'This open access book addresses an urgent issue on which little organized information exists. It reflects experience in Africa but is highly relevant to other fragile states as well.' -Constantine Michalopoulos, John Hopkins University, USA and former Director of Economic Policy and Co-ordination at the World Bank Fragile countries face a triple data challenge. Up-to-date information is needed to deal with rapidly changing circumstances and to design adequate responses. Yet, fragile countries are among the most data deprived, while collecting new information in such circumstances is very challenging. This open access book presents innovations in data collection developed with decision makers in fragile countries in mind. Looking at innovations in Africa from mobile phone surveys monitoring the Ebola crisis, to tracking displaced people in Mali, this collection highlights the challenges in data collection researchers face and how they can be overcome.

"How are business models purposeful designed and structured? How can the models be implemented professionally and managed successfully and sustainably? In what ways can existing business models be adapted to the constantly changing conditions? In this clearly structured reference work, Bernd W. Wirtz gives an answer to all these issues and provides the reader with helpful guidance. Although, 'Business Model Management' is first and foremost a scientific reference book, which comprehensively addresses the theory of business models, with his book Bernd W. Wirtz also turns to practitioners. Not least, the many clearly analyzed case studies of companies in different industries contribute to this practical relevance. My conclusion: 'Business Model Management' is an informative and worthwhile read, both for students of business administration as a textbook as well as for experienced strategists and decision makers in the company as a fact-rich, practical compendium." Matthias Muller, Chief Executive Officer Porsche AG (2010-2015), Chief Executive Officer (2015-2018) Volkswagen AG "In dynamic and complex markets a well thought out business model can be a critical factor for the success of a company. Bernd Wirtz vividly conveys how business models can be employed for strategic competition and success analysis. He structures and explains the major theoretical approaches in the literature and practical solutions in an easy and understandable way. Numerous examples from business practice highlight the importance of business models in the context of strategic management. The book has the potential to become a benchmark on the topic business models in the German-speaking world." Hermann-Josef Lamberti, Member of the Board Deutsche Bank AG 1999-2012/ Member of the Board of Directors, Airbus Group "The business environment has become increasingly complex. Due to changing conditions, the executive board of a company is confronted with growing challenges and increasing uncertainty. Thus, a holistic understanding of the corporate production and performance systems is becoming more and more important. At this point, Bernd W. Wirtz introduces and presents the concept of the structured discussion of the own business model. Business models present operational service processes in aggregated form. This holistic approach channels the attention of management, supports a sound understanding of relationships and facilitates the adaption of the business to changing conditions. The management of business models is thus an integrated management concept. Through the conceptual presentation of complex issues the author makes a valuable contribution to the current literature. In particular, the referenced case studies from various industries make the book clear and very applicable to practice." Dr. Lothar Steinebach, Member of the Board, Henkel AG 2007-2012/ Supervisory Board, ThyssenKrupp AG

This book presents the application of a comparatively simple nonparametric regression algorithm, known as the multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) surrogate model, which can be used to approximate the relationship between the inputs and outputs, and express that relationship mathematically. The book first describes the MARS algorithm, then highlights a number of geotechnical applications with multivariate big data sets to explore the approach's generalization capabilities and accuracy. As such, it offers a valuable resource for all geotechnical researchers, engineers, and general readers interested in big data analysis.

The importance of benchmarking in the service sector is well recognized as it helps in continuous improvement in products and work processes. Through benchmarking, companies have strived to implement best practices in order to remain competitive in the product- market in which they operate. However studies on benchmarking, particularly in the software development sector, have neglected using multiple variables and therefore have not been as comprehensive. Information Theory and Best Practices in the IT Industry fills this void by examining benchmarking in the business of software development and studying how it is affected by development process, application type, hardware platforms used, and many other variables. Information Theory and Best Practices in the IT Industry begins by examining practices of benchmarking productivity and critically appraises them. Next the book identifies different variables which affect productivity and variables that affect quality, developing useful equations that explaining their relationships. Finally these equations and findings are applied to case studies. Utilizing this book, practitioners can decide about what emphasis they should attach to different variables in their own companies, while seeking to optimize productivity and defect density.

