ELECTRONIC BUSINESS IN BUSINESS

The management of a business in the digital economy is based on a management process called digital management. Business in the digital economy integrates information technologies and communications within its activities and may be partially or totally electronic. Management of the business is carried out using information systems that support for the substantiation and decisions. Business electronic involve a complete change in how the customer is viewed in relation to the organization; requirements "e-customer" are larger and increasingly sophisticated, and the organization must be able to offer services of a quality that in the largest communities of a multinational partners and customers.management, business, IT & C, Internet, electronic

Composition and Self-Adaptation of Service-Based Systems with Feature Models

The adoption of mechanisms for reusing software in pervasive systems has not yet become standard practice. This is because the use of pre-existing software requires the selection, composition and adaptation of prefabricated software parts, as well as the management of some complex problems such as guaranteeing high levels of efficiency and safety in critical domains. In addition to the wide variety of services, pervasive systems are composed of many networked heterogeneous devices with embedded software. In this work, we promote the safe reuse of services in service-based systems using two complementary technologies, Service-Oriented Architecture and Software Product Lines. In order to do this, we extend both the service discovery and composition processes defined in the DAMASCo framework, which currently does not deal with the service variability that constitutes pervasive systems. We use feature models to represent the variability and to self-adapt the services during the composition in a safe way taking context changes into consideration. We illustrate our proposal with a case study related to the driving domain of an Intelligent Transportation System, handling the context information of the environment.Work partially supported by the projects TIN2008-05932, TIN2008-01942, TIN2012-35669, TIN2012-34840 and CSD2007-0004 funded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER; P09-TIC-05231 and P11-TIC-7659 funded by Andalusian Government; and FP7-317731 funded by EU. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Competitive implications of cross-border banking

This paper reviews the recent literature on cross-border banking, with a focus on policy implications. Cross-border banking has increased sharply in recent decades, particularly in the form of entry, and has affected the development of financial systems, access to financial services, and stability. Reviewing the empirical literature, the author finds much, although not uniform, evidence that cross-border banking supports the development of an efficient and stable financial system that offers a wide access to quality financial services at low cost. But as better financial systems have more cross-border banking, the relationship between cross-border banking and competitiveness has to be carefully judged. While developing countries have some special conditions, provided a minimum degree of oversight is in place, they experience effects similar to industrial countries. There are some questions, though, on the effects of cross-border banking on lending based on softer information and on stability. Relevant experiences from capital markets show that the degree of cross-border financial activities can affect local market sustainability and there can be path dependency when opening up to cross-border competition. Reviewing the fast changing landscape of financial services provision, the author argues that cross-border banking highlights the increased importance of competition policy in financial services provision. This competition policy cannot be traditional, institutional based, but will need to resemble that used in other network industries. Furthermore, with globalization accelerating, competition policy will need to be global, supported by greater cross-border institutional collaboration and using the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) process and the disciplines of the World Trade Organization. GATS can be of special value to developing countries as it provides a binding, pro-competition framework that has proven more difficult to establish otherwise.Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Knowledge Economy,Education for the Knowledge Economy

Rural extension services

The authors analyze the considerations that lead policymakers to undertake extension investments as a key public responsibility, as well as the complex set of factors and intra-agency incentives that explain why different extension systems'performance vary. The authors provide a conceptual framework outlining farmers'demand for information, the welfare economic characterizations of extension services, and the organizational and political attributes that govern the performance of extension systems. They use the conceptual framework to examine several extension modalities and to analyze their likely and actual effectiveness. Specifically, the modalities reviewed include"training and visit"extension, decentralized systems,"fee-for-service"and privatized extension, and farmer-field-schools. The authors also discuss methodological issues pertaining to the assessment of extension outcomes and review the empirical literature on extension impact. They emphasize the efficiency gains that can come from locally decentralized delivery systems with incentive structures based largely on private provision that in most poorer countries is still publicly-funded. In wealthier countries, and for particular higher income farmer groups, extension systems will likely evolve into fee-for-service organizations.Decentralization,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Economics&Finance,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,ICT Policy and Strategies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Knowledge Economy

Sharing Economy or Skimming Economy? A Review on the Sharing Economy\u27s Impact

During the last years, the Sharing Economy with its prominent trailblazers like Airbnb and Uber has become ubiquitous in our daily lives, enabling us to enjoy new and less expensive means of transportation, accommodation, and other goods and services. With the increasing success comes an increasing headwind from the media, unions, and legislators, claiming negative impacts like precarious employment situations or the promotion of tax evasion. These circumstances provide an uncertain environment for researchers or practitioners developing new sharing services. Conducting a systematic literature review, a comprehensive overview of claimed positive and negative impacts of the Sharing Economy is given. Based on this overview, guidelines are derived that are supposed to help address these issues during the development of the new sharing services and underlying information systems

