With the proper management, knowledge-based resources (human capital, relational capital, structural capital) aim to contribute to the creation of a competitive advantage not only for companies and institutions, but also for nations and economic regions. Intellectual Capital Strategy Management for Knowledge-Based Organizations brings together new perspectives on the knowledge-based view of strategy management as it considers the role of companies, organisations, and nations in the storage and measurement of their knowledge. This book is useful for industry leaders, practitioners, academics and scholars interested in emerging aspects of knowledge management and industry services.

This book examines key aspects of the increasingly important phenomenon of reshoring - the decision of companies to reverse offshoring by bringing manufacturing back from overseas. The aim is to equip readers with a full understanding of the current extent of reshoring, its drivers, and the associated opportunities and challenges. The impact of governments' economic policies on the location choices of entrepreneurs in an era of globalization is carefully analyzed, drawing on experiences in the United States and Italy, where contrasting encouragement is provided for reshoring decisions. The effect on reshoring of recent developments regarding technology, the environment, and other factors is assessed in depth, and readers will also find close scrutiny of the relationship between reshoring and manufacturing performance. The book will be of interest to all academics, researchers, and practitioners with an interest in the manufacturing industry and will be an excellent teaching aid for a variety of courses in different disciplines at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

This book analyses the role of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Intelligence (BI) systems in improving information quality through an empirical analysis carried out in Italy. The study begins with a detailed examination of ERP features that highlights the advantages and disadvantages of ERP adoption. Critical success factors for ERP implementation and post-implementation are then discussed, along with the capabilities of ERP in driving the alignment between management accounting and financial accounting information.The study goes on to illustrate the features of BI systems and to summarize companies' needs for BI. Critical success factors for BI implementation are then presented, along with the BI maturity model and lifecycle. The focus of the research entails a detailed empirical analysis in the Italian setting designed to investigate the role played by ERP and BI systems in reducing information overload/underload and improving information quality by influencing the features of information flow. The practical and theoretical implications of the study are discussed and future avenues of research are suggested. This book will be of value for all those who have an interest in the capacities of ERP and BI systems to enhance business information quality.

Businesses must constantly adapt to a dynamically changing environment that requires choosing an adaptive and dynamic information architecture that has the flexibility to support both changes in the business environment and changes in technology. In general, information systems reengineering has the objective of extracting the contents, data structures, and flow of data and process contained within existing legacy systems in order to reconstitute them into a new form for subsequent implementation. Information Systems Reengineering for Modern Business Systems: ERP, Supply Chain and E-Commerce Management Solutions covers different techniques that could be used in industry in order to reengineer business processes and legacy systems into more flexible systems capable of supporting modern trends such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), supply chain management systems and e-commerce. This reference book also covers other issues related to the reengineering of legacy systems, which include risk management and obsolescence management of requirements.

Technological advances in the last five years have allowed organizations to use Business Analytics to provide insights, increase understanding and it is hoped, gain the elusive 'competitive edge'. The rapid development of Business Analytics is impacting all enterprise competences profoundly and classical business professions are being redefined by a much deeper interplay between business and information systems.As computing capabilities for analysis has moved outside the IT glass-house and into the sphere of individual workers, they are no longer the exclusive domain of IT professionals but rather accessible to all employees. Complex open-source data analytics packages and client-level visualization tools deployed in desktops and laptops equip virtually any end-user with the instruments to carry out significant analytical tasks. All the while, the drive to improve 'customer experience' has heightened the demand for data involving customers, providers and entire ecosystems.In response to the proliferation of Business Analytics, a new Center and Masters of Science Program was introduced at the National University of Singapore (NUS). The Center collaborates with over 40 different external partner organizations in Asia-Pacific with which all MSBA students undertake individual projects. Business Analytics: Progress on Applications in Asia Pacific provides a useful picture of the maturity of the Business Analytics domain in Asia Pacific. For more information about the Business Analytics Center at NUS, visit the website at: msba.nus.edu/