The introduction of Enterprise Identity Management Systems (EIdMS) in organizations even beyond the purely technological level is a costly and challenging endeavor. However, for decision makers it seems difficult to fully understand the impacts and opportunities arising from the introduction of EIdMS. This book explores the relevant aspects for an ex-ante evaluation of EIdMS. Therefore it examines this domain by employing a qualitative expert interview study to better understand the nature of EIdMS, as they are situated between security and productive IT systems. To this regard, the focus is put on the general nature of EIdMS projects and the constructs being relevant for analyzing such projects in the decision support phase. Based on the derived constructs and thematic topics from the interviews, an explanatory model for EIdMS introductions is derived and iteratively improved and evaluated. Finally, a possible application use-case for the creation of adequate decision support tools is presented.

An idea is the first step in the process of creating a business. Most ideas, no matter how brilliant they may seem, never actually end up becoming a business. This book explains how to: Look for new small business ideas. Evaluate ideas for their commercial potential. Unlock the strategies that turn an idea into a business. English's focus is on finding the seed of an idea and the process of developing it into a genuine business opportunity. He includes practical diagnostic 'reality tests' developed in his small business workshops. He also includes an analysis of changes in the Australian small business environment as result of Covid-19. The practical, slim volume is ideal for any budding entrepreneur looking for guidance on how to evaluate a business opportunity and build a commercial strategy around it. It will also be an ideal secondary reading for books on entrepreneurship and small business courses.

Continuous technological innovation amidst the increasing complexity of organizational structures and operations has created the need to achieve a new level of skillful performance and innovative procedures within the information resources management sector. ""Best Practices and Conceptual Innovations in Information Resources Management: Utilizing Technologies to Enable Global Progressions"" provides authoritative insight into emerging developments in information resources management and how these technologies are shaping the way the world does business, creates policies, and advances organizational practices. With chapters delving into pertinent aspects of such disciplines as knowledge management, open source software, systems engineering, project management, and IT governance, this book offers audiences solutions for improved organizational functioning.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a critical role in rejuvenating and sustaining the modern economy, generating substantial employment and serving as important innovation engines for the global economy. Global Perspectives on Small and Medium Enterprises and Strategic Information Systems: International Approaches aims to spread research conducted on SMEs internationally and place it at the disposal of academics, practitioners, consultants, the vendor community, and policymakers. The goal of this book is to highlight the challenges faced by SMEs and how they are coping with the adverse environment through skillful use of IT and technologies such as Web 2.0, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), e-commerce, open source software, Business Process Digitization (BPD), and other emerging technologies.

"Decision Systems and Non-stochastic Randomness" is the first systematic presentation and mathematical formalization (including existence theorems) of the statistical regularities of non-stochastic randomness. The results presented in this book extend the capabilities of probability theory by providing mathematical techniques that allow for the description of uncertain events that do not fit standard stochastic models. The book demonstrates how non-stochastic regularities can be incorporated into decision theory and information theory, offering an alternative to the subjective probability approach to uncertainty and the unified approach to the measurement of information. This book is intended for statisticians, mathematicians, engineers, economists or other researchers interested in non-stochastic modeling and decision theory.

In many countries, small businesses comprise over 95% of the proportion of private businesses and approximately half of the private workforce, with information technology being used in more than 90% of these businesses. As a result, governments worldwide are placing increasing importance upon the success of small business entrepreneurs and are providing increased resources to support this emphasis. Managing Information Technology in Small Business: Challenges and Solutions presents research in areas such as IT performance, electronic commerce, internet adoption, and IT planning methodologies and focuses on how these areas impact small businesses.

