bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Data Communications and E-Learning
Authors: Dixon Michael W. , Karlsson Johan M. , McGill Tanya J.
Published: May 2011

Information and communications technology (ICT) has increasingly influenced higher education. Computer-based packages and other learning objects provide a useful supplement to students studying conventionally by illustrating aspects of the curriculum. Other packages are directed at aspects of course administration such as automated assessment (for example, see Randolph et al. (2002)). Initially such software and materials played only a supplementary role in course offerings, but this has changed rapidly. For example, Coleman et al. (1998) describe a successful early attempt to replace all lecturing with computer-aided learning. Remote delivery of courses also became a viable option because of the advent of the WWW. For example, Petre and Price (1997) report on their experiences conducting electronic tutorials for computing courses. Online education of various sorts is now routinely available to vast numbers of students (Alexander, 2001; Chen & Dwyer, 2003; Peffers & Bloom, 1999). Various terms have been used to label or describe forms of education supported by information technology. These include e-learning (e.g., Alexander, 2001; Campbell, 2004), Web-based learning (e.g. Huerta, Ryan & Igbaria, 2003; Khosrow-Pour, 2002), online learning (e.g., Simon, Brooks & Wilkes, 2003), distributed learning and technology- mediated learning (e.g., Alavi & Leidner, 2001); with e-learning probably the most commonly used term used to describe education and training that networks such as the Internet support. E-learning has become of increasing importance for various reasons. These include the rise of the information and global economy and the emergence of a consumer culture. Students demand a flexible structure so that they can study, work and participate in family life at the same time (Campbell, 2004). This flexibility is reflected in alternative delivery methods that include online learning and Internet use. We have also become more sensitive to cultural and gender differences, and to the learning needs of the challenged. These needs may be addressed by e-learning (Campbell, 2004).
Data Dissemination in Mobile Databases
Authors: Waluyo Agustinus Borgy , Srinivasan Bala , Taniar David
Published: May 2011

The development of wireless technology has led to mobile computing, a new era in data communication and processing (Barbara, 1999; Myers & Beigl, 2003). With this technology, people can now access information anytime and anywhere using a portable, wireless computer powered by battery (e.g., PDAs). These portable computers communicate with a central stationary server via a wireless channel. Mobile computing provides database applications with useful aspects of wireless technology known as mobile databases. The main properties of mobile computing include mobility, severe power and storage restriction, frequency of disconnection that is much greater than a traditional network, bandwidth capacity, and asymmetric communications costs. Radio wireless transmission usually requires a greater amount of power as compared with the reception operation (Xu, Zheng, Zhu, & Lee, 2002). Moreover, the life expectancy of a battery (e.g., nickel-cadmium, lithium ion) was estimated to increase time of effective use by only another 15% (Paulson, 2003). Thus, efficient use of energy is definitely one of the main issues. Data dissemination (can also be called data broadcasting) is one way to overcome these limitations. With this mechanism, a mobile client is able to retrieve information without wasting power to transmit a request to the server. Other characteristics of data dissemination include: scalability as it supports a large number of queries; query performance which is not affected by the number of users in a cell as well as the request rate; and effective to a high-degree of overlap in the user’s request. In this article, the terms data dissemination and data broadcasting are used interchangeably. The ultimate challenge in data dissemination is to minimize the response time and tuning time of retrieving database items. Response time is the total of elapsed time required for the data of interest to arrive in the channel and the download time, while tuning time is the amount of time that a client is required to listen to the channel, which is used to indicate its energy consumption. In some cases, the response time is equal to the tuning time. This article describes a state-of-the art development in data dissemination strategies in mobile databases. Several strategies for improving the query performance by disseminating data to a population of mobile users will be explained.
Data Mining in Franchising
Authors: Chen Ye-Sho , Hua Grace , Justis Bob
Published: May 2011

