bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
E-Commerce Development in China
Authors: Stylianou Antonis C. , Robbins Stephanie S. , Jackson Pamela
Published: October 2011

It is widely recognized that e-commerce represents a critical resource for most business organizations. With over 1.3 billion people and double-digit economic growth, China could potentially emerge as the largest Internet and telecommunications market in the world if certain economic, environmental, and organizational barriers are effectively addressed. This chapter develops a descriptive profile of Chinese business managers with respect to their awareness of the technological infrastructure as well as their perceptions and attitudes regarding e-commerce. Management’s viewpoint on a variety of environmental, organizational, and personal factors provides insight into the future of e-commerce in China within the framework of organizational commitment to e-commerce driven innovation. Findings indicate that firms interested in engaging in e-commerce in China will find a knowledgeable and supportive business climate; however, e-commerce initiatives may be hindered by constraints imposed by the current infrastructure as well as the political environment.
The Internet and SMEs in Sub-Saharan African Countries
Authors: Ifinedo Princely
Published: October 2011

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers using multiple Internet protocols (IP). Increasingly, it is being used to enhance business operation by both small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large organizations around the world (Bunker and MacGregor, 2002; Turban, Lee, King, & Chung, Lee, J., King, D. & Chung 2004). One reason is that the Internet, when used to facilitate e-commerce and e-business, offers several benefits for the adopting organizations (Walczuch, den Braven, & Lundgren, 2000; Turban, et al, 2004). Such benefits include the following: 1) reducing distance barrier, 2) the development of new products and services, 3) opening direct links between customer and suppliers, and 4) enhancing communication efficiency. Our study of the relevant literature reveals that the diffusion of the Internet among businesses in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), including SMEs, is the lowest in the world at around 2% (ITU, 2005). A recent report shows that the whole of Africa has only 1% of the total international Internet bandwidth (UNCTAD, 2005). Thus, it is to be expected that businesses in the region with such poor connectivity and use will be unable to fully reap the benefits of the technology. Against such unfavorable situations, it would seem reasonable for research efforts to uncover why such unfavorable conditions prevail in the region. Sadly, very few studies exist that have investigated such issues. Little is known about the perceptions of the Internet or the factors inhibiting its spread among SMEs in SSA. To fill this gap in research, this article aims at adding to knowledge by presenting a summary of the findings of a preliminary study designed to investigate the perceptions of the Internet and the sorts of barriers facing SMEs in SSA desiring to adopt Internet in their operations or for commerce. The study used SMEs in Nigeria, a Sub-Saharan African country. The country was chosen for illustration proposes as it is the most populous country in Africa and has favorable indicators for the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) compared to other SSA countries (Ifinedo, 2005). Importantly, researchers, for example, Ojukwu (2006) have discussed use of ICT among Nigerian SMEs and it is hoped that this present effort will complement similar research efforts.
Influencing Factors and the Acceptance of Internet and E-Business Technologies in Maritime Canada’s SMEs
Authors: Shareef Mahmud Akhter , Dwivedi Yogesh K. , Williams Michael D. , Singh Nitish
Published: October 2011

This chapter examines the influence of some relevant factors on the acceptance of internet and E-Business technologies in Maritime Canada’s SMEs (small- and medium- sized enterprises). To examine the influence of the factors, a research framework was developed and nine hypotheses formulated to test the various relationships. A survey was conducted and a total of 162 valid responses were obtained from mainly business owners and managers. The data supported five out of the nine hypotheses formulated. The key findings are as follows: The sampled SME’s organizational readiness is positively related to their intent to use Internet/business technologies (dependant variable); the two constructs of the technology acceptance model (TAM) were found to be important mediators in the relationship between the management support construct and the dependant variable. Further, no evidence was found to suggest that management support positively influences the intent to use Internet/ business technologies among Maritime Canada’s SMEs. The implications of the study’s findings for policy making and research were discussed.
E-Business Interoperability and Collaboration
Authors: Kipp Alexander , Schubert Lutz
Published: October 2011

Current e-business frameworks lack the capability of abstracting the underlying resource infrastructures in order to allow for seamless integration and thus smooth interaction between business entities. Mainly, such frameworks are unable to abstract human, as well as computing resources in a fashion that allows seamless integration into high-level distributed workflow descriptions. Usually, workflows or distributed processes are defined by managers with little background in IT specifications and platforms. Ideally, this should not be necessary at all; however, current solutions do not provide such abstraction support. In this chapter an approach is presented that will overcome this issue allowing for a high-level resource virtualization approach, in particular enabling the integration of human as well as computational resources within high-level workflow descriptions in a SOA fashion.
Assessing Relational E-Strategy Supporting Business Relationships
Authors: Croteau Anne-Marie , Beaudry Anne , Holm Justin
Published: October 2011

