The book presents a conceptually novel oscillations based paradigm, the Oscillation-Based Multi-Agent System (OSIMAS), aimed at the modelling of agents and their systems as coherent, stylized, neurodynamic processes. This paradigm links emerging research domains via coherent neurodynamic oscillation based representations of the individual human mind and society (as a coherent collective mind) states. Thus, this multidisciplinary paradigm delivers an empirical and simulation research framework that provides a new way of modelling the complex dynamics of individual and collective mind states. This book addresses a conceptual problem - the lack of a multidisciplinary, connecting paradigm, which could link fragmented research in the fields of neuroscience, artificial intelligence (AI), multi-agent system (MAS) and the social network domains. The need for a common multidisciplinary research framework essentially arises because these fields share a common object of investigation and simulation, i.e., individual and collective human behavior. Although the fields of research mentioned above all approach this from different perspectives, their common object of investigation unites them. By putting the various pathways of research as they are interrelated into perspective, this book provides a philosophical underpinning, experimental background and modelling tools that the author anticipates will reveal new frontiers in multidisciplinary research. Fundamental investigation of the implicit oscillatory nature of agents' mind states and social mediums in general can reveal some new ways of understanding the periodic and nonperiodic fluctuations taking place in real life. For example, via agent states-related diffusion properties, we could investigate complex economic phenomena like the spread of stock market crashes, currency crises, speculative oscillations (bubbles and crashes), social unrest, recessionary effects, sovereign defaults, etc. All these effects are closely associated with social fragility, which follows and is affected by cycles such as production, political, business and financial. Thus, the multidisciplinary OSIMAS paradigm can yield new knowledge and research perspectives, allowing for a better understanding of social agents and their social organization principles.

This volume is intended to aid both those organizations considering the establishment of an institutional archives and those practicing archivists needing materials to assist them in evaluating their programs and planning for their development. The author's theme is that archival programs found in corporate, educational, cultural, and religious institutions are necessary both to the organizations themselves and their efficient functioning and to society's concern for preserving its documentary heritage. Managing Institutional Archives covers all aspects of managing an archival program. There are chapters on appraisal and acquisition; preservation and security; arrangement, description, and reference; internal and external support, fund-raising and grantsmanship; and cooperation. The impact of new information technology on organizations and the implications for their archives are discussed. A detailed examination of three case studies of archives is provided. The final chapter is a description of sources for additional assistance in managing institutional archives. Managing Institutional Archives will be useful to archival specialists, administrators, educators, and others needing guidance about the elements of managing archives. Its contents is based on a wide-reading of archival theory and practice and nearly two decades of archival experience by the author.

Firm growth. This concept has interested researchers for generations. Economists have sought to predict and measure firm growth using a host of different variables, while strategic management scholars depict growth as the result of clever analyses and rational resource exploitation. Entrepreneurship scholars - ever engrossed by successful start-ups - have pondered why growth sometimes comes fast and sometimes never at all, while the field of business history has given countless examples of growing firms in a range of different settings. Yet despite research across fields, our knowledge of how growth in a firm actually comes about is limited and we still know little about the process. This book offers a new reading of economist Edith Penrose's The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. The bold statement is that although Penrose's work - across fields and generations - is amongst the most quoted on firm growth, the basic points of her work have yet to be realized and explored empirically. Essentially, growth is created by a dynamic interrelation between the firm's self-conception and its image of context. Based on these two subjective categories, the firm makes decisions and its actions lead it to develop along a particular path. To Penrose this is the basic engine that drives the growth and development of firms. This book discusses how the engine of firm growth can be captured in empirical analysis using interpretative theory and narrative methods inspired by recent streams of research in business history.

