This book provides a review of advanced topics relating to the theory, research, analysis and implementation in the context of big data platforms and their applications, with a focus on methods, techniques, and performance evaluation. The explosive growth in the volume, speed, and variety of data being produced every day requires a continuous increase in the processing speeds of servers and of entire network infrastructures, as well as new resource management models. This poses significant challenges (and provides striking development opportunities) for data intensive and high-performance computing, i.e., how to efficiently turn extremely large datasets into valuable information and meaningful knowledge. The task of context data management is further complicated by the variety of sources such data derives from, resulting in different data formats, with varying storage, transformation, delivery, and archiving requirements. At the same time rapid responses are needed for real-time applications. With the emergence of cloud infrastructures, achieving highly scalable data management in such contexts is a critical problem, as the overall application performance is highly dependent on the properties of the data management service.

One of the main challenges faced by all entrepreneurs, is the need to growth. Growth is part of all organizations, it implies continuous growth of sales, purchases, number of employees, profit and thus the growth of the enterprise. Most innovations that are part of the organizations are derived from the internal organization. Industrial Revolution 4.0 provides both opportunities and challenges to all entrepreneurs to grow their business. The rapid development of technology and all digital aspects create opportunities of innovation in organizations. These proceedings provide details beyond what is possible to be included in an oral presentation and constitute a concise but timely medium for the dissemination of recent research results. It will be invaluable to professionals and academics in the field of business, entrepreneurship and economics to get an understanding of recent research developments.

Stress is defined as a feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize. It can occur due to environmental issues, such as a looming work deadline, or psychological, for example, persistent worry about familial problems. While the acute response to life-threatening circumstances can be life-saving, research reveals that the body's stress response is largely similar when it reacts to less threatening but chronically present stressors such as work overload, deadline pressures and family conflicts. It is proffered that chronic activation of stress response in the body can lead to several pathological changes such as elevated blood pressure, clogging of blood vessels, anxiety, depression, and addiction. Organizational Stress Around the World: Research and Practice aims to present a sound theoretical and empirical basis for understanding the evolving and changing nature of stress in contemporary organizations. It presents research that expands theory and practice by addressing real-world issues, across cultures and by providing multiple perspectives on organizational stress and research relevant to different occupational settings and cultures. Personal, occupational, organizational, and societal issues relevant to stress identification along with management techniques/approach to confront stress and its associated problems at individual and organizational level are also explored. It will be of value to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students interested in stress management research.

This book intends to theoretically conceptualize and empirically investigate upcoming and established practices of community-based initiatives in various countries in which both citizens and governments join efforts and capacities to solve wicked issues. It aims to include and compare cases from various countries, departing from the notion that community-based initiatives take place in an institutional context of governmental structures, rules, procedures, regulations, and routines. This leads to government involvement in these initiatives and sharing the public space. Furthermore, the editors take into account what kind of leadership roles, knowledge, and resources are present and how they evolve in this collaborative or coordinative effort, which in turn can enhance the capacities of community-based initiatives. This book joins excellent researchers from renowned universities all over the world, aiming for a balance between upcoming scholars and renowned scholars in the field of community-based initiatives and governance capacity. Contributors were carefully selected on the basis of their experience in the field of community-based initiatives, citizens' engagement and governance capacity approaches. Aimed at researchers and academics, this volume will be of interest to those in the fields of business, economics, public administration, political science, social enterprise, sociology and third sector studies.

This book summarizes the results of Design Thinking Research Program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. Offering readers a closer look at design thinking, its innovation processes and methods, it covers topics ranging from how to design ideas, methods and technologies, to creativity experiments and creative collaboration in the real world, and the interplay between 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 actually work in companies, and introduce new technologies and their functions. Furthermore, readers learn how special-purpose design thinking can be used to solve thorny problems in complex fields. Thinking and devising innovations are fundamentally and inherently human activities - so is design thinking. Accordingly, design thinking is not merely the 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. This edition offers a historic perspective on the theoretical foundations of design thinking. Within the four topic areas, various frameworks, methodologies, mindsets, systems and tools are explored and further developed. The first topic area focuses on team interaction, while the second part addresses tools and techniques for productive collaboration. The third section explores new approaches to teaching and enabling creative skills and lastly the book examines how design thinking is put into practice. All in all, the contributions shed light and provide deeper insights into how to support the collaboration of design teams in order to systematically and successfully develop innovations and design progressive solutions for tomorrow.