As per the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce, the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the first quarter of 2009 was $31.7 billion. For the same period, e-commerce accounted for 3.5 percent of total sales with a value of $30.2 billion sales. As electronic business (e-business) has become essential in our economy, organizations have begun to demand a return on their investment in such endeavors (Damanpour and Damanpour, 2001). More recently, research indicates that webbased technologies enhance performance when the environmental pressures are high, the technical capabilities within the organization are well integrated, and the management team highly supports and sees value in e-business initiatives (Sanders, 2007). An extensive and diverse body of literature has been produced regarding e-business. One research angle that lacked over the years is the definition and assessment of an e-business strategy (e-strategy). Some efforts were made in evaluating e-strategy through an electronic simulation (Ha and Forgianne, 2006). Another recent research observed that human, technological and business capabilities and e-business implementation influence the business performance at various levels (Coltman, Devinney, and Midgley, 2007). However, both studies did not develop an e-strategy construct empirically tested with managers.
Workplace Safety and Personnel Well-Being
Authors: Fagbe T. , Adekola O. D.
Published: October 2011

Information Technology (IT) has emerged as the global driving force behind business success, improved performance, ease of operations, and accuracy. The growth of a business cannot be separated from the security and safety of the business environment, where the health of employees and facilities must be guaranteed. Therefore, this paper examines the role of IT in the management of workplace safety and personnel well-being in a challenging economy. The paper covers IT application in a safe working environment, personnel health, machinery safety, occupational hazards, risks, and accidents. This paper also addresses challenges that hinder the use of IT in the administration of health safety and environment issues. It concludes with a strategy for an effective utilization of this important tool in the development of health safety and environment.
The Multicultural Organization
Authors: Imafidon Tongo Constantine
Published: October 2011

This chapter avers that over the past years, monolithic organizations, as opposed to multicultural organizations, have been created by many top business executives in order to attain their corporate visions and missions. One particular feature of the monolithic organization is that its leaders psychologically impose the culture of the organization on their subjects (employees). Their expectation is that a business organization should be able to satisfy the diverse needs of its various stakeholders (customers, suppliers, shareholders, etc.), when a unique set of covert and overt behaviour is revered by a homogenous workforce. Oftentimes, the imposed “organizational culture” is nothing but a mere derivative or microcosm of the wider societal culture in which the organization is domiciled. This was conceivable in yesteryears, given the fact that most organizations only operated within their domestic business enclaves. However, with globalization and the increasing need for organizations to develop businesses and
Multinational Intellect
Authors: Gadman Leslie , Richardson Robert
Published: October 2011

The world of international business is experiencing transformations of such magnitude that existing business models have become either invalid of incomplete. A fundamental force behind these disruptions has been the emergence of the digital networked economy (Ridderstrale and Nordstrom 2004, Flores and Spinosa, 1998) with its supporting internet and communications technology. One significant manifestation of this economy is the emergence of business models designed to gain competitive advantage by bonding with customers, suppliers and complementors (Wilde and Hax 2001). From the multinational perspective outsourcing and off - shoring have been the most common examples of this approach, but user lead innovation models (von Hippel 2005) based on Open Source methods are rapidly emerging as the leading source of competitive advantage. Commitment has been argued to play an important role in determining the success of these relationships (Abrahamsson and Livari, 2002) suggesting that entrepreneurs must be adept at building and maintaining commitment based value networks (Allee 2004, Sveiby and Roland 2002, Savage 1996, Gadman 1996, Adams 2004). This paper considers the challenges associated with commitment in multinational value networking and finds them to be most problematic in the diffusion of innovation where increasing levels of commitment are required across national boundaries and cultures. (Mauer, Rai and Sali 2004). Current research into core commitment structures of virtual multinational communities is not been well established. By analyzing data from a range of sources the paper concludes that the success of value networks depends on the desire of participants to acquire history - making identities (Gauntlett 2002, Spinosa et al. 1997) by maintaining identity defining commitments across the network. Implications for theory and research are discussed.
Consumer Information Sharing
Authors: Foster Jonathan , Lin Angela
Published: October 2011

