Future Intelligent Systems and Networks 2019

In this Special Issue, we present current developments and future directions of future intelligent systems and networks. This is the second Special Issue regarding the future of the Internet. This subject remains of interest for firms applying technological possibilities to promote more innovative business models. This Special Issue widens the application of intelligent systems and networks to firms so that they can evolve to more innovative models. The five contributions highlight useful applications, business models, or innovative practices based on intelligent systems and networks. We hope our findings become an inspiration for firms operating in various industries

Contributions of Smart City Solutions and Technologies to Resilience against the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Literature Review

Since its emergence in late 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has swept through many cities around the world, claiming millions of lives and causing major socio-economic impacts. The pandemic occurred at an important historical juncture when smart solutions and technologies have become ubiquitous in many cities. Against this background, in this review, we examine how smart city solutions and technologies have contributed to resilience by enhancing planning, absorption, recovery, and adaptation abilities. For this purpose, we reviewed 147 studies that have discussed issues related to the use of smart solutions and technologies during the pandemic. The results were synthesized under four themes, namely, planning and preparation, absorption, recovery, and adaptation. This review shows that investment in smart city initiatives can enhance the planning and preparation ability. In addition, the adoption of smart solutions and technologies can, among other things, enhance the capacity of cities to predict pandemic patterns, facilitate an integrated and timely response, minimize or postpone transmission of the virus, provide support to overstretched sectors, minimize supply chain disruption, ensure continuity of basic services, and offer solutions for optimizing city operations. These are promising results that demonstrate the utility of smart solutions for enhancing resilience. However, it should be noted that realizing this potential hinges on careful attention to important issues and challenges related to privacy and security, access to open-source data, technological affordance, legal barriers, technological feasibility, and citizen engagement. Despite this, this review shows that further development of smart city initiatives can provide unprecedented opportunities for enhancing resilience to the pandemic and similar future events

Changing Business models for Sustainability: Role of drivers and dynamic capabilities in Arctic nature tourism

This thesis investigates nature tourism companies, which strive to incorporate sustainability into their business models and change them to be more resilient. For this purpose, it adopts a dynamic perspective on business models by which companies address corporate sustainability which is understood here as a balance among environmental, social, and economic pillars as well as a sustainable competitive advantage. Past studies overlooked the significance of a systematic analysis of drivers and enablers of change as a way to explain how business models are stimulated and changed. Thus, this thesis aims to answer this overall research question: What are the key drivers and dynamic capabilities underlying business model change for sustainability, and how do they give rise to business model changes for sustainability? Four sub-research questions are formulated across three studies: one systematic literature review and two empirical qualitative studies. Article 1 was inspired by the existing literature regarding a prominent knowledge gap in terms of the theorization of business models in tourism research compared to management research. This study resides in a systematic literature review of nature tourism literature about the conceptualization and operationalization of business models with respect to sustainability and innovation. Article 2 follows a qualitative multiple-case study design to comparatively examine five nature tourism companies to explore how their business models are driven to incorporate sustainability aspects. This study differentiates these business models in terms of sustainability integration and underlying drivers to shed light on crucial driving factors in terms of how they can drive various business models to embed sustainability. Article 3 relies on a longitudinal qualitative design to study how nature tourism companies handled the COVID-19 crisis and enhanced their resilience by changing their business models through building dynamic capabilities. To address the temporal aspects of dynamic capabilities and business model changes, two rounds of interviews were held with seven tourism entrepreneurs. This article regards the crisis as a driver underlying the building of dynamic capabilities that set the stage for business model changes. Given the conceptual contribution of individual articles, article 1 stresses that business models are relevant tools to set off the desired changes and innovations and contributes to sustainable business model research by offering insight into how past nature tourism studies applied the concept of business model with respect to sustainability and innovation. By identifying knowledge gaps in the literature on the nature tourism business models, this study yields two empirical qualitative articles, articles 2 and 3. Article 2 contributes to sustainable business model literature by refining and extending past typologies of drivers for sustainability embeddedness by clarifying how drivers perform empirically across different business models, particularly in nature tourism. Compared to article 2, article 3 seeks to probe more closely into firms via their respective dynamic capabilities and underlying practices, which enable business model changes to be either radical (innovations) or incremental (adjustments). While article 2 considers sustainability in terms of social and environmental aspects in addition to the economic aspect, article 3 conceptualizes sustainability in light of resilience. Article 3 proposes a taxonomy of dynamic capability-based practices and contributes to the dynamic capabilities and business model innovation literature in times of crisis. Above all, this thesis contributes to filling the noteworthy knowledge gap in terms of the lack of a systematic and thorough explanation of the relevant key drivers and dynamic capabilities to illustrate business model changes for sustainability. Notably, it makes novel theoretical contributions to the research stream of business model innovations for sustainability. Relatedly, this research clarifies how critical driving factors and dynamic capability-based practices stimulate and facilitate business model changes. This is done in this thesis by differentiating drivers and dynamic capabilities, but at the same time seeing them as closely linked. Hence, by applying a dynamic perspective on business models, the overall findings demonstrate how business models are driven, enabled, and changed to embed sustainability and enhance resilience. This thesis argues that business model design is a continuous task and not a one-time practice. Moreover, the overall results of this thesis provide useful insights into business models in nature tourism in two different situations: a competitive environment before the crisis and a turbulent environment during the crisis. More importantly, as the findings of articles 2 and 3 suggest, the focus of change might vary to ensure a proper balance among economic, social, and environmental aspects. This thesis concludes with some research limitations, suggestions for future studies and implications for practice