This book highlights state-of-the-art research on big data and the Internet of Things (IoT), along with related areas to ensure efficient and Internet-compatible IoT systems. It not only discusses big data security and privacy challenges, but also energy-efficient approaches to improving virtual machine placement in cloud computing environments. Big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) are ultimately two sides of the same coin, yet extracting, analyzing and managing IoT data poses a serious challenge. Accordingly, proper analytics infrastructures/platforms should be used to analyze IoT data. Information technology (IT) allows people to upload, retrieve, store and collect information, which ultimately forms big data. The use of big data analytics has grown tremendously in just the past few years. At the same time, the IoT has entered the public consciousness, sparking people's imaginations as to what a fully connected world can offer. Further, the book discusses the analysis of real-time big data to derive actionable intelligence in enterprise applications in several domains, such as in industry and agriculture. It explores possible automated solutions in daily life, including structures for smart cities and automated home systems based on IoT technology, as well as health care systems that manage large amounts of data (big data) to improve clinical decisions. The book addresses the security and privacy of the IoT and big data technologies, while also revealing the impact of IoT technologies on several scenarios in smart cities design. Intended as a comprehensive introduction, it offers in-depth analysis and provides scientists, engineers and professionals the latest techniques, frameworks and strategies used in IoT and big data technologies.

Information systems have become so complex and intertwined with process and politics that they now constitute an ecology in which executives must manage subtle human relationships and intricate group interactions as well as computers, networks, software, and individual experts. Hasenyager maintains that for most large corporations building better business technology linkage is a survival essential, enabling them to sustain their vital systems and simultaneously transform them to meet competitive pressures and exploit emerging technology. Written by an experienced manager, this book offers a persuasive discussion of the importance of business technology linkage and practical steps on how to build it in your company. It focuses on management essentials - deciding how much to spend and invest, choosing how to organize, and defining how to measure and reward performance. After an analysis of how to decide how much to spend and what to spend it on, Hasenyager describes how business and technology people within an organization deal with each other. He offers a way to classify relationships based on perceived common interest among people and their relative authority, then focuses on partnerships and teams as the most effective models for business technology linkage. He describes the kinds of teams needed for system development and infrastructure management in the information ecology. With special focus on how ^Iad hoc^R teams relate to an organization's traditional hierarchy, specific suggestions are given on how to establish accountability within teams and how to evaluate team performance. The book concludes with state-of-the-art information connecting organization structure, business technology linkage, and company profitability, followed by 14 principles of information technology management. Senior corporate managers will find this a unique, provocative, and constructive addition to their personal and company libraries on management skills and methods.

The first part of this book contains three case studies which illustrate the idea of knowledge networks for growth. The step-by-step methodology of the second part shows the reader how to build up and maintain these networks. The templates in the last part of the book ease the adaptation of networks for the reader's own company or his or her specific business needs.

In 2007 INTEROP-VLab defined Enterprise Interoperability as the ability of an enterprise system or application to interact with others at a low cost with a flexible approach . Enterprise Interoperability VI brings together a peer reviewed selection of over 40 papers, ranging from academic research through case studies to industrial and administrative experience of interoperability. It shows how, in a scenario of globalised markets, the capacity to cooperate with other firms efficiently becomes essential in order to remain in the market in an economically, socially and environmentally cost-effective manner, and that the most innovative enterprises are beginning to redesign their business model to become interoperable. This goal of interoperability is vital, not only from the perspective of the individual enterprise but also in the new business structures that are now emerging, such as supply chains, virtual enterprises, interconnected organisations or extended enterprises, as well as in mergers and acquisitions. Establishing efficient and relevant collaborative situations requires managing interoperability from a dynamic perspective: a relevant and efficient collaboration of organizations might require adaptation to remain in line with potentially changing objectives, evolving resources, and unexpected events, for example. Many of the papers contained in this, the seventh volume of Proceedings of the I-ESA Conferences have examples and illustrations calculated to deepen understanding and generate new ideas. The I-ESA 14 Conference is jointly organised by Ecole des Mines Albi-Carmaux, on behalf of PGSO, and the European Virtual Laboratory for Enterprise Interoperability (INTEROP-VLab) and supported by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). A concise reference to the state of the art in systems interoperability, Enterprise Interoperability VI will be of great value to engineers and computer scientists working in manufacturing and other process industries and to software engineers and electronic and manufacturing engineers working in the academic environment."