Putting capability management into practice requires both a solid theoretical foundation and realistic approaches. This book introduces a development methodology that integrates business and information system development and run-time adjustment based on the concept of capability by presenting the main findings of the CaaS project - the Capability-Driven Development (CDD) methodology, the architecture and components of the CDD environment, examples of real-world applications of CDD, and aspects of CDD usage for creating business value and new opportunities. Capability thinking characterizes an organizational mindset, putting capabilities at the center of the business model and information systems development. It is expected to help organizations and in particular digital enterprises to increase flexibility and agility in adapting to changes in their economic and regulatory environments. Capability management denotes the principles of how capability thinking should be implemented in an organization and the organizational means. This book is intended for anyone who wants to explore the opportunities for developing and managing context-dependent business capabilities and the supporting business services. It does not require a detailed understanding of specific development methods and tools, although some background knowledge and experience in information system development is advisable. The individual chapters have been written by leading researchers in the field of information systems development, enterprise modeling and capability management, as well as practitioners and industrial experts from these fields.

The book "Soft Computing for Business Intelligence "is the remarkable output of a program based on the idea of joint trans-disciplinary research as supported by the Eureka Iberoamerica Network and the University of Oldenburg.

It contains twenty-seven papers allocated to three sections" Soft Computing," "Business Intelligence and Knowledge Discovery," and "Knowledge Management and Decision Making." Although the contents touch different domains they are similar in so far as they follow the BI principle Observation and Analysis while keeping a practical oriented theoretical eye on sound methodologies, like Fuzzy Logic, Compensatory Fuzzy Logic (CFL), Rough Sets and other soft computing elements.

The book tears down the traditional focus on business, and extends Business Intelligence techniques in an impressive way to a broad range of fields like medicine, environment, wind farming, social collaboration and interaction, car sharing and sustainability. "

This book explains how various forms of artificial intelligence, namely machine learning, natural language processing, and robotic process automation, could provide a source of competitive advantage to firms deploying them compared to those firms that would not have deployed these technologies. The advantages of machine learning, natural language processing, and robotic process automation in strategy formulation and strategy implementation are explored. The book illustrates the potential sources of advantage for the strategy formulation and strategy implementation processes, which can be derived from the deployment of each form of artificial intelligence.

Concurrent Enterprising: Toward the Concurrent Enterprise in the Era of the Internet and Electronic Commerce presents the concurrent enterprise business model and concurrent enterprising approach, which is emerging as a crucial challenge for organizations in all geographical locations and economic sectors. To achieve this goal, this book deals with the main aspects of the merging context in which enterprises are doing business. This context is characterized by the fastest-spread information and communication technologies (ICT) that constitute the new infrastructure of the global marketplace. This book discusses a set of the most advanced enterprise paradigms created during the 1980s and 1990s, most of them supported by advanced research programs, especially in the worldwide manufacturing industry. The book discusses differences between these enterprise paradigms and presents Internet-related technologies as a main driver toward a new business model. It then examines less theoretical questions - among them, how to implement this new business model and how companies can move to the concurrent enterprise paradigm in creating a concurrent business environment. And it introduces a methodology for enterprises willing to maintain or even improve their competitiveness in the global marketplace. The book has eight chapters. The first two concentrate on the advanced enterprise paradigms, and their advantages and limits for maintaining or improving competitiveness in the global marketplace. Chapter 3 studies, separately, the virtual enterprise and related approaches. Chapter 4 studies another fundamental ingredient of the new business model - concurrent engineering (CE). Chapter 5 summarizes these preceding approaches and establishes a foundation for building a concurrent enterprise. Chapter 6 presents specific business cases illustrating the advantages and limits of virtual enterprise applications and introduces electronic commerce and electronic documents. Chapter 7 presents concurrent enterprise as a new business model, and Chapter 8 synthesizes the concurrent enterprising process. Concurrent Enterprising: Toward the Concurrent Enterprise in the Era of the Internet and Electronic Commerce is a reference and a user's guide designed for business managers, IT managers, engineers, researchers, scientists, and other individuals interested in learning how to use a sustainable business model driven by the Internet and electronic commerce.