One area of e-business that has visibly changed in the last few years is the capacity of the Internet for supporting consumer-to-consumer information sharing. By using a variety of social media software applications such as online reviews, blogs, social tagging, and wikis, consumers are increasingly able to generate and share content about the products and services that are available in the marketplace. Collectively the labor expended by consumers in generating such content is considerable, influencing other consumers’ perceptions of these products and services and informing their purchasing decisions. It has been estimated for example that more than 5 million customers have reviewed products on the Amazon.com site, with many more making purchasing decisions informed by reading such reviews (Amazon, 2008). According to the findings of a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project survey, consumer generated information sources such as product reviews and blogs are also considered equally as important as commercial information, e.g. manufacturers’ specifications, when making a purchasing decision (Horrigan, 2008). This article aims to provide an up-to-date review of the practice of consumer information sharing. First the different kinds of information sought by consumers are identified; second the social media software applications that consumers use to create, organize and share information with other consumers are discussed; and finally consideration is given to the marketing implications of consumer information sharing and how e-businesses can utilize social media for developing and managing relations with their customers.
Personnel Performance Management in IT eSourcing Environments
Authors: Hernández-López Adrián , Colomo-Palacios Ricardo , García-Crespo Ángel , Martín Fernando Paniagua , Acosta Pedro Soto
Published: October 2011

Performance management is one of the vital areas within any organization since it permits the supervision, measurement and control of the activities of employees. In outsourcing environments, this kind of activities are even more crucial, since the distance between supplier and client increases the difficulties in carrying out the process. This circumstance requires an improved and more specific level of the management of performance of the new organizational activities brought about by the client-supplier paradigm. This paper proposes a model of improvement of performance management of the activities of clients and suppliers, governed by the eSCM (eSourcing Capability Model) through the use of the management of performance of human capital defined in the People-CMM (People Capability Maturity Model). The overall objective of the work is to develop the new model that manages, in the most efficient way possible, one of the most important assets of the organizations: human capital.
Assessment Strategies for Servant Leadership Practice in the Virtual Organization
Authors: Molnar Darin R.
Published: October 2011

Leadership in the virtual organization presents unique opportunities and challenges for the manager. Some researchers consider management in the virtual organization to be comprised mainly of challenges while others see it as the opportunity to realize competitive advantage in the global marketplace. Several leadership approaches offer interesting options for the manager within the context of the virtual organization. One standout approach that has gained increasing popularity over the last 30 years is servant leadership in which the leader is servant first. Those managers in virtual organizations who have committed to a practice of servant leadership recognize the need for assessment instruments to help them understand the level of perceived servant leadership characteristics among organizational members under their guidance. This understanding acts as a foundation for training within this context. With this in mind, Laub’s Organizational Leadership Assessment (OLA) offers a reliable survey instrument accepted by the servant leadership practice community. The OLA is easily administered to virtual organization members as a set of Web pages and can be used in conjunction with complementary, third-party data sets such as the World Values Survey database. Future directions for the assessment of servant leadership in the virtual organization include the potential modification of the OLA, as well as the creation of survey instruments to be used in conjunction with it.
Decision-Making for Location of New Knowledge Intensive Businesses on ICT Sector
Authors: Ferreira João J. , Marques Carla S. , Fernandes Cristina
Published: October 2011

Technological innovation associated with e-business is seen as one of the key drivers of the knowledge economy and innovation performance and is a considerable test of a region’s or nation’s capacity to generate e-entrepreneurship and sustain competitiveness. The importance of the knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) sector to economic growth will increase significantly with the development of the knowledge economy and the rise of e-entrepreneurship. This article identifies different types of new KIBS and recognizes factors influencing their location. A conceptual research model based on the link between KIBS and location attributes is proposed and tested, and a survey was carried out in the Region Centro of Portugal to test a multidimensional approach at the location decision level. The authors’ found many different factors associated with the location of new KIBS, and their findings highlight two profiles of KIBS.
The Role of Culture in Business Intelligence
Authors: Park Jore , Fables Wylci , Parker Kevin R. , Nitse Philip S.
Published: October 2011

Global business intelligence will struggle to live up to its potential if it fails to take into account, and accurately interpret, cultural differences. This paper supports this assertion by considering the concept of culture, explaining its importance in the business intelligence process, especially in foreign markets, and demonstrating that attention to culture is currently inadequate in most international business intelligence efforts. Without a tool capable of modeling social interaction in disparate cultures, BI efforts will under perform when extended to the global arena. The Cultural Simulation Modeler is examined as a means of enhancing essential cultural awareness. The core components of the modeler are explained, as are the limitations of automated information gathering and analysis systems.
Interventions and Solutions in Gender and IT
Authors: Woszczynski Amy B. , Moody Janette
Published: October 2011