A macroanalytic view of the choral music of Vincent Persichetti.

This study was undertaken to provide a macroanalytic view of the choral music of Vincent Persichetti through analysis of six representative choral works. A subpurpose was to furnish choral conductors and other interested persons with an approach to score study in which emphasis was placed on

The role of internal stakeholders and influencing factors during the phases of e-government initiative implementation

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel UniversityGovernments around the globe were actively implementing e-government initiatives in the past two decades. However, the majority of e-government initiatives fail in achieving their objectives before, during or after implementation. This study is addressing the problem, e-government initiatives are still more failure than success. Literature indicates differing models that analyse various stages, stakeholders and factors influencing e-government implementation in the public sector. Yet, these models do not explore in particular the important roles and responsibilities of internal stakeholders and influencing factors during different phases of the implementation cycle of the e-government initiative. There is a need for a framework that guides the e-government initiative implementation internally. To achieve the aim of this research, this study should empirically investigate "managing e-government initiative implementation." Consequently, this thesis results in research that contributes towards successful e-government initiative implementation based on empirical data derived from three case studies. The practical parts of the research are three case studies on e-government initiative implementation, which are analysed using an interpretive and qualitative research approach. Besides document analysis and observation, interview was the main method to collect empirical data for this study. For an accurate result, only managers and above level are selected and interviewed. The study examines the proposed framework in three government organizations in the State of Kuwait by using a qualitative, interpretive, multiple case study research strategy. As a result, this thesis is proposing a framework that can be used to enhance the implementation process of e-government initiative throughout the different phases of the implementation cycle, and contributes to the body of knowledge by extending the literature. The stakeholders, factors and implementation phases are mapped together to ease understanding the implementation process of e-government initiative implementation across the public organizations. The study concludes by identifying internal stakeholders, factors, and providing a holistic framework for e-government initiative implementation. The findings of this research are useful for internal stakeholders in the field, as it enables them to gain a better understanding of their own roles and responsibilities. Moreover, researchers in similar fields may find this work useful as a way to approach the study of e-government initiative implementation

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia

Development and support of higher education in the Pilsen region

Based on the authorś scientific cooperation research resultr, and teaching experience, the goal article is to analyze examples of development and support of higher education in the Pilsen region