Products and Services

Today’s global economy offers more opportunities, but is also more complex and competitive than ever before. This fact leads to a wide range of research activity in different fields of interest, especially in the so-called high-tech sectors. This book is a result of widespread research and development activity from many researchers worldwide, covering the aspects of development activities in general, as well as various aspects of the practical application of knowledge

Construction management abstracts : cumulative abstracts and indexes of journals in construction management, 1983-2000

The purpose of this document is to provide a single source of reference for every paper published in the journals directly related to research in Construction Management. It is indexed by author and keyword and contains the titles, authors, abstracts and keywords of every article from the following journals: • Building Research and Information (BRI) • Construction Management and Economics (CME) • Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management (ECAM) • Journal of Construction Procurement (JCP) • Journal of Construction Research (JCR) • Journal of Financial Management in Property and Construction (JFM) • RICS Research Papers (RICS) The index entries give short forms of the bibliographical citations, rather than page numbers, to enable annual updates to the abstracts. Each annual update will carry cumulative indexes, so that only one index needs to be consulted

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

An Investigation on Benefit-Cost Analysis of Greenhouse Structures in Antalya

Significant population increase across the world, loss of cultivable land and increasing demand for food put pressure on agriculture. To meet the demand, greenhouses are built, which are, light structures with transparent cladding material in order to provide controlled microclimatic environment proper for plant production. Conceptually, greenhouses are similar with manufacturing buildings where a controlled environment for manufacturing and production have been provided and proper spaces for standardized production processes have been enabled. Parallel with the trends in the world, particularly in southern regions, greenhouse structures have been increasingly constructed and operated in Turkey. A significant number of greenhouses are located at Antalya. The satellite images demonstrated that for over last three decades, there has been a continuous invasion of greenhouses on all cultivable land. There are various researches and attempts for the improvement of greenhouse design and for increasing food production by decreasing required energy consumption. However, the majority of greenhouses in Turkey are very rudimentary structures where capital required for investment is low, but maintenance requirements are high when compared with new generation greenhouse structures. In this research paper, life-long capital requirements for construction and operation of greenhouse buildings in Antalya has been investigated by using benefit-cost analysis study

Knowledge Capturing in Design Briefing Process for Requirement Elicitation and Validation

Knowledge capturing and reusing are major processes of knowledge management that deal with the elicitation of valuable knowledge via some techniques and methods for use in actual and further studies, projects, services, or products. The construction industry, as well, adopts and uses some of these concepts to improve various construction processes and stages. From pre-design to building delivery knowledge management principles and briefing frameworks have been implemented across project stakeholders: client, design teams, construction teams, consultants, and facility management teams. At pre-design and design stages, understanding the client’s needs and users’ knowledge are crucial for identifying and articulating the expected requirements and objectives. Due to underperforming results and missed goals and objectives, many projects finish with highly dissatisfied clients and loss of contracts for some organizations. Knowledge capturing has beneficial effects via its principles and methods on requirement elicitation and validation at the briefing stage between user, client and designer. This paper presents the importance and usage of knowledge capturing and reusing in briefing process at pre-design and design stages especially the involvement of client and user, and explores the techniques and technologies that are usable in briefing process for requirement elicitation

Challenges to corporate and brand image in multinational companies across different linguistic and socio-economic markets : a semiotic analysis