This book explores the influence of the modes of knowledge transfer and environmental dynamism on the relationship between strategic actions and the sustainable balanced scorecard measurement of performance. Special emphasis is placed on emerging multinational enterprises in Kenya, a country that is rapidly becoming one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. The chapters address the best strategy for sustainable performance, the integral modes of knowledge transfer on strategy for sustainable performance and the achievement of sustainable performance in dynamic business environments. Providing innovative research on 25 diverse MNEs in Kenya, this book can be used by managers, investors, consultants, researchers and postgraduate students to understand the strategic mechanisms used by these emerging enterprises.

This book explores all relevant aspects of net scoring, also known as uplift modeling: a data mining approach used to analyze and predict the effects of a given treatment on a desired target variable for an individual observation. After discussing modern net score modeling methods, data preparation, and the assessment of uplift models, the book investigates software implementations and real-world scenarios. Focusing on the application of theoretical results and on practical issues of uplift modeling, it also includes a dedicated chapter on software solutions in SAS, R, Spectrum Miner, and KNIME, which compares the respective tools. This book also presents the applications of net scoring in various contexts, e.g. medical treatment, with a special emphasis on direct marketing and corresponding business cases. The target audience primarily includes data scientists, especially researchers and practitioners in predictive modeling and scoring, mainly, but not exclusively, in the marketing context.

In this volume organizational learning theory is used to analyse various practices of managing and facilitating knowledge sharing within companies. Experiences with three types of knowledge sharing, namely knowledge acquisition, knowledge reuse, and knowledge creation, at ten large companies are discussed and analyzed. This critical analysis leads to the identification of traps and obstacles when managing knowledge sharing, when supporting knowledge sharing with IT tools, and when organizations try to learn from knowledge sharing practices. The identification of these risks is followed by a discussion of how organizations can avoid them.

This work will be of interest to researchers and practitioners working in organization science and business administration. Also, consultants and organizations at large will find the book useful as it will provide them with insights into how other organizations manage and facilitate knowledge sharing and how potential failures can be prevented.

The essentials of comprehensible specifications of business and of system artefacts ought to be used by, and therefore understandable to, all customers of these specifications - business subject matter experts, decision makers, analysts, IT architects and developers. These documents have to be understood in the same manner by all stakeholders. And, as C.A.R. Hoare observed, only abstraction "enables a chief programmer or manager to exert real technical control over his teams, without delving into the morass of technical detail with which his programmers are often tempted to overwhelm him."

The book brings together theoreticians and practitioners to report their experience with making semantics precise, clear, concise and explicit in business specifications, business designs, and system specifications. It includes both theoretical and very pragmatic papers based on solid and clearly specified foundations. These seemingly different papers address different aspects of a single problem - they are all about understanding of business enterprises and of information systems (computer-based or not) that these enterprises rely upon. A substantial number of papers demonstrate that good business (and IT) specifications ought to start with the stable basics of the relevant business domains, thus providing a foundation for describing and evaluating the details of apparently "always changing" requirements.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2014, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in October 2014. The 73 revised papers were carefully selected from 190 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of identified challenges and recent advances in various collaborative network (CN) domains and their applications, with a particular focus on the following areas in support of smart networked environments: behavior and coordination; product-service systems; service orientation in collaborative networks; engineering and implementation of collaborative networks; cyber-physical systems; business strategies alignment; innovation networks; sustainability and trust; reference and conceptual models; collaboration platforms; virtual reality and simulation; interoperability and integration; performance management frameworks; performance management systems; risk analysis; optimization in collaborative networks; knowledge management in networks; health and care networks; and mobility and logistics.

