There are many books written for the accounting and finance community. However, there are very few books written to help the non-financial career professionals who still need to understand the conceptual fundamentals of accounting and finance. In 20 years of teaching this material to non-financial professionals, Dr. Bonner has perfected a teaching approach that works to help the non-financial professional engage with the material to use financial information in leveraging their career without becoming overloaded with information that is not helpful to them. Learning this material takes repetition, application, and building the thinking processes necessary for effectiveness. Many think the challenge with finance is the math, but as this book will demonstrate, it is a conceptual problem. If you understand the conceptual framework, you will understand the math. Dr. Julie Bonner is currently a tenured professor at Central Washington University in the information technology and administrative management department. Her career has spanned business and education for over 30 years. Initially, she received a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting, whereafter she earned an MBA and then a doctorate in organizational leadership.

Triggered largely by claims that small businesses were the main source of new jobs, an 'explosion' of interest in enterprise, entrepreneurs and small business has led to the establishment of a conventional wisdom about enterprise. Mistaken theories can become influential and examining the conventional enterprise wisdom indicates that much of it is questionable. If that is the case, a reassessment is needed. While wilful blindness and continuing to do more of the same is a natural response, it will not lead to improvements in knowledge. A new paradigm requires a step change in thinking, which is not easy to initiate. Nevertheless, accepting the evidence for the errors in current understanding and practice is a necessary first step if enterprise and its benefits are to be better understood and promoted. This book examines the conventional wisdom around enterprise, entrepreneurs and small businesses and illustrates not only why and how this could have evolved, but also why it could be based on a set of mistaken assumptions. Correcting the foundational knowledge on which enterprise and policy and practice rely and finding a new paradigm will result in better teaching and more effective policy. It will therefore be of interest to researchers, academics, students and policy makers in the fields of enterprise and entrepreneurship.

The International Conference on Informatics and Management Science (IMS) 2012 will be held on November 16-19, 2012, in Chongqing, China, which is organized by Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanyang Technological University, University of Michigan, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, and sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). The objective of IMS 2012 is to facilitate an exchange of information on best practices for the latest research advances in a range of areas. Informatics and Management Science contains over 600 contributions to suggest and inspire solutions and methods drawing from multiple disciplines including: * Computer Science * Communications and Electrical Engineering * Management Science * Service Science * Business Intelligence

Uses practical business cases in regional Australia to illustrate opportunities and challenges confronting businesses in non metropolitan regions

The fourth edition of this classic textbook provides major updates. This edition has completely new chapters on Big Data Platforms (distributed storage systems, MapReduce, Spark, data stream processing, graph analytics) and on NoSQL, NewSQL and polystore systems. It also includes an updated web data management chapter that includes RDF and semantic web discussion, an integrated database integration chapter focusing both on schema integration and querying over these systems. The peer-to-peer computing chapter has been updated with a discussion of blockchains. The chapters that describe classical distributed and parallel database technology have all been updated. The new edition covers the breadth and depth of the field from a modern viewpoint. Graduate students, as well as senior undergraduate students studying computer science and other related fields will use this book as a primary textbook. Researchers working in computer science will also find this textbook useful. This textbook has a companion web site that includes background information on relational database fundamentals, query processing, transaction management, and computer networks for those who might need this background. The web site also includes all the figures and presentation slides as well as solutions to exercises (restricted to instructors).

The Middle East was the region least impacted in the 2008 crisis, has investment systems markedly different to the West, is largely governed by Islamic Shari'a, and has varying forms of governance and institutional organization, which are not understood by many, nor how these systems shape entrepreneurial and industrial development. While the Middle East as a region has seen a small growth in entrepreneurship for women, and business scholarship on the Middle East has grown, there is no text in English that has brought critical insights from the Middle East together in a single volume. In examining women's entrepreneurship in the Middle East, this book aims to challenge Global North assumptions about the disempowering impacts of Islamic Shari'a and governance. Referring to the constraints of Islam on women's subjectivity and agency greatly misunderstands religious identity, of both men and women, and the way in which public administration and private sector institutions are organized in very different ways to Western regions. This timely text expands and adds new insights to the theorizations of women's entrepreneurship in the Middle East, through unravelling spatialized themes, and incorporates contemporary themes including: an Islamic science reading of women, work and venturing; changing families and entrepreneurship development; women managing social crises; Islamization, governance and women; Islamic feminist activisms and entrepreneurship; representations of women's entrepreneurship on social media; and women's collectives leading entrepreneurship via Facebook entrepreneurship. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of entrepreneurship, gender, work and organizations.