Franchising has been a popular approach given the high rate of business failures (Justis & Judd, 2002; Thomas & Seid, 2000). Its popularity continues to increase, as we witness an emergence of a new business model, Netchising, which is the combination power of the Internet for global demand-andsupply processes and the international franchising arrangement for local responsiveness (Chen, Justis, & Yang, 2004). For example, Entrepreneur magazine—well known for its Franchise 500 listing—in 2001 included Tech Businesses into its Franchise Zone that contains Internet Businesses, Tech Training, and Miscellaneous Tech Businesses. At the time of this writing, 40 companies are on its list. Netchising is an effective global e-business growth strategy (Chen, Chen, & Wu, 2006), since it can “offer potentially huge benefits over traditional exporting or foreign direct investment approaches to globalization” and is “a powerful concept with potentially broad applications” (Davenport, 2000, p. 52). In his best seller, Business @ the Speed of Thought, Bill Gates (1999) wrote, “Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without talking about the other” (p. 6). Gates’ point is quite true when one talks about data mining in franchise organizations. Despite its popularity as a global e-business growth strategy, there is no guarantee that the franchising business model will render continuous success in the hypercompetitive environment. This can be evidenced from the constant up-and-down ranking of the Franchise 500. Thus, to see how data mining can be “meaningfully” used in franchise organizations, one needs to know how franchising really works. In the next section, we show that (1) building up a good “family” relationship between the franchisor and the franchisee is the real essence of franchising, and (2) proven working knowledge is the foundation of the “family” relationship. We then discuss in the following three sections the process of how to make data mining “meaningful” in franchising. Finally, future trends of data mining in Netchising are briefly described.
Deploying Pervasive Technologies
Authors: Cano Juan-Carlos , Calafate Carlos Tavares , Cano Jose , Manzoni Pietro
Published: May 2011

Communication technologies are currently addressing our daily lives. Internet, fixed-line networks, wireless networks, and sensor technologies are converging, and seamless communication is expected to become widely available. Meanwhile, the miniaturization of devices and the rapid proliferation of handheld devices have paved the path towards pervasive computing and ubiquitous scenarios. The term ubiquitous and pervasive computing refers to making many computing devices available throughout the physical environment, while making them effectively invisible to the user (Weiser, 1991). Thanks to advances in the devices’ processing power, extended battery life, and the proliferation of mobile computing services, the realization of ubiquitous computing has become more apparent, being a major motivation for developing location and context-aware information delivery systems. Strongly related to ubiquitous computing is context-aware computing. In context-aware computing, the applications may change or adapt their functions, information, and user interface depending on the context and the client’s profile (Weiser, 1993). Many research centers and industries are actively working on the issues of context-awareness or more generally on ubiquitous computing (Baldauf, Dustdar, & Rosenberg, 2007). In particular, several proposals focus on smart spaces and intelligent environments (Harter, Hopper, Steggeles, Ward, & Webster, 1999; Kindberg et al., 2002; Smart-its, 2007), where it is expected that smart devices all around us will maintain updated information about their locations, the contexts in which they are being used, and relevant data about the users. Clearly, contextual services represent a milestone in today’s mobile computing paradigm, providing timely information anytime, anywhere. Nevertheless, there are still few examples of pervasive computing environments moving out from academic laboratories into our everyday lives. This occurs since pervasive technologies are still premature, and also because it is hard to define what a real pervasive system should be like. Moreover, despite the wide range of services and potential smart applications that can benefit from using such systems, there is still no clear insight about a realistic killer application.
Design Levels for Distance and Online Learning
Authors: Boettcher Judith V.
Published: May 2011

The importance of design for instructional programs — whether on campus or online or at a distance — increases with the possible combinations of students, content, skills to be acquired, and the teaching and learning environments. Instructional design —as a profession and a process— has been quietly developing over the last 50 years. It is a multidisciplinary profession combining knowledge of the learning process, humans as learners, and the characteristics of the environments for teaching and learning. The theorists providing the philosophical bases for this knowledge include Dewey (1933), Bruner (1963), and Pinker (1997). The theorists providing the educational and research bases include Vygotsky (1962), Knowles (1998), Schank (1996), and Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (1999). Instructional design offers a structured approach to analyzing an instructional problem and creating a design for meeting the instructional content and skill needs of a population of learners usually within a specific period of time. An instructional design theory is a “theory that offers explicit guidance on how to better help people learn and develop” (Reigeluth, 1999).
Developing a Web Service Security Framework
Authors: Park Yangil , Chen Jeng-Chung
Published: May 2011

Web Service (WS) is an open standard software component that uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) functions to access and exchange data via networks in communicating with other WSs. In business transactions, Web Service Description Language (WSDL) is used to describe data and deliver all parameters, return values, and types. However, the convenience of using WSDL in business transactions also lets hackers snoop and analyze data easily. In addition, the lack of Web Service standards at present makes the security issue even more serious in business transactions using WS. This article proposes a high-level security model for the security problems of the applications. Unlike other studies in the field, this study is dedicated to provide a total solution consisting of technological, organizational, and managerial aspects when using WS. Therefore, the understanding and development of business behaviors is essential in this study. It first introduces current uses of WS. Then definitions of WS, WS security, and WS policy are reviewed. Finally, a WS security model is proposed and explained in the following examples.
Digital Asset Management Concepts
Authors: Subramanian Ramesh
Published: May 2011

