bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Enhancing E-Service Collaboration with Enforcement and Relationship Management
Authors: Chiu Dickson K.W. , Cheung Shing-Chi , Till Sven , Narupiyakul Lalita , Hung Patrick C.K.
Published: May 2011

In a business-to-business (B2B) e-service environment, cross-organizational collaboration is important for attaining the interoperability of business processes and their proper enactment. The authors find that B2B collaboration can be divided into multiple layers and perspectives, which has not been adequately addressed in the literature. Besides regular e-service process enactment, robust collaboration requires enforcement, while quality collaboration involves relationship management. These problems are challenging, as they require the enactment of business processes and their monitoring in counter parties outside an organization’s boundary. This paper presents a framework for B2B process collaboration with three layers, namely, collaboration requirements layer, business rule layer, and system implementation layer. The collaboration requirements layer specifies the cross-organizational requirements of e-service processes. In the business rule layer, detailed knowledge of these three types of process collaboration requirements is defined as business rules in a unified Event-Condition-Action (ECA) form. In the system implementation layer, event collaboration interfaces are supported by contemporary Enterprise JavaBeans and Web Services. Based on this architecture, a methodology is presented for the engineering of e-service process collaboration from high-level business requirements down to system implementation details. As a result, B2B process collaboration can be seamlessly defined, enacted, and enforced. Conceptual models of various layers are given in the Unified Modeling Language (UML). We illustrate the applicability of our framework with a running example based on a supply-chain process and evaluate our approach from the perspective of three main stakeholders of e-collaboration, namely users, management, and systems developers.
Bridging User Requirements and Cultural Objects
Authors: Hadzilias Elias A. , Carugati Andrea
Published: May 2011

This chapter aims at defining a framework for the design of e-government services on cultural heritage. Starting from an analysis of three cases on digitisation of different types of cultural objects the authors highlight the problems existing in the creation of e-services on cultural heritage. These cases show the existence of four key issues in the development of this kind of information systems: digitisation, requirements engineering, standardization, and interoperability. The proposed framework addresses these issues focusing on the user requirements and the cultural object representation. Dynamic content exchange requires the use of a prescriptive framework for the development of cultural heritage Web sites. This chapter provides such a framework using observation from concrete applications and knowledge of information systems development methodologies.
How E-Services Satisfy Customer Needs
Authors: Baida Ziv , Gordijn Jaap , Akkermans Hans , Sæle Hanne , Morch Andrei
Published: May 2011

We outline a rigorous approach that models how companies can electronically offer packages of independent services (service bundles). Its objective is to support prospective Web site visitors in defining and buying service bundles that fit their specific needs and demands. The various services in the bundle may be offered by different suppliers. To enable this scenario, it is necessary that software can reason about customer needs and available service offerings. Our approach for tackling this issue is based on recent advances in computer and information science, where information about a domain at hand is conceptualized and formalized using ontologies and subsequently represented in machine-interpretable form. The substantive part from our ontology derives from broadly accepted service management and marketing concepts from business studies literature. In earlier work, we concentrated on the service bundling process itself. In the present chapter, we discuss how to ensure that the created bundles indeed meet customer demands. Experience of Norwegian energy utilities shows that severe financial losses can be caused when companies offer service bundles without a solid foundation for the bundle-creation process and without an in-depth understanding of customer needs and demands. We use a running case example from the Norwegian energy sector to demonstrate how we put theory into practice.
A Cloud Portal Architecture for Large-Scale Application Services
Authors: Jeng Jun-Jang , Mohindra Ajay , Yang Jeaha , Chang Henry
Published: May 2011

Application services entail multi-billion dollars of market in IT industry. However, to construct an application service is a labor- intensive and error-prone process. Application services developed through traditional development methods expose the same
Enabling Scalable Semantic Reasoning for Mobile Services
Authors: Steller Luke Albert , Krishnaswamy Shonali , Gaber Mohamed Methat
Published: May 2011

With the emergence of high-end smart phones/PDAs there is a growing opportunity to enrich mobile/pervasive services with semantic reasoning. This article presents novel strategies for optimising semantic reasoning for realizing semantic applications and services on mobile devices. We have developed the mTableaux algorithm which optimizes the reasoning process to facilitate service selection. We present comparative experimental results which show that mTableaux improves the performance and scalability of semantic reasoning for mobile devices.
Virtual Tutoring
Authors: George Beena , Dykman Charlene
Published: May 2011

