struggles for domination. The paper shows that IOS is not simply a technical and rational solution but that it involves political processes of articulating interests, building alliances and struggling over outcomes. These issues will be examined through an empirical study of a project to introduce an electronic patient file (EPF) system in The Netherlands. We will seek to expand our knowledge of how inter-organizational systems impact relations among organizations and individuals who use these systems and how such systems affect the division of power inside and between organizations. Such knowledge can be useful when applying an analysis of power during the process of the design and implementation of IOS, which can help managers to implement IOS more effectively.
Clustering Analysis of Networked Organizations
Authors: Eraslan Hakki , Bulu Melih , Turkay Metin
Published: May 2011

The corporate environment of organizations in the 21st century are expected to be very demanding, flexible, and competition driven as discussed by Drucker (2001). The organizations will have a very hard time sustaining their competitive advantages under these conditions. Therefore, individual organizations must collaborate with other organizations for survival and sustainable success (Wilkinson, Mattsson, & Easton, 2000). This translates itself into network organizations that specialize in certain functions of business of activity. Network organizations are defined as a system established by individual organization with designed roles and responsibilities (Achrol, 1997). Network organizations are established by the need of organizations to interact with each other for the purpose of establishing links and improving performance and business processes of individual organizations.
Collaborative Performance Measurement
Authors: Matheis Thomas , Simon Björn , Werth Dirk
Published: May 2011

Due to the increasing heterogeneity and dynamics of the economy, more and more enterprises are challenged to adapt continuously to rapid changes, to concentrate on their core competencies as well as to search for competitive advantages and innovations (e.g., Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). Rapid technological advances and altered customer demands create a new dynamic and complex business environment, which requires flexibility and mobility of enterprises (Camarinha-Matos, 2002). For these reasons, different enterprises have to cooperate in order to meet customer needs effectively, to encounter the contemporary prevalent high competition and innovation pressure as well as to be permanently successful in largely saturated markets. In this respect, the opening of an organization’s borders is no longer regarded as a necessary evil but rather as an opportunity of strategic importance. Current approaches mainly focus on the cross-enterprise integration of data, functions, and processes for operational purposes within such collaborative business structures (e.g., Adam, Chikova, Hofer, & Vanderhaeghen, 2005; Grefen, Aberer, Hoffner, & Ludwig, 2001; Schulz, 2002). The driving force behind such activities is to generate a win-win-situation for all partners, whether by creating new structures or by adapting the existing ones, realizing an optimization objective. However, how do you measure if this postulated win-win situation by concentration on core competences is really achieved? The question is: Has the cooperation yielded the objectives that had been determined in the run-up? Is the cooperation really as successful as it was intended to be or can it be improved?
Collaborative Work Training in Higher Education
Authors: Olvera-Lobo María Dolores , Castro-Prieto Rosa María , Quero-Gervilla Enrique , Muñoz-Martín Ricardo , Muñoz-Raya Eva , Murillo-Melero Miguel , Robinson Bryan , Senso-Ruiz José Antonio
Published: May 2011

In recent years, the influence of information and communication technology (ICT) has transformed the professional practice of translation and, consequently, led to the introduction of new techniques, methods, and media in the university teaching environment. The new technology has made professional translators’ work easier but, in order to ensure translation studies graduates meet employers’ needs, ICT must occupy its rightful place in their training. The ever-demanding market expects would-be professionals to be able to access the subject matter of any text, use a wide range of computer tools proficiently, and be versatile enough to master all aspects of the translation process. Today, the market place for translation can justly be described as global, decentralized, specialized, dynamic, virtual, and demanding (Aulaint, 2005).
Costs, Benefits, and Risks of E-Government Portals
Authors: Markov Rostislav , Okujava Shota
Published: May 2011