This open access book provides an overview of the dissertations of the eleven nominees for the Ernst Denert Award for Software Engineering in 2020. The prize, kindly sponsored by the Gerlind & Ernst Denert Stiftung, is awarded for excellent work within the discipline of Software Engineering, which includes methods, tools and procedures for better and efficient development of high quality software. An essential requirement for the nominated work is its applicability and usability in industrial practice. The book contains eleven papers that describe the works by Jonathan Brachthauser (EPFL Lausanne) entitled What You See Is What You Get: Practical Effect Handlers in Capability-Passing Style, Mojdeh Golagha's (Fortiss, Munich) thesis How to Effectively Reduce Failure Analysis Time?, Nikolay Harutyunyan's (FAU Erlangen-Nurnberg) work on Open Source Software Governance, Dominic Henze's (TU Munich) research about Dynamically Scalable Fog Architectures, Anne Hess's (Fraunhofer IESE, Kaiserslautern) work on Crossing Disciplinary Borders to Improve Requirements Communication, Istvan Koren's (RWTH Aachen U) thesis DevOpsUse: A Community-Oriented Methodology for Societal Software Engineering, Yannic Noller's (NU Singapore) work on Hybrid Differential Software Testing, Dominic Steinhofel's (TU Darmstadt) thesis entitled Ever Change a Running System: Structured Software Reengineering Using Automatically Proven-Correct Transformation Rules, Peter Wagemann's (FAU Erlangen-Nurnberg) work Static Worst-Case Analyses and Their Validation Techniques for Safety-Critical Systems, Michael von Wenckstern's (RWTH Aachen U) research on Improving the Model-Based Systems Engineering Process, and Franz Zieris's (FU Berlin) thesis on Understanding How Pair Programming Actually Works in Industry: Mechanisms, Patterns, and Dynamics - which actually won the award. The chapters describe key findings of the respective works, show their relevance and applicability to practice and industrial software engineering projects, and provide additional information and findings that have only been discovered afterwards, e.g. when applying the results in industry. This way, the book is not only interesting to other researchers, but also to industrial software professionals who would like to learn about the application of state-of-the-art methods in their daily work.

This publication is in collaboration with the University of Buckingham and is the result of a combined research and review process carried out by the three Editors who belongs to the University of Ferrara, Italy, the University of Buckingham, UK and Swansea University, UK. The book deepens the debate about the lean enterprise from both an academic and a professional management perspective. It thus provides the reader with a sound understanding of the modern lean enterprise and its current evolution. A range of innovative topics are covered, with individual chapters addressing the combinations of lean with hoshin kanri, green management, IT, organizational learning, flow accounting, system thinking, problem solving, internationalization aspects, luxury industry, and product innovation. Since the term "lean" first entered contemporary operations management language in 1990 to describe a set of practices proven to deliver superior performance over mass production systems, the lean approach to waste reduction and value generation has moved from vehicle production to other manufacturing sectors. It has reshaped the support functions of manufacturing businesses and has evolved from private industry into the public sector. Lean thinking is now a dominant model of operations management and has brought with it a new language and toolbox.

