International Management: Strategic Opportunities and Cultural Challenges

As the economies of many countries become more interrelated, international managers are facing huge challenges and unique opportunities associated with their roles. Now in its fifth edition, Sweeney and McFarlin\u27s International Management embodies a balanced and integrated approach to the subject, emphasizing the strategic opportunities available to firms on a global playing field, as well as exploring the challenges of managing an international workforce. Integrating theory and practice across all chapter topics, this book helps students to learn, grasp, and apply the underlying principles of successful international management: Understanding the broad context of international business, including the critical trends impacting international management, the legal and political forces driving international business, and the ethical and cultural dilemmas that can arise Mastering the essential elements of effective interaction in the international arena, from cross-cultural understanding and communication to cross-border negotiation Recognizing and taking advantage of strategic opportunities, such as entering and operating in foreign markets Building and leading effective international teams, including personal and behavioral motivation, as well as taking an international perspective on the hiring, training, and development of employees These principles are emphasized in the text with current examples and practical applications, establishing a foundation for students to apply their understanding in the current global business environment. With a companion website featuring an instructor’s manual, presentation slides, and a test bank, International Management Fifth Edition is a superb resource for instructors and students of international management

Determinants of Effective Change Management for Software Deployment Projects

Software application deployment change management is one of the emerging research themes that is gaining increased focus day by day. Our study examined the factors that affect software application deployment change management in Agile software development settings. Our study provided a systematic review and synthesized the approaches, practices, and challenges reported for adopting and implementing deployment change management. The prime objective of our study was to systematically synthesize the data extracted and formulate evidence-based practical recommendations that are influential in software deployment change management. Six research themes are proposed to evaluate the rationale of the research question. This qualitative study and systematic review explored the pertinent research articles and key findings from prominent academic databases. Based on the selected criteria, the final screening revealed 25 articles from an immense set of publications. Key findings that emerged from these publications are correlated with the six research themes: (a) timely communication with all stakeholders; (b) the reliance of deployment approaches on past experience; (c) the importance of collaboration among team members having adequate knowledge of DevOps tools; (d) the ramification of the differences among development, test, and production environments; (e) the influential areas that reap the benefits of continuous delivery and deployment; and (f) the challenges of the effective use of containerization. We also found indications of the significance of Lewin’s three-step change process model in the Agile development and deployment environment. Overall, our study deepens understanding of this thriving research area and contributes to the literature on Agile deployment and the software change management process

Addressing the Challenges in Federating Edge Resources

This book chapter considers how Edge deployments can be brought to bear in a global context by federating them across multiple geographic regions to create a global Edge-based fabric that decentralizes data center computation. This is currently impractical, not only because of technical challenges, but is also shrouded by social, legal and geopolitical issues. In this chapter, we discuss two key challenges - networking and management in federating Edge deployments. Additionally, we consider resource and modeling challenges that will need to be addressed for a federated Edge.Comment: Book Chapter accepted to the Fog and Edge Computing: Principles and Paradigms; Editors Buyya, Sriram

Why Select and Remain in my University: Re-examining Higher Education in South Africa

Tertiary institutions have a major role in providing relevant education that best meets the needs of the various constituencies served. To meet these needs an assessment of factors that influence their choices becomes imperative. As a result of the governments' policy to transform higher education in South Africa and the challenges brought about by globalisation and internationalisation, tertiary institutions are facing new challenges. Attracting quality students in a highly competitive education environment is crucial as the numbers of students' dropping out especially call attention to wastage in government funding. This paper examines some of the criteria used by South-African students, when choosing or evaluating a tertiary institution. The main findings include a significant positive link among trust in management, satisfaction with transport, perception of readiness for change and overall satisfaction with the university. These variables have indirect relationship with satisfaction with transport and living arrangement of students. Practical implications, limitations and suggestions for future studies were articulated

Pervasive computing at tableside : a wireless web-based ordering system

Purpose &ndash; The purpose of this paper is to introduce a wireless web-based ordering system called iMenu in the restaurant industry. Design/methodology/approach &ndash; By using wireless devices such as personal digital assistants and WebPads, this system realizes the paradigm of pervasive computing at tableside. Detailed system requirements, design, implementation and evaluation of iMenu are presented.Findings &ndash; The evaluation of iMenu shows it explicitly increases productivity of restaurant staff. It also has other desirable features such as integration, interoperation and scalability. Compared to traditional restaurant ordering process, by using this system customers get faster and better services, restaurant staff cooperate more efficiently with less working mistakes, and enterprise owners thus receive more business profits. Originality/value &ndash; While many researchers have explored using wireless web-based information systems in different industries, this paper presents a system that employs wireless multi-tiered web-based architecture to build pervasive computing systems. Instead of discussing theoretical issues on pervasive computing, we focus on practical issues of developing a real system, such as choosing of web-based architecture, design of input methods in small screens, and response time in wireless web-based systems.<br /

Development of MBA education in China: opportunities and challenges for western universities

China’s embrace of the market economy has created a growing demand for business education, in particular for MBA programs. This paper first reviews development of MBA education in China as a basis for then discussing problems with current Chinese MBA teaching. Next, suggestions of how to solve these problems are presented. Finally, opportunities and challenges for Western universities to participate in China’s MBA education are addressed

Practical applications of multi-agent systems in electric power systems

The transformation of energy networks from passive to active systems requires the embedding of intelligence within the network. One suitable approach to integrating distributed intelligent systems is multi-agent systems technology, where components of functionality run as autonomous agents capable of interaction through messaging. This provides loose coupling between components that can benefit the complex systems envisioned for the smart grid. This paper reviews the key milestones of demonstrated agent systems in the power industry and considers which aspects of agent design must still be addressed for widespread application of agent technology to occur

Cognition-Based Networks: A New Perspective on Network Optimization Using Learning and Distributed Intelligence

IEEE Access Volume 3, 2015, Article number 7217798, Pages 1512-1530 Open Access Cognition-based networks: A new perspective on network optimization using learning and distributed intelligence (Article) Zorzi, M.a , Zanella, A.a, Testolin, A.b, De Filippo De Grazia, M.b, Zorzi, M.bc a Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, Padua, Italy b Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy c IRCCS San Camillo Foundation, Venice-Lido, Italy View additional affiliations View references (107) Abstract In response to the new challenges in the design and operation of communication networks, and taking inspiration from how living beings deal with complexity and scalability, in this paper we introduce an innovative system concept called COgnition-BAsed NETworkS (COBANETS). The proposed approach develops around the systematic application of advanced machine learning techniques and, in particular, unsupervised deep learning and probabilistic generative models for system-wide learning, modeling, optimization, and data representation. Moreover, in COBANETS, we propose to combine this learning architecture with the emerging network virtualization paradigms, which make it possible to actuate automatic optimization and reconfiguration strategies at the system level, thus fully unleashing the potential of the learning approach. Compared with the past and current research efforts in this area, the technical approach outlined in this paper is deeply interdisciplinary and more comprehensive, calling for the synergic combination of expertise of computer scientists, communications and networking engineers, and cognitive scientists, with the ultimate aim of breaking new ground through a profound rethinking of how the modern understanding of cognition can be used in the management and optimization of telecommunication network