This case presents the story of TutorVista, an e-business organization based in India that provides online tutoring services to students in different parts of the world. TutorVista had been able to meet growth expectations and gain recognition in the lucrative private tutoring market because of its innovative technology platform and business model. As a fledgling organization charting new territory, TutorVista faced the dual challenges of creating and capturing the demand for online tutoring and managing resources to satisfy the shifting demand. Note: this case was constructed based on interviews with individuals at TutorVista.
Culture and Consumer Trust in Online Businesses
Authors: Greenberg Robert , Wong-On-Wing Bernard , Lui Gladie
Published: May 2011

The importance of consumer trust to the success of online businesses is well documented in the literature. Given the global nature of online transactions, an important question is whether trust and trust formation differ across cultures. This study compared Hong Kong and U.S. consumer trust in online businesses. Specifically, the study examined security and privacy risks related to the purchase of products as well as services. The results show that significant differences exist between consumers from the two countries regarding the perceived level of online business risks and the formation of trust via the transference process. These findings reiterate and underscore the significance of including national culture in studies of trust in e-commerce. The results also have potential implications for online businesses as well as third party certification and assurance services.
Beyond the Digital Divide
Authors: Auh Seongyeon , Shulman Stuart W. , Thrane Lisa E. , Shelley II Mack C.
Published: May 2011

An essential, and rapidly-developing, aspect of electronic government is the growing use of online resources for government activities such as e-rulemaking, citizen participation, and the provision of information, referral, and assistance for users with needs for service delivery. Major developments in the use of electronic government resources for services needed by the elder and disability populations are the primary focus of this chapter. We focus here on the results of a large-scale statewide survey of residents of the state of Iowa, and on the findings from evaluations of aging and disability resource Websites in the United States and in other countries. Current and future trends in service delivery that may help to bridge digital divides for the elder and disability populations are discussed.
Portals and the Challenge of Simplifying Internet Business Use
Authors: Adamson Greg
Published: May 2011

The Internet promised a lot for enterprises from 1995. The Internet’s ubiquity offered inter-company connectivity (previously provided to corporations by Electronic Data Interchange) for businesses of every size. The business-to-business (B2B) trading exchange concept emerged, 10,000 B2B exchanges were anticipated. Early Internet investment then struck an unexpected hurdle: the Internet didn’t inherently support many of the key requirements for business transactions (such as reliability, confidentiality, integrity, authentication of parties). These requirements added to the cost and complexity of Internet investment. The dot.com stock market crash affected all Internet-related initiatives. But while the B2B exchanges disappeared, other initiatives more aligned to user needs and the Internet’s architecture continued to grow. These included the enterprise portal, which supports the traditional single-business-centred customer relationship model, in contrast to the business disruptive B2B exchange model.
Online Journalistic Services
Authors: Flavián Blanco Carlos
Published: May 2011

The new online communication has had a considerable impact on the activities of the newspaper industry. As a result, analysis of the duality of journalism has aroused increasing interest. This chapter analyses the readers’ behavior in relation to digital and traditional media. We identify the main reading motivations and the behavior patterns in each medium. Besides, we examine the possible relationship between readers’ objectives for reading and the choice of each channel. The results confirm that the electronic and traditional channels are compatible, but suggest that it is necessary to take the process of differentiation in order to enhance this complementarity, meeting readers’ needs in different circumstances and combining effects to raise loyalty to a newspaper.
The Roles of Online Intermediaries in Collective Memory-Supported Electronic Negotiation
Authors: Lertpittayapoom Nongkran , Paul Souren
Published: May 2011

Following the emergence of the Internet, electronic negotiation has become an alternative to face-to-face negotiation. The rise of websites such as electronic marketplaces or electronic brokerages also fueled the popularity of electronic negotiation. The current forms of negotiation support systems (NSS) used to support many electronic negotiations offer very little support for historical negotiation data. In order to address this issue, the idea of a collective memory support in negotiations has been proposed in recent years. This paper highlights the use of an online intermediary as an effective location from which collective memory support can be offered. The paper proposes that an intermediary based collective memory support will increase confidence in negotiation, reduce overall negotiation time, and strengthen trust between negotiators.
Security of Web Servers and Web Services
Authors: Hockmann Volker , Knoell Heinz D. , Leiss Ernst L.
Published: May 2011

Web servers and the Web services associated with them have become increasingly important in the last few years. Online banking, e-mail, and money, business- to-business (B2B), and business-to-client (B2C) transactions are growing rapidly. It is difficult to imagine modern business without these forms of networking. However, there are also significant negative aspects. In many cases, due to competitive pressures, companies and government agencies had to implement these services very fast, often too fast and without any appreciation of the concepts of security and protection. As a consequence, it turns out that a hacker can misuse with little effort these Web services or compromise the underlying database (e.g., to obtain access to credit cards numbers or social insurance information). A very significant percentage of the population in developed and developing countries is using wired and wireless connections for reading e-mails, accessing newsgroups, or using Internet banking. All these services are running on a Web server. Most Web servers are running the Apache or the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) (all versions of both servers [Apache 1.3.x/2.x, IIS 3-6]) (Netcraft, 2006). Of these, older versions of the Internet Information Server are especially vulnerable to numerous attacks. Therefore, an attacker is in a position to break, with little effort, into many Web servers running IIS 4 or 5. However, the Apache Web server (running on Windows systems) is also vulnerable to similar attacks. Moreover, using a Web server based on UNIX or Linux is not a guarantee for a secure system. UNIX and Linux systems are also affected by inherent weaknesses and vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows and the handling of format strings (ZDNet, 2006). Readers who like to have more general insight are referred to works by Leiss (1990) and Garfinkel and Spafford (2002). These books give broader perspectives on Internet security.
An Approach for Intentional Modeling of Web Services Security Risk Assessment
Authors: Subhas C. Misra , Vinod Kumar , Uma Kumar
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, we provide a conceptual modeling approach for Web services security risk assessment that is based on the identification and analysis of stakeholder intentions. There are no similar approaches for modeling Web services security risk assessment in the existing pieces of literature. The approach is, thus, novel in this domain. The approach is helpful for performing means-end analysis, thereby, uncovering the structural origin of security risks in WS, and how the root-causes of such risks can be controlled from the early stages of the projects. The approach addresses “why” the process is the way it is by exploring the strategic dependencies between the actors of a security system, and analyzing the motivations, intents, and rationales behind the different entities and activities in constituting the system.
Engaging SMEs In E-business
Authors: Xu Mark , Rohatgi Ravni , Duan Yanqing
Published: May 2011

The rapid rise of e-business has brought profound impact on, as well as significant challenges to, businesses of all sizes. The lack of anticipated engagement in e-business by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is still a concern to the UK government. Findings from the literature appear to have revealed a contradictory picture of SMEs’ engagement in e-business. There is limited systematic research into how companies, especially small companies, are adopting the Internet technologies. This book chapter reviews current research on SMEs’ e-business adoption by following various adoption models. The chapter examines the driving forces and inhibitors that effect the adoption of ebusiness technology in SMEs. Through interviews with 40 owner managers in the electronic components industry, the chapter reveals that most of the small firms in this industry are at the lower level of the ‘e-adoption ladder’ - predominantly using the Internet for searching information and email. SMEs in this industry have not yet widely engaged in online transactions. The current level of adoption is driven by both internal and external factors, including operational benefits, industry common practice and peer pressure. External forces such as a lack of push from suppliers and customers and a lack of strategic vision of using advanced e-business technology for competitive advantages have determinant effects on the level and scale of e-adoption in SME sector.
An Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation-Based Model for Measuring Consumer Shopping Oriented Web Site Success
Authors: Garrity Edward J.
Published: May 2011

This paper develops a new model of web information systems success that takes into account both intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors. The proposed model begins with the Garrity and Sanders model of technologic acceptance and develops an extended nomological network of success factors that draws on motivation and flow theory.
Enterprise Systems in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Authors: Mathrani Sanjay , Rashid Mohammad A. , Viehland Dennis
Published: May 2011

The market for enterprise systems (ES), continues to grow in the post millennium era as businesses become increasingly global, highly competitive, and severely challenged. Although the large enterprise space for ES implementation is quite stagnated, now all of the ES vendors are focusing on the small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector for implementations. This study looks at the current ES implementation scenario in the SME sector. The purpose of the study is to gain insights into what is a typical case of ES implementation and to understand how current implementations in the SME sector differ from the earlier implementations in the large enterprise sector through a perspective of ES vendors, ES consultants, and IT research firms in a NZ context. Implications for practice in implementation processes, implementation models, and organizational contexts are discussed.
Implementing Best of Breed ERP Systems
Authors: Bradley Joseph
Published: May 2011

ERP implementation projects normally involve a single vendor providing the packaged software for the entire system. Although most companies follow this practice, a significant number of firms employ an alternate strategy of “best of breed” ERP. This strategy involves selecting software that best matches the current or desired business practices of the company from a variety of vendors. This strategy reduces the need for the firm to customize the software or to significantly reengineer its business practices. Best of Breed offers firms the opportunity to maintain or create competitive advantage based on unique business processes. “Vanilla” ERP implementations may result in competitors all adopting the same business processes leaving no firm with an advantage.
Directed Basic Research in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Authors: Parthasarathy S.
Published: May 2011

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) covers the techniques and concepts employed for the integrated management of businesses as a whole, from the viewpoint of the effective use of management resources, to improve the efficiency of an enterprise. One way of looking at ERP is as a combination of business processes and information technology. The objective of this chapter is to highlight the research challenges in ERP projects from the viewpoint of software engineering and draw round the solutions in hand. This chapter on the directed basic research in ERP systems gives us two outputs: (1) A comprehensive framework presenting the current research problems in the ERP systems from the viewpoint of software engineering and (2) The channel to solve these problems. The outcome is a high quality, reliable and complete ERP software solution.
Engineering Mobile Group Decision Support
Authors: Kronsteiner Reinhard
Published: May 2011

This chapter is about mobile multimedia and its usage in group decisions. With respect to the complexity of mobile decision scenarios, this paper presents the foundation for engineering mobile group decision support systems. Mobile multimedia allows the adaptation of information technology to the increasing mobile work practice with location independent access to information resource. This spatial and temporal flexibility strongly affects group behaviour in decision scenarios. As a prerequisite for identifying the potential of mobile technology a set of indicators is identified. Using these indicators an exemplary decision process is presented and evaluated according potential for mobile support and mobile needs. Analysing the scenario leads to particular implementation requirements on interaction, spatial distribution, and temporal distribution to be respected in mobile group decision support systems.
A Decision Support System for Selecting Secure Web Services
Authors: Khan Khaled M.
Published: May 2011

Web service is becoming an important area of business processing and research for enterprise systems. Various Web service providers currently offer diverse computing services ranging from entertainment, finance, and health care to real-time application. With the widespread proliferation of Web Services, not only delivering secure services has become a critical challenge for the service providers, but users face constant challenges in selecting the appropriate Web services for their enterprise application systems. Security has become an important issue for information systems (IS) managers for a secure integration of Web services with their enterprise systems. Security is one of the determining factors in selecting appropriate Web services. The need for run-time composition of enterprise systems with third-party Web services requires a careful selection process of Web services with security assurances consistent with the enterprise business goal. Selection of appropriate Web services with required security assurances is essentially a problem of choice among several alternative services available in the market. The IS managers have little control of the actual security behavior of the third-party Web services, however, they can control the selection of right services which could likely comply their security requirements. Selecting third-party Web services arbitrarily over the Internet is critical as well as risky.
The Role of Simulation in Business Process Reengineering
Authors: Alkhaldi Firas M. , Olaimat Mohammad , Abdali Rashed Abdullah
Published: May 2011

This chapter discusses the importance of business process simulation, while illustrating the relationship between business process reengineering (BPR) and change management, it focuses the discussion on the role of simulation in supporting BPR and the effect of simulation on business environment related skills, business management related skills, leadership related skills, employees empowering level, process improvement, ethical issues, and stakeholders’ management skills. The chapter discusses the value of simulation in implementing reengineering strategies and argues the future challenges of business process simulation and describes the limitations of simulation technology in reengineering business processes. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of the characteristics of successful simulation and simulation applications.
Introducing the Elasticity of Spatial Data
Authors: Gadish David A.
Published: May 2011

The data quality of a vector spatial data can be assessed using the data contained within one or more data warehouses. Spatial consistency includes topological consistency, or the conformance to topological rules (Hadzilacos & Tryfona, 1992, Rodríguez, 2005). Detection of inconsistencies in vector spatial data is an important step for improvement of spatial data quality (Redman, 1992; Veregin, 1991). An approach for detecting topo-semantic inconsistencies in vector spatial data is presented. Inconsistencies between pairs of neighboring vector spatial objects are detected by comparing relations between spatial objects to rules (Klein, 2007). A property of spatial objects, called elasticity, has been defined to measure the contribution of each of the objects to inconsistent behavior. Grouping of multiple objects, which are inconsistent with one another, based on their elasticity is proposed. The ability to detect groups of neighboring objects that are inconsistent with one another can later serve as the basis of an effort to increase the quality of spatial data sets stored in data warehouses, as well as increase the quality of results of data-mining processes
A European Virtual Enterprise on Collaborative Data Mining and Decision Support
Authors: Mladenic Dunja , Lavrac Nada
Published: May 2011