This book treats intellectual capital, smart technologies, and digitalization processes as levers of corporate competitiveness and global value creation. This book is based on theoretical and practical research output from the STEDIC SIDREA Group. It uses several methodologies to discover features and pillars on intellectual capital such as human capital, relational capital, and structural capital as well as smart technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, big data, and digitalization.

This book systematically examines and quantifies industrial problems by assessing the complexity and safety of large systems. It includes chapters on system performance management, software reliability assessment, testing, quality management, analysis using soft computing techniques, management analytics, and business analytics, with a clear focus on exploring real-world business issues. Through contributions from researchers working in the area of performance, management, and business analytics, it explores the development of new methods and approaches to improve business by gaining knowledge from bulk data. With system performance analytics, companies are now able to drive performance and provide actionable insights for each level and for every role using key indicators, generate mobile-enabled scorecards, time series-based analysis using charts, and dashboards. In the current dynamic environment, a viable tool known as multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is increasingly being adopted to deal with complex business decisions. MCDA is an important decision support tool for analyzing goals and providing optimal solutions and alternatives. It comprises several distinct techniques, which are implemented by specialized decision-making packages. This book addresses a number of important MCDA methods, such as DEMATEL, TOPSIS, AHP, MAUT, and Intuitionistic Fuzzy MCDM, which make it possible to derive maximum utility in the area of analytics. As such, it is a valuable resource for researchers and academicians, as well as practitioners and business experts.

This book approaches big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and business intelligence through the lens of Data Science. We have grown accustomed to seeing these terms mentioned time and time again in the mainstream media. However, our understanding of what they actually mean often remains limited. This book provides a general overview of the terms and approaches used broadly in data science, and provides detailed information on the underlying theories, models, and application scenarios. Divided into three main parts, it addresses what data science is; how and where it is used; and how it can be implemented using modern open source software. The book offers an essential guide to modern data science for all students, practitioners, developers and managers seeking a deeper understanding of how various aspects of data science work, and of how they can be employed to gain a competitive advantage.

This book introduces higher-degree research students and early career academics to scientific research as occurring in the field of information systems and adjacent fields, such as computer science, management science, organization science, and software engineering. Instead of focusing primarily on research methods as many other textbooks do, it covers the entire research process, from start to finish, placing particular emphasis on understanding the cognitive and behavioural aspects of research, such as motivation, modes of inquiry, theorising, planning for research, planning for publication, and ethical challenges in research. Comprehensive but also succinct and compact, the book guides beginning researchers in their quest to do scholarly work and to assist them in developing their own answers and strategies over the course of their work. Jan Recker explains in this book the fundamental concepts that govern scientific research and then moves on to introduce the basic steps every researcher undertakes: choosing research questions, developing theory, building a research design, employing research methods, and finally writing academic papers. He also covers essentials of ethical conduct of scientific research. This second edition contains major updates on all these elements plus significant expansions on relevant research methods such as design research and computational methods, a rewritten and extended chapter on theory development, and expansions to the chapters on research methods, scientific publishing, and research ethics. A companion website provides pedagogical materials and instructions for using this book in teaching.

This book discusses the unique nature and complexity of fog data analytics (FDA) and develops a comprehensive taxonomy abstracted into a process model. The exponential increase in sensors and smart gadgets (collectively referred as smart devices or Internet of things (IoT) devices) has generated significant amount of heterogeneous and multimodal data, known as big data. To deal with this big data, we require efficient and effective solutions, such as data mining, data analytics and reduction to be deployed at the edge of fog devices on a cloud. Current research and development efforts generally focus on big data analytics and overlook the difficulty of facilitating fog data analytics (FDA). This book presents a model that addresses various research challenges, such as accessibility, scalability, fog nodes communication, nodal collaboration, heterogeneity, reliability, and quality of service (QoS) requirements, and includes case studies demonstrating its implementation. Focusing on FDA in IoT and requirements related to Industry 4.0, it also covers all aspects required to manage the complexity of FDA for IoT applications and also develops a comprehensive taxonomy.