State-owned enterprises make up roughly 10 percent of the world economy, yet they are woefully understudied. This handbook offers the first synthesis of the topic since the 1980s and offers a comprehensive reference for a generation. The authors provide a detailed explanation of the theory that underpins the expansion of state-owned enterprises in the 21st century. Each chapter delivers an overview of current knowledge, as well as identifying issues and relevant debates for future research. The authors explain how state-owned enterprises are used in both developed and developing countries and offer an insight into complex and fascinating organizations such as the German municipal conglomerates or the multinational companies owned by states. New modes of governance and regulation have been invented to make sure they act in the public interest. This handbook brings together a wealth of international scholars, offering multiple theoretical perspectives to help shape a brave new world. It will be of interest to teachers and students of Economics, Public Administration and Business, academics, established researchers and PhD students seeking rigorous literature reviews on specific aspects of SOEs, as well as practitioners and decision makers in international organizations.

Practicing business with a conscience leaves no sector untouched. It trickles into how we treat our employees; approach our work in general; address stakeholders; engage in accounting, financial, and production management practices; implement and manage information technology; communicate on a direct and indirect basis; and market what we stand for. Business has encountered an interesting evolution in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, with social media as a catalyst aiding greater understanding and improvement regarding the critical value of soft skills, workplace diversity, change readiness, moral responsibility, sustainable awareness, and a general socially responsible mindset. This amalgamate spirit of business as we envision it in both the near and far future has found its way in all segments of business education, research, and practice. Adhering to the global trend of increased responsibility and evoking a constructive change in the narrative of business, this Research Companion serves as a critical reference work for business scholars and practitioners in various settings. It brings together contributing scholars from multiple business areas, from a variety of cultures and locations of the world, in order to achieve the compilation of a reference work that will find an expansive appeal. Including insights from the broad business spectrum ranging from internal managerial practices to strategic applications, including international sensitivity, this volume highlights the urgency for increased awareness in business decision-making on all fronts. It will be of great value to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of corporate social responsibility, business ethics, leadership, organizational studies, and entrepreneurship.

This book presents the concept of a fuzzy-based recommender system for user account privacy settings that can be used for citizen participation on online political platforms. The elaborated components are exemplarily based on the needs of a political platform implemented during the presidential election in Ecuador. The book readdresses the issue of privacy paradox demonstrating that, indeed, users' actual decisions of being private in most cases diverge with their initial privacy intentions. The two concepts presented in the book - the citizen privacy profile framework and the prototype fuzzy-based privacy settings recommender system - can be adapted by different organizations such as government institutions, NGOs, or private online service providers to meet their specific needs. The book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the areas of usage modeling, privacy, system design, and for service providers in eDemocracy.

This book examines and critiques classical approaches to strategic analysis, whilst exploring alternative methods which utilise ecosystem and platform concepts, as well as chaos and complexity theories. The innovative study provides a critique of the neoclassical Newtonian school of strategy, and proves it to be largely inappropriate as a decision-making methodology in today's internet-based market. By developing a new biological hydrothermal vent model in which analogical comparisons are made with the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector, the chapters challenge existing paradigms of competitive advantage and analyse the extent to which the Internet can be considered to be an ecosystem in its own right. The Internet as a Technology-Based Eco-System offers a range of alternative models and analytical frameworks for the analysis of internet-based technology companies in the twenty-first century, creating a valuable tool for students and academics undertaking research in strategy, technology and electronic engineering.

Electronic payment is the economic backbone of all e-commerce transactions. This book covers the major subjects related to e-payment such as, for example, public key infrastructure, smart cards, payment agents, digital cash, SET protocols, and micro-payment. Its first part covers the infrastructure for secure e-payment over the Internet, whereas in the second part a variety of e-payment methods and systems are described. This edited volume offers a well-written and sound technical overview of the state of the art in e-payment for e-business developers, graduate students, and consultants. It is also ideally suited for classes and training courses in e-commerce or e-payment.

Covers the largest scope of developing, emerging and transition economies (DETE). Investigates a full set of factors including context, financial strategy, innovation and performance of firms in DETE. Looks at both the challenges and opportunities of entrepreneurship, finance, innovation and development in DETE. Provides insightful business and policy implications. Contributions come from researchers and practitioners around the world, who focus on entrepreneurial finance, innovation and developmental issues of DETE in Asia, Europe, Africa, and America.