Doing business "the French way" in a Francophone market niche may be somehow different from doing it "the English way" in an Anglophone market niche. Since both the employees’ and the customers’ knowledge of an organisation underpins the organisation’s performance in complex business world environments, Multinational Organisations (MNOs) need to find a manner in which they can achieve coherence between their strategic vision, organisational culture and corporate image across the different linguistic and socio-economic markets they interact with through the various marketing tools they use to stimulate recognition. As a result this can support the integrity and sustainability of their corporate brand across markets and across different linguistics landscapes while interacting with their existing and new foreign markets. This study concentrates particularly on the rhetoric figures and visual cues employed in the selected French and English advertising/promotional messages from different types of advertisements and different product packages of multinational organisation subsidiaries. The study looks at how both the rhetoric figures and visual cues in the selected advertising/promotional messages support the integrity and maintain the sustainability of the corporate brand of the selected companies. The latter is examined across different linguistic and socio-economic markets. The study explores and examines how the possible linguistic properties are used in the selected French and English advertising/promotional messages from different types of advertisements, including those on different product packages. It also looks at how the linguistic properties in selected advertising/promotional messages belonging to different types of advertisements are used in creating and maintaining a positive corporate image of the MNOs and that of their parent companies. In addition, this study analyzes the potential impacts and challenges on moral, cultural and life-style values that multinational subsidiaries inflict on customers through the advertising/promotional messages from different types of advertisements in the promotion and branding of their products and how this affects their corporate image and that of their parent organisations. This is a content analytical study of language features evident in the selected advertising/promotional messages from different types of advertisements and different product packages at the lexical, syntactic and discourse levels and their role and impact on selected multinational parent organisations and their subsidiaries’ corporate images together with those of their selected products. In order to conduct a data-driven study, the author built a data corpus based on 29 advertising messages from different types of advertisements and advertising messages printed on different product packages. The types of advertisements include the photographs and scanned images of billboards, mural billboards, outdoor advertising billboards and leaflets advertising/promoting specific services or products. The product packages include photographs and scanned images of product covers/wraps, primary packages of products, product containers’ stickers with messages printed on them, and primary boxes. The sample comes from six selected multinational subsidiary organisations from two different countries, the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Francophone and multilingual country, and the Republic of South Africa, an Anglophone and multilingual country. Through a detailed content analysis of the advertising/promotional messages from a diversity of sources used as a means of communication, with a focus on rhetoric figures ,visual cues and language features, their roles and potential impact on MNO’s, corporate images in foreign markets will be summarized. In the end, possible conclusions are drawn in the light of the role and impact that they have on the selected companies’ corporate image across different linguistic and socio-economic markets

Media coverage of the U.S. contribution to conflict in colombia

The Propaganda Model of communication by Herman and Chomsky has been in the periphery of academia as its authors predicted. The authors also predicted what dimensions media coverage will take when the mainstream media cover events in states where corporate-governed super powers have interests, especially the U.S. It is this prediction of media performance that this research is testing in relation to the conflict in Colombia. In recent years Latin America has achieved some nationalist governments, as in Venezuela and Bolivia, however, the U.S quest for hegemony is a fact in Latin America. How the media cover conflict in Colombia, especially in relation to contributions of the U.S and its interventions is the concern of this thesis. This research uses Critical Discourse Analysis as methodology and the PM as its conceptual framework. The Toronto Star, CBC, National Post, and the Globe and Mail are analyzed in this research. Conclusions arrived at support the PM as a good instrument for predicting media performance: Mainstream media coverage favours allies of the U.S., protects U.S. corporations, supports capitalist values and imperialist ideology, and generally neglects the interests of the masses and social justice, while the elite agenda is favoured

Sustainable Business Models

The dynamically changing world economy, in an era of intensive development and globalization, creates new needs in both the theoretical models of management and in the practical discussion related to the perception of business. Because of new economic phenomena related to the crisis, there is a need for the design and operationalization of innovative business models for companies. Due to the fact that in times of crisis, the principles of strategic balance are particularly important; these business models can be sustainable business models. Moreover, it is essential to skillfully use different methods and concepts of management to ensure the continuity of business. It seems that sustainable business models, in their essence, can support companies' effectiveness and contribute to their stable, sustainable functioning in the difficult, ever-changing market. This Special Issue aims to discuss the key mechanisms concerning the design and operationalization of sustainable business models, from a strategic perspective. We invite you to contribute to this Issue by submitting comprehensive reviews, case studies, or research articles. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a rigorous peer review procedure, with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications