Recognizing the increasing importance of environmental issues, energy prices, material availability and efficiency and the difficulty of adequately managing these issues in traditional accounting systems, several companies all over the world have started implementing Environmental and Material Flow Cost Accounting (EMA and MFCA).

Environmental and Material Flow Costs Accounting explains and updates the approach developed for the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DSD/UNDESA) and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and in addition includes experiences of several case studies and recent developments regarding EMA and MFCA in national statistics and ISO standardization."

This book presents real-world decision support systems, i.e., systems that have been running for some time and as such have been tested in real environments and complex situations; the cases are from various application domains and highlight the best practices in each stage of the system's life cycle, from the initial requirements analysis and design phases to the final stages of the project. Each chapter provides decision-makers with recommendations and insights into lessons learned so that failures can be avoided and successes repeated. For this reason unsuccessful cases, which at some point of their life cycle were deemed as failures for one reason or another, are also included. All decision support systems are presented in a constructive, coherent and deductive manner to enhance the learning effect. It complements the many works that focus on theoretical aspects or individual module design and development by offering 'good' and 'bad' practices when developing and using decision support systems. Combining high-quality research with real-world implementations, it is of interest to researchers and professionals in industry alike.

This book is intended to mark the turn of the first century of the information age. The purpose of the book is to denote the transition from past to current to future investigations of the relationships and interactions among four major components: information systems (IS), information technology (IT), organizations, and society. These investigations share a primary focus on the interrelationships, not on the components themselves. The contributions to the book deal with the history of IS theory and technology, with the directions faced by those sharing the concerns of the field in its future research, and with attempts to draw these two views together. Five discourses collectively answer the key question: What is the status of IS, as related to organizations and society, now that we stand at the juncture of the new century?' These discourses deal with the fundamental concepts, the classical and novel challenges, the conceptualization processes, automation, and new technology. What is our story as we turn the first century of the information age? We believe that IT is even more critical in social interaction in organizations, that human language barriers form fundamental roadblocks to IT implementation, that newer forms of IS integrate horizontally rather than vertically, and that the mix of skills and knowledge is changing. We also find that we lack integrated approaches to risk management, that new social costs are being unleashed on people by the wiring of society, and we are rushing headlong into globalized systems with our eyes closed. We reveal how the old end-user tension between central control and innovation has reappeared in the intranet world, how IT has been converted into acultural commodity, and explore how the video screen has become the central means for discovering our relevance to our universe. We explore the surprising ways that machines have acquired human status, not through robotics, but rather through social construction. We discover new norms for defining the relationships and exchanges between human beings and computers. For example, gender defines IS success and web design defines social relationships. Consequently, we show how systems must now be developed interpretively, rather than through rational&endash;technical IS design principles used in the last century.

Hsu and Pant in Innovative Planning for Electronic Commerce and Enterprises: A Reference Model have proposed a management planning model for developing strategic goals for e-commerce enterprises. The authors feel they may be provocative sometimes; however, the field is so new that there is no working model for an e-commerce enterprise with a proven success record. In this book, Hsu and Pant develop a framework for a working model. This framework has three parts: (1) The first part is the planning model and a methodology. The planning model is based on principles derived from the literature and the author's research. The methodology also uses Value Chain Analysis to connect e-commerce goals with business processes. (2) The second part evaluates the model and calibrates it to industrial cases and established scholarly results in the field. (3) The last part consists of three exploratory plans for some industrial applications, including supply chain integration, Internet banking, and customer service (ordering) for heavy industry. About fifty cases are discussed in the book at various degrees of depth. The three industrial cases illustrate how to apply the planning model using the methodology. Hence, the book's e-commerce reference model is obtained from the planning model, its methodology, and the industrial benchmarks.

Due diligence conducted around technology decisions is complex. Done correctly, it has the power to enable outstanding positive outcomes; done poorly, it can wreak havoc on organizations, corporate cultures, and markets. ""Technology Due Diligence: Best Practices for Chief Information Officers, Venture Capitalists, and Technology Vendors"" develops a due diligence framework for anyone resolving technology decisions intended to help their business achieve positive results. This essential book contains actual case studies that incorporate the due diligence methodology to assist chief information officers, venture capitalists, and technology vendors who wrestle with technology acquisitions challenges on a daily basis.

Patrick Humphreys Department of Social Psychology London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. Email: P. Humphreys@lse. ac. uk This book presents a selection of contributions to the conference on Implementing Systems for Supporting Management Decisions: Concepts, Methods, and Experiences held in London in July, 1996. The conference was organized by the International Federation of Infonnation Processing's Working Group 8. 3 on Decision Support Systems and the London School of Economics and Political Science. (LSE). The Programme Committee for the Conference comprised Liam Bannon, University of Limerick; Patrick Humphreys, LSE, co-chairperson; Andrew McCosh, University of Edinburgh; Piero Migliarese, Politecnico di Milano, co chairperson; Jean-Charles Pomerol, LAFORIA, Universite Paris VI. The chairperson of the organizing committee was Dina Berkeley, LSE. The programme committee members served also as the editors of this book. Each contribution was selected by the editors after peer review and was developed by its authors specifically for inclusion in this volume. Working group 8. 3 was formally established in 1981 on the recommendation ofIFIP's Technical Committee on Information Systems (TC8). The scope of the working group covers: "Development of approaches for applying information systems technology to increase the effectiveness of decision makers in situations where the computer system can support and enhance human judgment in the perfonnance of tasks that have elements that cannot be specified in advance."

Actuarial Principles: Lifetables and Mortality Models explores the core of actuarial science: the study of mortality and other risks and applications. Including the CT4 and CT5 UK courses, but applicable to a global audience, this work lightly covers the mathematical and theoretical background of the subject to focus on real life practice. It offers a brief history of the field, why actuarial notation has become universal, and how theory can be applied to many situations. Uniquely covering both life contingency risks and survival models, the text provides numerous exercises (and their solutions), along with complete self-contained real-world assignments.

For courses in business mathematics, personal finance, or small business management. Business Math Brief, Tenth Edition unlocks the world of math by showing how it is used in the business world. Written in a conversational style, the book covers essential topics such as banking, interest, insurance, taxes, depreciation, and inventory. It carefully explains common business practices such as markup, markdown, and cash discounts-showing students how these tools work in small business or personal finance. Authors encourage self-starters from the beginning, with the review of basic math, annotated examples, stop and check exercises, skill builders and application exercises. This edition includes updated problem sets, new trends and laws, and the one-of-a-kind MyMathLab website.

Digital technology determines today s world and will be one of the key technologies of the future. Successful technology development, introduction and management are not only a question of technical issues; due to their complexity a close cooperation between different scientific disciplines is required to discuss various consequences, chances and risks from manifold points of view as a starting point for the design of adequate solutions. The ability to integrate business and technology decisions will become a crucial core competence.

The aim of this volume is to highlight a selection of important current research topics in the field of digital technology and management, illustrating the variety of aspects which have to be considered in the development and application of digital technologies.

Main topics of this book are the design of the innovation process, digital rights management, mobile, location-based and ubiquitous services, IT service management and future communication networks."

This revealing book is about software development, the developers themselves, and how their work is organized and managed. The latest original research from Australia, Europe, and the UK is used to examine the differences between the image and reality of work in this industry. Chapters also cover issues surrounding the management of 'knowledge work and workers' and professionals in order to expose some of the problems of the management of software development work and workers.

* First new guide on franchising in over 10 years * Employs proprietary dataset for a research-backed and practical approach * Enables students to prepare their own feasibility analyses and growth strategies to enter this booming sector

This book shows IT managers how to identify, mitigate and manage risks in an IT outsourcing exercise. The book explores current trends and highlights key issues and changes that are taking place within outsourcing. Attention is given to identifying the drivers and related risks of outsourcing by examining recently published and existing concepts of IT outsourcing. Founded on academic theory and empirical and quantitative information, this book: * Incorporates the complete risk identification and mitigation life cycle * Highlights the concept of core competency * Looks at motivating factors and working relationships of the buyer and supplier * Provides background to understand the risks as a result of 'human factors' as defined by the agency theory * Reviews the areas of risk that influence the decision to outsource the IT function * Examines the forces that determine the equilibrium in the risk profiles for the buyer and supplier

This book explores the Business Process Management cycle in theory and practice, from the technical as well as the business point of view. Both the ARIS Platform and the methodical approach of ARIS Value Engineering (AVE) are referred to in detail. More than half of the articles are case studies. The book offers valuable ideas to companies on how to optimize their own business processes and thus become more competitive.

This book investigates organizational learning from a variety of information processing perspectives. Continuous change and complexity in regulatory, social and economic environments are increasingly forcing organizations and their employees to acquire the necessary job-specific knowledge at the right time and in the right format. Though many regulatory documents are now available in digital form, their complexity and diversity make identifying the relevant elements for a particular context a challenging task. In such scenarios, business processes tend to be important sources of knowledge, containing rich but in many cases embedded, hidden knowledge. This book discusses the possible connection between business process models and corporate knowledge assets; knowledge extraction approaches based on organizational processes; developing and maintaining corporate knowledge bases; and semantic business process management and its relation to organizational learning approaches. The individual chapters reveal the different elements of a knowledge management solution designed to extract, organize and preserve the knowledge embedded in business processes so as to: enrich organizational knowledge bases in a systematic and controlled way, support employees in acquiring job role-specific knowledge, promote organizational learning, and steer human capital investment. All of these topics are analyzed on the basis of real-world cases from the domains of insurance, food safety, innovation, and funding.

Business expectations of their IT departments are simple: Deliver IT without fuss, get involved in achieving business results, and provide leadership. But while business emphasis is on business results and leadership, IT is focused on the technology.
How to get your IT Department to Add Real Value to Business presents a practical framework that defines the roles and activities for the CIO to meet business expectations. It introduces a new approach to IT in large organizations, which shifts the focus from day to day technological operations to three critical areas of performance for IT: IT management, business results and information leadership.
The concepts are simple and elegant but the implementation is increasingly demanding. However, these changes are essential if in-house IT functions are to survive and prosper in organizations.
The author's framework has already proven itself in changing business and IT perspectives significantly. Large organisations have commenced the implementation process, and are reporting significant results. The book offers ground-breaking perspectives on the role of IT in organisations. These perspectives are finding favour with business and IT people alike. The book offers practical and anecdotal examples and plans to assist in implementing the framework.
*CIOs will benefit from a radically changed perspective on how they can gain real alignment and add real value to their business
*Business management will benefit from a new understanding of what they should expect from their IT functions
*Offers a new common language to talk meaningfully about IT and business issues

FileNET is the world's leading enterprise content management system. Established in 1982, FileNET practically invented the field of Enterprise Office Document Imaging Systems. FileNET's Image Services is the industry's leading provider of high-volume systems for storing, retrieving, and managing document images, transactional content, workflows, web contents, and other business objects. More than 3,700 organizations worldwide have implemented FileNET systems to provide content management services that are scalable, highly available, and provide strong disaster recovery capabilities. They have provided solutions for 81 of the Fortune 100 companies. Unfortunately, despite an open and modular design that runs on the majority of enterprise computing platforms, FileNET's products suffer from a dearth of independently produced knowledge resources. This book has been written to fill that information void and provide wider understanding of this complex and powerful set of products to enterprise level decision makers, project managers, and technicians. In addition, the book provides general knowledge on how to use existing document imaging and/or document management systems to provide advanced knowledge management functions.

This book brings together for the first time two important features of a computer system that must be embedded in an organisational context. First comes responsibility, in other words, whether the computer system properly supports the organisational responsibilities that people are allocated. Second, the book examines dependability, which means whether the system supports those responsibilities in a trustworthy fashion. Aimed at researchers and doctoral students, the work pays particular attention to looking at what happens when things go wrong.