One of the challenging research problems is to develop data mining and decision support integration techniques and to propose new methods for collaborative data mining. Advances in this area were achieved within the European project Data Mining and Decision Support for Business Competitiveness: A European Virtual Enterprise (SolEuNet, 2000-2003), in which a virtual enterprise model was proposed as a dynamic problem- solving link between a network of experienced data mining and decision support experts on the one hand, and customers in need of specific solutions on the other.
Translating Knowledge Management Practices into the Boundaries of Supply Chain
Authors: Bak Ozlem
Published: May 2011

This chapter aims to evaluate the application of knowledge management (KM) literature in supply chains. The underlying understanding derived from this evaluation can be used to devise a valid business strategy to encourage knowledge management practices in supply chains. The concept of a supply chain encompasses businesses organised around a common goal of delivering a product or service from the initial supplier to the end customers. In this respect, the importance of knowledge management within the boundaries of supply chain management has been iterated by many authors; some underline the strategic and tactical importance of knowledge management, whereas others focus on the advantages and tools used to create knowledge in supply chains. The difficulty of assessing knowledge management is twofold when considering supply chains–first, the underlying difficulty of locating the trail of knowledge creation in supply chains and secondly how this can be utilised to devise a business strategy. On close examination of the literature in this field, we can identify a salient need for the theoretical categorisation of existing theoretical frameworks of supply chain management (SCM) on KM-related practices. This chapter explicitly looks into three supply chains, namely learning chains, virtual chains and build-to-order supply chains, and the specific challenges that these create for knowledge management and devising a valid business strategy.
Evolution of Electronic Procurement in Egypt
Authors: Kamel Sherif
Published: May 2011

Emerging information and communication technology is driving transformation and change in the cyberspace. Speed, competition and globalization are key factors for development and growth in the reengineered global business environment where electronic business promises to grow in volume helping the digital economy to mature and dominate. This chapter demonstrates the case of an Internet startup that capitalized on the opportunities presented by the information economy. Since its establishment in 2001, the business2business platform of speedsend.com pioneered the electronic procurement industry in Egypt through a customized Web-based platform. The transformation of classical emerging markets challenges into opportunities has been a critical success factor that related to all building blocks of the business venture including technology infrastructure deployment, community awareness, information availability, and cultural adaptation of the online business amongst others. The owners of Speedsend. com developed a set of models to drive down procurement costs while providing a practical and reliable electronic solution that can boost enterprise procurement efficiency and effectiveness and that could be appealing to a community that is known for being resistant to change and not really mature in terms of information technology adoption, diffusion and adaptation. The case focuses on the models deployed by speedsend.com demonstrating the internal and external challenges faced and lessons learnt.
Leveraging Supply Chain Management in the Digital Economy
Authors: Raisinghani Mahesh S.
Published: May 2011

A supply chain is a network of facilities and distribution options that performs the functions of procurement of materials, transformation of these materials into intermediate and finished products, and the distribution of these finished products to customers. In other words, supply chain encompasses all of the activities associated with moving goods from raw-materials stage through to the end user. The information systems needed to monitor all of these activities are a critical part of the mix. Successful supply chain management (SCM), then, coordinates and integrates all of these activities into a seamless process. It embraces and links all of the partners in the chain. In addition to the key functional areas within the organization, these partners include vendors, carriers, third-party logistics companies, and information systems providers.
Enterprise Resource Planning and Integration
Authors: Kurbel Karl
Published: May 2011

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a state-of-the-art approach to running organizations with the help of comprehensive information systems, providing support for key business processes and more general, for electronic business (e-business). ERP has evolved from earlier approaches, in particular, materials requirement planning (MRP) and manufacturing resource planning (called MRP II) in the 1980s. The focus of MRP and MRP II was on manufacturing firms. The essential problem that MRP attacked was to determine suitable quantities of all parts and materials needed to produce a given master production schedule (also called a “production program”), plus the dates and times when those quantities had to be available. Application packages for MRP have been available from the 1960s on. In the beginning, they were mostly provided by hardware vendors like IBM, Honeywell Bull, Digital Equipment, Siemens, etc. MRP was later expanded to closed-loop MRP to include capacity planning, shop floor control, and purchasing, because as Oliver Wight (1884) puts it: “Knowing what material was needed was fine, but if the capacity wasn’t available, the proper material couldn’t be produced” (p. 48). The next step in the evolution was MRP II (manufacturing resource planning). According to the father of MRP II, Oliver Wight, top management involvement in the planning is indispensable. Therefore, MRP II expands closed-loop MRP “to include the financial numbers that management needs to run the business and a simulation capability” (Wight, 1984, p. 54). Enterprise resource planning (ERP) has its roots in the earlier MRP II concepts, but it extends those concepts substantially into two directions. ERP takes into account that other types of enterprises than those producing physical goods need comprehensive information system (IS) support as well, and even in the manufacturing industry, there are more areas than those directly related to the production of goods that are critical for the success of a business.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Embedding
Authors: Vinck Dominique , Rivera-Gonzales Igor , Penz Bernard
Published: May 2011