Virtual teams constitute a relatively new knowledge area that has risen from two recent changes: the globalization of industry and markets, and advances in information communication technology tools. Continual technological advancement is set against a backdrop of international mergers, take-overs, and alliances, which invariably leads to more distributed collaboration, both formal and informal. The concept of creativity is often at the core of such proactive decisions.Virtual Teams and Creativity: Managing Virtual Teams Effectively for Higher Creativity presents advanced research on the concept of creativity using virtual teams, demonstrating a specific focus and application for virtual teams. Virtual Teams and Creativity: Managing Virtual Teams Effectively for Higher Creativity presents tools, processes, and frameworks to advance the overall concept that leveraging ideas from different locations in an organization and within extended networks is based on creativity, which can deliver innovation.

The purpose of the 3rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS) was to bring together researchers, engineers, and practitioners interested in the advances and business applications of information systems. The research papers published here have been carefully selected from those presented at the conference, and focus on real world applications covering four main themes: database and information systems integration; artificial intelligence and decision support systems; information systems analysis and specification; and internet computing and electronic commerce.

Audience: This book will be of interest to information technology professionals, especially those working on systems integration, databases, decision support systems, or electronic commerce. It will also be of use to middle managers who need to work with information systems and require knowledge of current trends in development methods and applications.

In Decision Modelling And Information Systems: The Information Value Chain the authors explain the interrelationships between the decision support, decision modelling, and information systems. The authors borrow from Porter's value chain concept originally set out in the organizational context and apply it to a corporate IS context. Thus data, information and knowledge is seen to be the progressive value added process leading to business intelligence. The book captures key issues that are of central interest to decision support researchers, professionals, and students. The book sets out an interdisciplinary and contemporary view of Decision Support System (DSS).

The first two parts of the book focus on the interdisciplinary decision support framework, in which mathematical programming (optimization) is taken as the inference engine. The role of business analytics and its relationship with recent developments in organisational theory, decision modelling, information systems and information technology are considered in depth. Part three of the book includes a carefully chosen selection of invited contributions from internationally-known researchers. These contributions are thought-provoking and cover key decision modelling and information systems issues.

These chapters include: Arthur Geoffrion on restoring transparency to computational solutions, Bill Inmon on the concept of the corporate information factory, Louis Ma and Efraim Turban on strategic information systems, and Erik Thomsen on information impact and its relationship to the value of information technology.

The final part of the book covers contemporary developments in the related area of business intelligence considered within an organizational context. The topics cover computing delivered across the web, management decision-making, and socio-economic challenges that lie ahead. It is now well accepted that globalisation and the impact of digital economy are profound; and the role of e-business and the delivery of decision models (business analytics) across the net lead to a challenging business environment. In this dynamic setting, decision support is one of the few interdisciplinary frameworks that can be rapidly adopted and deployed to so that businesses can survive and prosper by meeting these new challenges.

This book explores coordination within and between teams in the context of large-scale agile software development, providing readers a deeper understanding of how coordinated action between teams is achieved in multiteam systems. An exploratory multiple case study with five multiteam systems and a total of 66 interviewees from development teams at SAP SE is presented and analyzed. In addition, the book explores stereotypes of coordination in large-scale agile settings and shares new perspectives on integrating conditions for coordination. No previous study has researched this topic with a similar data set, consisting of insights from professional software development teams. As such, the book will be of interest to all researchers and practitioners whose work involves software product development across several teams.

Integrity and Internal Control in Information Systems is a state-of-the-art book that establishes the basis for an ongoing dialogue between the IT security specialists and the internal control specialists so that both may work more effectively together to assist in creating effective business systems in the future. Building on the issues presented in the preceding volume of this series, this book seeks further answers to the following questions: What precisely do business managers need in order to have confidence in the integrity of their information systems and their data? What is the status quo of research and development in this area? Where are the gaps between business needs on the one hand and research/development on the other; what needs to be done to bridge these gaps? Integrity and Internal Control in Information Systems contains the selected proceedings of the Second Working Conference on Integrity and Internal Control in Information Systems, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Warrenton, Virginia, USA, in November 1998. It will be essential reading for academics and practitioners in computer science, information technology, business informatics, accountancy and edp-auditing.

