This successful book provides in its second edition an interactive and illustrative guide from two-dimensional curve fitting to multidimensional clustering and machine learning with neural networks or support vector machines. Along the way topics like mathematical optimization or evolutionary algorithms are touched. All concepts and ideas are outlined in a clear cut manner with graphically depicted plausibility arguments and a little elementary mathematics.The major topics are extensively outlined with exploratory examples and applications. The primary goal is to be as illustrative as possible without hiding problems and pitfalls but to address them. The character of an illustrative cookbook is complemented with specific sections that address more fundamental questions like the relation between machine learning and human intelligence.All topics are completely demonstrated with the computing platform Mathematica and the Computational Intelligence Packages (CIP), a high-level function library developed with Mathematica's programming language on top of Mathematica's algorithms. CIP is open-source and the detailed code used throughout the book is freely accessible.The target readerships are students of (computer) science and engineering as well as scientific practitioners in industry and academia who deserve an illustrative introduction. Readers with programming skills may easily port or customize the provided code. "'From curve fitting to machine learning' is ... a useful book. ... It contains the basic formulas of curve fitting and related subjects and throws in, what is missing in so many books, the code to reproduce the results.All in all this is an interesting and useful book both for novice as well as expert readers. For the novice it is a good introductory book and the expert will appreciate the many examples and working code". Leslie A. Piegl (Review of the first edition, 2012).

In recent years, exchanges on both sides of the Atlantic have been extensively reengineered, and their organizational structures have changed from non-profit, membership organizations to for-profit, demutualized organizations. Concurrently, new alternative trading systems have emerged and the traditional functions of broker/dealer firms have evolved. How have these changes affected the delivery of that mission? How has the efficiency of capital raising in the IPO market been impacted? These are among the key questions addressed in this book, titled after the Baruch College Conference, The Economic Function of a Stock Market. Featuring contributions from a panel of scholars, academicians, policymakers, and industry leaders, this volume examines current issues affecting market quality, including challenges in the marketplace, growth opportunities, and IPO capital raising in the global economy. The Zicklin School of Business Financial Markets Series presents the insights emerging from a sequence of conferences hosted by the Zicklin School at Baruch College for industry professionals, regulators, and scholars. Much more than historical documents, the transcripts from the conferences are edited for clarity, perspective and context; material and comments from subsequent interviews with the panelists and speakers are integrated for a complete thematic presentation. Each book is focused on a well delineated topic, but all deliver broader insights into the quality and efficiency of the U.S. equity markets and the dynamic forces changing them.

This proceedings volume presents the latest scientific research and trends in experimental economics, with particular focus on neuroeconomics. Derived from the 2016 Computational Methods in Experimental Economics (CMEE) conference held in Szczecin, Poland, this book features research and analysis of novel computational methods in neuroeconomics. Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary field that combines neuroscience, psychology and economics to build a comprehensive theory of decision making. At its core, neuroeconomics analyzes the decision-making process not only in terms of external conditions or psychological aspects, but also from the neuronal point of view by examining the cerebral conditions of decision making. The application of IT enhances the possibilities of conducting such analyses. Such studies are now performed by software that provides interaction among all the participants and possibilities to register their reactions more accurately. This book examines some of these applications and methods. Featuring contributions on both theory and application, this book is of interest to researchers, students, academics and professionals interested in experimental economics, neuroeconomics and behavioral economics.

The impact of the global financial crisis is still being felt today and the deeply unethical behaviour of the top level leaders at those economic and financial organizations, that were at the heart of the crisis, has served to highlight the importance of integrity, and in particular the need for servant leadership, if we are to avoid another major catastrophe in the management of both commercial and non-profit organizations. Servant leadership has many features in common with transformational leadership but is primarily focused on caring about employees and their personal development. Ethical behaviour is one of the most important components of successful leadership yet this remains insufficiently investigated, especially from an interdisciplinary perspective. With the help of theory, empirical analysis and the relevant methodological apparatus, the authors fill the gap in the analysis of integrity and its impact on leadership and locate the significant factors which affect integrity in general. They develop and assess the forces that impact Servant Leadership style, as well as the ability to engender trust. As a starting point they make two assumptions: An important element in leading is the ethical dimension of leadership; The ratio of factors that affect leading and the servant leadership style is complex, but the integrity of leaders is the most important among them. The authors examine four integrated scientific areas: ethics and business ethics, human resource management and psychology and focus on the analysis of the process of leadership and the factors within that process of leading that influence its success and its ethical dimension.