This book presents 3D3C platforms - three-dimensional systems for community, creation and commerce. It discusses tools including bots in social networks, team creativity, privacy, and virtual currencies & micropayments as well as their applications in areas like healthcare, energy, collaboration, and art. More than 20 authors from 10 countries share their experiences, research fi ndings and perspectives, off ering a comprehensive resource on the emerging fi eld of 3D3C worlds. The book is designed for both the novice and the expert as a way to unleash the emerging opportunities in 3D3C worlds. This Handbook maps with breadth and insight the exciting frontier of building virtual worlds with digital technologies. David Perkins, Research Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education This book is from one of the most adventurous and energetic persons I have ever met. Yesha takes us into new undiscovered spaces and provides insight into phenomena of social interaction and immersive experiences that transform our lives. Cees de Bont, Dean of School of Design & Chair Professor of Design, School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University When you read 3D3C Platforms you realize what a domain like ours -- 3D printing -- can and should do for the world. Clearly we are just starting. Inspiring.David Reis, CEO, Stratasys Ltd This book provides a stunning overview regarding how virtual worlds are reshaping possibilities for identity and community. Th e range of topics addressed by the authors- from privacy and taxation to fashion and health care-provide a powerful roadmap for addressing the emerging potential of these online environments. Tom Boellstorff , Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine Handbook on 3D3C Platforms amassed a unique collection of multidisciplinary academic thinking. A primer on innovations that will touch every aspect of the human community in the 21st century. Eli Talmor, Professor, London Business School

This book identifies ten linguistic traps in our everyday language usage and provides philosophical justification for a method of determining internally consistent definitions of groups of related terms that avoid all ten traps. Various examples and applications of this method are given throughout. The book demonstrates how the seemingly straightforward matter of our understandings of the meaning of words can have major implications for the exercise of power. This book illustrates how this insight originated from management research into project governance that found lack of agreement on the definition of that term, as well as on many other important management terms. To resolve this, the impacts of evolution, philosophy and linguistics upon our everyday language usage were investigated. The research documented in this book found that the human tool called language works well for describing physical objects but has difficulty producing a common understanding of the meaning of concepts - a problem not restricted to the management field. That field is simply a microcosm that exposes a much more widespread linguistic usage problem affecting our personal, religious and political lives; one that existed at the time of Plato and Aristotle and has laid hidden for millennia. This book includes a lexicon of 70 commonly used but confused or contested management terms, as well as a further 18 such project management terms, all developed by applying its definitional method. The terms include governance, power, ethics, leadership and their associated groups of terms. The book explores how disagreement can be resolved using these new clear definitions and extends this into an analysis of who 'good' ethics are good for. It also incorporates a section on "how to speak management and actually know what you are talking about", written in the style of an 'idiots guide' or 'guide for dummies'. This identifies common, everyday circumstances in which lack of agreed definitions cause avoidable confusion and provides the book's focus on conflict dissolution rather than on conflict resolution.

This book summarizes the results of Design Thinking Research carried out at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA and Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. The authors offer readers a closer look at Design Thinking with its processes of innovations and methods. The contents of the articles range from how to design ideas, methods and technologies via creativity experiments and wicked problem solutions, to creative collaboration in the real world and the connectivity of designers and engineers. But the topics go beyond this in their detailed exploration of design thinking and its use in IT systems engineering fields and even from a management perspective. The authors show how these methods and strategies work in companies, introduce new technologies and their functions and demonstrate how Design Thinking can influence as diverse a topic area as marriage. Furthermore, we see how special design thinking use functions in solving wicked problems in complex fields. Thinking and creating innovations are basically and inherently human - so is Design Thinking. Due to this, Design Thinking is not only a factual matter or a result of special courses nor of being gifted or trained: it's a way of dealing with our environment and improving techniques, technologies and life.

The short history of the International Working Conference on Educating Professionals for Network Centric Organizations is a good illustration of the tremendous rate of development of global networking, its impact and of its deep penetration into management of business, industty and administration. In 1996, when the theme and name of the conference had been set, there was yet no heavy use of networks in the fields just mentioned. However, it has been already established well enough to enable those with a visionary sense to feel that it will be an important subject and it could be an interesting theme for a conference to be held within two years. It seemed a risky decision at the time but it turned out to be very successful when conducted in 1998. It has been stated that "it took until 1997 for the business world to discover the Internet." In less than two years, the Internet and the Intranets are a vital component for running major parts of the business world. This fast pace puts some pressure on writing papers and holding a conferenc- effort has to be made to have meaningful contents despite the changes. A time span of 9 months between writing a paper and having it published, seemed once to be very short, but it is not so any more when referring to a dynamic issue like global networking.