This book provides a practical approach to designing and implementing a Knowledge Management (KM) Strategy. The book explains how to design KM strategy so as to align business goals with KM objectives. The book also presents an approach for implementing KM strategy so as to make it sustainable. It covers all basic KM concepts, components of KM and the steps that are required for designing a KM strategy. As a result, the book can be used by beginners as well as practitioners. Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise's information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers. Knowledge is considered to be the learning that results from experience and is embedded within individuals. Sometimes the knowledge is gained through critical thinking, watching others, and observing results of others. These observations then form a pattern which is converted in a 'generic form' to knowledge. This implies that knowledge can be formed only after data (which is generated through experience or observation) is grouped into information and then this information pattern is made generic wisdom. However, dissemination and acceptance of this knowledge becomes a key factor in knowledge management. The knowledge pyramid represents the usual concept of knowledge transformations, where data is transformed into information, and information is transformed into knowledge. Many organizations have struggled to manage knowledge and translate it into business benefits. This book is an attempt to show them how it can be done.

Understanding the adoption, diffusion, and transfer of technology in the marketplace is vital for the success of any organization. Knowledge and Technology Adoption, Diffusion, and Transfer: International Perspectives is filled with original scientific and quality research articles on management information systems, technology diffusion, and business systems application aspects of e-commerce, e-government, and mobile application. As a forum of multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary dialogue, it addresses research on all aspects of innovation diffusion in the field of business computing technologies and their past, present, and future use. This title serves as a vital source of information for researchers and practitioners alike.

As the growing relationship between individuals and technology continue to play a vital role in our society and work place, the progress and execution of information technology communication systems is important in maintaining our current way of life. Knowledge and Technological Development Effects on Organizational and Social Structures provides a wide ranging discussion on the exchanging of research ideas and practices in an effort to bring together the social and technical aspects within organizations and society. This collection focuses on new ideas and studies for research, students, and practitioners.

The world of corporate management benefits when organizations realize the profitability, reliability, and flexibility obtained through IT standardization. Toward Corporate IT Standardization Management: Frameworks and Solutions details the IT standards conceptual model through insightful case studies that illustrate the factors affecting the performance of business processes. By offering organizations the opportunity to enhance process performance through IT standardization, this reference work demonstrates the effectiveness of IT standards, and the applicable techniques for implementation and management of such practices. This book features information useful to educators and students in the fields of Information Systems, IT-Management, Business Studies, and Economics, as well as IT practitioners and IS Managers.

The globalised advancements of the business and technological markets in Asia continue to have an international and interdisciplinary effect on economies around the world. Business, Technology, and Knowledge Management in Asia: Trends and Innovations highlights the efforts and developments in the fields of Asian studies as well as its potential role in IT and management within the constant growing business market. This book is a comprehensive collection of research that is useful for policymakers, government officials, academicians, and students alike.

The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations is the first book to teach storytelling as a powerful and formal discipline for organizational change and knowledge management. The book explains how organizations can use certain types of stories ("springboard" stories) to communicate new or envisioned strategies, structures, identities, goals, and values to employees, partners and even customers. Readers will learn techniques by which they can help their organizations become more unified, responsive, and intelligent. Storytelling is a management technique championed by gurus including Peter Senge, Tom Peters and Larry Prusak. Now Stephen Denning, an innovator in the new discipline of organizational storytelling, teaches how to use stories to address challenges fundamental to success in today's information economy.

Asia is a continent of contradictions and boundaries; it offers exciting business opportunities, but is also characterized by unpredictability and conflict. While flexibility and creativity are in the DNA of many startups in China, major players like Xiaomi and Alibaba have also emerged as global giants, challenging established global competitors. The authors of this book show that these companies are crossing various boundaries - between cultures, mindsets, and perspectives. At the same time, Western companies entering Asian markets face challenges that are very different from those on their home turf. This book addresses the needs of current and future managers doing business in Asia, who need to understand the individual, social and business challenges that can arise from crossing boundaries. The respective case studies provide essential insights on how several Asian companies have made impressive strides towards becoming established players; how the revival of local brands and growing pride in local products has become a major challenge for global competition; how the need to actively practice corporate social responsibility in Asian markets is currently challenging many companies; and how the need for individual and team coaching among the members of management to support a company's development has grown tremendously, calling for new solutions.