The role of women in technology-related fields began with promising contributions from pioneers like Grace Hopper. In recent years, women have moved away from information technology (IT) fields, and the number of women selecting IT majors in universities continues to decline. Likewise, the number of women employed in the IT workforce remains low and declining. Researchers have recognized the problem and have investigated the many reasons for low participation of women in IT-related fields. Researchers have proposed various interventions to fill the pipeline and retain women in computing. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the current state of women in IT. We focus on girls and women at various life stages, from early education to the IT workplace. We also provide a discussion of the various methods and appropriate interventions that may be employed to encourage women to become empowered users of technology worldwide. We use a broad definition of IT, which includes computer science (CS), computer engineering, information systems (IS), information technology (IT), and related professional fields. By examining research from multiple technologyrelated fields, we gain a clearer picture of the many ways that women may participate in IT. Recent research on gender and IT has used an interdisciplinary approach, which has greatly expanded our potential for understanding why women decide not to pursue IT-related fields and how to implement appropriate interventions. Researchers from topics as diverse as IS, psychology, social sciences, education, and feminism, have taken a distinctive approach to understanding why women are not better represented in the IT workplace. We believe this broad, interdisciplinary approach has great potential to understand motivations for women pursuing IT-related careers. As Trauth & Niederman (2006, p. 8) said, “…the IT profession is challenged with meeting the demand to enlarge the IT workforce by recruiting and retaining personnel from historically underrepresented groups.” This chapter looks at women in IT, shedding light on one historically underrepresented group.
A Unified View of Enablers, Barriers, and Readiness of Small to Medium Enterprises for E-Business Adoption
Authors: Chugh Ritesh , Gupta Pramila
Published: October 2011

SMEs have been looking at expanding their market share by extending beyond their geographical boundaries and this is where electronic business has come to the forefront. The path to e-business adoption is ridden with barriers and understanding these along with the benefits it offers to SMEs is important. This chapter has reviewed the existing literature of barriers and benefits of e-business adoption by SMEs to identify the various enablers that can facilitate adoption. The chapter also provides an insight into e-readiness and analyses six existing tools that are used globally to measure e-readiness. Based on a comprehensive analysis, an holistic framework (Motivation Application Measurement Support (MAMS) e-readiness assessment framework) has been proposed. The framework can be utilized as a reference to assess, design and implement a supplementary strategic approach for the assessment of e-business readiness of SMEs. Further empirical research to test, amend and improve the MAMS framework can be undertaken in the future.
Recognizing Innovation through Social Network Analysis
Authors: Francesca Grippa , Gianluca Elia
Published: October 2011

Advances in communication technologies have enabled organizations to develop and operate decentralized organizational structures by supporting coordination among workers in different locations. Such developments have lessened formality in control structures and replaced formal channels of communication with less formal social networks. The chapter describes the development and application of a ‘Social Network Scorecard’ (SNS) managerial tool to monitor social interchanges and relationships within and across organizations in order to assess the effectiveness of knowledge networks. In this chapter, a project team made up of individuals from academia and industry collaboratively implemented an integrated technological platform for KM, e-Learning, e-Business, and project management disciplines in a higher education environment. This VeBMS platform, consisting of a collaborative working environment within the University of Salento, Italy, was used as a ‘test bed’ to evaluate the validity of the scorecard in practice. The chapter describes how the SNS tool can help in monitoring the evolution of an organizational community, recognizing creative roles and initiatives, and tracing the connections between such initiatives and innovative outcomes. Looking at trends at individual, team, inter-organizational, and organizational levels, researchers identified the most innovative phases within the team’s life cycle using network indicators like density and degree centrality. The SNS provided feedback on the effectiveness of the team and helped discover the phases in which the team acted in a manner conducive to innovation. The Virtual eBMS project team followed the typical structure of an innovative knowledge network where learning networks and innovation networks co-exist with a more sparse interest network.
Scalable Authoritative OWL Reasoning for the Web*
Authors: Hogan Aidan , Harth Andreas , Polleres Axel
Published: October 2011