This is the fifth volume in a series dealing with such topics as information systems practice and theory, information systems and the accounting/auditing environment, and differing perspectives on information systems research.

"Everybody loves an innovation, an idea that sells." But how do we arrive at such ideas that sell? And is it possible to learn how to become an innovator? Over the years Design Thinking - a program originally developed in the engineering department of Stanford University and offered by the two D-schools at the Hasso Plattner Institutes in Stanford and in Potsdam - has proved to be really successful in educating innovators. It blends an end-user focus with multidisciplinary collaboration and iterative improvement to produce innovative products, systems, and services. Design Thinking creates a vibrant interactive environment that promotes learning through rapid conceptual prototyping. In 2008, the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program was initiated, a venture that encourages multidisciplinary teams to investigate various phenomena of innovation in its technical, business, and human aspects. The researchers are guided by two general questions: 1. What are people really thinking and doing when they are engaged in creative design innovation? How can new frameworks, tools, systems, and methods augment, capture, and reuse successful practices? 2. What is the impact on technology, business, and human performance when design thinking is practiced? How do the tools, systems, and methods really work to get the innovation you want when you want it? How do they fail? In this book, the researchers take a system's view that begins with a demand for deep, evidence-based understanding of design thinking phenomena. They continue with an exploration of tools which can help improve the adaptive expertise needed for design thinking. The final part of the book concerns design thinking in information technology and its relevance for business process modeling and agile software development, i.e. real world creation and deployment of products, services, and enterprise systems.

This book is a guide to asset and risk management from a practical point of view. It is centered around two questions triggered by the global events on the stock markets since the middle of the last decade:

- Why do crashes happen when in theory they should not?

- How do investors deal with such crises in terms of their risk measurement and management and as a consequence, what are the implications for the chosen investment strategies?

The book presents and discusses two different approaches to finance and investing, i.e., modern portfolio theory and behavioral finance, and provides an overview of stock market anomalies and historical crashes. It is intended to serve as a comprehensive introduction to asset and risk management for bachelor s and master s students in this field as well as for young professionals in the asset management industry. A key part of this bookis the exercises to further demonstrate the concepts presented with examples and a step-by-step business case. AnExcel file with the calculations and solutions for all 17 examples as well as all business case calculations can be downloaded at extras.springer.com."

