This book analyses quantitative open source software (OSS) reliability assessment and its applications, focusing on three major topic areas: the Fundamentals of OSS Quality/Reliability Measurement and Assessment; the Practical Applications of OSS Reliability Modelling; and Recent Developments in OSS Reliability Modelling. Offering an ideal reference guide for graduate students and researchers in reliability for open source software (OSS) and modelling, the book introduces several methods of reliability assessment for OSS including component-oriented reliability analysis based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP), analytic network process (ANP), and non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) models, the stochastic differential equation models and hazard rate models. These measurement and management technologies are essential to producing and maintaining quality/reliable systems using OSS.

A classic text for accuracy and statistical precision. Statistics for Business and Economics enables readers to conduct serious analysis of applied problems rather than running simple "canned" applications. This text is also at a mathematically higher level than most business statistics texts and provides readers with the knowledge they need to become stronger analysts for future managerial positions. The eighth edition of this book has been revised and updated to provide readers with improved problem contexts for learning how statistical methods can improve their analysis and understanding of business and economics.

Multicriteria analysis is a rapidly growing aspect of operations research and management science, with numerous practical applications in a wide range of fields. This book presents all the recent advances in multicriteria analysis, including multicriteria optimization, goal programming, outranking methods, and disaggregation techniques. The latest developments on robustness analysis, preference elicitation, and decision making when faced with incomplete information, are also discussed, together with applications in business performance evaluation, finance, and marketing. Finally, the interactions of multicriteria analysis with other disciplines are also explored, including among others data mining, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary methods.

This book explores the premise that organizations are significantly influenced by their inter-organizational relationships; moreover, these relationships may generate important externalities, both positive and negative, impacting the environment at several levels. The advent of the Internet era, on the other hand, has resulted in disruptive changes in traditional inter-organizational networks, and some completely new inter-organizational settings are now arising. In its first part the book reviews the most commonly cited theories explaining inter-organizational phenomena: transaction costs economics, agency theory, resource dependence theory, game theories, collaborative networks theory, institutional theories, organizational ecology, resource-based / relational-based view of the firm, and knowledge network / social network theories. In Part II it thoroughly reviews the literature on a number of key IT-enabled inter-organizational systems currently on the rise, such as virtual organizations, e-intermediators and e-marketplaces. Lastly, Part III presents the case of the Yoox Group, a leading firm offering e-commerce services for fashion and design products. A framework is proposed for systematically linking the different possible types of inter-organizational relationships to specific, suitable sets of theories. The range of possible inter-organizational relationships is described on the basis of three pairs of opposites: conformism-breach, exploitation-exploration, and cooperation-competition. This results in a model that makes it possible to combine different theories in order to study the effects of inter-organizational ambidexterity and dynamism on performance.

This book draws new attention to domain-specific conceptual modeling by presenting the work of thought leaders who have designed and deployed specific modeling methods. It provides hands-on guidance on how to build models in a particular domain, such as requirements engineering, business process modeling or enterprise architecture. In addition to these results, it also puts forward ideas for future developments. All this is enriched with exercises, case studies, detailed references and further related information. All domain-specific methods described in this volume also have a tool implementation within the OMiLAB Collaborative Environment - a dedicated research and experimentation space for modeling method engineering at the University of Vienna, Austria - making these advances accessible to a wider community of further developers and users. The collection of works presented here will benefit experts and practitioners from academia and industry alike, including members of the conceptual modeling community as well as lecturers and students.

This book addresses action research (AR), one of the main research methodologies used for academia-industry research collaborations. It elaborates on how to find the right research activities and how to distinguish them from non-significant ones. Further, it details how to glean lessons from the research results, no matter whether they are positive or negative. Lastly, it shows how companies can evolve and build talents while expanding their product portfolio. The book's structure is based on that of AR projects; it sequentially covers and discusses each phase of the project. Each chapter shares new insights into AR and provides the reader with a better understanding of how to apply it. In addition, each chapter includes a number of practical use cases or examples. Taken together, the chapters cover the entire software lifecycle: from problem diagnosis to project (or action) planning and execution, to documenting and disseminating results, including validity assessments for AR studies. The goal of this book is to help everyone interested in industry-academia collaborations to conduct joint research. It is for students of software engineering who need to learn about how to set up an evaluation, how to run a project, and how to document the results. It is for all academics who aren't afraid to step out of their comfort zone and enter industry. It is for industrial researchers who know that they want to do more than just develop software blindly. And finally, it is for stakeholders who want to learn how to manage industrial research projects and how to set up guidelines for their own role and expectations.

There are two types of readers that will find this book useful: those who have an interest in the Metadatabase model as an integration technology, and those who also seek a general discussion on information system analysis and design. To this end, a general conceptual framework on enterprise integration and modeling is provided in the first chapter, and is used to tie together all of the remaining chapters of the book. The next two chapters present some basics and examples of systems analysis and design for enterprise modeling; which serve the purposes of general discussion on the subject as well as illustrating the modeling methods particular to the Metadatabase approach. The particular methods are discussed fully in Chapter 4. An overview of the Metadatabase Model is provided in Chapter 5 and illustrated with a paper demonstration' of a basic Metadatabase prototype in Chapter 6. The main technical elements of the model are presented in Chapters 7-9. The model is then applied to manufacturing in Chapter 10, where a core information model for implementing the Metadatabase approach to integration is also included. Chapter 11 extends the Metadatabase technology into the realm of information visualization. The new user interface model developed can be applied to integrate the traditional management of information in an enterprise with new cyberspace applications such as electronic commerce. The Metadatabase model of enterprise information integration (for multiple systems) has been developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute under the sponsorships of Alcoa, Digital, GE, GM, and IBM (from 1986-1995 through the Computer-Integrated Manufacturing and the Adaptive Integrated ManufacturingEnterprises programs), the National Science Foundation (since 1991), Samsung (since 1995), and U.S. Army (since 1995). The technology is being developed into a product for Samsung and the Army. This is the first expository book on the topic.

Many recent advances in modelling within the applied sciences and engineering have focused on the increasing importance of sensitivity analyses. For a given physical, financial or environmental model, increased emphasis is now placed on assessing the consequences of changes in model outputs that result from small changes or errors in both the hypotheses and parameters. The approach proposed in this book is entirely new and features two main characteristics. Even when extremely small, errors possess biases and variances. The methods presented here are able, thanks to a specific differential calculus, to provide information about the correlation between errors in different parameters of the model, as well as information about the biases introduced by non-linearity. The approach makes use of very powerful mathematical tools (Dirichlet forms), which allow one to deal with errors in infinite dimensional spaces, such as spaces of functions or stochastic processes. The method is therefore applicable to non-elementary models along the lines of those encountered in modern physics and finance. This text has been drawn from presentations of research done over the past ten years and that is still ongoing. The work was presented in conjunction with a course taught jointly at the Universities of Paris 1 and Paris 6. The book is intended for students, researchers and engineers with good knowledge in probability theory.

Enterprise Modelling (EM) methods are frequently used by entrepreneurs as an analysis tool for describing and redesigning their businesses. The resulting product, an enterprise model, is commonly used as a blueprint for reconstructing organizations and such effort is often a part of business process re-engineering and improvement initiatives.

Automating Business Modelling describes different techniques of providing automated support for enterprise modelling methods and introduces universally used approaches. A running example of a business modelling method is included; providing a framework and detailed explanation as to how to construct automated support for modelling, allowing readers to follow the method to create similar support.

Suitable for senior undergraduates and postgraduates of Business Studies, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, practitioners in the fields of Knowledge Management, Enterprise Modelling and Software Engineering, this book offers insight and know-how to both student and professional.

The book throws light on the ongoing trends in international business, integration of information technology with global businesses, its role in value co-creation, resource integration, and service for service exchange. While discussing the issues of these areas, chapters of this book also delve into prevalent problematic areas which are closely related like employment, ethical aspects, power creation, and so on. Recognizing the role digitization and new technologies play in enabling global managers to communicate with outside world directly via digital channels irrespective of their location (which is especially true in time of COVID-19), the book takes an emerging economy perspective and throws light on new theories, perceptions, employment opportunities, and innovative ideas through its content. The book not only discusses effects of information technology but also the latest emerging technology in global business like use of artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning, big data, and their integration with the global business 4.0. Since emergence of these new technologies requires proper infrastructural development, the book also throws light on government initiatives and CSR in this respect. It contains takeaways for both undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and academicians, industry watchers, practitioners, start-ups, and entrepreneurs

Der Sammelband vereinigt Beitrage von uber 50 Autorinnen und Autoren aus Wirtschaftswissenschaft, Informatik und Mathematik zu aktuellen und grund--legenden Problemen und Losungsansatzen der intelligenten Entscheidungs--unterstutzung in Unternehmen und erscheint zum 65. Geburtstag von Hermann Gehring, Professor fur Wirtschaftsinformatik an der FernUniversitat in Hagen.