“DAM. Looks like something you might say if you couldn’t find a photograph you needed for a front-page story. But DAM—digital asset management—is actually designed to preempt such frustrated outbursts. In an age when oodles of media, including print, images, video and audio, are stored in computers rather than file cabinets, newspapers and other groups need a way to organize, manipulate and share those media quickly and easily.” (Grimes, 1998) Dramatic changes have occurred on the corporate front in the last few years, as more and more businesses have started to conduct commerce on the Internet. New business concepts and products are being developed on a daily basis. The accent is on speed, and changes occur quickly – daily, hourly or even minute-to-minute. Two major facets of these changes are: 1. Large amounts of data are created and stored in digitized forms in organizations, and 2. New “digital products” are created. As more and more information is created in electronic form, organizations are faced with the following problems: • The volume of digital data has become cumbersome to manage and reuse (Sharples, 1999). • Organizations have struggled to reduce cycle time, maintain brand consistency, and coordinate crossmedia publishing as well as one-to-one marketing efforts. • The number of digital assets that an organization may manage has exploded. • Gistics, a California-based research firm that has studied media asset management for several years, estimates that approximately 30% of all media assets in organizations are misplaced, and then reworked or duplicated. A 2001 Frost and Sullivan market indicator report by Subha Vivek forecasts tremendous future growth in the U.S. digital media management market (Vivek, 2001). The three market segments that will be affected represent the capture, storage and access, and distribution of digital media, respectively. The promise of digital asset management has attracted a lot of commercial enterprises and software research laboratories, and several products have been introduced commercially in the last few years. However, due to the “newness” of the field, there is not much academic research literature in the field. A good source of academic thought in this field can be found in the online proceedings of the Annenberg DAM Conference, held at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California in 1998 (Annenberg DAM Conference, 1998).
Effective Leadership of Virtual Teams
Authors: Tuffley David
Published: May 2011

Geographically dispersed project teams collaborating in virtual environments face a range of challenges in the successful completion of IT development projects. This is particularly the case when the project teams are nonhomogenous, comprising multidisciplinary members with a range of skills, professional orientations and cultural backgrounds. Of interest to the global enterprise are those leadership mechanisms and attributes that may serve to optimize team functioning. With an increasing portion of the estimated US$600,000,000,000 (Cusamano, 2004) global software industry being performed by virtual teams, and with the mechanics and dynamics of virtual team operations being a relatively new area of study, the significance of the problem can be firmly established. Virtual teams, and the leadership thereof, is therefore a significant aspect of the global software development industry. Yet as Cusamano (2004) asserts, it is the business itself (and the processes therein), not the technology that determines the success or failure of the organizations that produce the software.
Effective Learning Through Optimum Distance Among Team Members
Authors: Choudhary Bishwajit
Published: May 2011

For several years, researchers have argued that too much closeness or distance among the team members inhibits intellectual debate and lowers the quality of decision-making. In fact it is often said that if two people always agree, then one is useless and if they always disagree, then both are useless. While too much “closeness” leads to copycat attitude, too much “distance” among the team members results in incompatibility. Creating teams in which the members experience “optimum distance” is not easy. In this backdrop, we have identified certain gaps in the contemporary organizational learning theories and developed conceptual constructs and conditions that are likely to cause optimum distance in teams.
ERP Systems' Life Cycle
Authors: de Souza Cesar Alexandre , Zwicker Ronaldo
Published: May 2011

The 1990’s witnessed an impressive growth of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in the market of corporate IT solutions, and now they are an important component of IT architecture in many companies. The ERP systems are introduced in companies following well-defined stages, namely the stages of decision, selection, implementation, stabilization and utilization. This last stage (utilization) is also characterized by the development of an organized effort to continuously ensure that the ERP system meets business needs regarding functionality, performance, availability, and to control operation costs, at the ERP management stage. This chapter presents aspects involved in each stage of this life cycle, based on the referenced bibliography.
Extreme Programming for Web Applications
Authors: Kamthan Pankaj
Published: May 2011