This book investigates the formation, configuration and consolidation of elites amongst Kenya's Maasai. The Maasai ethnic group is one of the world's most anthropologized populations, but research tends to focus on what appears to be their dismal situation, analysing how their culture hinders or challenges modern ideas of economic and political development. This book instead focuses on the Maasai men and women who rise to the position of elites, overcoming the odds to take on positions as politicians, professors, CEOs, and high-end administrators. The twenty-first century has seen new opportunities for progression beyond the social reproduction of family wealth, with NGOs, missionaries, tourists and researchers providing new sources of global capital flows. The author, who is Maasai herself, demonstrates the diverse local, national, and global resources and opportunities which lead to social mobility and elite formation. The book also shows how female elites have been able to navigate a patriarchal society in their journey to attaining and maintaining elite status. This book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of anthropology, political science, international development, sociology, and African studies.

Supporting employee entrepreneurship is among major challenges contemporary organizations face. Many facets of corporate entrepreneurship are investigated, and the body of knowledge in the field is growing rapidly; nevertheless, there are still knowledge and research gaps to be filled. Notably, while there are studies linking HRM with corporate entrepreneurship, studies on connections between CSR-oriented practices and corporate/employee entrepreneurship are to be developed. The main goal of this book is to explain relationships between corporate volunteering and employee entrepreneurship in organisations. The book combines two extremely vivid fields of research: entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility. Based on their own research, the authors present how participation in corporate volunteering, as one of the CSR practices in organisations, leads to strengthening employee entrepreneurial behaviour. The book offers a framework showing the role of CSR practices in shaping entrepreneurial and innovative employees' behaviour. This book is aimed mainly at postgraduates, researchers and academics in the fields of entrepreneurship and corporate volunteering. As it touches vital fields of managerial education and management, it will also be of interest to master level students at universities or business schools as well as business practitioners.

Grain boundaries are important structural components of polycrystalline materials used in the vast majority of technical applications. Because grain boundaries form a continuous network throughout such materials, their properties may limit their practical use. One of the serious phenomena which evoke these limitations is the grain boundary segregation of impurities. It results in the loss of grain boundary cohesion and consequently, in brittle fracture of the materials. The current book deals with fundamentals of grain boundary segregation in metallic materials and its relationship to the grain boundary structure, classification and other materials properties.

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.

For decades, outsourcing has been a major international phenomenon in business. The areas of Technology, Information Technology and Management represent a unique case for outsourcing both in terms of benefits and potential interorganisational problems. This fully updated text has been brought up to date with this new landscape, including discussion of Robotic Process Automation, Internet of Things, cloud computing, low code and DevOps and agile. With a range of new global case studies in manufacturing, logistics, chemical industry and cloud services, this textbook offers a strong grounding in real-world industrial experience that effectively combines theory with practice. Uniquely, this book focuses on both sides of the outsourcing relationship, providing a balanced exploration of the ways in which these partnerships can be managed successfully. Accessible and cutting-edge, the third edition of Managing Information Technology Outsourcing provides an in-depth, practical perspective on this important and far-reaching challenge in information technology management. It is an ideal text for students, academics and practitioners alike.

The book addresses the prevalent digital transformation and focuses on its significant disruption in healthcare. In light of the distinctive characteristics and evolution of the Chinese healthcare industry, private multi-sided platform (MSP) companies emerge to offer novel values and explore the industry value chain. Drawing on the management and economics literature of MSPs, this book examines the selected Chinese MSPs and compares them with the counterpart MSPs in the U.S. This analysis highlights how the unfolding healthcare disruption is valuable for both scholars and practitioners to understand the trends and to take effective actions. "Disruptive Innovation through Digital Transformation: Multi-Sided Platforms of E-Health in China" provides readers in the developing and developed countries with insights on how to approach the current multi-sided platform and to resolve the current problems to better serve customers and patients in the healthcare market.