Overcome math anxiety and confidently master key mathematical concepts and their business applications with Brechner's CONTEMPORARY MATHEMATICS FOR BUSINESS AND CONSUMERS, 6th Edition, International Edition. This book's unique modular approach invites readers into a successful, interactive learning experience with numerous real business examples and integrated CengageNOW with MathCue (TM) learning technology. Step-by-step instructions, worked-out problems, and engaging learning features help readers progress one topic at a time without being intimidated or overwhelmed. Thousands of exercises offer practice with Excel (R), common business scenarios, and calculators. The accompanying MathCue tutorial software provides additional step-by-step solutions for more than 15,000 questions to further ensure targeted assistance in areas where readers may struggle. The CONTEMPORARY MATHEMATICS FOR BUSINESS AND CONSUMERS, 6th Edition, International Edition text and software provide the support and confidence for success in business math today.

Technological innovation is a core aspect of corporate and national competitiveness and it is not only complex-requiring cooperation and coordination among many stakeholders-but it also involves high risk due to uncertainty. Financial markets are a key to successful technological innovation. This book looks at how traditional financing and non-traditional ones transform corporate innovation strategy. This book reviews Korean companies to illustrate the impact of financialization on technological innovation through the relationships among financialization, managerial myopia and short-termism of innovation strategy. It does so by conducting an empirical study using Korean firm and USPTO data from the period of 1980 to 2017. By analyzing the innovation capabilities of Korean companies and presenting indicators of technological competitiveness, it offers insights into how financialization has influenced organizational behaviour, causing them to shift strategy formulation, decision making for production, investment and technological innovation away from a long-term perspective to short-term one. This concise book will be of interest to those interested in strategy and entrepreneurship innovation, especially policy makers focusing on financialization or national level innovation strategies.

Information technology has had a major impact on individuals, organizations and society over the past 50 years. There are few organizations that can afford to ignore IT and few individuals who would prefer to be without it. As managerial tasks become more complex, so the nature of the required information systems (IS) changes - from structured, routine support to ad hoc, complex enquiries at the highest levels of management. Global Information Systems aims to present the many complex and inter-related issues associated with culture in the management of information systems.
The editors have selected a wide range of contemporary articles from leading experts in North America and Europe that represent a wide variety of different national and cultural environments. They offer valid explanations for, rather than simply pointing out cultural differences in articles that cover a variety of national cultures, including: China, Egypt, Finland, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Jamaica, Peru South Korea, Kuwait, Mexico, Singapore, Sweden, the United Arab Emirate, the UK, and the US.
* Provides students with insight into managing global firms and IT workforce
* Contributions are carefully selected from universities of world renown and is supported by helpful introductions for each paper
* Reflects current trends and debates around Global IS

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.

Ontologies tend to be found everywhere. They are viewed as the silver bullet for many applications, such as database integration, peer-to-peer systems, e-commerce, semantic web services, or social networks. However, in open or evolving systems, such as the semantic web, different parties would, in general, adopt different ontologies. Thus, merely using ontologies, like using XML, does not reduce heterogeneity: it just raises heterogeneity problems to a higher level. Euzenat and Shvaiko's book is devoted to ontology matching as a solution to the semantic heterogeneity problem faced by computer systems. Ontology matching aims at finding correspondences between semantically related entities of different ontologies. These correspondences may stand for equivalence as well as other relations, such as consequence, subsumption, or disjointness, between ontology entities. Many different matching solutions have been proposed so far from various viewpoints, e.g., databases, information systems, and artificial intelligence. The second edition of Ontology Matching has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect the most recent advances in this quickly developing area, which resulted in more than 150 pages of new content. In particular, the book includes a new chapter dedicated to the methodology for performing ontology matching. It also covers emerging topics, such as data interlinking, ontology partitioning and pruning, context-based matching, matcher tuning, alignment debugging, and user involvement in matching, to mention a few. More than 100 state-of-the-art matching systems and frameworks were reviewed. With Ontology Matching, researchers and practitioners will find a reference book that presents currently available work in a uniform framework. In particular, the work and the techniques presented in this book can be equally applied to database schema matching, catalog integration, XML schema matching and other related problems. The objectives of the book include presenting (i) the state of the art and (ii) the latest research results in ontology matching by providing a systematic and detailed account of matching techniques and matching systems from theoretical, practical and application perspectives.