The engineering environment of Web Applications is in a constant state of technological and social flux. These applications face challenges posed by new implementation languages, variations in user agents, demands for new services, and user classes from different cultural backgrounds, age groups, and capabilities. We require a methodical approach towards the development life cycle and maintenance of Web Applications that can adequately respond to this constantly changing environment. In this article, we propose the use of an agile methodology (Highsmith, 2002), namely Extreme Programming (XP) (Beck & Andres, 2005), for a systematic development of Web Applications. In general, agile methodologies have show to be cost-effective for projects with certain types of uncertainties (Liu, Kong, & Chen, 2006) and, according to surveys (Khan & Balbo, 2005), been successfully applied to Web Applications. The organization of the article is as follows. We first outline the background necessary for the discussion that pursues and state our position. This is followed by a discussion of the applicability and feasibility of XP practices as they pertain to Web Applications. Then the shortcomings of XP towards Web Applications are highlighted, and suggestions for improvement are presented. Next, challenges and directions for future research are outlined. Finally, concluding remarks are given.
Functional and Object-Oriented Methodology for Analysis and Design
Authors: Shoval Peretz , Kabeli Judith
Published: May 2011

The chapter provides an overview of FOOM–Functional and Object-oriented Methodology–for analysis and design of information systems. FOOM integrates the functional and object-oriented approaches. In the analysis phase, two main models are created: a) a conceptual data model, in the form of an initial class diagram; and b) a functional model, in the form of OO-DFDs (object-oriented data-flow diagram). In the design phase, the above models are used to design the following products: a) a complete class diagram, including Data, Menus, Forms, Reports and Transactions classes, including their attributes, relationships and methods; b) the user interface–a menus tree; c) the input and output form and report; and d) detailed descriptions of the class methods, expressed in pseudo-code or message charts.
Geographic Information Systems as Decision Tools
Authors: Crossland Martin D.
Published: May 2011

Geographic information systems (GISs) as a technology have been studied and reported extensively and, not unexpectedly, in the field of geography. The various ways of capturing spatial data, arranging attribute data into appropriate database structures, and making the resulting large data sets efficient to store and query have been extensively researched and reported (Densham, 1991). However, the geographic research community has only recently noted the need to study how GISs are used as decision tools, especially with regard to how such decision making might be related to a decision maker’s cognitive style (Mennecke, Crossland, et al., 2000). As an example, the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science called for research examining how geographic knowledge is acquired through different media and by users with different levels of experience and training (University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, 1996). Researchers in the fields of decision sciences and information systems have more recently begun to make contributions in the area of decision making with GISs. When a GIS is employed as a decision support system, in these studies the resultant system is often referred to as a spatial decision support system, or SDSS (see Crossland, 1992; Crossland, Perkins, et al., 1995; Mennecke et al., 2000). A geographic information system in its simplest form is a marriage of accurately scaled digital maps with a database. The digital maps comprise spatially referenced details such as natural elements (lakes, rivers, topographic elevation contours, etc.), manmade objects (buildings, roads, pipelines, etc.), and political boundaries (city limits, state and county lines, international boundaries, etc.). These natural elements are typically referenced, with varying degrees of precision, to latitude/longitude coordinates on the earth’s surface. It must be noted here that the degree of precision and, more importantly, differences in degrees of precision for the various elements are the subjects of much research and user consternation in applications of GISs to solving problems. The database, in turn, catalogs information about the various spatial elements (e.g., the names of rivers, names of buildings, building owner, operator of a pipeline, etc.). These descriptive entries in the database are often referred to as attributes of the various spatial elements. A GIS may be paired with the global positioning system (GPS), from which real-time, satellite-derived location information may be derived, as provided by an appropriate GPS receiver.
Global Software Team and Inexperienced Software Team
Authors: Lui Kim Man , Chan Keith C.C.
Published: May 2011

Given that the number of qualified programmers cannot be increased drastically and rapidly, software managers in most parts of the world will likely have to live with a human resources shortage in this area for some time. One way of dealing with this shortage is to form global software teams in which members are recruited from all over the world and software is developed in a distributed manner. Forming such a global software teams can have many advantages. In addition to alleviating the problems caused by scarcity of human resources, programmers on a global team would be free to work without being confined by physical location. Although forming global software teams may increase the size of the pool of programmers that can be recruited, both team quality and software quality are issues of great concern. Some software companies would prefer to establish a global software team with software programmers in developing countries, such as China, Poland, and South Africa (Sanford, 2003). Given the tremendous salary gap between skilled and unskilled developers or between developed and developing countries, it is not difficult to see that maintaining a team with a proportion of less experienced members significantly reduces running expenses (Figure 1). On the other hand, however, it would present the problem of managing inexperienced programmers. This chatper shares our experience of managing inexperienced software teams in China. To simplify our discussion, we deal separately with the two topics of inexperienced software teams and global software teams. However, it should be noted that a global software team can be composed of both inexperienced and experienced software subteams. We categorize the problems in these two types of software teams which will help software managers learn more how to manage the two types of software teams.
Governance Structures for IT in the Health Care Industry
Authors: Suomi Reima
Published: May 2011

