Open semantic service networks

Online service marketplaces will soon be part of the economy to scale the provision of specialized multi-party services through automation and standardization. Current research, such as the *-USDL service description language family, is already defining the basic building blocks to model the next generation of business services. Nonetheless, the developments being made do not target to interconnect services via service relationships. Without the concept of relationship, marketplaces will be seen as mere functional silos containing service descriptions. Yet, in real economies, all services are related and connected. Therefore, to address this gap we introduce the concept of open semantic service network (OSSN), concerned with the establishment of rich relationships between services. These networks will provide valuable knowledge on the global service economy, which can be exploited for many socio-economic and scientific purposes such as service network analysis, management, and control

Towards the disintermediation of creative music search: Analysing queries to determine important facets

Purpose: Creative professionals search for music to accompany moving images in films, advertising, television. Some larger music rights holders (record companies and music publishers) organise their catalogues to allow online searching. These digital libraries are organised by various subjective musical facets as well as by artist and title metadata. The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of written queries relating to creative music search, contextualised and discussed within the findings of text analyses of a larger research project whose aim is to investigate meaning making in this search process. Method: A facet analysis of a collection of written music queries is discussed in relation to the organisation of the music in a selection of bespoke search engines. Results: Subjective facets, in particular Mood, are found to be highly important in query formation. Unusually, detailed Music Structural aspects are also key. Conclusions: These findings are discussed in relation to disintermediation of this process. It is suggested that there are barriers to this, both in terms of classification and also commercial / legal factors

The New International Tax Diplomacy

International tax avoidance by multinational corporations is now frontpage news. At its core, the issue is simple: the tax regimes of different countries allow multinational corporations to book much of their income in low-tax or no-tax jurisdictions, and many of their expenses in high-tax jurisdictions, thereby significantly reducing their tax liabilities. In a time of public austerity, citizens and legislators around the world have been more focused on the resulting erosion of the corporate income tax base than ever before. In response, in 2012, the G-20—the gathering of the leaders of the world’s twenty largest economies—launched the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, the most extensive attempt to change international tax norms since the 1920s. In the course of the BEPS project, the field of international tax has adopted the institutional and procedural architecture for multilateral action used in international financial law. This Article is the first to ask whether that architecture will work in the international tax context. To answer that question, this Article first applies lessons from the international financial law literature to assess international tax agreements that are now being reached through soft-law instruments and procedures comparable to those that characterize international financial law. This initial analysis, which draws from the experience in international financial law, is largely pessimistic. However, this Article then describes how model tax treaty law—although also a form of soft law—is highly effective, and differentiates the political economy of international tax law from that of international financial law. As a result, a key theoretical point emerges: bifurcating analysis of multilateral efforts to change international tax norms into their Model Treaty-based and non-Model Treaty-based components is necessary in order to understand the new regime for international tax governance. At a more practical level, bifurcating the analysis highlights that observers should expect the Model Treaty-based parts of the BEPS project to be implemented, as well as most parts of the project focused on tax transparency. By contrast, sustained international coordination in implementing other dimensions of the project is doubtful. In reaching these conclusions, the Article contributes to the broader international economic governance literature by using a high-profile example from international tax diplomacy to show how underlying legal institutions affect the prospects for implementation of international regulatory agreements

The New Generation of Community Foundations

Community foundations have enjoyed considerable growth in recent years, not only in their number but also in their character. This emergence of a "new generation" of community foundations is occurring within a larger context of other emerging forms of "social solidarity" movements and institutions, including rural development philanthropy, member-based organizing and other hybrid forms of citizen-led actions. In an effort to strengthen a conceptual framework for this phenomenon, this paper identifies synergies and linkages across networks (and their respective bodies of literature) that may previously not have been well connected

Imageries of corporate social responsibility: Visual recontextualization and field-level meaning

In this paper, we explore how corporations use visual artifacts to translate and recontextualize a globally theorized managerial concept (CSR) into a local setting (Austria). In our analysis of the field-level visual discourse, we analyze over 1,600 images in stand-alone CSR reports of publicly traded corporations. We borrow from framing analysis and structural linguistics to show how the meaning structure underlying a multifaceted construct like CSR is constituted by no more than a relatively small number of fundamental dimensions and rhetorical standpoints (topoi). We introduce the concept of imageries-of-practice to embrace the critical role that shared visual language plays in the construction of meaning and the emergence of field-level logics. In particular, we argue that imageries-of-practice, compared to verbal vocabularies, are just as well equipped to link locally resonating symbolic representations and globally diffusing practices, thus expressing both the material and ideational dimension of institutional logics in processes of translation. We find that visual rhetoric used in the Austrian discourse emphasizes the qualities of CSR as a bridging concept, and facilitates the mediation of inconsistencies in several ways: By translating abstract global ideas into concrete local knowledge, imageries-of-practice aid in mediating spatial oppositions; by linking the past, present, and future, they bridge time; by mediating between different institutional spheres and their divergent logics, they appease ideational oppositions and reduce institutional complexity; and, finally, by connecting questionable claims with representations of authenticity, they aid in overcoming credibility gaps

BlogForever D3.2: Interoperability Prospects

This report evaluates the interoperability prospects of the BlogForever platform. Therefore, existing interoperability models are reviewed, a Delphi study to identify crucial aspects for the interoperability of web archives and digital libraries is conducted, technical interoperability standards and protocols are reviewed regarding their relevance for BlogForever, a simple approach to consider interoperability in specific usage scenarios is proposed, and a tangible approach to develop a succession plan that would allow a reliable transfer of content from the current digital archive to other digital repositories is presented