In recent years, a lot of research energy has been devoted to the planning and implementation process of electronic government (e-government) information systems and specifically the empirical derivation of success factors in e-government projects (e.g., Burn & Robins, 2003; Jaeger & Thompson, 2003; Becker et al., 2004; Mahrer & Brandtweiner, 2004; Scott et al., 2004 Gil-García & Pardo, 2005; Ni & Ho, 2005). However, with e-government initiatives slowly reaching higher stages of growth in many countries, research focus is shifting toward the assessment of what has already been achieved, and for public administrators the justification of substantial investments. To best reveal the key issues in investigating the economical success of e-government projects, this article draws on literature from information systems, investment valuation, organisation and public administration studies, as well as the authors’ experience with the economic evaluations of information technology (IT) investments in the public sector. The focus of this article lies on the discussion of findings and lessons learned from the economic evaluation (also termed valuation) of a large e-government portal, encompassing 62 applications developed between 2001 and 2005 at a German municipality. The valuation of this e-government portal is based on a framework that defines a standardised procedure model in order to enable both ex ante and ex post valuation of IT investments throughout the whole project lifecycle. This procedure model operates on a framework that can easily be adapted to different IT investment projects such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM) or portal projects in general. The additional support by appropriate methods and tools enables the user to build up valuation routine in order to emphasise the valuation process itself.
Evaluating Organisational Readiness for Virtual Collaboration
Authors: Gall Peter , Burn Janice
Published: May 2011

This chapter endeavours to clarify some of the concepts related to the virtual organisation and to move away from the definition of a “virtual organisation” as one with few or no tangible assets, existing in virtual space created through information communication technologies (ICT) (Warner & Witzel, 2004). The authors focus on the concept of an organisation, which is “virtually organised,” employing ICT for the majority of its communication, asset management, knowledge management and customer resource management, across a network of customers, suppliers and employees (Venkatraman & Henderson, 1998). The authors consider the concepts of virtual organisations and virtual organising and develop an instrument that can be used to evaluate organisational readiness to exploit virtual networks. The instrument can be used initially to measure the value of virtual models to the organisation and then reapplied to measure the extent to which these values are actually embraced.
Scales and Dynamics in Outsourcing
Authors: Pires Iva Miranda , Kvinge Torunn
Published: May 2011

Outsourcing is used to describe the situation where a firm decides to subcontract assembly and/or service functions to an external supplier, either locally or abroad. When activities are subcontracted abroad, the term offshore outsourcing often applies. While offshore assembling activities have taken place for some time, the phenomenon of outsourcing services abroad is quite new. Several factors have contributed to these altered circumstances. First, the development of information and communication technologies (ICT) implies that services can, to a great degree, also be located at arm’s length or elsewhere in the flat world (Friedman, 2005). Second, institutional changes have opened access to new markets for goods and services as well as skilled labor, for instance in Eastern Europe and China. Third, the increased competition through globalization pushes firms to adapt quickly to new contexts and to achieve efficiency in order to maintain competitiveness.
Social Knowledge in Multi-Agent Systems
Authors: Marík Vladimir , Pechoucek Michal
Published: May 2011

The development in the recent decade has proven that the multi-agent paradigm represents a challenging framework for solving very complex tasks of cooperation in virtual organizations. Each partner/unit engaged in a virtual organization can be considered as an autonomous unit with its own resources, knowledge and goals and represented by a corresponding software module—a software agent.
Sense of Virtual Community
Authors: Ellonen Hanna-Kaisa , Kosonen Miia , Henttonen Kaisa
Published: May 2011

Virtual communities have been an issue in academic research since the 1990s (c.f., Fernback & Thompson, 1995; Hagel & Armstrong, 1997; Preece, 2000; Rheingold, 2000). In the simplest terms, a virtual community could be defined as a group of people who communicate with each other via electronic media (Romm et al., 1997, p. 261). It was recognized early on that a virtual community may foster a “sense of belonging” (Figallo, 1998), “a social contract” (Sproull & Faraj, 1997) or “an internal set of social norms” (Burnett & Bonnici, 2003). It has also been suggested that these attributes would make such a community more powerful (Figallo, 1998) and successful (Wallace, 1999), representing the glue that keeps people together. According to a recent empirical study (Leimeister et al., 2004), members of virtual communities value these issues highly; for instance, establishing codes of behavior and building trust among members were evaluated among the most important success factors of virtual communities.
Supply Chain Integration in Construction Industry
Authors: Telhada José , Pinho Tiago , Carvalho Maria Sameiro
Published: May 2011

Although logistics activities have been carried out by individuals for many centuries, only a few decades ago, logistics has been seen as a new area of integrated management, that is, to think about products and services flowing seamlessly from the sources of raw materials to the final consumers (Ballou, 1999). The supply chain management (SCM) consists of the integration of the business logistics management processes involving not only units within an enterprise but also across units belonging to both upstream and downstream partners, such as suppliers, customers, and logistics service providers.
A Survey of Link Analysis Ranking
Authors: Sidiropoulos Antonis , Katsaros Dimitrios , Manolopoulos Yannis
Published: May 2011