The pressures for the health care industry are well known and very similar in all developed countries (i.e., altering population, shortage of resources for staff and from taxpayers, higher sensitivity of the population for health issues, new and emerging diseases, etc.). Underdeveloped countries experience different problems, but they have the advantage of learning from the lessons and actions that developed countries underwent perhaps decades ago. On the other hand, many solutions also exist, but they all make the environment even more difficult to manage (i.e., possibilities of networking, booming medical and health-related research and knowledge produced by it, alternative caretaking solutions, new and expensive treatments and medicines, promises of biotechnology, etc.). From the public authorities’ points of view, the solution might be easy—outsource as much as you can out of this mess. Usually, the first services to go are marginal operational activities, such as laundry, cleaning, and catering services. It is easy to add information systems to this list, but we believe this is often done without a careful enough consideration. Outsourcing is often seen as a trendy, obvious, and easy solution, which has been supported by financial facts on the short run. Many examples show that even in the case of operational information systems, outsourcing can become a costly option, not to mention lost possibilities for organizational learning and competitive positioning through mastering of information technology.
History of Artificial Intelligence
Authors: Benko Attila , Sik Lányi Cecília
Published: May 2011

George Boole was the first to describe a formal language for logic reasoning in 1847. The next milestone in artificial intelligence history was in 1936, when Alan M. Turing described the Turing-machine. Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts created the model of artificial neurons in 1943, and it was in 1944 when J. Neumann and O. Morgenstern determined the theory of decision, which provided a complete and formal frame for specifying the preferences of agents. In 1949 Donald Hebb presented a value changing rule for the connections of the artificial neurons that provide the chance of learning, and Marvin Minsky and Dean Edmonds created the first neural computer in 1951. Artificial intelligence (AI) was born in the summer of 1956, when John McCarthy first defined the term. It was the first time the subject caught the attention of researchers, and it was discussed at a conference at Dartmouth. The next year, the first general problem solver was tested, and one year later, McCarty?regarded as the father of AI?announced the LISP language for creating AI software. Lisp, which stands for list processing, is still used regularly today. Herbert Simon in 1965 stated: “Machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do.” However, years later scientists realized that creating an algorithm that can do anything a human can do is nearly impossible. Nowadays, AI has a new meaning: creating intelligent agents to help us do our work faster and easier (Russel & Norvig, 2005; McDaniel, 1994; Shirai & Tsujii, 1982; Mitchell, 1996; Schreiber, 1999). Perceptrons was a demonstration of the limits of simple neural networks published by Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert in 1968. In 1970, the first International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence was held in Washington, DC. PROLOG, a new language for generating AI systems, was created by Alain Colmerauer in 1972. In 1983, Johnson Laird, Paul Rosenbloom, and Allen Newell completed CMU dissertations on SOAR.
The Impact of Network-Based Parameters on Gamer Experience
Authors: Picovici Dorel , Denieffe David , Carrig Brian
Published: May 2011

Most of the existent games consist of multiple players, connected over a network, collaborating and competing in a virtual world. In this world, each player typically controls a single virtual entity. Communication between players can be achieved by sharing entity state information, such as positioning using synchronisation messages. These messages are periodically transmitted across the connecting network, and update the remote state of the virtual entity, which is the state replicated on other players’ computers. If the games are using the Internet as a connecting network, latency, jitter, and packet loss, can have a significant impact upon the service experienced by application user (end-user). More specifically, latency or delay can by introduced by various types of delays, such as propagation, serialisation, and queuing delays. Jitter is the variation in latency experienced by consecutive packets. Not all of the packets in a given flow will take the same path through the network. The time taken to traverse different routes is likely to vary due to factors such as their different physical distance, the number of hops, or physical link properties. On lower bandwidth links, which have a greater serialization delay, variation in packet lengths can introduce jitter. The size distribution and arrival patterns of other traffic flows on shared links may influence the queuing delay experienced by packets in one particular flow and is, in itself, a source of jitter. There are a number of different points on the network where packets may be lost. At the physical layer, all links experience some rate of data corruption, known as the bit error rate (BER). This may be caused by a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) during digital to analog conversion processes, which causes erroneous encoding or decoding of data, or it may be caused by faulty hardware. Forward error correction (FEC) is sometimes used at the link layer to recover from one- or two-bit errors. A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) may be applied to detect whether or not errors are included in the frame. Occasionally, transient congestion, with the subsequent queuing of packets, is so severe that it causes the routing queue buffer to overflow. When this occurs, newly arriving packets will be dropped until there is sufficient space in the buffer to place new packets. On other occasions, dynamic routing changes or route flapping may result in a temporarily incomplete network path, which causes losses.
The Impact of Risks and Challenges in E-Commerce Adoption Among SMEs
Authors: Ratnasingam Pauline
Published: May 2011