In this chapter, the authors discuss the challenges of performing reasoning on large scale RDF datasets from the Web. Using ter-Horst’s pD* fragment of OWL as a base, the authors compose a rule-based framework for application to Web data: they argue their decisions using observations of undesirable examples taken directly from the Web. The authors further temper their OWL fragment through consideration of “authoritative sources” which counter-acts an observed behaviour which they term “ontology hijacking”: new ontologies published on the Web re-defining the semantics of existing entities resident in other ontologies. They then present their system for performing rule-based forward-chaining reasoning which they call SAOR: Scalable Authoritative OWL Reasoner. Based upon observed characteristics of Web data and reasoning in general, they design their system to scale: the system is based upon a separation of terminological data from assertional data and comprises of a lightweight in-memory index, on-disk sorts and file-scans. The authors evaluate their methods on a dataset in the order of a hundred million statements collected from real-world Web sources and present scale-up experiments on a dataset in the order of a billion statements collected from the Web. In this republished version, the authors also present extended discussion reflecting upon recent developments in the area of scalable RDFS/OWL reasoning, some of which has drawn inspiration from the original publication (Hogan, et al., 2009).
Community-driven Consolidated Linked Data
Authors: Shakya Aman , Takeda Hideaki , Wuwongse Vilas
Published: October 2011

User-generated content can help the growth of linked data. However, there are a lack of interfaces enabling ordinary people to author linked data. Secondly, people have multiple perspectives on the same concept and different contexts. Thirdly, there are not enough ontologies to model various data. Therefore, the authors of this chapter propose an approach to enable people to share various data through an easy-to-use social platform. Users define their own concepts and multiple conceptualizations are allowed. These are consolidated using semi-automatic schema alignment techniques supported by the community. Further, concepts are grouped semi-automatically by similarity. As a result of consolidation and grouping, informal lightweight ontologies emerge gradually. The authors have implemented a social software system, called StYLiD, to realize the approach. It can serve as a platform motivating people to bookmark and share different things. It may also drive vertical portals for specific communities with integrated data from multiple sources. Some experimental observations support the validity of the approach.
Inductive Classification of Semantically Annotated Resources through Reduced Coulomb Energy Networks
Authors: Fanizzi Nicola , d’Amato Claudia , Esposito Floriana
Published: October 2011

The tasks of resource classification and retrieval from knowledge bases in the Semantic Web are the basis for a lot of important applications. In order to overcome the limitations of purely deductive approaches to deal with these tasks, inductive (instance-based) methods have been introduced as efficient and noise-tolerant alternatives. In this paper we propose an original method based on a non-parametric learning scheme: the Reduced Coulomb Energy (RCE) Network. The method requires a limited training effort but it turns out to be very effective during the classification phase. Casting retrieval as the problem of assessing the class-membership of individuals w.r.t. the query concepts, we propose an extension of a classification algorithm using RCE networks based on an entropic similarity measure for OWL. Experimentally we show that the performance of the resulting inductive classifier is comparable with the one of a standard reasoner and often more efficient than with other inductive approaches. Moreover, we show that new knowledge (not logically derivable) is induced and the likelihood of the answers may be provided.
Discovery Process in a B2B eMarketplace
Authors: D’Aubeterre Fergle , Iyer Lakshmi S. , Ehrhardt Richard , Singh Rahul
Published: October 2011

In the context of a customer-oriented value chain, companies must effectively address customers changing information needs during the process of acquiring a product or service to remain competitive. The ultimate goal of semantic matchmaking is to identify the best resources (supply) that fully meet the requirements (demand); however, such a goal is very difficult to achieve due to information distributed over disparate systems. To alleviate this problem in the context of eMarketplaces, the authors suggest an agent-enabled infomediary-based eMarketplace that enables semantic matchmaking. They extend and apply the exact, partial, and potential match algorithms developed in Di Noia et al. (2004) to show how partial and potential matches can become full matches. Specifically, the authors show how multi-criteria decision making techniques can be utilized to rank matches. They describe mechanisms for knowledge representation and exchange to allow partner organizations to seamlessly share information and knowledge to facilitate the discovery process in an eMarketplace context.
Intelligent Information Integration
Authors: Ashish Naveen , Maluf David A.
Published: October 2011

The authors present their work in the conceptualization, design, implementation, and application of “lean” information integration systems. They present a new data integration approach based on a schema-less data management and integration paradigm, which enables developing cost-effective large scale integration applications. They have designed and developed a highly scalable, information-on-demand system called NETMARK, which facilitates information access and integration based on a theory of articulation management and a context sensitive paradigm. NETMARK has been widely deployed for managing, storing, and searching unstructured or semi-structured arbitrary XML and HTML information at the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA). In this paper the authors describe the theory, design and implementation of our system, present experimental benchmark evaluations, and validate our approach through real-world applications in the NASA enterprise. [Article copies are available for purchase from InfoSci-on-Demand.com]
SME Characteristics and the Use of the Internet to Expand the Scale and Geographic Scope of Sales
Authors: Thompson Piers , Williams Robert , Packham Gary , Thomas Brychan C.
Published: October 2011