During the past decade, the World Wide Web became the most popular network in the World. WWW grows with a very fast speed, thus the information that can be found through it is huge. In the early 90s, the first search engines for the WWW appeared. The user could give some keywords and the system returned a number of URLs (uniform resource locators) that contained the keywords. The order of the URLs in the return list was initially based on the number of the keyword occurrences in each URL. Some more sophisticated systems were taking into account the importance and the frequency of the keywords. As WWW was growing, a simple keyword search could match hundreds of thousands of pages. A human can only check the first twenty or even some more of the URLs that the search engine returns. Consequently, the ordering of the search results became very important. The most important URLs that are related with the search keywords should be ranked first. The link analysis ranking (LAR) is an objective way to sort search results. There are many advantages of the LAR over older methods. First of all the ranking is feasible without getting any feedback from the users. It is also not necessary to store the content of the URLs, but only the links. Another advantage is that it is difficult for the site developers to cheat by repeating keywords in the documents and moreover it may be pre-computed for all URLs. There are even more benefits using LAR to sort the search results that make it the best method used so far.
Technology Change and Online Community Development
Authors: Elwell Mark G. , Medeni Tunç D.
Published: May 2011

Online communities are increasingly seen to display the same features accepted as characteristic of communities based on face-to-face interaction. Among the characteristics of “real,” “normal” communities is the ability to grow and thrive by evolving and adapting to, for example, changes in technology and infrastructure. Our experience in online gaming communities also demonstrates this same ability to evolve and adapt to technological and infrastructural changes. One online community that began in 1991 and continues to “live long and prosper” began in conception as a role-playing game called Starfleet and is now described as a shared fiction or collaborative writing group. Set in a fictional universe based on that of the television program “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” this group moved from the Prodigy online service onto Usenet in 1994 (it is still known by its newsgroup name, “alt.starfleet.rpg”), and by 2000 had established a Web-based Yahoo! Group (http://groups.yahoo. com/group/starfleet-rpg/), which continues to be its means of functional interaction. Each of these hosting venues brought with it changes in the means (posts, direct e-mails, Web pages) by which game or collaborative writing activities were conducted. Parallel to these were changes in the rules, policies, and practices of the community. Even the nature and content of the social interactions of the members of the community changed in fundamental ways as its technological manifestation did so.
Using Telework and E-Work as Flexible Working Alternatives
Authors: Nunes Flavio
Published: May 2011

The argument of a paradigm shift in the organization of work is not new, it goes back to the post-Fordism debate, in which the dissolution of traditional production structures was predicted, especially as a consequence of the good results achieved by the flattening of hierarchies, as well as the practice of a more flexible and decentralized organization of work. Since then, the issue of flexibility in working arrangements has been central in order to make enterprises more competitive in a global economy, where fragmented and rapidly changing markets impose a more efficient use of human resources in order to respond to the changing external demands and opportunities. Sisson et al. (1999) distinguish two main approaches to workforce flexibility: numerical and functional. Numeric flexibility is the ability of the organization to adjust the quantity of labor to meet fluctuations in demand (for instance the part-time jobs or the temporary work). Function flexibility is about the ability to increase the level of responsibility of the workforce, which involves continuing training to enable employees to acquire new skills and competences (for instance the job rotation and the polyvalent workers), as well as collaborative approaches ensuring that employees become more responsible for organizing their own work (for instance the workplace flexibility that characterizes telework or the subcontracts dissemination).
Virtual Enterprise Environments for Scientific Experiments
Authors: Bosin Andrea , Dessì Nicoletta , Fugini Maria Grazia , Liberati Diego , Pes Barbara
Published: May 2011

An electronic marketplace (e-marketplace) is a promising architectural model to develop collaborative supply chain management and integration platforms (Premkumar, 2003). The e-marketplace philosophy is based on a collection of economically motivated companies that need to cooperate with each other by exchanging data, resources, and competences. To this aim, competitive technical and economical solutions have been found by integrating resources from diverse organizations into a virtual enterprise (VE) (Travica, 2005), enabling groups of companies to jointly develop and commercialise products and services, which an individual participating company could not realise by itself due to limited technical and financial capabilities.
Virtual Organizations in Commercial Games
Authors: Barlow Michael
Published: May 2011