E-commerce provides different opportunities to small businesses as it overcomes part of their technical, environmental, organizational, and managerial inadequacies (Bergeron, Raymond, & Rivard, 2001; Hussin, King, & Cragg, 2002). According to Forrester Research, e-commerce in the US will grow at 19% reaching $230 billion by 2008. Further, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimated that in 2003, there were 27 million small business tax returns. Small businesses are an important and integral part of every nation’s economy (Hambrick & Crozier, 1985). The US Small Business Administration (SBA) defines a small business as “an independent business having fewer than 500 employees or is independently owned and not dominant in its field of operation.” Small firms play an increasingly crucial role in US economy. They employ more than one half of the US private sector work force, are responsible for about one-half of the GDP, and generate more than one half of all sales in the US create 60%-80% of net new jobs annually (Ibrahim, Angelidids, J. & Parsa, 2004). Alternatively, small businesses are often more challenged than larger firms by resource constraints, such as lack of fi- nancial capital, and technical or managerial skills, knowledge and expertise that significantly reduce the number and types of options available to management (Hodgetts & Kuratko, 2001). Previous research suggests that although most small businesses were connected to the Internet, the potential use of the Internet in their business was rarely explored. Security concerns has a direct impact on every critical part of the small business including reputation, productivity, and business continuity, as they need to adhere to the legal requirement for information management. The research question thus designed for this study is what factors inhibit or pose challenges for e-commerce adoption among small businesses? We discuss the findings of an exploratory case study with four firms, across a section of different industries, on the risks and challenges they encountered when adopting e-commerce. The study contributes to managerial and theoretical implications by increasing the importance and awareness of small businesses in e-commerce adoption.
Implementation Management of an E-Commerce-Enabled Enterprise Information System
Authors: Sarkis Joseph , Sundarraj R.P.
Published: May 2011

The integration of enterprise systems and the supply chain to an organization is becoming more critical in an ever-changing, globally competitive environment. Quick response will require close relationships, especially communications and information sharing among integrated internal functional groups as well as the suppliers and customers of an organization. Texas Instruments (TI), headquartered in Dallas, Texas, has come to realize this requirement for building and maintaining its competitive edge. Thus, it sought to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with a focus on linking it with a global electronic commerce (e-commerce) setting, an innovative and current issue (Weston, 2003). There were a number of major players, including project management direction from Andersen Consulting Services, software vendors such as SAP and i2 Technologies, hardware vendors such as Sun Microsystems, and various suppliers and customers of TI. The purpose of this case is to provide some aspects of implementation of strategic systems that provide valuable lessons for success. We begin and rely on the foundation of a strategic systems implementation model, which is initially described. A description of the case follows, with the various stages as related to strategic systems implementation described. We complete our discussion with implications and conclusions.
Improving the Usability in Learning and Course Materials
Authors: Sucupira Furtado Maria Elizabeth
Published: May 2011

Human-computer interaction (HCI) is a discipline concerned with the study, design, and development of high-usability interactive systems (ISs) focusing on users’ needs and their experiences with technologies, among others. In a simplified way, the usability of an IS refers to how easy it is to use and to learn. HCI is a very broad discipline that encompasses different specialties with different concerns regarding computer development: software engineering (SE) is concerned with the design and development of high-quality ISs focusing on schedule, budget, communication, and productivity. The quality of an IS refers to how satisfied the system clients and/or users are, verifying whether the system is performing exactly what was requested. In order to achieve both IS usability and quality, it is necessary to go beyond designing user interfaces (UIs) and that they are easier to use and learn. It is important to define methods and use techniques (as ethnographic, semiotic, prototypes), which help designers to understand HCI concepts and build better interactive artifacts (as widgets) and to understand the effects that systems will have on humans (Cooper & Reimann, 2003). Some HCI concepts are characteristics of users (such as their preferences, language, culture, and system experience) and their contexts of use (such as great familiarity with a device, easy accessibility, and good luminosity of the environment). In the interactive learning context, it is necessary to consider HCI concepts into an interactive learning system development method. The pedagogic usability of an interactive learning system is related to how easy and effective it is for a student to learn something using multiple devices (such as palm, camera, cell phone) to interact with the system. For these reasons, it is important not only to think about the IS quality, but about its usability as well. In this text, an interactive learning system is composed of a virtual learning environment (VLE), with tools to support a collaborative learning and interactive course materials available for the users through this environment. So, it is important not only to think about the VLE usability, but also about the interactive course material usability.
Innovation Generation and Innovation Adoption
Authors: Askarany Davood
Published: May 2011

