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.

* Provides tailored guidance for entrepreneurs who are also life partners, and women entrepreneurs, based on the authors' decades of successful experience * Covers such important issues for all entrepreneurs as risk tolerance and mitigation, infrastructure scaling, and exit strategy * Offers insights on trends and opportunities for entrepreneurs in a post-COVID19 world

Achieving Successful Business Outcomes: Driving High Performance & Effective Transformations in a Continuously Evolving Business Environment Navigating in space is exponentially more difficult than navigating on the road - because there are too many directions to investigate, too many unknowns to be prepared for and infinite pathways to chart in the galactic system. So it is with business. Business environments are extremely demanding and change continuously, precipitated by innumerable actors and conditions. Business success cannot be predicated on the pedigree of a leader or a prescribed theory alone, as start-ups have amply proven. Large companies have tried to copy nimble-footed start-ups while start-ups, after achieving a certain size, have been forced to adapt to unchartered territory. Disruptions seems to be the order of the day. This book is about achieving successful business outcomes. An aircraft has a complex dashboard of dials, where only a critical few need to be monitored continuously, and other subsets warrant attention only during specific phases of the flight. A well-modeled business can be managed successfully using a similar strategy. But the larger question is how to model a business, with closely correlated variables, to represent the reality of the environment and to allow for devising, formulating and adjusting business strategy and actions in real-time. The author uses a simple but well-researched STA-Triangle (space, time and action) model to achieve this purpose. The core of the STA model is to help navigate effectively in a rapidly changing business environment. Unlike traditional business studies that use a single lens to define business rules or organizational practices, it uses the combination of space, time and action as the driver of outcomes - something fundamental and core to human thinking across the ages. This book contains both theoretical and practical applications - the former helps propel further research and analysis and the latter helps practicing leaders confidently drive their firms forward in any environmental conditions. It will also help causal readers understand how the future is evolving and how different organizations are responding to this change. The author includes more than a hundred supporting examples and tools that help create highly incisive and unique views for calibrating strategy and execution. Visit the authors' website at www.alokksinha.com

The Covid-19 pandemic has induced a crisis grasping the world abruptly, simultaneously, and swiftly. As a critical juncture, it ignited a change of era for international business. This book illustrates how governments have dealt with the pandemic and the consequent impacts on international business. It also explores the disrupted operations and responses of businesses as their worldwide interconnectivity has been seriously threatened. The book discourses multidirectional aspects of the effects of Covid-19 on international business, ranging from the juxtaposing forces disrupting globalization and installing a change of era through decoupling of technological, production and knowledge flows to its stimulating aspects to the strategic response on business, industry and state level. The book contains thirty chapters that offer a multidimensional interpretation of impacts of Covid-19 on international business theory and practice. Employing the latest state of knowledge on the topic, the book is aimed at international business audience - scholars, students and managers who need to understand better the nature, scope and scale of the impacts of the pandemic on international business.

The GCBME Book Series aims to promote the quality and methodical reach of the Global Conference on Business Management & Entrepreneurship, which is intended as a high-quality scientific contribution to the science of business management and entrepreneurship. The Contributions are expected to be the main reference articles on the topic of each book and have been subject to a strict peer review process conducted by experts in the fields. The conference provided opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and implementation of experiences, to establish business or research connections and to find Global Partners for future collaboration. The conference and resulting volume in the book series is expected to be held and appear annually. The year 2019 theme of book and conference is "Transforming Sustainable Business In The Era Of Society 5.0". The ultimate goal of GCBME is to provide a medium forum for educators, researchers, scholars, managers, graduate students and professional business persons from the diverse cultural backgrounds, to present and discuss their research, knowledge and innovation within the fields of business, management and entrepreneurship. The GCBME conferences cover major thematic groups, yet opens to other relevant topics: Organizational Behavior, Innovation, Marketing Management, Financial Management and Accounting, Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship and Green Business.

* Provides tailored guidance for entrepreneurs who are also life partners, and women entrepreneurs, based on the authors' decades of successful experience * Covers such important issues for all entrepreneurs as risk tolerance and mitigation, infrastructure scaling, and exit strategy * Offers insights on trends and opportunities for entrepreneurs in a post-COVID19 world

Who will lead your organization into the future? Have you created the systems to properly implement required succession transitions? Have you put the financial tools in place to fund the transition? Do you want a plan that connects with your personal and company core values? When do you include timely planning related to strategy and talent issues? What are the appropriate communication strategies for sharing your plan? What legal issues need consideration related to the strategy, financial, and people aspects of succession? So, what is preventing you from starting this effort tomorrow? Small and family businesses are the bedrock of all businesses. More people are employed by small and family-owned businesses than by all multinational companies combined. Yet the research on small and family businesses is bleak: fewer than one-third of small business owners in the United States can afford to retire. Only 40% of small businesses have a workable disaster plan in case of the sudden death or disability of the owner, and only 42% of small businesses in the United States have a succession plan. Fewer than 11% of family-owned businesses make it to the third generation beyond the founder. Lack of succession planning is the second most common reason for small business failure. Many organizations often wonder where to start and what to do. Succession Planning for Small and Family Businesses: Navigating Successful Transitions presents a comprehensive approach to guiding such efforts. Small and family-owned businesses rarely employ first-rate, well-qualified talent in human resources. More typically, business owners must be jacks-of-all-trades and serve as their own accountants, lawyers, business consultants, marketing experts, and HR wizards. Unfortunately, that does not always work well when business owners embark on planning for retirement or business exits. To help business owners avert problems, this book advises on some of the management, tax and financial, legal, and psychological issues that should be considered when planning retirement or other exits from the business. This comprehensive approach is unique when compared to the books, articles, and other literature that currently exist on the market. This book takes on a bold and integrated approach. Relevant research combined with the rich experiences of the authors connects this thorough, evidence-based approach to action-based approaches for the reader.

This book surveys big data tools used in macroeconomic forecasting and addresses related econometric issues, including how to capture dynamic relationships among variables; how to select parsimonious models; how to deal with model uncertainty, instability, non-stationarity, and mixed frequency data; and how to evaluate forecasts, among others. Each chapter is self-contained with references, and provides solid background information, while also reviewing the latest advances in the field. Accordingly, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers, professional forecasters, and students of quantitative economics.