Modern computer games—one of the most common forms of entertainment today—have given rise to a diverse and rapidly changing collection of virtual organizations. These organizations, some of which are particularly large, are focused around the play, and to a lesser extent the development, of the games themselves. All share a number of the properties of the more traditionally recognized commercial or business virtual organizations and teams—electronic communication, geographic distribution of the members, changing membership, lack of permanence, and shared sense of purpose or identity (Barnatt, 1995; Jagers, Jansen & Steenbakkers, 1998; Wiesenfeld, Raghuram & Garud, 1999) —though differing in their focus on non-commercial activities and in particular entertainment, leisure, and play.
VO Breeding Environments Value System and Metrics
Authors: Romero David , Galeano Nathalíe , Molina Arturo
Published: May 2011

The concept of virtual organization breeding environment (VBE) has emerged as the necessary context for effective creation of dynamic virtual organizations (Afsarmanesh & Camarinha-Matos, 2005). One important element to be considered during the VBE operation life-cycle stage is value generation. A virtual breeding environment is a “value network” that should create different types of values such as goods, services, revenue, knowledge, and/or intangible benefits (Allee, 2000). Aimed to achieve the identification of values generated in a breeding environment, the present article reports research issues related to the definition of the VBE value system and metrics. The VBE value system presented in this article will include the identification of the value generation objects (or capitals) in a virtual breeding environment and its performance measurement system, involving not only financial value generation objects but also the intellectual value generation objects (such as human capital, structure capital, innovation and learning capital, relational capital, and identity capital). Along with the VBE performance measurement system, the identification of potential incentives and sanctions are also described. Additionally, the identification of VBE ethical values are also studied through the definition of its culture and ethical code.
Strategies for Static Tables
Authors: Kelley Dean
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents three alternatives for structuring static tables—those tables in which the collection of keys remains unchanged and in which the FIND operation is optimized. Each alternative provides performance guarantees for the FIND operation which can help those who design and/or implement systems achieve performance guarantees of their own. The chapter provides clear and concise algorithms for construction and/or usage and simple guidelines for choosing among the strategies. It is intended that this presentation will help inform system design decisions. It is further intended that this chapter will assist implementation activities for systems which make use of static tables.
Notes on the Emerging Science of Software Evolution
Authors: Samuelis Ladislav
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the irreducibility principle within the context of computer science and software engineering disciplines. It argues that the evolution, analysis, and design of the application software, which represent higher level concepts, cannot be deduced from the underlying concepts, which are valid on a lower level of abstractions. We analyze two specific sweeping statements often observed in the software engineering community and highlight the presence of the reductionism approach being treated already in the philosophy. We draw an analogy between the irreducibility principle and this approach. Furthermore, we hope that deep understanding of the reductionism approach will assist in the correct application of software design principles.
Utility-Cost Tradeoffs in the Design of Data Resources
Authors: Even Adir , Shankaranarayanan G. , Berger Paul D.
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces a novel perspective for designing and maintaining data resources. Data and the information systems that manage it, are critical organizational resources. Today the design and the maintenance of data management environments are driven primarily by technical and functional requirements. We suggest that economic considerations, such as the utility gained by the use of data resources and the costs involved in implementing and maintaining them, may significantly affect data management decisions. We propose an analytical framework for analyzing utility-cost tradeoffs and optimizing design. Its application is demonstrated for analyzing certain design decisions in a data warehouse environment. The analysis considers variability and inequality in the utility of data resources, and possible uncertainties with usage and implementation.
Class Patterns and Templates in Software Design
Authors: Sanchez Julio , Canton Maria P.
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes the use of design patterns as reusable components in program design. The discussion includes the two core elements: the class diagram and examples implemented in code. The authors believe that although precanned patterns have been popular in the literature, it is the patterns that we personally create or adapt that are most useful. Only after gaining intimate familiarity with a particular class structure will we be able to use it in an application. In addition to the conventional treatment of class patterns, the discussion includes the notion of a class template. A template describes functionality and object relations within a single class, while patterns refer to structures of communicating and interacting classes. The class template fosters reusability by providing a guide in solving a specific implementation problem. The chapter includes several class templates that could be useful to the software developer.
Hybrid Data Mining for Medical Applications
Authors: Hassan Syed Zahid , Verma Brijesh
Published: May 2011

