This editorial book presents twelve contributions from the German "Wirtschaftsinformatik"
that exemplify the contemporary approach of theory-guided modeling and empiricism which complements existing approaches. It summarizes recent research which has been presented at major international and national conferences in order to demonstrate the growing importance of this stream
of research.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Enterprise Applications and Services in the Finance Industry, FinanceCom2008, held in Paris, France, on December 13, 2008. The workshop spans multiple disciplines, including technical, economic, sociological and behavioral sciences. The guiding theme of this workshop was concerned with innovations in the financial services industry, driven by either new business models or changed regulations.

The nine presented papers and the keynote speech were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The topics covered are financial markets and customers, service-oriented architectures, and regulation and compliance.

Therapiddevelopmentandadoptionoftechnology-basedinformation,commu- cationandproductdeliverysystemshavefacilitatedglobalizationofthe?nancial services industry and removed the barriers between its vertical segments. New business and market models require the adaptation of existing IT infrastr- tures as well as the development of innovative solutions for both experimental and operational systems. In this context, several aspects are creating a highly innovative and at the same time competitive setup in the ?nancial industry. In the workshop series on enterprise applications and services in the ?nance industry (FinanceCom), we try to capture this development. Here, service-oriented computing concepts and architecturesplayamajorrole.Whenapplyingthesenovelconceptsintheba- ing and?nancesector,thebusiness valueofsucharchitectureshasto beassessed quantitatively. Also, the heterogeneous and evolving service-oriented modeling methodologies have to be evaluated. Pulling these novel modeling methodo- gies up to a larger picture, the technology-driventransformation of the ?nancial industry is emphasized, where a highly fragmented and heterogeneous situation is currently developing towards banking value networks. In this ?eld, ?nancial business standardization and the introduction of st- dardized service modules play a core role. Applying standardized services c- tainly allows one to utilize economies of scale in a better way and hence fosters outsourcing and o?shoring tendencies in the sector of banking information s- tems. While addressing this aspect, of course novel technologies that are being developedin other ?elds also entering the banking and ?nance domain.Web s- vicesandgridcomputing aretwo importantexamples.However,thesestandards can only be utilized when being applied homogeneously in ?nancial systems. As an example, international standards such as the "markets and ?nancial inst- ments directive (MiFID)" of the European Union are of key interest.

Standards play a prominent role in systems characterized by interaction. In information systems, standards provide for compatibility and are a prerequisite for collaboration benefits. More generally speaking, standards constitute networks. In this work, a standardization framework based on an analysis of deficiencies of network effect theory and a game theoretic network equilibrium analysis is developed. Fundamental determinants of diffusion processes in networks (e.g. network topology, agent size, installed base) are identified and incorporated into a computer-based simulation model. As a result, typical network behaviour (specific diffusion patterns) can be explained and many findings from traditional network effect theory can be described as special cases of the model at particular parameter constellations (e.g. low price, high density). On this basis, solution strategies for standardization problems are developed, and a methodological path towards a unified theory of networks is proposed.