Researchinbothacademicandnon-academiccircleshasremainedvirtuallyiden- calinitsconductandorganizationoverthelastfewdecades. Disparategroupsof researchershaveworkedontheirideas,projectsandinventionsinisolatedclusters, withlittlesharingofinformationandsynergiesfromcollaboration. Theadventof social networks and Web technologies has led to the creation of new research networksthathavedramaticallyreducedthebarriersandobstaclestocollaboration forresearcherswhoaregeographicallyandorganizationallydistant. Webtechnologiesusebroadbandconnections,improvedbrowsers,and"rich" multimediainconcertwithanewgenerationofwebsitesthatencouragedusersto contribute to content. Blogs, forums, wikis, and other forms of user-generated contentare,inmanycases,themajorsourceofcontentforthesewebsites. Theevolutionofsocialnetworksbeganwiththetrulysocialnetworksoffriends pavingthewayforbusinessnetworks,whichinturnledtothecurrentresearch networksthatconnectacademicandnon-academicresearchersacrosstheworld. Beingmuchmorerobustthantheoriginalsocialnetworksandthebusinessn- worksthatfollowed,collaborativeresearchnetworkshavethepotentialtoeven- ate in technological advances, innovation, and economic contributions to both industryandnations. Currently,tensofthousandsofresearchersareusingresearchnetworks,ushering in a new paradigm for research. In this paradigm, collaboration is made much easier,andsharingofresearchknowledgeisinstant. Synergiesfromroutinecoll- oration will yield huge advances in research productivity and innovation. The challengeforadministratorsinbothindustryandacademiaistounderstandhow researchnetworksarechangingthepracticeofresearchandtodecidehowbestto embracesuchtechnologiesandusethemtotheirbestadvantage. v . Contents PartI e-ResearchCollaboration:Theory AnOverviewofe-ResearchCollaboration ...3 1 Introduction...3 2 SocialNetworksandResearchCollaboration ...6 3 WebTechnologies,SocialNetworksande-ResearchCollaboration...6 4 AnOverviewofThisBook...7 5 PartOne:e-ResearchCollaboration:Theory...8 6 PartTwo:e-ResearchCollaboration:Technologies...9 7 PartThree:e-ResearchCollaboration:Challenges...10 8 Conclusions...12 References...1 2 AnAnatomyofCollaborationWithintheOnlineEnvironment ...15 1 IntroductiontoCollaborationTheory...15 2 De?ningCollaboration...16 2. 1 Cooperation...16 2. 2 Coordination...17 2. 3 Collaboration...18 3 EssentialElementsofCollaboration...19 3. 1 Communication...19 3. 2 TrustandRespect ...20 3. 3 EqualityandPower...21 3. 4 StrategicAlliances...22 3. 5 IncentiveandValue...23 3. 6 Negotiation...23 3. 7 Inter-organisationalKnowledgeSharing...24 vii viii Contents 4 ComparisonofCooperation,CoordinationandCollaboration...25 5 PracticalImplicationsforCollaborationTheory...30 References...32 Time,PlaceandCyberspace:FoundationsforSuccessful e-ResearchCollaboration ...35 1 Introduction...35 2 Context:RoleofCommunicationinCollaborations ...36 3 Methodology:CaseStudyofDigitalHumanitiesCommunity...39 4 Findings:e-ResearchCommunicationTools,UsesandDrawbacks...40 5 ImplicationsofResearchResults:FindingtheBalance Betweene-ResearchToolsandIn-personCommunications...43 6 ConclusionsandRecommendationsforGlobalResearchTeams...46 References...47 GapsandBridgesinInterdisciplinaryKnowledgeIntegration ...49 1 Introduction...49 2 KnowledgeIntegrationWithinandBeyondEpistemicCultures...5 1 3 ThePuzzleofInterdisciplinaryKnowledgeIntegration...51 4 ResearchApproach...54 5 COMDEV ...54 6 CollaborationGapsandBridges...55 6. 1 CollaborationBridges...56 7 EntrepreneurialGaps ...57 8 EntrepreneurialBridges...59 9 Conclusion...60 References...63 BuildingaConceptualFrameworkforCreatingNewKnowledge ThroughaVirtualInterdisciplinaryEnvironmentProcess ...

Virtual reality--one of the most advanced and exciting technologies to emerge in recent decades--offers businesspeople a new way to grasp information and use it quickly and effectively. By literally experiencing information in an artificially created computer generated world instead of reading, hearing, or viewing it on a screen, businesspeople can get information in a way that has proved most successful and most natural for humans. The result is saved time and money, savings that are essential to any enterprise if it is to survive and prosper in today's fast-paced, competitive business environment. The first book to explore virtual reality strictly for businesspeople, Virtual Reality Systems in Business provides essential information not only on theory and the scientific underpinnings of this new technology, but also on its methods, purposes, and day-to-day applications.

Readers will learn how virtual reality applies to retailing, marketing, design, manufacturing, accounting, finance, training, human resource management, and other functions critical to the operations of any organization, public or private. They will learn the types of hardware and software currently available to develop the virtual worlds they need in their specific organizations, and how to procure them from vendors. Also covered are the methodologies by which computer professionals can develop their own virtual reality systems, and the relationship between virtual reality systems and computer databases and data communications. Explained too is the basic framework underlying business-oriented virtual reality systems and how these systems tie in with nonbusiness oriented systems. A major contribution to our understanding of today's technologies and the benefits that will accrue from them in years to come.