This chapter focuses on hybrid data mining algorithms and their use in medical applications. It reviews existing data mining algorithms and presents a novel hybrid data mining approach, which takes advantage of intelligent and statistical modeling of data mining algorithms to extract meaningful patterns from medical data repositories. Various hybrid combinations of data mining algorithms are formulated and tested on a benchmark medical database. The chapter includes the experimental results with existing and new hybrid approaches to demonstrate the superiority of hybrid data mining algorithms over standard algorithms.
Machine Learning for Designing an Automated Medical Diagnostic System
Authors: Khandoker Ahsan H. , Begg Rezaul K.
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes the application of machine learning techniques to solve biomedical problems in a variety of clinical domains. First, the concept of development and the main elements of a basic machine learning system for medical diagnostics are presented. This is followed by an introduction to the design of a diagnostic model for the identification of balance impairments in the elderly using human gait pattern, as well as a diagnostic model for predicating sleep apnoea syndrome from electrocardiogram recordings. Examples are presented using support vector machines (a machine learning technique) to build a reliable model that utilizes key indices of physiological measurements (gait/electrocardiography [ECG] signals). A number of recommendations have been proposed for choosing the right classifier model in designing a successful medical diagnostic system. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the importance of signal processing techniques and other future trends in enhancing the performance of a diagnostic system.
Information Systems Curriculum Design Processes
Authors: Alexander Paulette , Gossett Carol
Published: May 2011

The process of designing a university curriculum in the information systems discipline needs to follow many of the same processes that professional systems analysts use. Of concern are the product, the stakeholders, the drivers, and the methods; indeed, an information systems curriculum is an information system. This chapter presents a case study of one small regional university’s efforts to create an updated information systems curriculum addressing the challenges of curriculum development using the framework of the very systems analysis and design course content that the students are expected to learn. The chapter identifies each component of the information system curriculum and details the processes supporting each development step along the way, from problem identification to system operation and support. This case study presents a cohesive approach to dealing with the many pressures associated with information systems curriculum development and might be instructive for curriculum development in other disciplines as well.
Electronic Usage Statistics
Authors: Hults Patricia
Published: May 2011

This chapter provides an overview of electronic usage statistics, including methods of defining, collecting, and using the data. A survey of some of the systems of estimating journal usage in the print environment is followed by a description of the development of electronic usage practices. The important contributions of the COUNTER and SUSHI projects are reviewed, along with issues in the management and use of electronic statistics. Examples of ways these statistics can assist in decision making throughout a product’s life cycle are included, as well as other ways usage statistics can prove useful. The chapter concludes with a brief look at the use of statistics in the bibliomining process.
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
Authors: Soules Aline , Ferullo Donna L.
Published: May 2011

The chapter begins with an examination of the sections of copyright law that impact electronic resource management, and reviews the various laws that have been enacted in recent years to attempt to delineate appropriate uses of information in the electronic environment. In section two, the impact of copyright is discussed in relation to particular types of electronic resources. The unique characteristics and challenges inherent in both access and format are discussed. Section three reports on responses to a series of interview questions the authors posed to librarians working in a wide variety and type of libraries. The goal was to elicit information about how librarians are managing to implement copyright law in the daily reality of their increasingly electronic environments.
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
Authors: Crum Janet A.
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, the author advocates providing a unified, seamless interface—one-stop shopping—for the full range of journal literature available and of interest to library patrons. After outlining the reasons why libraries should provide this access, the chapter reviews the tools available for making journal collections accessible, then analyzes the categories of journal literature to which a library could provide access—print and individual electronic titles, aggregated collections and big deals, free titles, free articles, and articles available for purchase. The chapter discusses the challenges associated with each category, as well as tools available to overcome these challenges. It closes with a brief look at future trends that will affect the ability of libraries to provide coherent, seamless access to journal literature.
Beyond OpenURL
Authors: Boston George , Gedeon Randle J.
Published: May 2011