The modern application server is a complex platform that is the linchpin of an enterprise environment that includes a very wide range of technologies-web document formatting, web protocols, server-side scripts, servlets, applets, programming languages, distributed object technologies, security capabilities, directory and naming services, load balancing, system management, and others. As such, it can be a daunting task to try to comprehend these systems. Application Servers for E-Business helps you understand the use of application servers in e-business. The book presents a comprehensive overview of the technologies related to application servers in their facilitation of E-business. These technologies include CORBA, Java, Enterprise Java Beans, Java 2, web servers, and legacy systems. It explores the role these servers play in the modern enterprise IT infrastructure and the environment in which they operate. The material also includes implementation considerations for application servers, including security, scalability, load balancing, and fault tolerance. Chapter one provides an overview of application servers, the evolution of computing that took us from hierarchical, mainframe-centric environments to the web model of computing, and the rationale for E-commerce and E-business. Chapters two through five cover specific technologies, from web browsers and servers to applets and servlets. Chapter three provides an overview of Java technologies, and chapter four covers CORBA. Chapter five discusses application servers in detail. Since application servers are increasingly supporting the key mission-critical processes of an enterprise, it is critical that organizations deploying them build in "enterprise-class" facilities for security, scalability, load balancing, fault tolerance, and management. Chapter six discusses these deployment design issues. The book concludes with chapter seven, a chapter that presents several examples of the advantages of application ser

This book presents research in artificial techniques using intelligence for energy transition, outlining several applications including production systems, energy production, energy distribution, energy management, renewable energy production, cyber security, industry 4.0 and internet of things etc. The book goes beyond standard application by placing a specific focus on the use of AI techniques to address the challenges related to the different applications and topics of energy transition. The contributions are classified according to the market and actor interactions (service providers, manufacturers, customers, integrators, utilities etc.), to the SG architecture model (physical layer, infrastructure layer, and business layer), to the digital twin of SG (business model, operational model, fault/transient model, and asset model), and to the application domain (demand side management, load monitoring, micro grids, energy consulting (residents, utilities), energy saving, dynamic pricing revenue management and smart meters, etc.).

For over a century, creativity has unfolded as a valuable field of knowledge. Emerging from disciplines like psychology, management and education, the field of creativity is making strides in others including the arts and engineering. Research and education in this field helped it establish an identity as evidenced by a growing number of courses and specialised journals. However, this progress has come with a price. In a domain like management, institutionalisation of creativity in learning, research and practice has left creativity subordinated to concerns with standardisation, employability and economic growth. Values like personal fulfilment, uncertainty, improvement and connectedness which could characterise systemic views on creativity need to be rescued to promote more and inclusive dialogue between creativity stakeholders. The author aims to recover the importance of creativity as a systemic phenomenon and explores how applied systems thinking, or AST, can further support creativity. This demonstrates how creative efforts could be directed to improve quality of life for individuals as well as their environments. The book uses the systems idea as an enquiring device to bring together different actors to promote refl ection and action about creative possibilities. The chapters offer conceptualisations, applications and refl ections of systems ideas to help readers make sense of the field of creativity in academia and elsewhere. Complemented by the author's own personal, conceptual and practical journey, the insights of the book will act as a vital toolkit for management researchers, career-driven students, practitioners and all creators to define and pursue creative ideas and thrive through their journeys to benefit themselves, other people and organisations.

Drawing on an impressive range of archival material, this monograph delves into the careers of two businessmen who worked for Nordic chartered monopoly trading companies to illuminate individual entrepreneurship in the context of seventeenth-century long-distance trade. The study spans the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, examining global entanglements through personal interactions and daily trading activities between Europeans, Asian merchants and African brokers. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role of individuals and their networks within the great European trading companies of the early modern period. This unique book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of economic history, business history, early modern global history and entrepreneurship.