This chapter analyses the mutual processes according to which the tool (ERP) and the organisation adapt to each other. It documents the live experience of technological change during the introduction of ERP in a medium-sized enterprise. Focusing on the election of the new tool and its appropriation by firm members, it does not simply reduce the process to a handful of factors (of success or failure), but analyses the different negotiations between actors leading to the reconstruction of both the tool and the organisation. It thus takes an in-depth look at the role of technology rather than just resorting to a simplistic and deterministic search for causal connections. Tracing the construction and meshing of the performance of both organisation and tools within the company, it reviews a set of dichotomies between technology and society, initial project and “impact,” but also action and submission to constraints. Hence, the chapter explores the learning processes and the redefinition of actors, organisation and tools.
The Role of Information Technology Knowledge in B2B Development
Authors: Ortega Blanca Hernandez , Martinez Julio Jimenez , De Hoyos Ma Jose Martin
Published: May 2011

The objective of this work is to analyse the importance of firms’ previous experience with different information technologies (Internet, electronic data interchange (EDI)) in their implementation of e-Customer Relationship Management (e-CRM) and B2B. Moreover, we also study the role of e-CRM in B2B development. The results show that experience with systems such as EDI or Internet has a direct influence on the use of e-CRM. There is also a direct and positive transmission of knowledge from e-CRM to B2B, though the former has not been adopted intensively by firms yet. Companies should be aware of the interrelations that exist between the different information technologies. The knowledge accumulated from using a technological innovation can be considered an important aspect of organisational knowledge, which allows firms to obtain a number of benefits as a result of applying systems that are complementary.
The Current State of Information Technology Governance Literature
Authors: Buckby Sherrena , Best Peter , Stewart Jenny
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces current and prior IT governance literature across five key focus areas being strategic alignment of business and IT systems, delivery of value from IT systems, risk management of IT systems, management of IT resources and measurement of the performance of IT systems. The chapter focuses on synthesising the current literature on ITG to achieve three primary objectives. First, the review presents a detailed overview of research across the key focus areas of ITG. Second, the synthesis of the literature identifies important gaps in ITG research. Third, the review aims to guide future thinking and research on ITG in each of the focus areas. This chapter will provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of IT governance literature.
Management Considerations for B2B Online Exchanges
Authors: Archer Norm
Published: May 2011

Information systems that link businesses for the purpose of inter-organizational transfer of business transaction information (inter-organizational information systems, or IOIS) have been in use since the 1970s (Lankford & Riggs, 1996). Early systems relied on private networks, using electronic data interchange (EDI) or United Nations EDIFACT standards for format and content of transaction messages. Due to their cost and complexity, the use of these systems was confined primarily to large companies, but low-cost Internet commercialization has led to much more widespread adoption of IOIS. Systems using the Internet and the World Wide Web are commonly referred to as B2B (business-to-business) systems, supporting B2B electronic commerce. Technological innovations have led to several forms of B2B Internet implementations, often in the form of online exchanges. These are virtual marketplaces where buyers and sellers exchange information about prices, products, and service offerings, and negotiate business transactions. In addition to substituting proprietary lines of communication, emerging technologies and public networks have also facilitated new business models and new forms of interaction and collaboration, in areas such as collaborative product engineering or joint offerings of complex, modularized products. During the years 1999-2001 a number of online exchanges were introduced, but many of these failed (Gallaugher & Ramanathan, 2002), due mainly to an inability to attract participating business partners. Those that have survived are often owned by companies or consortia that are also exchange customers or suppliers. The objective of this overview is to describe the evolution and the characteristics of B2B Internet implementations, and to discuss management considerations, the evaluation and adoption of B2B applications, and the technical infrastructure supporting these systems. We also indicate some of the open issues that remain as the technology and its adoption continues to evolve.
E-Business and the Resource-Based View
Authors: Soto-Acosta Pedro
Published: May 2011