The potential of the Internet to both geographically expand customer bases and provide a source of sales growth has led to a rapid embracement of the Internet by a majority of small businesses in the United Kingdom. However, many studies suggest that much of this adoption takes the form of simple Web sites representing little more than an electronic brochure. Although theories and models have been proposed suggesting adoption and development of e-commerce takes a staged process, with firms moving to more complex e-commerce processes after first mastering simpler forms of Web site, studies have found mixed evidence with regard to this. This chapter investigates the level of Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Web site adoption and functionality and how this relates to growth aspirations, specifically the geographical expansion of customer bases. One potential explanation for this slow uptake of true e-commerce is a lack of employees with basic and advanced IT skills. The possibility that Information Technology (IT) skills shortages could explain the gap between the Internet’s potential and the extent of involvement by a vast majority of UK SMEs is explored. Discussion within the chapter is complemented with analysis of data from a large survey of SMEs.
E-Learning Methods and the Factors Hindering Their Usage
Authors: Wang Chengbo , Qi Baomin
Published: October 2011

In recent years, e-learning technology has been widely used in the academic institutes for supporting the effectiveness and efficiency of the students’ learning and the educators’ teaching, as a favored approach. However, regarding the student community, the extent to which e-learning technology is used, types of e-learning methods are being mainly used, as well as the barriers for enjoying the advantages of e-technology, remain interesting topics for the educators to explore. This chapter focuses on these issues through an investigation among the students within a higher education institute. The findings give an understanding regarding the usage of e-learning methods and the factors hindering the efficacy of their usage among the students. Also, a primary analysis on the usage difference between undergraduate and postgraduate students is presented.
Costs of E-Learning Support
Authors: Lam Paul , Csete Josephine , McNaught Carmel
Published: October 2011

Understanding e-learning costs informs decision making on support for the development and implementation of teaching and learning technologies in higher education. This chapter describes costs and processes in a central e-learning support service that is especially applicable to face-to-face universities that use e-learning in a blended or supplemental mode. We differentiate three types of costs: infrastructure costs that are less sensitive to variation in the complexity of e-learning strategies, and e-development and e-delivery costs that are directly related to the nature of the strategies used. Using actual data from a three-year e-learning support project (e3Learning) with 139 sub-projects, the chapter illustrates how the calculations promoted an understanding of e-learning in the following four aspects: 1) total cost of running an e-learning support service, 2) individual costs attributable to each of the sub-projects, 3) ‘price-tags’ of e-learning strategies, and 4) initial exploration of the cost-effectiveness issue. Institutional decisions made as a consequence of this study are described.
Publication and Protection of Sensitive Site Information in a Grid Infrastructure
Authors: Cholia Shreyas , Porter R. Jefferson
Published: October 2011

In order to create a successful grid infrastructure, sites and resource providers must be able to publish information about their underlying resources and services. This information enables users and virtual organizations to make intelligent decisions about resource selection and scheduling, and facilitates accounting and troubleshooting services within the grid. However, such an outbound stream may include data deemed sensitive by a resource-providing site, exposing potential security vulnerabilities or private user information. This study analyzes the various vectors of information being published from sites to grid infrastructures. In particular, it examines the data being published and collected in the Open Science Grid, including resource selection, monitoring, accounting, troubleshooting, logging and site verification data. We analyze the risks and potential threat models posed by the publication and collection of such data. We also offer some recommendations and best practices for sites and grid infrastructures to manage and protect sensitive data.
Push-based Prefetching in Remote Memory Sharing System
Authors: Chu Rui , Xiao Nong , Lu Xicheng
Published: October 2011

Remote memory sharing systems aim at the goal of improving overall performance using distributed computing nodes with surplus memory capacity. To exploit the memory resources connected by the high-speed network, the user nodes, which are short of memory, can obtain extra space provision. The performance of remote memory sharing is constrained with the expensive network communication cost. In order to hide the latency of remote memory access and improve the performance, we proposed the push-based prefetching to enable the memory providers to push the potential useful pages to the user nodes. For each provider, it employs sequential pattern mining techniques, which adapts to the characteristics of memory page access sequences, on locating useful memory pages for prefetching. We have verified the effectiveness of the proposed method through trace-driven simulations.
Factors Affecting Information Communication Technologies Usage and Satisfaction
Authors: Rouibah Kamel , Hamdy Hosni
Published: October 2011