The exponential growth of disruptive technology is changing our world. The development of cloud computing, big data, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and other related autonomous systems, such as self-driving vehicles, have triggered the emergence of new products and services. These significant technological breakthroughs have opened the door to new economic models such as the sharing and platform-based economy. As a result, companies are becoming increasingly data- and algorithm-driven, coming to be more like "decentralized platforms". New transaction or payment methods such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, based on trust-building systems using Blockchain, smart contracts, and other distributed ledger technology, also constitute an essential part of this new economic model. The sharing economy and digital platforms also include the everyday exchange of goods allowing individuals to commodify their surplus resources. Information and innovation technologies are used in order to then match these resources with existing demand in the market. Online platforms such as Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon reduce information asymmetry, increase the value of unused resources, and create new opportunities for collaboration and innovation. Moreover, the sharing economy is playing a major role in the transition from exclusive ownership of personal assets toward access-based exploitation of resources. The success of online matching platforms depends not only on the reduction of search costs but also on the trustworthiness of platform operators. From a legal perspective, the uncertainties triggered by the emergence of a new digital reality are particularly urgent. How should these tendencies be reflected in legal systems in each jurisdiction? This book collects a series of contributions by leading scholars in the newly emerging fields of sharing economy and Legal Tech. The aim of the book is to enrich legal debates on the social, economic, and political meaning of these cutting-edge technologies. The chapters presented in this edition attempt to answer some of these lingering questions from the perspective of diverse legal backgrounds.

While intense efforts of clarification have been made to distinguish between the concept of system and ecosystem, and between the different forms of ecosystems, very few works have addressed the issues of how these different forms of ecosystems are interacting in a dynamic perspective, or of how the notion of a dynamic ecosystem could emerge from the static frame of a system approach. The five chapters in this volume precisely aim at adding to this literature by highlighting the interplay between different types of innovation systems. A common thread among the five chapters of the book is the recognition of the need to develop new lenses to formally account for adaptative behaviour within clusters, networks, or regional innovation systems using the ecosystem metaphor. The diversity and heterogeneity of agents, the complexity of relationships, and new forms of organisation (underground, middleground, and upperground) are the main characteristics of innovation ecosystems, in contrast to more traditional concepts like clusters or networks. In essence, the five chapters add various complexity dimensions (relationships, knowledge, systems, etc.) to the existing knowledge on ecosystems. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Industry and Innovation.

In the last two decades, the quest for a widely accepted definition of social enterprise has been a central issue in a great number of publications. The main objective of the ICSEM Project (on which this book is based) was to show that the social enterprise field would benefit much more from linking conceptualisation efforts to the huge diversity of social enterprises than from an additional and ambitious attempt at providing an encompassing definition. Starting from a hypothesis that could be termed "the impossibility of a unified definition", the ICSEM research strategy relied on bottom-up approaches to capture the social enterprise phenomenon in its local and national contexts. This strategy made it possible to take into account and give legitimacy to locally embedded approaches, while simultaneously allowing for the identification of major social enterprise models to delineate the field on common grounds at the international level. Social Enterprise in Central and Eastern Europe - the last volume in a series of four ICSEM-based books on social enterprise worldwide - will serve as a key reference and resource for teachers, researchers, students, experts, policy makers, journalists and others who want to acquire a broad understanding of the social enterprise and social entrepreneurship phenomena as they emerge and develop in this region.

The volume includes a collection of peer-reviewed contributions from among those presented at the main conference organized yearly by the Mexican Statistical Association (AME) and every two years by a Latin-American Confederation of Statistical Societies. For the 2018 edition, particular attention was placed on the analysis of highly complex or large data sets, which have come to be known as "big data". Statistical research in Latin America is prolific and research networks span within and outside the region. The goal of this volume is to provide access to selected works from Latin-American collaborators and their research networks to a wider audience. New methodological advances, motivated in part by the challenges of a data-driven world and the Latin American context, will be of interest to academics and practitioners around the world.

