Knowledge Management is concerned with all aspects of eliciting, acquiring, modelling, and managing knowledge. Application of knowledge resources successfully helps the organization to deliver creative products and services. Especially in service business, service job experience and information about the customer, as well as the installed site equipment, are key factors to deliver services efficiently and with high quality. In many cases supporting information is stored in different backend systems and it needs to be retrieved, aggregated, and presented on demand. Knowledge Management and Drivers of Innovation in Services Industries provides a comprehensive collection of knowledge from experts within the Information and Knowledge Management field. Outlining areas on Knowledge Management, Innovation, Information Technologies and Systems, and Services Industry, this book provides insight for academic professors, policymakers, and students alike.

The United States is becoming an information-based, service economy with fewer middle-income jobs than in an industrial economy. How does increasing service sector employment affect community income and thus social well-being? This well-documented study assesses the impact of changing levels of employment in the service and manufacturing sectors on the level and distribution of community income. The study includes both analyses of low-wage and high-wage service and manufacturing sectors and analyses of major segments of the service sector, including business services and retail trade. Measures of social well-being include changes in community aggregate income, aggregate wages and salaries, distribution of income within the community, and the community's position in the regional hierarchy. Particular attention is given to differences in impact on rural and urban communities. The book will be of interest to those concerned with rural economic development and issues related to inequality and economic and industrial change.

This casebook provides students and academics in business management and marketing with a collection of case studies on services marketing and service operations in emerging economies. It explores current issues and practices in Asia, across different areas, countries, commercial and non-commercial sectors. This book is important and timely in providing a framework for instructors, researchers, and students to understand the service dynamics occurring in these countries. It serves as an invaluable resource for marketing and business management students requiring insights into the operationalization of services across different geographical areas in Asia. Students will find it interesting to compare and contrast different markets covering important aspects related to services.

This fascinating book introduces travelers—of the body or the mind—to a few simple economic concepts that will help them to think differently and more deeply about the differences between the people and the places they visit during their journeys. The principles and mechanics of economics are firmly rooted in everything around us, in our home country as well as in every nation and culture around the world. Having a basic grasp of economics can help all travelers to think more carefully about why things work differently in different places. Armed with this knowledge, readers will be equipped to better appreciate—and learn from—the beauty and complexity of the world around us. The Traveling Economist: Using Economics to Think about What Makes Us All So Different and the Same illustrates important economic concepts that every traveler and world citizen should understand. Employing clear, jargon-free explanations and illustrated with real-life examples, Knoop uniquely focuses on the interplay between travel and economics. He uses our shared travel experiences to illustrate exactly how economic thinking supplies such a powerful framework for understanding the world around us. More than simply explaining economics through travel experiences, this book enables adventurers who desperately want to avoid being tourists—i.e., people who travel to see what they know is there—to become explorers: those who learn each and every day from what they witness.

This study is a comparison of postwar productivity data for 34 British and American manufacturing industries. It examines statistical relationships between observed productivity differences and other variables, interpreting the relative influence of these factors on productivity.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an important element in creating competitive advantages for enterprises in different sectors. The authors guide readers through the different cases studies in order to present the benchmarking of international standards and CSR initiatives, as well as CSR performance evaluation practices. This book aims to identify current problems that can arise during CSR implementation in manufacturing and services companies. Moreover some best practice examples suitable for the introduction of CSR in the small and medium size companies will be described. The authors show how different stakeholders can benefit from sustainable resource management and pro-social behaviors. This book will be a valuable resource for both academics and practitioners who want to deepen their knowledge of CSR. This scientific monograph has been doubled blind reviewed.

Measuring progress in the service sector is closely linked to the ability to develop and implement information systems. As the service sector continues to grow, it is important to investigate what drives the production of intangible goods and overall economic health. Advancing the Service Sector with Evolving Technologies: Techniques and Principles provides a forum for practitioners and researchers to discuss the application of information systems to service creation, modeling, and evolution. Covering foundational concepts and innovations in service management, service-oriented computing, strategic information systems, and Web services, this collection of research aims to shape future research and promote further growth of the service sector.

As other industries, the global travel and tourism industry has been facing immense challenges and highly visible upheaval since the beginning of the new millennium. The International Tourism Exchange ITB Berlin, the world's leading travel trade show, aims at pinpointing the most important challenges, identifying the trends and offering a platform to solve pressing problems. The ITB Convention Market Trends & Innovations has developed into a centre of excellence and a driving force for the global travel and tourism industry, generating a much needed information platform. This compilation unites the highlights of the convention in articles prepared by renowned professionals and scientists from the industry. Readers may benefit from this comprehensive vision of the developments that are shaping the structure of the global tourism industry today and in the future. This book is indispensable for tourism and travel professionals as well as for academics and students anal- ing current global tourism and travel trends.

Financial advisors, poker players, hedge fund traders, fund-raisers, sports agents, credit counselors and commissioned salespeople all deal with one central concern in their jobs: money. In Money at Work, Kevin Delaney explores how we think about money and, particularly, how our jobs influence that thinking. By spotlighting people for whom money is the focus of their work, Delaney illuminates how the daily practices experienced in different jobs create distinct ways of thinking and talking about money and how occupations and their work cultures carry important symbolic, material, and practical messages about money. Delaney takes us deep inside the cultures of these 'moneyed' workers, using both interviews and first-hand observations of many of these occupations. From hedge fund trading rooms in New York, to poker players at work in Las Vegas casinos, to a "Christian money retreat" in a monastery in rural Pennsylvania, Delaney illustrates how the underlying economic conditions of various occupations and careers produce what he calls "money cultures," or ways of understanding the meaning of money, which in turn shape one's economic outlook. Key to this is how some professionals, such as debt counselors, think very differently than say poker players in their regard to money-Delaney argues that it is the structure of these professions themselves that in turn influences monetary attitudes. Fundamentally, Money at Work shows that what people do for a living has a profound effect on how people conceive of money both at work and in their home lives, making clear the connections between the economic and the social, shedding light on some of our most basic values. At a time when conversations about money are increasingly important, Delaney shows that we do not merely learn our attitudes toward money in childhood, but we also learn important money lessons from the work that we do.