Instant messaging (IM) technology has received extensive focus in the West while there is lack of knowledge of it in the Arab world. This study aims to shed light on factors affecting IM usage and user satisfaction in an Arab country (Kuwait). To achieve this objective, this study develops a theoretical model that is based on three well-known models. This model includes curiosity (from the theory of flow), compatibility (from the innovation diffusion theory), perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (from the technology acceptance model), and individual characteristics in the form of prior similar experience. The proposed model was tested using survey data from 609 students, with the results lending support for the proposed model. Importantly, results highlight the impact of social effect on curiosity as a new mediator of technology adoption and satisfaction. This study contributes to the literature on technology adoption in the Arab word and aids educational institutions and companies to understand the social and technical nature of users’ attitudes with regard to ICT adoption and satisfaction.
Flexibility in Offshoring
Authors: Yadav Vanita , Adya Monica , Sridhar Varadharajan , Nath Dhruv
Published: October 2011

Globalization of software development has resulted in a rapid shift away from the traditional collocated, on-site development model, to the offshoring model. Emerging trends indicate an increasing interest in offshoring, even in early phases like requirements analysis. Additionally, the flexibility offered by the agile development approach makes it attractive for adaptation in globally distributed software work. A question of significance then is what impacts the success of offshoring earlier phases, like requirements analysis, in a flexible and globally distributed environment? This chapter incorporates the stance of control theory to posit a research model that examines antecedent factors such as requirements change, facilitation by vendor and client site-coordinators, control, and computer-mediated communication. The impact of these factors on success of requirements analysis projects in a “flexible” global setting is tested using two quasi-experiments involving students from Management Development Institute, India and Marquette University, U.S.A. Results indicate that formal modes of control significantly influence project success during requirements analysis. Further, facilitation by both client and vendor site coordinators positively impacts requirements analysis success.
Taking Information Systems Business Process Outsourcing Offshore
Authors: Beverakis Georgia , Dick Geoffrey N. , Cecez-Kecmanovi Dubravka
Published: October 2011

As Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) moves offshore and now includes Information Systems (IS) Processes, there is a need to consider a combination of the two. This article explores the factors that a multinational organisation considered when it “offshored” its IS business processes to lower-cost destinations. It focuses on determining the driving factors and challenges faced during the offshore sourcing project. A single, in-depth interpretive case study approach was used to explore this research topic. The results of this study show that the organisation under investigation was primarily driven to offshore its IS business processes in order to become more competitive in the marketplace. This was assisted by the organisation reducing its operational costs, and establishing a global presence in many lower-cost locations offshore. A model was developed, which illustrates the interrelationships that exist between these concepts.
From Chatbots to Dialog Systems
Authors: Klüwer Tina
Published: October 2011

This chapter provides an overview of the technologies used for chatbots on the one hand and research dialog systems on the other hand. By comparing the two, the main disadvantage of chatbots is shown: its dependency on huge amounts of inflexible language data. Methods originating from Computational Linguistics, which are frequently used in dialog systems, can provide a solution by offering further flexibility to the language processing part of the system.
Designing and Evaluating Interactive Agents as Social Skills Tutors for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Authors: Milne Marissa , Luerssen Martin , Lewis Trent , Leibbrandt Richard , Powers David
Published: October 2011

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) makes communication and social interaction very difficult for those affected. Existing studies have reported positive results for teaching social skills to children with ASD using human-controlled virtual agents and language skills using autonomous agents. Here we combine these approaches and investigate the potential of autonomous agents as social skills tutors. A system for audio-visually synthesising an agent is developed towards this purpose and utilised together with two tutoring modules that we specifically designed for teaching conversation skills and how to deal with bullying. Following evaluation, children’s thoughts about their experience with the virtual tutor were investigated through use of a survey. The positive feedback and the modest but significant improvements in test scores for both modules suggest that this strategy for teaching social skills has much potential and that further research and development in this area would be eminently worthwhile.
A Cognitive Dialogue Manager for Education Purposes
Authors: Pirrone Roberto , Cannella Vincenzo , Russo Giuseppe , Pipitone Arianna
Published: October 2011