Understanding experience at work, especially in toxic organizations, is a multidimensional undertaking that must include all senses. The use of applied poetry has its primary value as an evocative approach to sensing, knowing, and understanding workplace experience. Poetry at its best condenses into relatively few words, metaphors, and images what conventional social science narratives would take much longer to articulate. Where poetry often hints and alludes, narrative seeks to spell out, expound, and complete. Where poetry leaves much mental space for the listener or reader to fill in with one's imagination, narrative fills in the spaces with rich detail. Applied poetry and its contextual stories offer a way of accessing workplace experience that is unique and valuable in terms of understanding lives at work. The use of complementary psychodynamic theories, like all theories, is a way of trying to account for what we have found and experienced and in particular why it happened. "Why," the authors suggest, is critical in terms of understanding the sensing, images, and metaphors evoked by the poetry and stories that may resonate with hearers and readers for reasons that are unconscious and are rooted in the past. These transferences that come forward from life experience into the present are the critical data we work with. These are the data of psychoanalysis. This book both widens and deepens the scope of organizational research offered by other researchers, theorists, and approaches to understanding, interpreting, explaining, leading, and consulting with workplace organizations. Its triangulating integration of applied poetry, experience and stories behind the poetry, and the three psychoanalytic models of explaining life in workplaces, is a new and distinct contribution to organizational research, leadership, and consulting efforts to help organization members solve real, underlying problems and not offer simplistic, formulaic solutions based solely on a study of the organization's surface. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of organizational studies, leadership, and management.

Service chain management enables service organisations to improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs. In this book, Christos Voudouris and his BT colleagues together with experts from industry and academia present the latest innovations and technologies used to manage the operations of a service company. The viewpoints presented are based on the BT experience and on associated research and development. Service chain management is looked at both from the enterprise perspective and from the standpoints of the service professional and customer. The focus is on real-world challenges.

For graduate and executive level MIS students, and practicing IS managers. A thorough and practical guide to IT management practices and issues. Managing Information Technology provides comprehensive coverage of IS management practices and technology trends for advanced students and managers. Through an approach that offers up-to-date chapter content and full-length case studies, this text presents a unique set of materials that educators can customize to their students' needs. The sixth edition has been thoroughly updated and streamlined to reflect current IS practices.

Despite the growing attention towards the importance of practical wisdom in business today, little research has been done about the concept of practical wisdom in the Indigenous, Asian and Middle-Eastern traditions. Contemporary studies of wisdom are dominated by the philosophical traditions of Western thought, which is based on the ancient Greek concepts of wisdom. Much less is known about how practical wisdom, as illuminated by these other traditions, can be implemented in today's organizational settings. This book thus fills an important gap in understanding wisdom and how it is applied in a poly-cultural world. Wisdom is culturally bound. Wisdom is poly-cultural and interweaves individuality and communality. Practical wisdom is inextricably connected to many needs of contemporary personal and professional life. Moreover, the increasingly growing poly-culturality around the world requires a better understanding of how practical wisdom is understood in different cultures and traditions. Accordingly, there is a need for a) poly-cultural understanding of the concept of wisdom and b) the role of practical wisdom in a world crying out for wisdom. This book underlines the importance of developing a poly-cultural and interdisciplinary understanding of the concept of practical wisdom in today's complex environment. The book offers significant insight into the implications of the non-Western traditions of wisdom and how such an understanding of the non-Western traditions can help us better and more critically understand and appropriately address new multi-faceted complex emerging phenomena. While the Western traditions offer valuable insight into the implication of wisdom in modern life, an integrated view that brings together the Western and non-Western traditions can provide a more critical and practical insight into how to apply practical wisdom in a contemporary poly-cultural environment.

Written by an author that has real world experience in launching a cyber consulting company. Comprehensive coverage ranging all the way from the legal formation to be used to which segment of the Cybersecurity Industry should be targeted. Explains how CISOs can market their services and get key customers.

This book introduces readers and students to the entrepreneurial process. It is important as evidence has suggested that the probability of entrepreneurs' success enhances when they thoroughly appreciate the components of the entrepreneurial process as well as how to effectively use them. The fact that nearly 33 percent of new firms fail within the first two years while twenty percent fail within four to five years of their existence makes it evident that while many people are highly motivated to start new firms, motivation alone is not sufficient, rather it should be coupled with relevant information, a strong business idea, a well-crafted business plan, and sound execution to maximize chances for success. This work offers an insightful and a practical guide to the process of launching and growing an entrepreneurial organisation with success. It will therefore serve as an important resource to students of Entreprenuership and to anyone interested in the field, academically or practically.