Emerging business models, value configurations, and information technologies interact over time to create competitive advantage. Modern information technology has to be studied, understood, and applied along the time dimension of months and years, where changes are the rule. Such changes created by interactions between business elements and resources are very well suited for system dynamics modeling. ""Business Dynamics in Information Technology"" presents business-technology alignment processes, interaction processes, and decision processes, helping the reader study information technology from a dynamic, rather than a static, perspective. By introducing two simple tools from system dynamic modeling - causal loops and reference modes - the dynamic perspective will become important to both students and practitioners in the future.

Information Technology for Small Business: Managing the Digital Enterprise provides an overview of how small and medium business enterprises (SMEs) can use flexibility, agility, and anticipation strategies to better utilize information technology and knowledge management. Because small and medium businesses tend to be late technology adopters, they could miss versatile and strategic workforce advantages that enable them to achieve higher efficiency and effectiveness through technology.

This book shows these SMEs new technology trends that can transform the nature of their operations both in an evolutionary business path and through revolutionary opportunities. Information Technology for Small Business: Managing the Digital Enterprise applied correctly to small and medium business can be used as a strategic tool to reach growth and profit goals for the SMEs competing in a very dynamic and global marketplace. Examples include: identifying ways that IT can be used to develop strong relationships with customers and suppliers, and how to select the best technologies for business needs.

Information Technology for Small Business: Managing the Digital Enterprise targets SME owners, educators, and practitioners working in the related fields of management, IT, IS, and CS-related disciplines. Advanced-level students and policy makers focusing on SMEs will also find this book valuable in terms of main concepts for discussion.

This guide is for practicing statisticians and data scientists who use IBM SPSS for statistical analysis of big data in business and finance. This is the first of a two-part guide to SPSS for Windows, introducing data entry into SPSS, along with elementary statistical and graphical methods for summarizing and presenting data. Part I also covers the rudiments of hypothesis testing and business forecasting while Part II will present multivariate statistical methods, more advanced forecasting methods, and multivariate methods. IBM SPSS Statistics offers a powerful set of statistical and information analysis systems that run on a wide variety of personal computers. The software is built around routines that have been developed, tested, and widely used for more than 20 years. As such, IBM SPSS Statistics is extensively used in industry, commerce, banking, local and national governments, and education. Just a small subset of users of the package include the major clearing banks, the BBC, British Gas, British Airways, British Telecom, the Consumer Association, Eurotunnel, GSK, TfL, the NHS, Shell, Unilever, and W.H.S. Although the emphasis in this guide is on applications of IBM SPSS Statistics, there is a need for users to be aware of the statistical assumptions and rationales underpinning correct and meaningful application of the techniques available in the package; therefore, such assumptions are discussed, and methods of assessing their validity are described. Also presented is the logic underlying the computation of the more commonly used test statistics in the area of hypothesis testing. Mathematical background is kept to a minimum.

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

This book explores community dynamics within social media. Using Wikipedia as an example, the volume explores communities that rely upon commons-based peer production. Fundamental theoretical principles spanning such domains as organizational configurations, leadership roles, and social evolutionary theory are developed. In the context of Wikipedia, these theories explain how a functional elite of highly productive editors has emerged and why they are responsible for a majority of the content. It explains how the elite shapes the project and how this group tends to become stable and increasingly influential over time. Wikipedia has developed a new and resilient social hierarchy, an adhocracy, which combines features of traditional and new, online, social organizations. The book presents a set of practical approaches for using these theories in real-world practice. This work fundamentally changes the way we think about social media leadership and evolution, emphasizing the crucial contributions of leadership, of elite social roles, and of group global structure to the overall success and stability of large social media projects. Written in an accessible and direct style, the book will be of interest to academics as well as professionals with an interest in social media and commons-based peer production processes.