A conversational agent is a software system that is able to interact with users in a natural way, and often uses natural language capabilities. In this chapter, an evolution of a conversational agent is presented according to the definition of dialogue management techniques for the conversational agents. The presented conversational agent is intended to act as a part of an educational system. The chapter outlines the state-of-the-art systems and techniques for dialogue management in cognitive educational systems, and the underlying psychological and social aspects. We present our framework for a dialogue manager aimed to reduce the uncertainty in users’ sentences during the assessment of his/her requests. The domain is the development of a new generation of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) enabled with meta-cognitive abilities to make the learning process more effective. The architecture of the developed systems is explained in detail, along with some experimental results, and a possible vision for the future of these systems is presented.
Ex-Post Analyses of Agri-Environment Schemes
Authors: Bartolini Fabio , Bourke David , Finn John , Viaggi Davide
Published: October 2011

This chapter illustrates an ex-post evaluation of the performance of agri-environment scheme (AES) implementation in three case study regions in the EU. Due to a lack of available environmental data, we devised a methodology to assess environmental performance of AESs in the case study areas. The methodology is based on the combination of a harmonised framework for characterising environmental objectives, expert judgement, aimed at assessing environmental effectiveness, and multicriteria analysis techniques, aimed at producing an aggregated judgement about single case studies. Our experience shows the potential practical application of this methodology, especially in formalising the evaluation process. In particular, the methodology connecting the evaluation process with design parameters helps to identify specific causes of lower effectiveness. The methodology could also be used to conduct an ex-ante evaluation (based on experts’ predictions of environmental performance criteria), and is especially suited to learning how to improve the environmental performance of schemes.
Local Authority Websites in Rural Areas
Authors: Owsinski Jan W. , Pielak Aneta M.
Published: October 2011

Illustration comes with a case study in Poland, where a sample of varied characteristics of rural counties and municipalities was considered. The assessments were related to characteristics of respective units – the general socio-economic indices and the custom-made yardsticks. A separate section presents a cursory study of local authority websites in regions of four other EU countries (UK, The Netherlands, Romania and Spain). The conclusions and recommendations concern both policy and technicalities of assessing and evaluating rural ICT development and use.
An Architecture of Participation
Authors: Wendler Rachael , Altuna Aria , Crain Timothy , Perez Oksana , Sanchez Savannah , Vidotto Jalina
Published: October 2011

This case study, collaboratively authored by a university researcher and five high school students, presents a model for assessing community partnerships that employs Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate participatory evaluations. A research team of high school students undertook an evaluation of a service-learning partnership titled Wildcat Writers that sponsors online writing exchanges between high school and college English courses. The evaluation project used a participatory action research (PAR) approach, which involves (1) including community members as equal co-researchers, (2) respecting experiential knowledge, and (3) working toward mutually-conceived positive change. This case study demonstrates how Web 2.0 tools that allow participants to collaboratively create documents provide an architecture of participation that supports a PAR approach to assessing and improving community partnerships.
“How Do We Know What They Need?”
Authors: Dolson Theresa
Published: October 2011

The University of Richmond, a mid-size liberal arts institution, had a longstanding institutional commitment to civic engagement. Campus location and curricular issues once made the popular model of service-learning, direct service to fellow citizens in need, too restrictive, and not a good fit for many of the university’s courses. Campus leaders wanted to create community partnerships that would accommodate the wide range of pedagogical needs on campus, connect to every discipline, and still maintain healthy and sustainable partnerships in the community. This case study describes their collaboration with community leaders to launch ConnectRichmond, a network hub with many Web 2.0 features. This innovation has created a large online community that facilitates a variety of course models and has helped to support the development of a major program for community-based learning. ConnectRichmond allows UR to move beyond talking about meeting community needs to working in true reciprocity with fellow Richmonders.
Leveraging the Technology-Enhanced Community (TEC) Partnership Model to Enrich Higher Education
Authors: Dikkers Amy Garrett , Whiteside Aimee L.
Published: October 2011

This chapter provides the Technology-Enhanced Community (TEC) Partnership Model to enrich higher education. The TEC Partnership Model addresses the incorporation of community resource professionals into coursework to provide authentic learning experiences for students. The model is situated in a case study of an online Human Rights Education course, designed to serve the needs and academic interests of K-12 practitioners, community practitioners, and students in a variety of disciplines. This chapter describes the experiences and impact from both perspectives of the partnership and provides examples from the Human Rights Education course to show the model in practice. The final section also provides an overview of the strategies others can use to incorporate similar partnerships and collaborations among instructors, students, student-practitioners, and practitioners in the field.