E-finance-lab at the House of Finance : about us

The financial services industry is believed to be on the verge of a dramatic [r]evolution. A substantial redesign of its value chains aimed at reducing costs, providing more efficient and flexible services and enabling new products and revenue streams is imminent. But there seems to be no clear migration path nor goal which can cast light on the question where the finance industry and its various players will be and should be in a decade from now. The mission of the E-Finance Lab is the development and application of research methodologies in the financial industry that promote and assess how business strategies and structures are shared and supported by strategies and structures of information systems. Important challenges include the design of smart production infrastructures, the development and evaluation of advantageous sourcing strategies and smart selling concepts to enable new revenue streams for financial service providers in the future. Overall, our goal is to contribute methods and views to the realignment of the E-Finance value chain. ..

Come On In. The Water's Fine. An Exploration of Web 2.0 Technology and Its Emerging Impact on Foundation Communications

According to the authors of Come on in. The water's fine. An exploration of Web 2.0 technology and its emerging impact on foundation communications, foundations that have adopted new and still emerging forms of digital communications -- interactive Web sites, blogs, wikis, and social networking applications -- are finding that they offer "opportunities for focused convenings and conversations, lend themselves to interactions with and among grantees, and are an effective story-telling medium." The report's authors, David Brotherton and Cynthia Scheiderer, of Brotherton Strategies, who spent nearly a year exploring how foundations are using new media, add that "electronic communications create an opportunity to connect people who are interested in an issue with each other and the grantees working on the issue."The report also acknowledges that the new technologies raise skepticism and concern among foundations. They include the "worry of losing control over the foundation's message, allowing more staff members to represent the foundation in a more public way, opening the flood gates of grant requests or the headache of a forum gone bad with unwanted or inappropriate posts."Still, the report urges foundations to put aside their worries and make even more forceful use of new media applications and tools. The report argues that whatever is "lost in message control will be more than made up for by the opportunity to engage audiences in new ways, with greater programmatic impact."Acknowledging that adoption of new media tools will require some cultural and operational shifts in foundations, the report offers suggestions from Ernest James Wilson III, dean and Walter Annenberg chair in communication at the University of Southern California, for how to deal with these challenges. He says that for foundations to make the best use of what the technology offers, they should concentrate on three things:Build up the individual "human capital" of their staffs and provide them the competencies they need to operate in the new digital world.Make internal institutional reforms to reward creativity and innovation in using these new media internally and among grantees.Build social networks that span sectors and institutions, to engage in ongoing dialogue among private, public, nonprofits and research stakeholders.As Wilson also says, "All of these steps first require leadership, arguably a new type of leadership, not only at the top but also from the 'bottom' up, since many of the people with the requisite skills, attitudes, substantive knowledge and experience are younger, newer employees, and occupy the low-status end of the organizational pyramid, and hence need strong allies at the top.

Learning from a Funders' Collaborative: The Human Services Strategic Restructuring Pilot Project

In 2009, Eighteen funders in Northeast Ohio joined together in the Human Services Strategic Restructuring Pilot Project (the Collaborative) to examine how to support nonprofit organizations in strategic restructuring. This the final report on that project

Looking back on the future of genetic counselling in Canada

This article focuses on how occupational roles and work relationships have changed over time for genetic counselling activities in Canada. It begins with a review of the stages of consensus that were reached about a role for geneticists and genetic counselling in clinical settings and, second, the formation of medical genetics as a service specialism. Interviews conducted by the author and survey data collected by the Canadian Association of Genetic Counsellors/L’Association Canadienne des Conseillers en Genetique are then used to examine role divarication in genetic counselling and the boundary realignment in inter-professional relations between physician and non-physician personnel involved in counselling activities. This leads, in a final step, to summarize what the research shows about the changing face of genetic counselling in Canada and directions for future historical investigation

The Impact of Technovation and Collaboration on Strategic Service Classification in the Digital Economy

Service organizations increasingly organize themselves and operate on a value chain level. This creates important challenges and opportunities, which call for a realignment of strategic focuses, in particular with respect to the impact of technovation on service creation and services modus operandi, their resulting service classification, and the restructuring amongst different service value chain industries. This research builds on a recently developed classification scheme, referred to as the Services Cubicle, that transcends current industry boundaries and includes upcoming service business trends in technovation. The paper subsequently illustrates a variety of service industry examples in order to clarify the resulting service classifications, taking into account deployment of varying degrees of technovation in that industry

Work in Motion / Assessment at Rest: An Attitudinal Study of Academic Reference Librarians A Case Study At Mid-Size University (MSU A)

It is reasonable to assume the existence of a new "dynamic" that influences how to measure reference services in libraries and how we evaluate the reference librarians who provide those services. Traditional, face-to-face delivery of reference services is reported to be declining, and there is myriad evidence, albeit largely uncollated and little evaluated, that suggests reference librarians are delivering significant and increasing amounts of the services they render in network environments. These trends raise questions, in turn, about how well we understand the current state of affairs in reference services, particularly where the management and evaluation of reference services in network environments are concerned. The purpose of this study is to investigate relevant circumstances and conditions bearing -- directly and indirectly -- on changes in the nature, form, substance, and effects of reference services -- through the reference librarian experience. Specifically, this attitudinal study will account for and assess changes in reference services (in the context of a medium-sized private university with a national reputation for successfully integrating information technologies into the educational process), with the further aim of developing an understanding of how to capture statistics and evaluate reference services and personnel in this dynamic environment. Reference librarians at a second mid-sized public university library were also interviewed for comparative data analysis in this study

The Humanities Computing Center and Library Collaboration in New Scholarly Communication Processes

This is a postprint of an article published in Advances in Librarianship, vol 26 (2002). Complete citation of published version: Vinopal, Jennifer. 'The Humanities Computing Center and Library Collaboration in New Scholarly Communication Processes.' Advances in Librarianship 26 (2002): 91-126