This handbook offers comprehensive coverage of recent advancements in Big Data technologies and related paradigms. Chapters are authored by international leading experts in the field, and have been reviewed and revised for maximum reader value. The volume consists of twenty-five chapters organized into four main parts. Part one covers the fundamental concepts of Big Data technologies including data curation mechanisms, data models, storage models, programming models and programming platforms. It also dives into the details of implementing Big SQL query engines and big stream processing systems. Part Two focuses on the semantic aspects of Big Data management including data integration and exploratory ad hoc analysis in addition to structured querying and pattern matching techniques. Part Three presents a comprehensive overview of large scale graph processing. It covers the most recent research in large scale graph processing platforms, introducing several scalable graph querying and mining mechanisms in domains such as social networks. Part Four details novel applications that have been made possible by the rapid emergence of Big Data technologies such as Internet-of-Things (IOT), Cognitive Computing and SCADA Systems. All parts of the book discuss open research problems, including potential opportunities, that have arisen from the rapid progress of Big Data technologies and the associated increasing requirements of application domains. Designed for researchers, IT professionals and graduate students, this book is a timely contribution to the growing Big Data field. Big Data has been recognized as one of leading emerging technologies that will have a major contribution and impact on the various fields of science and varies aspect of the human society over the coming decades. Therefore, the content in this book will be an essential tool to help readers understand the development and future of the field.

This edited collection brings together a series of interdisciplinary contributions in the field of Information Technology Law. The topics addressed in this book cover a wide range of theoretical and practical legal issues that have been created by cutting-edge Internet technologies, primarily Big Data, the Internet of Things, and Cloud computing. Consideration is also given to more recent technological breakthroughs that are now used to assist, and - at times - substitute for, human work, such as automation, robots, sensors, and algorithms. The chapters presented in this edition address these issues from the perspective of different legal backgrounds. The first part of the book discusses some of the shortcomings that have prompted legislators to carry out reforms with regard to privacy, data protection, and data security. Notably, some of the complexities and salient points with regard to the new European General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) and the new amendments to the Japan's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) have been scrutinized. The second part looks at the vital role of Internet intermediaries (or brokers) for the proper functioning of the globalized electronic market and innovation technologies in general. The third part examines an electronic approach to evidence with an evaluation of how these technologies affect civil and criminal investigations. The authors also explore issues that have emerged in e-commerce, such as Bitcoin and its blockchain network effects. The book aims to explain, systemize and solve some of the lingering legal questions created by the disruptive technological change that characterizes the early twenty-first century.

This book gathers carefully selected works in Mathematical Economics, on myriad topics including General Equilibrium, Game Theory, Economic Growth, Welfare, Social Choice Theory, Finance. It sheds light on the ongoing discussions that have brought together leading researchers from Latin America and Southern Europe at recent conferences in venues like Porto, Portugal; Athens, Greece; and Guanajuato, Mexico. With this volume, the editors not only contribute to the advancement of research in these areas, but also inspire other scholars around the globe to collaborate and research these vibrant, emerging topics.

The contents of this volume focuses on the economic issues such as income inequality, foreign direct investment, world income classification, business issues such as customer churn analysis, internal branding, human resources issues among others. The papers were presented during the 11th Annual Research Conference of Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies (SIMSARC2020). The book also focuses on the information technology and its application for the business in the form of social media, role of artificial intelligence etc. The contents of the volume are highly relevant, consisting of recent data and results, and based on strong research and statistical analysis. They widely cover the business, society and environmental issues faced in the present times, and the challenges faced by India to reach its goal of a trillion dollar economy. The papers not only discuss the issues but also come up with research based solutions and will be of interest to scholars, corporates, policy makers, and academics alike.

Corporate success has been changed by the importance of new developments in Business Analytics (BA) and furthermore by the support of computational intelligence- based techniques. This book opens a new avenues in these subjects, identifies key developments and opportunities. The book will be of interest for students, researchers and professionals to identify innovative ways delivered by Business Analytics based on computational intelligence solutions. They help elicit information, handle knowledge and support decision-making for more informed and reliable decisions even under high uncertainty environments.Computational Intelligence for Business Analytics has collected the latest technological innovations in the field of BA to improve business models related to Group Decision-Making, Forecasting, Risk Management, Knowledge Discovery, Data Breach Detection, Social Well-Being, among other key topics related to this field.

ECMI, the European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry, is the European brand associated with applied mathematics for industry and organizes highly successful biannual conferences. In this series, the ECMI 2010, the 16th European Conference on Mathematics for Industry, was held in the historic city hall of Wuppertal in Germany. It covered the mathematics of a wide range of applications and methods, from circuit and electromagnetic device simulation to model order reduction for chip design, uncertainties and stochastics, production, fluids, life and environmental sciences, and dedicated and versatile methods.

These proceedings of ECMI 2010 emphasize mathematics as an innovation enabler for industry and business, and as an absolutely essential pre-requiste for Europe on its way to becoming the leading knowledge-based economy in the world.