This textbook reviews and systematically presents the use of the Internet in public administration and politics. Further, it employs a process-oriented layer model to define the opportunities for exchange and participation for all stakeholder groups, covering the following topics: eAssistance, eProcurement, eService, eContracting, eSettlement, eCollaboration, eDemocracy, and eCommunity. In turn, real-world case studies demonstrate the practical applications in industry, administration and research. The second edition of this book has been completely revised and extended, and includes several new case studies. It offers a valuable asset for students in Business, Economics and Political Sciences courses, as well as practitioners interested in emerging opportunities for digital exchange and participation in the knowledge society.

Whilst Information Systems has the potential to widen our view of the world, it often has the opposite effect by limiting our ability to interact, facilitating managerial and state surveillance or instituting strict hierarchies and personal control. In this book, Bernd Stahl offers an alternative and critical perspective on the subject, arguing that the ongoing problems in this area could be caused by the misconceptualization of the nature and role of IS. Stahl discusses the question of how IS can be used to actually overcome oppression and promote emancipation, breaking the book into four sections. The first section covers the theory of critical research in IS, giving a central place for the subject of ethics. The second section discusses the philosophical underpinnings of this critical research. The third and largest section gives examples of the application of critical work in IS. The final section then reflects on the approach and suggests ways for further development.

This book examines prominent issues in the Emerging Markets (EM) from a variety of disciplines in order to make useful societal contributions through knowledge exchange. EMs offer enormous opportunities, but realizing them is both challenging and risky due to inherent uncertainties of such markets. EM's also have unique characteristics that makes them different from developed countries. This causes implications for both theory and practice. These markets necessitate substantial adaptations of developed theories and approaches employed in the Western world. This book investigates problems specific to emerging markets, and identifies new theoretical constructs, hypotheses (re)development, and emphasizes institutional contexts. The chapters in this book establish new conceptual and theoretical paradigms from multidisciplinary perspectives concentrated in the areas of information systems, electronic government, and digital and social media matters. The book focuses on topics in these areas such as digital enterprises, sustainability, telemedicine, and Information Communication Technology (ICT) and surveys the potential challenges and opportunities that may arise. These concepts and topics covered in this book are vital for making the global economy more equitable and sustainable.

In the newly revised seventh edition of Managing Quality: Integrating the Supply Chain, a decorated team of operations experts delivers a thorough introduction to quality management with an enduring emphasis on the importance of the supply chain for quality improvement. You'll obtain an integrated understanding of the customers, suppliers, technology, and people essential to maintaining and enhancing product quality in business.

This latest edition combines the unifying theme of the supply chain with the latest developments in critical subject areas, like Lean, Six Sigma, and service quality. Updated vignettes and references maintain the currency of the work, while new content expands its scope and increases readability and accessibility for students of operations, quality management, and business.

Mathematical Statistics for Economics and Business, Second Edition, provides a comprehensive introduction to the principles of mathematical statistics which underpin statistical analyses in the fields of economics, business, and econometrics. The selection of topics in this textbook is designed to provide students with a conceptual foundation that will facilitate a substantial understanding of statistical applications in these subjects. This new edition has been updated throughout and now also includes a downloadable Student Answer Manual containing detailed solutions to half of the over 300 end-of-chapter problems. After introducing the concepts of probability, random variables, and probability density functions, the author develops the key concepts of mathematical statistics, most notably: expectation, sampling, asymptotics, and the main families of distributions. The latter half of the book is then devoted to the theories of estimation and hypothesis testing with associated examples and problems that indicate their wide applicability in economics and business. Features of the new edition include: a reorganization of topic flow and presentation to facilitate reading and understanding; inclusion of additional topics of relevance to statistics and econometric applications; a more streamlined and simple-to-understand notation for multiple integration and multiple summation over general sets or vector arguments; updated examples; new end-of-chapter problems; a solution manual for students; a comprehensive answer manual for instructors; and a theorem and definition map. This book has evolved from numerous graduate courses in mathematical statistics and econometrics taught by the author, and will be ideal for students beginning graduate study as well as for advanced undergraduates.