Whilst other countries in Asia particularly China and India have been studied in terms of entrepreneurial endeavours, there is a lack of research on Indonesia despite it being amongst the fastest growing economies in the world. Indonesia is also one of the largest recipients of venture capital in Asia. This book looks at the growth of entrepreneurship in Indonesia from artisan and cultural endeavours to an increased awareness of digital and technology-based forms of entrepreneurship. The book examines the distinct cultural heritage of people in Indonesia towards entrepreneurial pursuits and analyses the role family and minority businesses play in the development of entrepreneurial capabilities. It stresses the need to focus on more categories of entrepreneurship in Indonesia such as artisan, tourism and sustainability in order to facilitate the growth of digital-based startups. This book will be amongst the first to explore how Indonesia is leaping ahead of competitors in its quest to be a dominant world power through its entrepreneurial pursuits.

This book provides an understanding of innovation models and why they are important in the business context, and considers sources of innovation and how to apply business frameworks using real-world examples of innovation-led businesses. After providing a solid background to the key concepts related to innovation models, the book looks at why innovation takes place and where the sources of innovation lie, from corporate research to crowd-sourced and government-funded initiatives. Innovation models across manufacturing, services and government are explored, as well as measuring innovation, and the impact of design thinking and lean enterprise principles on innovation and sustainability-driven imperatives. Offering a truly comprehensive and global approach, Business Innovation should be core or recommended reading for advanced undergraduate, postgraduate, MBA and Executive Education students studying Innovation Management, Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship.

The second volume of this edited collection offers a number of contributions from leading scholars investigating Blockchain and its implications for business. Focusing on the transformation of the overall value chain, the sections cover the foundations of Blockchain and its sustainability, social and legal applications. It features a variety of use cases, from tourism to healthcare. Using a number of theoretical and methodological approaches, this innovative publication aims to further the cause of this ground-breaking technology and its use within information technology, supply chain and wider business management research.

Organizations can make data science a repeatable, predictable tool, which business professionals use to get more value from their data Enterprise data and AI projects are often scattershot, underbaked, siloed, and not adaptable to predictable business changes. As a result, the vast majority fail. These expensive quagmires can be avoided, and this book explains precisely how. Data science is emerging as a hands-on tool for not just data scientists, but business professionals as well. Managers, directors, IT leaders, and analysts must expand their use of data science capabilities for the organization to stay competitive. Smarter Data Science helps them achieve their enterprise-grade data projects and AI goals. It serves as a guide to building a robust and comprehensive information architecture program that enables sustainable and scalable AI deployments. When an organization manages its data effectively, its data science program becomes a fully scalable function that's both prescriptive and repeatable. With an understanding of data science principles, practitioners are also empowered to lead their organizations in establishing and deploying viable AI. They employ the tools of machine learning, deep learning, and AI to extract greater value from data for the benefit of the enterprise. By following a ladder framework that promotes prescriptive capabilities, organizations can make data science accessible to a range of team members, democratizing data science throughout the organization. Companies that collect, organize, and analyze data can move forward to additional data science achievements: Improving time-to-value with infused AI models for common use cases Optimizing knowledge work and business processes Utilizing AI-based business intelligence and data visualization Establishing a data topology to support general or highly specialized needs Successfully completing AI projects in a predictable manner Coordinating the use of AI from any compute node. From inner edges to outer edges: cloud, fog, and mist computing When they climb the ladder presented in this book, businesspeople and data scientists alike will be able to improve and foster repeatable capabilities. They will have the knowledge to maximize their AI and data assets for the benefit of their organizations.

This book provides a historical economic analysis of two key issues relating to township and village enterprise (TVE) development in China. Firstly, the nature of the evolving relationship between TVEs and local government; in particular how TVE entrepreneurs have used institutionalized power to secure the political influence needed to defend their financial independence. Secondly, the relationship between TVEs and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the role of SOEs in China's economic transition. This study highlights the importance of the role of SOEs in the "dual-track pricing system" and its impact on other parts of the economy. Township and village enterprises were key to China's success in the late twentieth century, but have more or less disappeared as an entity over the past decade or so. By measuring the structural difference of the SOE sector before and after 1998-2003 SOE reform, Jin explains their fast catch-up in productivity since the mid-1990s, as well as the relative decline of TVE productivity.