Web service for knowledge management in e-marketplaces

A common strategic initiative of organizations engaged in electronic business (e-business) is the development of synergistic relations with collaborating value-chain partners to deliver their value proposition to customers. This requires the transparent flow of problem specific knowledge to partner organizations over highly integrated information systems. Transparent exchange of information and knowledge across collaborating organizations requires technological foundations for integrating business processes using software architectures built upon industry standards. The unambiguously interpretable flow of knowledge to inform online business processes is a challenging task with significant competitive benefits for organizations that take technical initiative. Infomediary organizations can serve the e-business need for exchange of knowledge and information through value-added knowledge services to participating firms in the value chain through intelligent software systems integrated with the Web Services Architecture. We define knowledge services as the "exchange of problem domain-specific knowledge to inform decision activities of specific e-business processes, facilitated by an infomediary using intelligent software systems and the Web Services Architecture." This research presents a knowledge services framework, founded on the Web Services Architecture, to enable the transparent exchange of knowledge between intelligent software systems that manage processes of organizations engaged in e-business in the knowledge-based economy. The objective is to enable informed and knowledge-based discovery of business partners from among the multitude online, and to support knowledge-rich e-business processes that cut across the value chain and deliver the value proposition to the customer

The impact and penetration of location-based services

Since the invention of digital technology, its development has followed an entrenched path ofminiaturisation and decentralisation with increasing focus on individual and niche applications. Computerhardware has moved from remote centres to desktop and hand held devices whilst being embedded invarious material infrastructures. Software has followed the same course. The entire process has convergedon a path where various analogue devices have become digital and are increasingly being embedded inmachines at the smallest scale. In a parallel but essential development, there has been a convergence ofcomputers with communications ensuring that the delivery and interaction mechanisms for computersoftware is now focused on networks of individuals, not simply through the desktop, but in mobilecontexts. Various inert media such as fixed television is becoming more flexible as computers and visualmedia are becoming one.With such massive convergence and miniaturisation, new software and new applications define the cuttingedge. As computers are being increasingly tailored to individual niches, then new digital services areemerging, many of which represent applications which hitherto did not exist or at best were rarely focusedon a mass market. Location based services form one such application and in this paper, we will bothspeculate on and make some initial predictions of the geographical extent to which such services willpenetrate different markets. We define such services in detail below but suffice it to say at this stage thatsuch functions involve the delivery of traditional services using digital media and telecommunications.High profile applications are now being focused on hand held devices, typically involving information onproduct location and entertainment but wider applications involve fixed installations on the desktop whereservices are delivered through traditional fixed infrastructure. Both wire and wireless applications definethis domain. The market for such services is inevitably volatile and unpredictable at this early stage but wewill attempt here to provide some rudimentary estimates of what might happen in the next five to tenyears.The ?network society? which has developed through this convergence, is, according to Castells (1989,2000) changing and re-structuring the material basis of society such that information has come todominate wealth creation in a way that information is both a raw material of production and an outcome ofproduction as a tradable commodity. This has been fuelled by the way technology has expanded followingMoore?s Law and by fundamental changes in the way telecommunications, finance, insurance, utilitiesand so on is being regulated. Location based services are becoming an integral part of this fabric and thesereflect yet another convergence between geographic information systems, global positioning systems, andsatellite remote sensing. The first geographical information system, CGIS, was developed as part of theCanada Land Inventory in 1965 and the acronym ?GIS? was introduced in 1970. 1971 saw the firstcommercial satellite, LANDSAT-1. The 1970s also saw prototypes of ISDN and mobile telephone and theintroduction of TCP/IP as the dominant network protocol. The 1980s saw the IBM XT (1982) and thebeginning of de-regulation in the US, Europe and Japan of key sectors within the economy. Finally in the 1990s, we saw the introduction of the World Wide Web and the ubiquitous pervasion of business andrecreation of networked PC?s, the Internet, mobile communications and the growing use of GPS forlocational positioning and GIS for the organisation and visualisation of spatial data. By the end of the 20thcentury, the number of mobile telephone users had reached 700 million worldwide. The increasingmobility of individuals, the anticipated availability of broadband communications for mobile devices andthe growing volumes of location specific information available in databases will inevitably lead to thedemand for services that will deliver location related information to individuals on the move. Suchlocation based services (LBS) although in a very early stage of development, are likely to play anincreasingly important part in the development of social structures and business in the coming decades.In this paper we begin by defining location based services within the context we have just sketched. Wethen develop a simple model of the market for location-based services developing the standard non-linearsaturation model of market penetration. We illustrate this for mobile devices, namely mobile phones in thefollowing sections and then we develop an analysis of different geographical regimes which arecharacterised by different growth rates and income levels worldwide. This leads us to speculate on theextent to which location based services are beginning to take off and penetrate the market. We concludewith scenarios for future growth through the analogy of GIS and mobile penetration