As the size and complexity of a company change in the course of its evolution it experiences predictable stages of growth. During these stages, a company discovers that what worked in the past no longer works. At such times, managers have to juggle the three variables of organizational evolution--the firM's purpose, its business and management processes, and its human resource issues--and keep them in balance as they reinvent new ways of structuring the firm. Typically, tension develops as one variable is stressed at the expense of the others. Managers need to know how to delegate decision making without abdicating overall control of the organization. The model developed here derives from the authors' understanding of how successful firms have managed these tensions.

Fletcher and Taplin deal with teamwork, leadership, and the nature of dynamic change while successfully avoiding the cliches to which many experts in those areas are prone. They discuss teamwork in the context of wider performance and process issues. They address leadership not by talking about personality traits but by examining the tensions within authority structures as senior managers attempt to reconcile organizational logics (history and past practices that have sustained the firm) and their own definition of the challenges that face the firm. The authors argue that such contradictions follow a predictable pattern. Managers can either ignore the underlying instability or confront it in ways that will ease the transition and sustain the organization's dynamic growth.

In the new knowledge-based economy, our most valued resource is information. Unlike hard assets, such as buildings and machines, information can be easily copied and distributed, often without the owner being aware of the situation. Organizations need to foster an awareness of the vital role people play (in addition to technology) in how information or intelligence is gathered and protected. Equally important is how intelligence is used to develop strategy. Ever-changing competitive, industry, and business environments require constant monitoring. In this compelling new book by a former diplomat, you will learn the secrets (step by step) to developing an intelligence strategy by effective information gathering and analyzing, and then to delivering credible intelligence to senior management. Along the way, you will learn how to better read people and organizations and get them to open up and share information with you- all the while behaving in an ethical, legal manner. Illustrated with real-world anecdotes and personal experiences, Corporate Intelligence Awareness brings this important topic to the attention of today's business leaders. Intelligence Awareness is more than just good intelligence gathering; understanding how intelligence is gathered and processed will keep you ahead of the game, protect your secrets, and secure your competitive edge

A volume in I.S.C.E Book Series: Managing the Complex Series Editors Kurt Richardson and Michael Lissack, ISCE Research It seems as if attempts to use knowledge to understand and manage social networks are everywhere. Millions, if not billions, of dollars are being spent in an attempt to derail terrorist networks, with much of it being invested in making sense of massive data streams. There is growing concern that much of this money is being squandered on approaches that will never deliver on their promises. Our armed forces are being prepared to combat terrorist threats by the introduction of "network centric approaches" and "digital battlefields" - basically attempts to provide warfighters with a complete picture of the battlespace. However, the experience of practitioners suggests that the "data smog" this creates is actually counterproductive. From the arena of politics, the recent invigorating battle between senators Clinton and Obama has thrown the spotlight on the deficiencies in political polling (Economist, 2008b). Changes in the structure of the situation (e.g. high turnouts) have thrown the whole industry into chaos. Complexity is being discounted and the results are stark. The conclusion formed in the media was that the situation was wildly unpredictable (so anyone's to win), and ended up having real consequences for the Democratic challenger in November 2008 (Baldwin, 2008). Turning to business, we find that Societe Generale recently lost $7.2bn as the result of a single rogue trader making a series of bogus transactions amid turbulent markets in 2007 and 2008. There has been much speculation on what was known, when it was known, and who knew it. In other words, we have speculation that this is an example of the role of knowledge in the mismanagement of social networks - with spectacular effect. At a glance, the problems highlighted above seem positively overwhelming. Where do you start? But start we must. Simple "causal and effect" thinking doesn't seem to be able to cut the mustard. There is broad agreement that even if the Kyoto targets were fully met, on schedule, by 2100 it would only delay the warming of the planet by six years (Parry et al., 1998). We need to utilize knowledge in new ways...or maybe uncover insights from old ways. It is hard to think of something more worthy of attention that the role of knowledge in the management of complex systems. In Volume 4 of the Managing the Complex Series we have brought together seventeen essays from authors around the globe to explore the complex systems view of knowledge and its role in social networks. Contributors explore such topics as: the limitations to our knowledge of complex systems, the transfer of knowledge from local to global levels, collaborative knowledge generation, decision making in complex multi-stakeholder situations, organizational learning and innovation, all through the lens of the emerging field of complexity science. The editors hope that this volume will give theorists further avenues to explore in their attempts to understand knowledge creation, maintenance and distribution, and also provide practitioners with new tools to apply in the complex and messy real world.