This book focuses on market developments of crowdfunding, crowdinvesting, crowdlending, social trading, robo-advice, personal financial management, online payment and mobile payment in Germany. FinTech companies are an important driver of innovation in the financial industry. By making financial transactions more user-friendly and transparent, these firms potentially contribute to financial stability and economic growth. The authors define and categorize the different market segments that have emerged. They further provide an assessment of current market volumes and make forecasts for the next 5, 10 and 20 years. Particular attention is given to the empirical findings resulting from scholarly research. Furthermore, the authors evaluate how the German FinTech market ranks relative to international standards. This book will appeal to finance and entrepreneurship researchers as well as practitioners from banking and tech industries. "This book offers a fresh and fascinating look at the FinTech market. The authors provide a rigorous economic analysis of the FinTech market in Germany and offer many insights that are of interest to practitioners, academics, and policymakers alike." -Professor Douglas Cumming, Schulich School of Business "Germany is one of the fastest growing FinTech markets in Europe. This book not only provides a comprehensive and systematic overview on the developments and actors, but undertakes a visionary outlook on the forthcoming decades based on scientific methods." -Dr. Thomas Puschmann, Head of Swiss FinTech Innovation Lab

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th European Lean Educator Conference ELEC 2021, hosted in Trondheim, Norway, in October 2021 and sponsored by IFIP WG 5.7. The conference was held virtually. The 42 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 82 submissions. They are organized in the following thematic sections: Learning Lean; Teaching Lean in the Digital Era; Lean and Digital; Lean 4.0; Lean Management; Lean Coaching and Mentoring; Skills and Knowledge Management; Productivity and Performance Improvement; New Perspectives of Lean.

This book explores the impact of design science and design thinking on tourism planning, gathering contributions from leading authorities in the field of tourism research and providing a comprehensive and interconnected panorama of cutting-edge results that influence the current and future design of tourist destinations. The book builds on recent findings in psychology, geography and urban and regional planning, as well as from economics, marketing and communications, and explores the opportunities arising from recent advances in the Internet and related technologies like memory, storage, RFID, GIS, mobile and social media in the context of collecting and analyzing traveler-related data. It presents a broad range of insights and cases on how modern design approaches can be used to develop new and better touristic experiences, and how they enable the tourism industry to track and communicate with visitors in a more meaningful way and more effectively manage visitor experiences.

In this book the author aims to describe the path from Information Technology to Information Management and Information Governance. This path allows organizations to identify IT Business Value and take advantage of it. The book synthesizes the main approaches that have emerged in recent years, compares these approaches along multiple variables, and finally proposes an advanced and new approach to Information Governance, based on the concept of Organizational Absorptive Capacity. Furthermore, the book presents a new approach to Information Management: the SIGMA (Strategic Information Governance Modelling and Assessment) approach. The new approach is centered on information as a key factor allowing integration between IT applications, organizational capabilities and business strategy. In particular, the Absorptive Capacity concept is presented and discussed: this concept represents the ability of an organization to maintain and absorb the potential of information and IT investments. After having presented and discussed the model, we also provide the reader with a brief presentation of how the SIGMA approach should be applied in companies. The book adopts a scientific approach to ensure methodological rigour; however, it is also concrete and describes problems from the viewpoints of managers, adopting a clear and easy-to-understand language in order to capture the interest of top managers and graduate students.

Cooperation between science and business (S2B cooperation) is a very important issue from the points of view of the domestic economy, companies, and universities. This is mainly because such cooperation is a catalyst for faster and reliable development - not only of enterprises, but also of the entire economy. Thanks to S2B cooperation, enterprises can gain and commercialize new and ground-breaking solutions. Universities in turn can give their research a more practical dimension to increase its economic applicability, which helps universities prepare future staff to work in modern enterprises. The aim of this publication is to indicate how cooperation between universities and business can be implemented in an international dimension. It shows the role of modern universities in supporting the development of enterprise and entire economies as well as the role of modern enterprises that use resources located in universities (including knowledge resources). This unique combination has a positive impact on the results and developmental opportunities for each of them. Any potential obtained in this manner is the basis for creating a competitive advantage on the market. This book is devoted to a specific area of cooperation between enterprises and universities and will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of entrepreneurship, knowledge management, international relations, and higher education.