Business Principles for Landscape Contracting, fully revised and updated in its third edition, is an introduction to the application of business principles of financial management involved in setting up your own landscape contracting business and beginning your professional career. Appealing to students and professionals alike, it will build your knowledge of financial management tools and enable you to relate their applications to real-life business scenarios. Focusing on the importance of proactive financial management, the book serves as a primer for students in landscape architecture, contracting, and management courses and entrepreneurs within the landscape industry preparing to use business principles in practice. Topics covered include: Financial management and accountability Budget development Profitable pricing and estimating Project management Creating a lean culture Personnel management and employee productivity Professional development Economic sustainability.

This book provides a set of integrated frameworks-capital, systems, and objects-that transcend managerial or technology hype by focusing on the long-term fundamentals that sustain organizational success. Many organizations are currently addressing two important transformational issues: ecological sustainability and digitization. Sustainability is a goal, an end, and digitization is a process, a means to achieve a goal. This book introduces a flexible model that can be applied to current and future organizational challenges, including sustainability and digitization, because the fundamentals are constant. This book is designed to serve two purposes for the readers: first, to present three conceptual foundations for designing and operating organizations (capital, systems, and objects in Part I); and second, to provide a reference source for implementing these ideas in an organization (Parts II and III). The Part I of the book, chapters 1 through 7, sets forth the conceptual foundations. The chapters mix concepts and practical examples to give a new way of thinking about the setting in which one may work many days each year. The Part II provides details and associated examples of every one of the thirty-six forms of capital conversion. It also illustrates how the five foundational systems support capital conversion in a variety of ways. Finally, the Part III is about measuring capital and systems. The book will resonate with practitioners and students of strategy, leadership, and organizational design. It is critical reading for leaders, industry experts, and general readers who want to understand how over thousands of years the capital creation system has developed today's world and will fashion its future.

This book attempts to link some of the recent advances in crowdsourcing with advances in innovation and management. It contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it provides a global definition, insights and examples of this managerial perspective resulting in a theoretical framework. Second, it explores the relationship between crowdsourcing and technological innovation, the development of social networks and new behaviors of Internet users. Third, it explores different crowdsourcing applications in various sectors such as medicine, tourism, information and communication technology (ICT), and marketing. Fourth, it observes the ways in which crowdsourcing can improve production, finance, management and overall managerial performance. Crowdsourcing, also known as "massive outsourcing" or "voluntary outsourcing," is the act of taking a job or a specific task usually performed by an employee of a company or contractors, and outsourcing it to a large group of people or a community (crowd or mass) via the Internet, through an open call. The term was coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 issue of Wired magazine. It is being developed in different sciences (i.e., medicine, engineering, ICT, management) and is used in the most successful companies of the modern era (i.e., Apple, Facebook, Inditex, Starbucks). The developments in crowdsourcing has theoretical and practical implications, which will be explored in this book. Including contributions from international academics, scholars and professionals within the field, this book provides a global, multidimensional perspective on crowdsourcing.

Robo-Advisory is a field that has gained momentum over recent years, propelled by the increasing digitalization and automation of global financial markets. More and more money has been flowing into automated advisory, raising essential questions regarding the foundations, mechanics, and performance of such solutions. However, a comprehensive summary taking stock of this new solution at the intersection of finance and technology with consideration for both aspects of theory and implementation has so far been wanting. This book offers such a summary, providing unique insights into the state of Robo-Advisory. Drawing on a pool of expert authors from within the field, this edited collection aims at being the vital go-to resource for academics, students, policy-makers, and practitioners alike wishing to engage with the topic. Split into four parts, the book begins with a survey of academic literature and its key insights paired with an analysis of market developments in Robo-Advisory thus far. The second part tackles specific questions of implementation, which are complemented by practical case studies in Part III. Finally, the fourth part looks ahead to the future, addressing questions of key importance such as artificial intelligence, big data, and social networks. Thereby, this timely book conveys both a comprehensive grasp of the status-quo as well as a guiding outlook onto future trends and developments within the field.