This chapter provides a general overview of the development and implementation of existing techniques for the reference linking of scholarly research materials, additionally, some of the new techniques designed for advanced linking are described. Also presented are several new technologies currently under development, with an eye toward enhancing resource discovery and the interlinking of resources. The progress of computer technology, the adoption of those technologies by the information consumer, and the implementation of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 tools to existing resources have combined in opening up new avenues of linking previously isolated resources together. Information professionals must come to appreciate and apply these new techniques and in doing so will provide library patrons with a more user friendly and thorough research experience.
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Authors: Hogarth Margaret , Bloom Vicki
Published: May 2011

Management of electronic resources requires more features and fields than legacy integrated library systems (ILS) can provide. Relationships between title, package, platform and publisher, incident and breach records, changeable holdings, license, and access restrictions cannot easily be captured. Usage combined with cost is needed for collection development and public services decisions. This chapter demonstrates how the Electronic Resource Management Initiative reports, library-developed systems, and existing and in-process standards help the continuing development of compensating electronic resource management systems and their integration into ILS. Much more work and discussion is needed in order to maximize the use of these resources and their data. Modular, extensible, standards-based tools will supplement legacy ILS and their valuable business and bibliographic data. Vendor-provided bridging tools, also based on these standards, will enable and maximize data movement between systems.
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
Authors: Kennedy Marie R.
Published: May 2011

As libraries dramatically increased their numbers of licensed electronic resources in the 1990s, such as online journals and databases, they realized the need for a record-keeping system that would help manage the details of acquiring and maintaining them. Since no off-the-shelf product existed, some libraries developed their own tools to manage electronic resources. This chapter discusses the development of locally designed electronic resource management systems; the process of developing the tools at several academic institutions is traced, with a focus on the aspects of the systems unique to each university. Locally developed electronic resource management systems have lead academic institutions to engage with other institutions and vendors building similar tools. As a result, community-wide efforts in identifying key elements for managing electronic resources have begun to emerge. These efforts lay the foundation for the future successful development of tools and standards to assist in electronic resource management.
Telecommuting and the Management of the Human Moment
Authors: Smith Alan D.
Published: May 2011

Telecommuting is a tool that is becoming more and more a way a life for organizations as they strive to recruit and retain employees and assist them in improving their quality of life. The recurring themes tended to be the need to select the proper employee, training managers to manage remote employees, strong communication (formal/informal) strategies, clear expectations and proactive stance in deterring isolation. Telecommuting is not for everyone or every organization. Extreme care must be taken in preparation; development, implementation and ongoing evaluation must take place to ensure that it is not only a good fit for the employee but also for the organization. Safeguards must be in place to promote the human moment at work that may be lost when there is lack of face-to-face contact with fellow workers. Efforts should be made by management to promote professional development via regularly scheduled meetings with fellow workers, management, and customers.
Explaining Organizational Virtuality
Authors: Fang Yulin , Dutta Dev K.
Published: May 2011

Despite a sizable body of literature on virtual organization, little attention has been paid to defining organizational virtuality and identifying factors that influence degree of virtuality in organizations. Based on virtual organization literature and the knowledge-based view of the firm, we develop a working definition of organizational virtuality. We do this by conducting a review of existing definitions of a virtual organization, and identify organizational knowledge-related factors that influence virtuality. More specifically, we propose that 1) an organization’s need for knowledge exchange and ability to exchange knowledge jointly determine the level of organizational virtuality that develops in the firm; and 2) the higher the need for and ability to engage in knowledge exchange, the higher this level of resulting organizational virtuality. The contribution that this research makes to academia and managerial practice are also discussed.
Intranets
Authors: Vlasic Goran , Pavicic Jurica , Krupka Zoran
Published: May 2011

