This book is a case study in industrial economics, using the computing industry as a base at a time when it was undergoing drastic changes. The objective was to identify and analyze those major forces and mechanisms which account for the evolution of an industry. The approach is to recognize the diversity of enterprises and to explore the interplay between products, production processes and the characteristics of enterprises, including their organization and management systems, which business experience indeed shows can be decisive competitive advantages or disadvantages. One might expect the analysis of competitive processes to be readily available in the economic literature, but most economists treat firms as black boxes, ignoring their differences. Beyond providing the basic concepts and mechanisms, mainstream economics are of little help here, since their fundamental paradigms of competition and equilibrium all but ignore the real-world notions of enterprise, differentiation and competition. To understand the internal working of enterprises, one has to turn to the so-called "management" literature, which unfortunately most often stops at the border of the enterprise and seldom tackles the interplay between internal choices and the workings of the market. The separation of those two disciplines is an essential weakness when considering the subject of this book. Economic theory uses too schematic a view of the firm, and organizational theory has too little concern for the market environment. This book attempts to combine those two strands of thought into one theory of industrial structure. Its subject, one particular industry, is limited enough for theory to be always confronted with the experience of the business professional. At the same time, that subject is comprehensive enough to allow moving beyond a pure monograph and to support the beginnings of new conceptual developments. The same approach and concepts could prove useful in the analysis of other complex industries, and perhaps form a starting point for more general contributions to research into industry structures. This book was originally written in French and published in 1996, based on research done in 1994/1995 and on the statistics available at that time. The author translated it into English, but the French publisher could not find an English-language counterpart. The French version is now out of print and the publisher has renounced the rights. New publishing techniques, including print on demand, now allow an independent publisher to make a book available in printed form with a minimal investment. The world has changed since the book was written, most notably computers and the computing industry. There have been giant advances in microelectronics and in their applications to all walks of life. Many firms and products have disappeared, and many new have emerged. Many catch-phrases are now obsolete; new ones are now popular. Also, the easily accessible industry statistics that I used have been discontinued. Updating the book to 2013 would involve a complete rewrite and extensive additional research. But I happen to believe that the approach and concepts put forward in 1996 are still worth publishing in their original state. Concerning the analytical approach and the conclusions, I leave it to the reader to evaluate which are obsolete and which are still valid today. Concerning the predictions that I ventured at the time on the basis of that analysis, it turns out that they did materialize to a large extent. At any rate, the factual part, i. e. the history and the industry statistics in the period 1950-1995, may still be of interest as far as it goes. Be that as it may, I urge the reader to constantly keep in mind that the book was written in 1995, using data available at that time, relying on the technologies of the time and on whatever literature I was able to lay my hands on. In the context of this book, "today" must always be understood as "in 1995."

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Co-creativity has become a significant cultural and economic phenomenon. Media consumers have become media producers. This book offers a rich description and analysis of the emerging participatory, co-creative relationships within the videogames industry. Banks discusses the challenges of incorporating these co-creative relationships into the development process. Drawing on a decade of research within the industry, the book gives us valuable insight into the continually changing and growing world of video games.

The "Top 25 Telecommunications KPIs of 2011-2012" report provides insights into the state of telecommunications performance measurement today by listing and analyzing the most visited KPIs for this industry on smartKPIs.com in 2011. In addition to KPI names, it contains a detailed description of each KPI, in the standard smartKPIs.com KPI documentation format, that includes fields such as: definition, purpose, calculation, limitation, overall notes and additional resources. This product is part of the "Top KPIs of 2011-2012" series of reports and a result of the research program conducted by the analysts of smartKPIs.com in the area of integrated performance management and measurement. SmartKPIs.com hosts the largest catalogue of thoroughly documented KPI examples, representing an excellent platform for research and dissemination of insights on KPIs and related topics. The hundreds of thousands of visits to smartKPIs.com and the thousands of KPIs visited, bookmarked and rated by members of this online community in 2011 provided a rich data set, which combined with further analysis from the editorial team, formed the basis of these research reports.

Interactive journalism has transformed the newsroom. Emerging out of changes in technology, culture, and economics, this new specialty uses a visual presentation of storytelling that allows users to interact with the reporting of information. Today it stands at a nexus: part of the traditional newsroom, yet still novel enough to contribute innovative practices and thinking to the industry. Nikki Usher brings together a comprehensive portrait of nothing less than a new journalistic identity. Usher provides a history of the impact of digital technology on reporting, photojournalism, graphics, and other disciplines that define interactive journalism. Her eyewitness study of the field's evolution and accomplishments ranges from the interactive creation of Al Jazeera English to the celebrated data desk at the Guardian to the New York Times' Pulitzer-endowed efforts in the new field. What emerges is an illuminating, richly reported profile of the people coding a revolution that may reverse the decline and fall of traditional journalism.

From Pilgrim Pulpit to the Electronic Era fills a long existing void in the study of American public address. In this comprehensive and fascinating discussion of the history and evolution of religious communication in the United States, Professor Cotham has provided a lexicon of a wide range of speakers--from early colonial preachers to modern-day religious and spiritual leaders. Fortunately, the text has included an examination of various non-Christian religious leaders and speakers including American Muslims, Native Americans, and American Jews. Women, African-Americans; national political speakers are included as are writers, artists, and even entertainers.

While well-researched and amply illustrated, the text is narrated with an engaging and readable style that appeals both to university students and general readers. What an excellent classroom text And what a welcome addition to the library of anyone seeking to understand how religious communication has been instrumental in shaping our American history and our American culture --Margaret McCree, Professor, Middle Tennessee State University

This book analyzes and integrates various perspectives on the impact of e-business technologies on supply chain practices and performances. Relying on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, the authors designed a comprehensive conceptual framework within which to examine the performance implications of e business technologies. This framework can be used to compare e-business technologies to other types of information technology (IT), and it can also function as a tool for further investigations into supply chain management (SCM) relationships. After a brief introduction, a review of RBV will formulate the main theoretical grounding for this work. Next, an RBV-based integrative model of e-business value is presented that provides a basis for structuring a review of accumulated knowledge, for identifying gaps in the knowledge, and for developing propositions to guide future research. The fourth section describes the methodology, explaining how papers were selected for the review. The results can be found in the fifth section, including the analyses of the variables, the underlying theoretical perspectives, and the literature synthesis. In the sixth section, the authors discuss and highlight the main theoretical issues related to the results. The monograph concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the research and suggests avenues for future research.

A revealing and gripping investigation into how social media platforms police what we post online-and the large societal impact of these decisions Most users want their Twitter feed, Facebook page, and YouTube comments to be free of harassment and porn. Whether faced with "fake news" or livestreamed violence, "content moderators"-who censor or promote user-posted content-have never been more important. This is especially true when the tools that social media platforms use to curb trolling, ban hate speech, and censor pornography can also silence the speech you need to hear. In this revealing and nuanced exploration, award-winning sociologist and cultural observer Tarleton Gillespie provides an overview of current social media practices and explains the underlying rationales for how, when, and why these policies are enforced. In doing so, Gillespie highlights that content moderation receives too little public scrutiny even as it is shapes social norms and creates consequences for public discourse, cultural production, and the fabric of society. Based on interviews with content moderators, creators, and consumers, this accessible, timely book is a must-read for anyone who's ever clicked "like" or "retweet."