The emergence of China as a major world economy is of great importance to the global political economy and to international business. There has been much research on the macro level of institutional reform but little detailed work on the grassroots level of entrepreneurship in China. This innovative book addresses this gap by investigating how an economic system dominated by central plans, communist ideologies and suppressing bureaucracies could generate such energy from the bottom of society, fuelling the country's economic growth. Keming Yang's theory of entrepreneurship is based on two interrelated concepts: double entrepreneurship and institutional holes. He argues that the two concepts bridge a gap between the neo-classical institutionalism of economic development and entrepreneurship studies that emphasize individual choice. The rigorous theoretical framework is supported by substantial empirical research, offering statistical analyses of survey data as well as detailed case studies. This timely book will appeal to an interdisciplinary readership in sociology, economics, business studies and Chinese and Asian Studies.

To whom does a father, retiring from his life as a successful entrepreneur, pass control of the business he has built? Once it would always have been his eldest son, but increasingly women are becoming involved in family firms having risen to positions of influence and leadership. Using revealing case studies from the daughters who succeeded their entrepreneur fathers in a wide variety of challenging situations, cultures and continents, Father-Daughter Succession in Family Business discusses the changes which have led to daughters gaining influence in more and more family businesses. It looks at the tensions this succession can produce between old notions of how men and women should behave, and the new style of leadership that often comes about when a woman takes the helm. This book will help consultants, business educators, and researchers, as well as those who are themselves involved in significant family managed enterprises to better understand why it can no longer be assumed in any part of the World that the first born son will take over the reins of the family business.

This book explores the importance of entrepreneurs in driving economic growth as the world economy grows and becomes more integrated and more challenging. It examines the situation in both advanced and developing countries and shows how the entrepreneurial orientation of the founders of small and medium sized enterprises has resulted in phenomenal growth, often fuelled by innovation and new technologies. It contrasts the experiences of Chinese family business in China and among the overseas Chinese with the experiences of family businesses in the United States and Europe. One important conclusion is that there has been a noticeable fall in entrepreneurial proclivity in the advanced economies, in contrast to the position in emerging economies.

This book explores recent advances in the Internet of things (IoT) via advanced technologies and provides an overview of most aspects which are relevant for advance secure, distributed, decentralized blockchain technology in the Internet of things, their applications, and industry IoT. The book provides an in-depth analysis of the step-by-step evolution of IoT to create a change by enhancing the productivity of industries. It introduces how connected things, data, and their communication (data sharing) environment build a transparent, reliable, secure environment for people, processes, systems, and services with the help of blockchain technology.

What is the role of culture in the innovation dynamic of small firms within the context of their territorial environments? How do shared values, beliefs and practices underpin the knowledge production process that leads to innovation? In what way do symbolic aspects of social life shape European SMEs' innovation processes? This volume gives an extensive insight into the complex links between culture and innovation in one of the key agents of economic life: SMEs and micro firms. The chapters employ different analytical and methodological strategies in regions of Europe to identify dimensions of culture, especially values, norms, skills and institutions, and to scrutinize which specific components of culture are relevant to firm innovation and to the more general dynamics of regional innovation. The original research presented shows how small firms learn, interact, compete and collaborate with other key agents of the innovation system. Taken as a whole, the volume points the way towards a more comprehensive framework for understanding the nature of innovation in SMEs and micro firms. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.

The assessment and effective management of credit risk is fundamental to the success of any financial institution. However, the increasing sophistication of financial instruments, many of which are over-the-counter products, has demonstrated that traditional methods of evaluation of risk are no longer adequate. Even "common practice" now requires advanced methodologies.

"...The first comprehensive and detailed compendium of credit risk models. This book is an absolute must for all the students and risk professionals who need to understand the modern foundations of credit risk management." Michel Crouhy, Risk Management, CIBC

"This is an impressive exposition of credit risk matters. Every angle is investigated: structural models, reduced-form models, credit risk of derivatives, and empirical results are all explained with verve and rigor. This book should be read by all credit specialists who care to venture beyond the obvious." Jamil Baz, Co-Head of Fixed Income Research, Lehman Brothers, Europe

"The measurement and management of credit risk has undergone a revolutionary transformation over the past few years. Advances in credit pricing and risk management models, together with the development of a sophisticated market for credit derivatives, have forced banks and investors alike to re-evaluate their entire approach to credit risk. Didier Cossin and Hugues Pirotte have delivered a timely, comprehensive and well-balanced synthesis of the concepts and models underpinning modern credit management." Guy Coughlan, Head of European Portfolio Research, J.P. Morgan