The growing level of global competition is forcing organizations to make dramatic change and improvements in order to compete, prosper, and survive (Kotter, 1996). During the past three decades, the world has witnessed some spectacular changes that have provided a totally new environment for organizations. These changes include technological and administrative innovations that organizations are dealing with in different areas of their operations such as manufacturing process, operation technologies, and information systems (Shields, 1997). It can be argued that the growing level of global competition has lead to the adoption of technological evolution, which may also require the adoption of complementary administrative innovation (e.g., Baines & Langfield-Smith 2003). Given this information, to keep pace with other competitors in the global market, the adoption and the diffusion of latest ideas, techniques, practices, and processes has become a key factor for success in organizations. Therefore, this places a greater emphasis on the innovation generation and innovation adoption in organizations in order to compete, prosper, and survive.
Institutional Isomorphism and New Technologies
Authors: Amoretti Francesco , Musella Fortunato
Published: May 2011

Technological factor is mainly underestimated in the literature on institutions and organizations. Although organizational studies and information technology are disciplines dedicated respectively to studying socio-political and technical aspects of organizing, cross-fertilization among such fields has remained quite limited. Only rarely the variable of technology has been interpreted as a crucial element for explaining institutional uniformity. From a more general point of view, changing technical factors have been considered “relatively unimportant sources of organizational change in a mature organizational field” (Yang, 2003, p. 433). Only after the spread of the information and communication technologies (ICTs), a good number of studies has started to consider the relationships among information technology and organizational structure (Guthrie, 1999). Neo-institutional analysis on the use of information technology was mostly directed at showing how the embeddedness of organizational actors “in cognitive, cultural, social, and institutional structures influences the design, perceptions, and uses of the Internet and related [information technology]” (Fountain, 2001, p. 88). Therefore, it can been argued that most of the literature on this field concerns the way in which technology represents a social construct, because it shows that any technological application is strongly influenced by social aspects, such as cognitive frames, political culture, local traditions and so forth. Yet, a few contributions have been dedicated until now to investigate how institutions change through the introduction of new technologies. Although technological innovation is said to be the source of variation in a given institutional context, as “new technology offers new possibilities for solving problems [and] new practices arise when innovative organizations take advantage of its novel benefits” (Leblebici, 1991, p. 335), little attention is focused on technological variables. Despite such disregard, in the following article some examples of the strategic use of information and communication technologies will be included, with specific reference to pressures exerted by ICTs for producing “institutional isomorphism.”
Intelligent Information Systems
Authors: Fulcher John
Published: May 2011

Information Systems (IS), not surprisingly, process information (data + meaning) on behalf of and for the benefit of human users. Information Systems comprise the basic building blocks shown in Figure 1, and as such can be likened to the familiar Von Neumann computer architecture model that has dominated computing since the mid 20th Century. In practice, IS encompass not just computer system hardware (including networking) and software (including DataBases), but also the people within an organization (Stair & Reynolds, 1999). Information Systems are ubiquitous in today’s world–the so-called “Digital Age”–and are tailor-made to suit the needs of many different industries. The following are some representative application domains: • Management Information Systems (MIS) • Business IS • Transaction processing systems (& by extension, eCommerce) • Marketing/Sales/Inventory IS (especially via the Internet) • Postal/courier/transport/fleet/logistics IS • Geographical Information System (GIS)/Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) systems • Health/Medical/Nursing IS The roles performed by IS have changed over the past few decades. More specifically, whereas IS focussed on data processing during the 1950s and 1960s, management reporting in the 1960s and 1970s, decision support during the 1970s and 1980s, strategies and end user support during the 1980s and 1990s, these days (the early years of the 21st Century) they focus more on global Internetworking (O’Brien, 1997). Accordingly, we nowadays find extensive use of IS in e-business, decision support, and business integration (Malaga, 2005). Let us take a closer look at one of these–Decision Support Systems. A DSS consists of (i) a (Graphical) User Interface, (ii) a Model Management System, and (iii) a Data Management System (comprising not only Data/Knowledge Bases but also Data Warehouses, as well as perhaps incorporating some Data Mining functionality). The DSS GUI typically displays output by way of text, graphs, charts and the like, enabling users to visualize recommendations/advice produced by the DSS. The Model Management System enables users to conduct simulations, perform sensitivity analysis, explore “what-if” scenarios (in a more extensive manner than what we are familiar with in spreadsheets), and so forth.
Internet Abuse and Addiction in the Workplace
Authors: Griffiths Mark
Published: May 2011