Utilising technologies, processes, and applications to analyse internal and structured data, business intelligence is a key aspect in the ability of an organization to gather knowledge and develop new opportunities for growth. Principles and Applications of Business Intelligence Research provides the latest ideas and research on the practices and management of business intelligence. Including original research, case studies, and analysis, this comprehensive collection aims to advance the understanding and implementation of business intelligence.

This book describes the setup of digital enterprises and how to manage them, focusing primarily on the important knowledge and essential understanding of digital enterprise management required by managers and decision makers in organizations. It covers ten essential knowledge areas of this field: * Foundation of Digital Enterprise * Technology Foundation and Talent Management for Digital Enterprise * Digital Enterprise Strategy Planning and Implementation * B2C Digital Enterprise: E-tailing * B2C Digital Enterprise: E-Services * B2B Digital Enterprise and Supply Chain * Digital Platforms * Digital Marketing and Advertising * Digital Payment Systems * Mobile Enterprise Overall, this text provides the reader with the basics to understand the rapid development of digitization, facilitated by the dramatic advancements in digital technologies, extensively connected networks, and wider adoption of computing devices (especially mobile devices), as more and more organizations are realizing the strategic importance of digitization (e.g., sustainable growth of the organization, competitive advantage development and enhancement) and are embarking on digital enterprise.

This book identifies, analyzes and discusses the current trends of digitalized, decentralized, and networked physical value creation by focusing on the particular example of 3D printing. In addition to evaluating 3D printing's disruptive potentials against a broader economic background, it also addresses the technology's potential impacts on sustainability and emerging modes of bottom-up and community-based innovation. Emphasizing these topics from economic, technical, social and environmental perspectives, the book offers a multifaceted overview that scrutinizes the scenario of a fundamental transition: from a centralized to a far more decentralized system of value creation.

Ubiquitous Developments in Knowledge Management: Integrations and Trends depicts new technologies, approaches, issues, solutions, and cases that can help an organization implement a knowledge management initiative or provide a knowledge base for the practitioner/academic researcher. This foundational reference contributes to existing knowledge management literature by providing new insight into the continual evolution of the discipline in modern organizations.

Identifying, measuring, and valuing knowledge-based intangible assets: new perspectives highlights the importance of intangible resources in business management, the need for a strategic analysis that enables them to be identified and assessed, and solutions to these challenges. Aimed at executives, practitioners, academics and students, this book demonstrates new models and methods that allow progress to be made on the task of intangibles management, which is the fundamental source of wealth in the knowledge economy.

Dr. Chisholm defines data modelers and data managers. Establishing a common understanding of financial instruments, including the nuances of their underlying contractual structure, is the very foundation of systemic oversight, business process automation, and analytical modeling.

In scheduling theory, the models that have attracted considerable attention during the last two decades allow the processing times to be variable, i.e., to be subjected to various effects that make the actual processing time of a job dependent on its location in a schedule. The impact of these effects includes, but is not limited to, deterioration and learning. Under the first type of effect, the later a job is scheduled, the longer its actual processing time becomes. In the case of learning, delaying a job will result in shorter processing times. Scheduling with Time-Changing Effects and Rate-Modifying Activities covers and advances the state-of-the-art research in this area. The book focuses on single machine and parallel machine scheduling problems to minimize either the maximum completion time or the sum of completion times of all jobs, provided that the processing times are subject to various effects. Models that describe deterioration, learning and general non-monotone effects to be considered include positional, start-time dependent, cumulative and their combinations, which cover most of the traditionally used models. The authors also consider more enhanced models in which the decision-maker may insert certain Rate-Modifying Activities (RMA) on processing machines, such as for example, maintenance or rest periods. In any case, the processing times of jobs are not only dependent on effects mentioned above but also on the place of a job in a schedule relative to an RMA. For most of the enhanced models described in the book, polynomial-time algorithms are presented which are based on similar algorithmic ideas such as reduction to linear assignment problems (in a full form or in a reduced form), discrete convexity, and controlled generation of options.