"This book has assembled the major results on the value of instruments that are subject to credit risk. The coverage is extensive. Therefore it should prove to be a useful text for both practitioners and graduate students who wish to work in this area." Professor Suresh M. Sundaresan, Chase Manhattan Bank Foundation Professor, Columbia Business School

Prevailing models of organisation divide people into owners, managers and employees, forcing especially the latter to obey, to behave, and to function well within a hierarchical and managerial pecking order. However, there is no natural law suggesting the need for such organisations, not in market economies and definitely not in modern democratic societies - and there is no justification for such types of organisation. Arguing that most current organisations are orthodox, hierarchical, anti-democratic, oppressive, unfair, and unjust, this book presents a viable alternative, a better type of organisation - the democratic organisation. Diefenbach develops and provides step by step a systematic, comprehensive, thorough, and detailed general model of the democratic organisation. He describes the democratic organisation's fundamental principles, values, governance, management, structures, and processes, and the ways it functions and operates both within the organisation and towards others and the environment. Crucially, and most importantly, the democratic organisation provides the institutions and organisational context for individuals to maintain and pursue their fundamental freedoms, inalienable rights, and dignity; to manage organisations in democratic, participative, and cooperative ways; and to conduct business in considerate, balanced, and sustainable ways. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of management, organisation studies, strategic management, business ethics, entrepreneurship, and family business.

This book highlights the latest research articles presented at the second Digital Marketing & eCommerce Conference in June 2021. Papers include a diverse set of digital marketing and eCommerce-related topics such as user psychology and behavior in social commerce, influencer marketing in social commerce, social media monetization strategies, social commerce characteristics and their impact on user behavior, branding on social media, social media-based business models, user privacy and security protection on social media, social video marketing and commerce, among other topics.

This book covers a very broad range of topics in marketing, communication, and tourism, focusing especially on new perspectives and technologies that promise to influence the future direction of marketing research and practice in a digital and innovational era. Among the areas covered are product and brand management, strategic marketing, B2B marketing and sales management, international marketing, business communication and advertising, digital and social marketing, tourism and hospitality marketing and management, destination branding and cultural management, and event marketing. The book comprises the proceedings of the International Conference on Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism (ICSIMAT) 2019, where researchers, academics, and government and industry practitioners from around the world came together to discuss best practices, the latest research, new paradigms, and advances in theory. It will be of interest to a wide audience, including members of the academic community, MSc and PhD students, and marketing and tourism professionals.

"Unprecedented" is the adjective most often ascribed to everything about Donald Trump. Trump @ Work is about the unprecedented impact that Donald Trump and his Presidency and style has had on attitudes and perceptions of leadership and management. This book brings a unique perspective about what has changed and what has not changed through humorous and true "bullets" and observations. Why do some leaders get fired for things that other leaders boast about? In spite of controversy, why do some initiatives still get implemented? Is implementation all that matters? Is empathy and credibility still critical to success? Why aren't there any instruction manuals about how to navigate the new workplace? These are not questions raised by just a few. These are questions everyone in the workplace is asking. Trump @ Work explores these questions and many more. It reveals how the rules of the game have changed for everyone seeking success or at least, to survive. It's hard enough to keep up with leadership and management trends. Donald Trump is making it more difficult, not intentionally, not through the tweets he writes, but by how he is challenging the long existing norms. Who knew that tweeting would become an established way of communicating to an organization? Who knew that in spite of constant searing criticism, one can disregard it and continue to follow an agenda? Who knew that preaching to supporters and ignoring naysayers is a way to manage? Whether you appreciate Donald Trump or not, he has had an impact on the thinking about leadership and management and the author precisely explores that impact in this book.

Systems Engineering for Business Process Change: New Directions is a collection of papers resulting from an EPSRC managed research programme set up to investigate the relationships between Legacy IT Systems and Business Processes. The papers contained in this volume report the results from the projects funded by the programme, which ran between 1997 and 2001. An earlier volume, published in 2000, reported interim results.
Bringing together researchers from diverse backgrounds in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering and Business Schools, this book explores the problems experienced by IT-dependent businesses that have to implement changing business processes in the context of their investment in legacy systems. The book presents some of the solutions investigated through the collaborations set up within the research programme.
Whether you are a researcher interested in the ideas that were generated by the research programme, or a user trying to understand the nature of the problems and their solutions, you cannot fail to be inspired by the writings contained in this volume.