Measuring the Knowledge Base of Regional Innovation Systems in Germany in terms of a Triple Helix Dynamics

While a market economy seeks equilibrium, a knowledge-based economy may upset this tendency towards stabilization by adding the feedback of globalization. The interaction among the three subdynamics of economic exchange, technological innovation, and institutional control can be captured with a generalized Triple Helix model. We propose to use the mutual information as an indicator of integration among the three subdynamics at the systems level. This probabilistic entropy can be positive or negative. On the basis of data at the district level in Germany the conclusions of a previous study about the Netherlands are tested: medium-tech manufacturing is the main driver of a knowledge-based configuration in a regional economy, while knowledge-intensive services tend to uncouple the economy from the regional configuration. At the level of regions (NUTS-2) the knowledge-based economy is no longer structured by the previous East-West divide of the country, while this divide has remained the main structure at the level of the states (NUTS-1) which constitute the Federal Republic. -- Während eine Marktwirtschaft nach Gleichgewicht strebt, kann diese Stabilisierungs-tendenz in einer Wissensgesellschaft durch einen zusätzlichen Feedback-Effekt der Globalisierung gestört werden. Das Zusammenspiel der drei Teildynamiken ökonomi-scher Austausch, technologische Innovation und institutionelle Kontrolle kann mit ei-nem allgemeinen Triple Helix-Model erfasst werden. Wir nutzen die gegenseitigen Informationsflüsse zwischen diesen drei Teildynamiken als einen Indikator für die systemische Integration dieser drei Bereiche. Dies probabilistische Entropy kann positiv oder negativ sein. Wir untersuchen, ob Ergebnisse einer früheren, für die Niederlande durchgeführten Studie auch auf Deutschland zutreffen. Wie in den Niederlanden erweist sich auch in Deutschland die medium-tech Industrie als wesentliche Triebkraft der regionalen Wissensbasis während die wissensintensiven Dienstleistungen offenbar weitgehend losgelöst von regionalen Gegebenheiten sind. Während auf der Ebene von Bundesländern (NUTS-1 Regionen) noch ein klarer Ost-West-Unterschied festgestellt werden kann ist das Bild auf der feineren Ebene von NUTS-2 Regionen wesentlich differenzierter.Wissensgesellschaft,Triple Helix,Regionale Innovationssysteme,Deutschland,Probabilistische Entropy,Knowledge economy,Triple Helix,regional innovation systems,Germany,probabilistic entropy

Governance and The New Economic Order: At The Roots of Uncertainty. Managing Risks in The Service Economy

The Club of Rome has achieved worldwide renown, sometimes stimulated by heavy criticism, after the publication in 1972 of its report on «Limits to Growth». This was a very critical time since the high rate of growth of the economy in most of the industrialized countries after the World War II had been until then of around 6% per year. From 1973 until now, such rate of growth has declined to about 2 to 3 % per year in the average. The "scandal" of the Club of Rome consisted in the fact that doubts were expressed on the possibility of a continued, and as one would say today of a "sustainable", growth. This article summarizes another point of view: during those years, there has been a fundamental change in the way in which wealth is produced. The industrial revolution based essentially on investment in new machines, tools and products, had given way to the emergence of service functions- in all sectors of the economy - as the key factors of production. This issue is therefore essentially a view from the supply side of the economy. A series of reports were proposed through the Club of Rome to support this analysis based on over two decades of experience in the manufacturing as well as in the traditional service sector. The difficulty, which persists today, is that the classical and neo-economic analysis is still bound essentially to fundamentals linked to a reality in which the manufacturing system would be dominant. When services become determinant for the production of the wealth of nations, the very basic notion of economic value changes its connotations and the issue is at the end philosophical: value can not anymore be defined as the result of an equilibrium system where the disequilibria have to be considered as a matter of imperfect information. Such information is bound, in the service economy, to remain constantly imperfect because it involves the utilization of products and systems in time. A larger and larger part of costs in the performance of such systems in time is linked to future events where even that duration of utilization is uncertain. The value system is therefore basically dependent on the uncertainties of reality. The assumption is that the deterministic model, which is still dominant in the traditional macroeconomic analysis, has in fact given way to in deterministic systems. As a major consequence, the key economic issue today is that of understanding and managing, as fundamental problems, risks, uncertainty and vulnerability.