Psychological elements explaining the consumer's adoption and use of a website recommendation system: A theoretical framework proposal

The purpose of this paper is to understand, with an emphasis on the psychological perspective of the research problem, the consumer's adoption and use of a certain web site recommendation system as well as the main psychological outcomes involved. The approach takes the form of theoretical modelling. Findings: A conceptual model is proposed and discussed. A total of 20 research propositions are theoretically analyzed and justified. Research limitations/implications: The theoretical discussion developed here is not empirically validated. This represents an opportunity for future research. Practical implications: The ideas extracted from the discussion of the conceptual model should be a help for recommendation systems designers and web site managers, so that they may be more aware, when working with such systems, of the psychological process consumers undergo when interacting with them. In this regard, numerous practical reflections and suggestions are presented

A Metrics Approach for Collaborative Systems

This article presents different types of collaborative systems, their structure and classification. This paper defines the concept of virtual campus as a collaborative system. It builds architecture for virtual campus oriented on collaborative training processes. It analyses the quality characteristics of collaborative systems and propose techniques for metrics construction and validation in order to evaluate them. The article analyzes different ways to increase the efficiency and the performance level in collaborative banking systems.collaborative system, collaborative learning, virtual campus, banking, metric

Electronic tourism

The constant development in technology, communication and particularly the Internet, has revolutionized the entire tourism industry, by generating new business models, restructuring the distribution channels, reshaping the production process involved in tourism industry and last but not least has influenced the suppliers of touristic services as well as the stakeholders. In this work I have tried to enhance the implications of electronic tourism for the visitors, the tourism operators, highlighting the informational systems which serve the touristic services. E-tourism comes to support the tourists by providing specialized sites and software which reduce the time necessary for the touristic destinations , making easier the process of booking or renting a car or help planning the trip and making a decision. One of the most common problems associated with the developing distribution is the large amount of information available for the client and to be able to explore it, I have presented intelligent agents with all the advantages this new artificial technology brings along.e-tourism, portal, intelligent agents.

Organizational Optimization of a Company Through the Implementation of Business Intelligence Solutions

Most organizations don’t need data. On the contrary, they have dozens of applications, files, data bases in which the smallest details are memorized regarding the daily activity. Yet, all these data should be united, compared, analysed and filtered to emphasize what is really important for the business. We have to find tendencies, opportunities, strategic directions. This is the role of Business Intelligence solutions. In this work, we shall tackle the importance of implementation of a Business Intelligence solution in a company and present a case study at a food distribution company. For the optimization of the company’s management, we designed with the help of QlikView application some sales analysis reports, some presented under the form of tables, other under the form of graphs

ITC SOLUTIONS TO ACHIEVE PERFORMANCE AND EFFICIENCY OF HEALTH SERVICES:ONLINE VIRTUAL CLINIC

The digital era modified the way people work, how the information and the informational resources are defined and organized. The organization which holds, uses and correctly reproduces the piece of information, the knowledge, the intellectual capital, becomes a leader in the proper field of activity. Following the actual tendencies in the digital era connected to the exchange of professional information, I can say that the exchange and sharing of digital information in a global multitude of interconnected computers are essential instruments that can contribute to the development and consolidation of the intellectual potential of the organization. This is why, the access of the individuals to information is an actual requirement of the development of the Romanian society in the context of globalization and world implication o contemporary processes and phenomena. The Digital integration eliminates the barriers that traditionally suppress the circuit of the medical information, lets the goods and services circulate to and from Romania by promoting efficiency as final purpose. Performance is needed in the health system, the transformation of the system of medical services by bringing the benefits of the medical science and technology to all individuals from every community. In order to accomplish these expectations it is needed that all the components that form the health system look at it as a whole and subscribe to modern solutions for improvement so that the quality of health should raise to an unprecedented level. Even if health systems differ from country to country from the organizational and financial point of view, they face the same challenges and problems, respectively the supply of medical care of better quality and keeping under control the health expenses. The use of information and communication technology in the field of medical assistance in order to stock, share, transmit and analyze clinical data and knowledge is more necessary than ever.Internet, communication in real time, health system, medical information system, digital integration, virtual medical assistance, virtual clinic, shared medical information

DEVELOPING AND VALIDATING A QUALITY ASSESSMENT SCALE FOR WEB PORTALS

The Web portals business model has spread rapidly over the last few years. Despite this, there have been very few scholarly findings about which services and characteristics make a Web site a portal and which dimensions determine the customers’ evaluation of the portal’s quality. Taking the example of financial portals, the authors develop a theoretical framework of the Web portal quality construct by determining the number and nature of corresponding dimensions, which are: security and trust, basic services quality, cross-buying services quality, added values, transaction support and relationship quality. To measure the six portal quality dimensions, multi item measurement scales are developed and validated.Construct Validation, Customer Retention, E-Banking, E- Loyalty, Service Quality, Web Portals

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

The Importance of Trust for Investment: Evidence From Venture Capital (Revision of DP 2009-43)

We examine the effect of trust on financial investment and contracting decisions in a micro-economic environment where trust is exogenous. Using hand-collected data on European venture capital, we show that the Eurobarometer measure of trust among nations significantly affects investment decisions. This holds even after controlling for investor and company fixed effects, geographic distance, information and transaction costs. The national identity of venture capital firms’ individual partners further contributes to the effect of trust. Education and work experience reduce the effect of trust but do not eliminate it. We also examine the relationship between trust and sophisticated contracts involving contingent control rights and find that, even after controlling for endogeneity, they are complements, not substitutes.Venture Capital;Social Capital;Trust;Financial Contracts;Corporate Governance.

Deoxy technologies: a medical technology startup project: business plan for UK market

L26, O32DEOXY Technologies is a seed-stage medical technology project whose future core business will be based on an innovative Gene Expression profiling (GEP) nanotechnology, developed and patented at Harvard University. The project is located at Ludwig-Maximilian University (Germany) and its goal is to develop diagnostic tests for clinical market where price, speed and automation are competitive advantages. DEOXY Technologies intends to become a global and "lean" company focused on development and manufacturing of molecular tests (in vitro medical devices). This is a strategic analysis and a feasibility study for the breast cancer market. Breast cancer is the most frequent female cancer affecting 12% of women, worldwide and is seen as a paradigm of precision medicine success. The promoter identifies a clinical application for the GEP technology and proposes an alliance with an USA biomarker-focused company whose assets are complementary to the technology. The strategic analysis was based on a macroenvironmental analysis for the entrance market: United Kingdom, where regulatory and reimbursement contexts were systematized, and for Germany the country of development and manufacturing, where the impact of governmental support and the integration in a biotechnology cluster are critical favorable factors. In the microenvironmental analysis the high barriers to entrance and the importance of planning an exit strategy were underlined. The economic and financial viability analysis revealed that governmental funding is a critical success factor, as demonstrated by the positivity of the APV and emphasized the importance of a market expansion plan before starting operations. The scenario analysis explored how reimbursement and healthcare policies may impact the economic and financial viability of the project.A DEOXY Technologies é um projeto, baseado numa nanotecnologia inovadora de análise perfis de expressão genética (APEG), descoberta e patenteada na Universidade de Harvard. O projeto está integrado na Universidade de Ludwig-Maximilians, (Alemanha) e é candidato a fundos de investimento governamentais. A DEOXY Technologies acredita que por possuir uma tecnologia inovadora pode desenvolver máquinas de APEG e testes moleculares para o mercado clínico, onde o preço, automatização e rapidez serão vantagens competitivas. A DEOXY Technologies planeia tornar-se uma empresa global e "lean", focada no desenvolvimento e produção de testes moleculares "in vitro". Este plano de negócios contém a análise estratégica e económico-financeira para o mercado do cancro da mama, em Inglaterra (Reino Unido). O cancro da mama é o cancro mais frequente na mulher, afetando 12% desta população, e é paradigmático do sucesso da medicina de precisão. O promotor identifica uma necessidade clínica e para sua concretização propõe uma aliança com uma empresa biotecnológica detentora de ativos intelectuais complementares aos da DEOXY Technologies. A estratégia proposta baseia-se na análise PEST para o Reino Unido, contendo a regulamentação e etapas-chave para obter reembolso, e análise PEST para Alemanha, destacando-se a relevância do apoio governamental e da inserção num cluster biotecnológico como fatores críticos de sucesso. Da análise micro-ambiental salientam-se as barreiras à entrada e a importância da estratégia de saída nesta indústria. O estudo de viabilidade económico-financeira revelou que os fundos governamentais são um fator critico para a exequibilidade e viabilidade económico-financeira do projeto, sendo o valor atualizado ajustado o único indicador positivo. A análise de cenários demonstra como as políticas de cuidados de saúde influenciam a estratégia e a viabilidade económico-financeira do projeto

The modified smart city concept for Russian municipalities in the context of change management

Relevance. Outdated tools and instruments for development and governance prevent the effective use of data and digital platforms in Russian cities, thus creating obstacles for the implementation of smart new solutions.  Moreover, the established system of smart city evaluation is 'overloaded' with indicators. For these reasons, the smart city concept is inadequate for today's reality of most Russian municipalities, making it difficult for them to meet the national goals for the digitalization of the country's economy. The relevance of this study is determined by the need to adjust the smart city concept for municipal economy in Russia and to propose a modified version of this concept.Research objective. This study aims at creating a modified smart city concept by changing evaluation criteria and using a simulation model of municipal economy.Results. The study found that the established smart city concept is not entirely suitable for implementation in Russian municipalities. The lack of adequate methodology of smart city evaluation impedes efficient economic development of municipalities.Data and methods. The study applies a simulation model of municipal economy, which is built by using simulation modelling methods and the Bass diffusion model.Conclusions. The proposed modifications of the smart city concept can provide a springboard for economic development of Russian municipalities to achieve the goals of national digital strategies