The article provides a review of the adoption of a resource-based view of the firm (RBV) in eBusiness literature and, then, suggests directions for future research. First, a distinction is drawn between Internet resources and eBusiness capabilities. Second, the relationship between Internet resources and eBusiness value is emphasized. Third, the relationships among Internet resources, eBusiness capabilities and firm performance are argued and, finally, the complementarity of Internet resources and eBusiness capabilities is proposed as source of business value. In this regard, a set of propositions is advanced to help guide future research.
Information Sharing and Supply Chain Performance
Authors: Posey Clay , Bari Abdullahel
Published: May 2011

Practically all supply chains operate under conditions of uncertainty. To mitigate this uncertainty and increase performance, organizations within chains exchange information to achieve operational cohesion. However, as some researchers have noted, some supply chains benefit more from increased levels of information sharing than others (e.g. Cachon & Fisher, 2000). To assist in explaining the performance differences experienced by supply chains engaged in information-sharing activities, we introduce a new perspective of information sharing within supply chains based on organizational information processing theory (Galbraith, 1973). More specifically, our work and derived conceptual model posit that individual supply chains may be examined as single information processors and that their characteristics can induce complexities in the shared information which subsequently influence how supply chains process this information. Furthermore, the degree to which supply-chain members’ information systems are compatible with each other is posited to also play a significant role in information-processing capabilities.
The Critical Success Factors of Web-Based Supply Chain Collaboration Adoption
Authors: Ghaleb Yaseen Saad , Al Omoush Khaled Saleh
Published: May 2011

This chapter aims to identify the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and outcomes of Web-based Supply Chain Collaboration (SCC). A total of 230 questionnaires were initially distributed to sample respondents of seven manufacturing firms in Jordan that use Web systems to collaborate with supply chain members. The results showed that top management support, IT infrastructure, training and education, business processes reengineering, trust among partners, open information sharing, and performance measurement are critical factors for Web-based SCC implementation success. In addition, this study revealed that Web-based SCC implementation is positively related to supply chain relationship quality, performance effectiveness, and performance efficiency.
A Global Perspective of Laws and Regulations Dealing with Information Security and Privacy
Authors: Medlin B. Dawn , Chen Charlie C.
Published: May 2011

The price of privacy intrusion and security breaches is often due to the ubiquitous connectivity of networks.  National entities as well as other governing bodies have passed laws and regulations to assist individuals in their quest to protect their information as it is being transmitted as well as received over these networks.  An international perspective of information privacy and security laws and regulations can provide an insightful view concerning how each country differs as well as the important drivers for these differences. Policy makers can learn from the comparisons made in relation to similarity and/or differences of privacy and security laws as well.  In chapter 9, authors have selected different countries and regions around the world due to the growth of security and privacy threats that has grown over the past 10 years as well as their legislative practices.
Data Security Legislative as Data Shredding Mill
Authors: Kral Jaroslav , Zemlicka Michal
Published: May 2011

Business intelligence is the most powerful part of enterprise information systems (ERP). It is shown that the absence of the counterpart of business intelligence in e-government called civic intelligence (CI) has important negative consequence that are probably more severe than the absence of business intelligence for enterprises. Missing CI threatens the prosperity of countries and nations as it has crucial negative effects on social processes like the quality of education, health-care research, and research and control of economic processes. Data security of CI is an issue. Current practices of data security are to a high degree equivalent to virtual massive data shredding. It is a big obstacle for the development of CI. An architecture of CI allowing satisfactory level of data security is proposed in chapter 15, together with organizational and legislative preconditions of CI, and the barriers of CI are analyzed.
Designing Appropriate Frameworks, Models, Strategies and Solutions
Authors: Chhabra Pawan , Kothari Chetan Jagatkishore , Sarkar Subhadip
Published: May 2011

In recent times, the focus of innovation is increasingly moving beyond the centralized R&D programs of large firms to more of a collaborative innovation. This is true even in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) industries. With this approach in mind, the technical strategy has to be laid down to design appropriate architectural models that act as key foundations of building large software systems without compromising on access rights, privacy, confidentiality, ethics, policies, IP, etc. A platform that can enable researchers to share their views, ideas, thoughts or products in seamless manner is the need of the hour. Chapter 17 examines the ways and means of creating a standard model which focuses on well proven software design practices to leverage full potential of open innovation platform; while focusing upon the evolution of IP trends and without compromising on access rights, privacy, confidentiality, ethics, policies, IP, etc.
A Personalized Forest Fire Evacuation Data Grid Push Service
Authors: Asimakopoulou Eleana , Bessis Nik , Varaganti Ravikanth , Norrington Peter
Published: May 2011