This book presents the main theoretical foundations behind smart services as well as specific guidelines and practically proven methods on how to design them. Furthermore, it gives an overview of the possible implementation architectures and shows how the designed smart services can be realized with specific technologies. Finally, it provides four specific use cases that show how smart services have been realized in practice and what impact they have within the businesses. The first part of the book defines the basic concepts and aims to establish a shared understanding of terms, such as smart services, service systems, smart service systems or cyber-physical systems. On this basis, it provides an analysis of existing work and includes insights on how an organization incorporating smart services could enhance and adjust their management and business processes. The second part on the design of smart services elaborates on what constitutes a successful smart service and describes experiences in the area of interdisciplinary teams, strategic partnerships, the overall service systems and the common data basis. In the third part, technical reference architectures are presented in detail, encompassing topics on the design of digital twins in cyber physical systems, the communication between entities and sensors in the age of Industry 4.0 as well as data management and integration. The fourth part then highlights a number of analytical possibilities that can be realized and that can constitute or be part of smart services, including machine learning and artificial intelligence methods. Finally, the applicability of the introduced design and development method is demonstrated by considering specific real-world use cases. These include services in the industrial and mobility sector, which were developed in direct cooperation with industry partners. The main target audience of this book is industry-focused readers, especially practitioners from industry, who are involved in supporting and managing digital business. These include professionals working in business development, product management, strategy, and development, ranging from middle management to Chief Digital Officers. It conveys all the basics needed for developing smart services and successfully placing them on the market by explaining technical aspects as well as showcasing practical use cases.

As more people choose to work from home, the challenges for both the home worker and traditional management increase. Many questions arise regarding how to appraise the remote worker, the logistics of home working, and productivity. The authors focus on developing the right skills to cope with this new environment and stress the importance of knowing what the homeworker needs.Other issues addressed are finding the right balance between the office, home and client sites, dealing with the creation of workable home office environment, and technological and legal issues.

This book addresses and examines the impacts of applications and services for data management and analysis, such as infrastructure, platforms, software, and business processes, on both academia and industry. The chapters cover effective approaches in dealing with the inherent complexity and increasing demands of big data management from an applications perspective. Various case studies included have been reported by data analysis experts who work closely with their clients in such fields as education, banking, and telecommunications. Understanding how data management has been adapted to these applications will help students, instructors and professionals in the field. Application areas also include the fields of social network analysis, bioinformatics, and the oil and gas industries.

Whilst books have been written on countless subjects there has been no practical guide to understanding and controlling the architecture of corporate information and intellectual capital. This volume is a practical guide to information resources management in the information age. Information is seriously undervalued and underused as a corporate resource. The pressures of global competition and a growing dependence on information technology mean that the effective use of information is more important now than it has ever been. This book is a fundamental guide for unleashing information potential, by combining the discipline of information architecture with the power of knowledge management, to drive organizational changes. Instead of unlocking the potential of information, people are drowning in detail. Current books only approach this subject from an information technology perspective. This book combines techniques from knowledge management and information architecture to provide a layer above the detail techniques for seeing the big picture. * Creates a clear picture of an organization and the way it works, by mapping the information and knowledge resource, showing where change is required and providing a plan to achieve it * Streamline decision-making and action-taking by eliminating frustration and confusion * Supports an information-based culture by maintaining the right infrastructures and constantly improving the use of the information resource

IT management and staff are called upon to perform the almost-impossible tasks of evaluating, purchasing, integrating, and maintaining complex IT systems, and directing these systems to meet the ever-changing goals of an organization. Add to that the spending restraints of a down economy, and IT managers find themselves in need of a thoughtful, real-world guide that can maximize resources and bring efficiency to often chaotic environments.

IS Management Handbook, Eighth Edition details how IT professionals can align people, information, and technology with the strategic goals of an organization. The handbook offers technical and business insight from dozens of leading names from the technology sector, with a major focus on maximizing the performance of existing resources during tough economic times.

The handbook provides the information that allows IT managers to effectively organize people and processes, and efficiently integrate and maintain infrastructure, applications, support systems, e-business tools, and databases.

In 'Key Issues in the New Knowledge Management, ' Firestone and McElroy, the architects of the New Knowledge Management (TNKM) provide an in-depth analysis of the most important issues in the field of Knowledge Management. The issues the book addresses are central in the field today: The Knowledge Wars, or the issue of "how you define knowledge determines how you manage it" The nature of knowledge processing Information management or knowledge management? Three views on the evolution of knowledge management The role of knowledge claim evaluation in knowledge processing, or the difference between opinion, judgements, information, data, and real knowledge in knowledge management systems Is culture a barrier in knowledge management? The Open Enterprise and accelerated sustainable innovation Portals How should one evaluate KM software? Intellectual Capital Measuring the impact of KM initiatives on the organization and the bottom line KM and terrorism The first book to address head-on the central issues in Knowledge ManagementMoves the discussion of knowledge management into the hot area of innovationCharts the next generation of knowledge management thinking by the President of KMCI: the leading KM organization