This chapter deals with the importance of intranets as knowledge management tools/media enabling efficient knowledge exchange and development within an organization and the “community” of stakeholders. Communities are analyzed as networked systems of interested parties. The importance of intranets is even more stressed today when most company activities are project based—with project members working together from all over the world. Intranets serve as project coordination support as well as organization functioning generalization through combining different project activities into organizational efficiency analysis. This chapter analyzes possibilities of different approaches to development and management of intranets, and thus of networked people creating a certain networked “community form.” These developments are crucial to virtual workplaces as well as for increasing business efficiency
Supporting Collaboration with Trust Virtual Organization
Authors: Lin Aizhong , Vullings Erik , Dalziel James
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the trust virtual organization as a means of facilitating authentication and authorization for sharing distributed and protected contents and services. It indicates that sharing institutional protected services and deliverables has proven a hurdle since user accounts are created in many sites. It provides an approach to solving this problem using virtual organizations with cross-institutional Single Sign On, with which users use their existing institutional accounts to login. This chapter also presents the challenges of building trust virtual organizations: managing users from distributed identity providers; managing services from distributed service providers; managing trust relationships between users and services, and authorizing the access privileges to users based on the trust relationships. It argues that the trust virtual organization increase the effectiveness of e-learning, e-research and e-business significantly. Furthermore, the authors hope that the trust virtual organization facilitates not only Webbased authentication and authorization, but also grid-based authentication and authorization.
Augmented Reality and the Future of Virtual Workspaces
Authors: Ford James K. , Höllerer Tobias
Published: May 2011

Until recently, Augmented Reality (AR) technology has rarely been discussed outside of the computer science world. It has taken years for this technology to become closer to a stable existence, and will most likely take several more years before it will be used by average citizens. However, the technology does exist, it has been applied in several areas, and research is being done to create even more stable systems that are adaptable to various environments. For this reason, it is necessary for decision-makers in establishments where education and training, knowledge distribution, and individual and collaborative task completion are essential to be aware of this technology, its abilities, and the possible impacts to common workspaces and workers. The purpose of this chapter is to inform decision-makers of AR’s history, the completed research and current applications of AR, possible impacts to managers and workers, and the future trends of the technology.
Implementing Client-Support for Collaborative Spaces
Authors: Stephens R. Todd
Published: May 2011

This chapter examines the critical task of providing client support for virtual environments. The vast majority of information workers are not familiar with virtual solutions and need guidance on how to best utilize and integrate this technology into their day to day operations. A company’s ability to manage information effectively over its life cycle, including sensing, collecting, organizing, processing, and maintaining information, is crucial to the long term success in a global economy. Over the past few years, the case study organization has been actively engaged in building, deploying, and managing the procurement, education, and strategic direction for a Fortune 500 company. The success of the studied organization can be seen by reviewing the metrics as the collaborative content continues to grow by an average 28.08% per month and the usage rates have grown by 21% per month. This growth rate was accomplished by focusing on building communities of practice, physical and electronic training programs, promotional road shows, self-service procurement processes, templates, pattern libraries, and an evolving online environment that supports the business user every step in the learning process.
Second Language Reading in Hypertext Environments
Authors: Ariew Robert , Erçetin Gulcan , Cooledge Susan
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces second language reading in hypertext/hypermedia environments. It discusses the development of a template to annotate reading texts with multiple types of media such as text, sound, graphics, and video so as to aid reading comprehension for L2 readers. The chapter also reports on a series of studies conducted using the template in a variety of L2 learning environments in order to explore L2 learners’ reading behavior and the effects of multimedia annotations on L2 reading and vocabulary learning. The chapter synthesizes the results according to multimedia learning theories and discusses the role of proficiency level and prior knowledge in relation to L2 learners’ reading comprehension in hypertext environments.
Invested Mental Effort in an Aural Multimedia Environment
Authors: Jones Linda
Published: May 2011

This study addresses the views of 9 students on the amount of invested mental effort (Salomon, 1983a) needed to effectively process multimedia annotations (pictorial and written) so as to learn from a second language (L2) aural passage. Initially, 67 college students in a second-semester French course listened to a multimedia based French passage. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four listening treatments that contained either no annotations, written annotations, pictorial annotations, or both annotation types. Follow up vocabulary production and recall protocol tests measured vocabulary learning and aural comprehension. From these 67 students, 9 were selected to participate in interviews based on treatment type and posttest results. After examining anecdotal information and test results of these 9 students, it appears that the amount of invested mental effort applied to processing different annotation types varied in its influence on their abilities to learn French vocabulary and on their aural comprehension.
Developing L2 Strategic Competence Online
Authors: Finkbeiner Claudia , Knierim Markus
Published: May 2011