Much work is under way in disaster reduction and emergency management towards the utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the design of relevant services associated with risk management towards sustainable development and livelihood. Recent forest fires occurred in Southern Europe, caused environmental destruction and a number of fatalities. The effective and efficient production of forest fire evacuation plans requires decisions based on integrated data from heterogeneous and distributed sources that change over time very quickly. Recent ICT advances suggest the need for further work in the advanced evacuation systems area. We are particularly interested of how to automatically inform potential victims about the most relevant evacuation routes in the most-timely fashion so they can escape a forest fire safely. With this in mind, this chapter describes the concepts, architecture and implementation of the Personalized Forest Fire Evacuation Data Grid Push Service using data push and next generation grid technologies.
Design and Implementation of a Framework for Assured Information Sharing Across Organizational Boundaries
Authors: Thuraisingham Bhavani , Kumar Yashaswini Harsha , Khan Latifur
Published: May 2011

In this chapter we have designed and developed a framework for sharing data in an assured manner in case of emergencies. We focus especially on a need to share environment. It is often required to divulge information when an emergency is flagged and then take necessary steps to handle the consequences of divulging information. This procedure involves the application of a wide range of policies to determine how much information can be divulges in case of an emergency depending on how trustworthy the requester of the information is.
Spam Classification Based on E-Mail Path Analysis
Authors: Srikanth Palla , Ram Dantu W. , João Cangussu
Published: May 2011

Email spam is the most effective form of online advertising. Unlike telephone marketing, email spamming does not require huge human or financial resources investment. Most existing spam filtering techniques concentrate on the emails’ content. However, most spammers obfuscate their emails’ content to circumvent content-based spam filters. An integrated solution for restricting spam emails is needed as content analyses alone might not provide a solution for filtering unsolicited emails. Here we present a new method for isolating unsolicited emails. Though spammers obfuscate their emails’ content, they do not have access to all the fields in the email header. Our classification method is based on the path an email traverses instead of content. Overall, our classifier produced fewer false positives when compared to current filters such as SpamAssassin. We achieved a precision of 98.65% which compares well with the precisions achieved by SPF, DNSRBL blacklists.
Applying Dynamic Causal Mining in Health Service Management
Authors: Wang Yi
Published: May 2011

This article describes an application that illustrates the role of data mining technology in identifying hidden causal knoledge from health and medical data repositories. Across the health care and medical enterprises, a wide variety of data is being generated at a rapid rate. Current information technologies tends to focus on a more statical side of causal knowledge and do not address the dynamic causal knowledge. This article shows that the dynamic causal relation data can be captured for treatment, payment, operations purposes and administrative directed insights. Accessing this currently unrealized knowledge potential would enable the delivery of actionable knowledge to medical practitioners, healthcare system managers, policy planners and even patients to make a significant difference in overall healthcare.
The Hypercomputational Case for Substance Dualism
Authors: Bringsjord Selmer
Published: May 2011

I'm a dualist; in fact, a substance dualist. Why? Myriad arguments compel me to believe as I do, some going back to Descartes. But some sound arguments for substance dualism are recent; and one of these, a new argument so far as I know, is given herein | one that exploits both the contemporary computational scene, and a long-established continuum of increasingly powerful computation, ranging from varieties \beneath" Turing machines to varieties well beyond them. This argument shows that the hypercomputational nature of human cognition implies that Descartes was right all along. Encapsulated, the implication runs as follows: If human persons are physical, then they are their brains (plus, perhaps, other central-nervous-system machinery; denote the composite object by `brains+'). But brains+, as most in AI and related fields correctly maintain, are information processors no more powerful than Turing machines. Since human persons hypercompute (i.e., they process information in ways beyond the reach of Turing machines), it follows that they aren't physical, i.e., that substance dualism holds. Needless to say, objections to this argument are considered and rebutted.
Logic and Abstraction as Capabilities of the Mind
Authors: Saab David J. , Riss Uwe V.
Published: May 2011

In this chapter we will investigate the nature of abstraction in detail, its entwinement with logical thinking, and the general role it plays for the mind. We find that non-logical capabilities are not only important for input processing, but also for output processing.  Human beings jointly use analytic and embodied capacities for thinking and acting, where analytic thinking mirrors reflection and logic, and where abstraction is the form in which embodied thinking is revealed to us. We will follow the philosophical analyses of Heidegger and Polanyi to elaborate the fundamental difference between abstraction and logics and how they come together in the mind.  If computational approaches to mind are to be successful, they must be able to recognize meaningful and salient elements of a context and engage in abstraction. Computational minds must be able to imagine and volitionally blend abstractions as a way of recognizing gestalt contexts.  And it must be able to discern the validity of these blendings in ways that, in humans, arise from a sensus communis.