The authors present a number of financial market studies that have as their general theme, the econometric testing of the underlying econometric assumptions of a number of financial models. More than 30 years of financial market research has convinced the authors that not enough attention has been paid to whether the estimated model is appropriate or, most importantly, whether the estimation technique is suitable for the problem under study. For many years linear models have been assumed with little or no testing of alternative specification. The result has been models that force linearity assumptions on what clearly are nonlinear processes. Another major assumption of much financial research constrains the coefficients to be stable over time. This critical assumption has been attacked by Lucas (1976) on the grounds that when economic policy changes, the coefficients of macroeconomics models change. If this occurs, any policy forecasts of these models will be flawed. In financial modeling, omitted (possibly non-quantifiable) variables will bias coefficients. While it may be possible to model some financial variables for extended periods, in other periods the underlying models may either exhibit nonlinearity or show changes in linear models. The authors research indicates that tests for changes in linear models, such as recursive residual analysis, or tests for episodic nonlinearity can be used to signal changes in the underlying structure of the market.

The book begins with a brief review of basic linear time series techniques that include autoregressive integrated moving average models (ARIMA), vector autoregressive models (VAR), and models form the ARCH/GARCH class. While the ARIMA and VAR approach models the first moment of a series, models of the ARCH/GARCH class model both the first moment and second moment which is interpreted as conditional or explained volatility of a series. Recent work on nonlinearity detection has questioned the appropriateness of these essentially linear approaches. A number of such tests are shown and applied for the complete series and a subsets of the series. A major finding is that the structure of the series may change over time. Within the time frame of a study, there may be periods of episodic nonlinearity, episodic ARCH and episodic nonstationarity. Measures are developed to measure and relate these events both geographically and with mathematical models. This book will be of interest to applied finance researchers and to market participants.

The globalization of everyday business and increasing international trade lead to a growing need to improve national and international business collaborations and transactions. Upcoming new technologies for e-business transactions allow for new ways of process, information and application integration. But business partners almost always have different ways to systemize the information needed to run the business, in terms of information structure, syntax and semantics. Consequences are mismatch and misunderstanding in electronic transactions. This book shows what ontology management can do for process, information and application integration under dynamic e-business conditions. We not only discuss research results and develop novel methods and frameworks, but also apply them to build business use application components that are deployed as web services.

For two-semester courses in Finite Math & Applied Calculus or Mathematics for Business. College Mathematics for Business, Economics, Life Sciences, and Social Sciences, 14th Edition offers more built-in guidance than any other text for this course - with special emphasis on applications and prerequisite skills - and a host of student-friendly features to help students catch up or learn on their own. Its emphasis on helping students "get the idea" is enhanced in the new edition by a design refresh, updated data and applications. The text is organised into three parts: A Library of Elementary Functions (Chapter 1), Finite Mathematics (Chapters 2-7, 14), and Calculus (Chapters 8-13).

This book offers a comprehensive guide to implementing SAP and HANA on private, public and hybrid clouds. Cloud computing has transformed the way organizations run their IT infrastructures: the shift from legacy monolithic mainframes and UNIX platforms to cloud based infrastructures offering ubiquitous access to critical information, elastic provisioning and drastic cost savings has made cloud an essential part of every organization's business strategy. Cloud based services have evolved from simple file sharing, email and messaging utilities in the past, to the current situation, where their improved technical capabilities and SLAs make running mission-critical applications such as SAP possible. However, IT professionals must take due care when deploying SAP in a public, private or hybrid cloud environment. As a foundation for core business operations, SAP cloud deployments must satisfy stringent requirements concerning their performance, scale and security, while delivering measurable improvements in IT efficiency and cost savings. The 2nd edition of "SAP on the Cloud" continues the work of its successful predecessor released in 2013, providing updated guidance for deploying SAP in public, private and hybrid clouds. To do so, it discusses the technical requirements and considerations necessary for IT professionals to successfully implement SAP software in a cloud environment, including best-practice architectures for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS deployments. The section on SAP's in-memory database HANA has been significantly extended to cover Suite on HANA (SoH) and the different incarnations of HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) and Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI). As cyber threats are a significant concern, it also explores appropriate security models for defending SAP cloud deployments against modern and sophisticated attacks. The reader will gain the insights needed to understand the respective benefits and drawbacks of various deployment models and how SAP on the cloud can be used to deliver IT efficiency and cost-savings in a secure and agile manner.