As with the introduction of other mass communication technologies, issues surrounding Internet use, abuse and addiction have surfaced. This article has a number of objectives. It will first introduce readers to the concept of Internet addiction before going on to look at the wider issue of Internet abuse in the workplace. In this section, generic types of Internet abuse will be described, in addition to further examination of the reasons why Internet abuse occurs. The chapter ends with some guidelines and recommendations for employers and human resources departments.
Internet Diffusion in the Hospitality Industry
Authors: Martins Ramos Anatália Saraiva
Published: May 2011

Tourism is the most important industry in the world in terms of the numbers of employees and its effect on the social and economical development of a region or country. Holjevac (2003) believes that, by the year 2050, tourism will by far be the largest industry worldwide, with 2 billion tourists and US$24 billion in domestic and international receipts. Moreover, the major tourist destinations will be India, China, Indonesia, and Brazil. The use of information technologies for basic functions— conferences, business meetings in distant places, training, designed routes and airlines, reservations and tickets purchased through computer systems, tourist shops, restaurants—is becoming usual in tourism. All these services have led tourist companies to adopt more updated methods in order to increase competition. Consumers, who are already becoming familiar with new technologies, demand more flexible, interactive, and specialized products and services, bringing new management techniques from the intelligent use of IT used to accomplish tour company business processes (Buhalis, 2000). The hotels depend progressively on the resources of new information technology to follow and update the tools which allow an efficient development of activities in each section of the company, leading to better results for its management (Mendes-Filho & Ramos, 2003a). To Phillips and Moutinho (1998), information technology (IT) is one of the critical factors of success in the hotel industry. According to studies and data, the use of technological tools will allow a bigger competitiveness for hotels (Cline, 1999). Technology will be the catalyst of change, a source of growing connectivity and one of the most important factors in distinguishing success among hotel companies. Few issues have greater importance to the business of hospitality than the technological decisions that will be made in the coming years (Buhalis, 2000; Mendes-Filho & Ramos, 2004; Olsen & Connoly, 2000). The hotel industry is one of the most important kinds of Web commerce. The data shows that all major companies linked to the tourism industry (hotels, agencies, air companies, and rentals) possess some kind of e-commerce activity through the Web (O’Connor, 1999; Scottish Executive, 2000; Werthner & Klein, 1999).
IT Application Development with Web Services
Authors: Makris Christos , Panagis Yannis , Sakkopoulos Evangelos , Tsakalidis Athanasios
Published: May 2011

The advent of Web Services (WS) has signaled a true revolution in the way service-oriented computing and remote procedure invocation over the Web are conducted. Web Services comprise of a set of loosely coupled specifications to coordinate process execution from distance, based on common and widely accepted Web protocols such as HTTP, FTP, and XML, and therefore, providing increased development flexibility. Since the WS Framework was built on top of those protocols, Web Services have been widely acclaimed by the Web development community and paradoxically; they have marked one of the few examples in the history of computer protocols where a global consensus has been reached. The Web Service framework consists of essentially three basic components: 1. The Web Service Description Language (WSDL), a language that allows formal functional characterization of the provided functionalities; 2. The Simple Object Access Protocol (simply SOAP from its version 1.2), a protocol that defines the format of the information interchange; and 3. The UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) is a catalog of Web Service descriptions. All three of these components are specified using XML markup. The elegance of the WS architecture lies in the fact that every WS transaction is taking place over established Web protocols such as HTTP and FTP. As remarked in Ballinger (2003, p. 5): “A Web Service is an application logic that is accessible using Internet standards.” This very fact has accounted for the rapid and universal adoption of Web Services. This work is organized as follows: First, a review of underlying technologies and tools is presented. Consequently, existing techniques for design methodologies are described. Next, an overview of storage and retrieval techniques for Web Services is given followed by real-world applications of Web Services. We conclude with open issues and discussion.