Research on CALL environments that explicitly focuses on the development of strategic competence is almost non-existent. This chapter reports on an exploratory study which was conducted as a semesterlong, Web-based project to facilitate the development of L2 strategic competence by means of online collaboration among advanced EFL (English as a foreign language) learners who are students in an EFL teacher education program at a German university. The project—called the “Online Learner ABCs”—combines an autobiographic approach to raise the learners’ awareness of their own strategy use with data-driven activities to foster diagnostic skills with regard to strategy use. Overall, the “Online Learner ABCs” was found to be conducive to the students’ development of L2 strategic competence, in particular by raising the students’ awareness of a considerable number of language learning strategies. Deep-level reflections on strategy use, however, remained scant, indicating that further instructional fine-tuning is needed.
Artificial Higher Order Neural Networks in Time Series Prediction
Authors: Onwubolu Godfrey C.
Published: May 2011

Real world problems are described by nonlinear and chaotic processes, which makes them hard to model and predict. This chapter first compares the neural network (NN) and the artificial higher order neural network (HONN) and then presents commonly known neural network architectures and a number of HONN architectures. The time series prediction problem is formulated as a system identification problem, where the input to the system is the past values of a time series, and its desired output is the future values of a time series. The polynomial neural network (PNN) is then chosen as the HONN for application to the time series prediction problem. This chapter presents the application of HONN model to the nonlinear time series prediction problems of three major international currency exchange rates, as well as two key U.S. interest rates—the Federal funds rate and the yield on the 5-year U.S. Treasury note. Empirical results indicate that the proposed method is competitive with other approaches for the exchange rate problem, and can be used as a feasible solution for interest rate forecasting problem. This implies that the HONN model can be used as a feasible solution for exchange rate forecasting as well as for interest rate forecasting.
Adaptive Higher Order Neural Network Models and Their Applications in Business
Authors: Xu Shuxiang
Published: May 2011

Business is a diversified field with general areas of specialisation such as accounting, taxation, stock market, and other financial analysis. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have been widely used in applications such as bankruptcy prediction, predicting costs, forecasting revenue, forecasting share prices and exchange rates, processing documents and many more. This chapter introduces an Adaptive Higher Order Neural Network (HONN) model and applies the adaptive model in business applications such as simulating and forecasting share prices. This adaptive HONN model offers significant advantages over traditional Standard ANN models such as much reduced network size, faster training, as well as much improved simulation and forecasting errors, due to their ability to better approximate complex, non-smooth, often discontinuous training data sets. The generalisation ability of this HONN model is explored and discussed.
CEO Tenure and Debt
Authors: Zhang Jean X.
Published: May 2011

This chapter proposes nonlinear models using artificial neural network models to study the relationship between chief elected official (CEO) tenure and debt. Using Higher Order Neural Network (HONN) simulator, this study analyzes debt of the municipalities as a function of population and CEO tenure, and compares the results with that from SAS. The linear models show that CEO tenure and the amount of debt vary inversely. Specifically, a longer length of CEO tenure leads to a decrease in debt, while a shorter tenure leads to an increase in debt. This chapter shows nonlinear model generated from HONN out performs linear models by 1%. The results from both models reveal that CEO tenure is negatively associated with the level of debt in local governments.
Fundamental Theory of Artificial Higher Order Neural Networks
Authors: Gupta Madan M. , Homma Noriyasu , Hou Zeng-Guang , Solo Ashu M. G. , Goto Takakuni
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, we aim to describe fundamental principles of artificial higher order neural units (AHONUs) and networks (AHONNs). An essential core of AHONNs can be found in higher order weighted combinations or correlations between the input variables. By using some typical examples, this chapter describes how and why higher order combinations or correlations can be effective.
A New Topology for Artificial Higher Order Neural Networks
Authors: Lu Zhao , Shieh Leang-san , Chen Guanrong
Published: May 2011

Aiming to develop a systematic approach for optimizing the structure of artificial higher order neural networks (HONN) for system modeling and function approximation, a new HONN topology, namely polynomial kernel networks, is proposed in this chapter. Structurally, the polynomial kernel network can be viewed as a three-layer feedforward neural network with a special polynomial activation function for the nodes in the hidden layer. The new network is equivalent to a HONN; however, due to the underlying connections with polynomial kernel support vector machines, the weights and the structure of the network can be determined simultaneously using structural risk minimization. The advantage of the topology of the polynomial kernel network and the use of a support vector kernel expansion paves the way to represent nonlinear functions or systems, and underpins some advanced analysis of the network performance. In this chapter, from the perspective of network complexity, both quadratic programming and linear programming based training of the polynomial kernel network are investigated.