How do Australian small and medium enterprises communicate their corporate social responsibility activities online?

Much of the existing research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) focuses on large firms, with comparatively little on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The SME research focuses on barriers and drivers to CSR and neglects how SMEs communicate their CSR activities. This paper addresses this gap by reporting on a content analysis of 443 Australian SME websites which identifies how they are using this channel to communicate their CSR activities.<br /

Project Management in the German Trade Sector: A (Preliminary) Action Research Framework For The Introduction Of Computer Assisted Management Of Projects In Small And Medium Sized Enterprises

This paper describes an framework for the introduction of project management in the German trade sector, at a time when businesses are increasingly involved in inter-organisational activities, using an action research approach. The paper initially describes the project management issues particular to small and micro enterprises and explains why action research is conceptually the most appropriate research method for this project. The framework developed for the carrying out of this project is based on the necessary phases of the project and the resulting research cycles. Among the many questions raised, it is important to examine why project management has not been popular with this part of the production sector. Additionally we need to explore the special needs of the trade sector with its particular structure, the education of the employees, the size of the businesses, the manpower involved, typical projects and organisational issues

Mobile Project Management: introducing personal digital assistants to support project steering and controlling in trade

This paper describes the introduction of a novel system to steer and control projects in small and medium sized enterprises in the German trade sector. These businesses are facing increasing competition and need to find innovative ways to organise processes more professionally. Trade businesses usually plan projects accurately, but once a project has started, the plan does not necessarily reflect the changes that occur in real life. Reporting is usually done on paper with insufficient processing time and therefore problems can not be taken care of in an adequate fashion. The introduction of PDAs to those businesses as mobile devices for steering and controlling proves to make these processes more efficient. Therefore we explore relevant business processes in the building trade, the singular properties of PDAs and related software developing issues as well as introducing our project steering and controlling system

Market Design for the Transition to Renewable Electricity Systems

The research carried out in this thesis aims to shed light on the role of the European electricity market design in the transition to a target electricity system that combines sustainability, affordability, and reliability. While the ongoing expansion of fluctuating renewable electricity sources challenges the established structures and market mechanisms, governments across Europe have decided to phase-out certain conventional technologies like coal or nuclear power. Since traditional electricity systems rely on flexibility provided by controllable generation capacity, other flexibility options are needed to compensate for the decommissioned conventional power plants and support the system integration of renewables. Against this background, the dissertation extends an established large-scale agent-based electricity market model in order to account for the developments towards an integrated European electricity market and the characteristics of storage technologies. In particular, the representation of cross-border effects is enhanced by integrating approaches from the fields of operations research, non-cooperative game theory, and artificial intelligence in the simulation framework. The extended model is then applied in three case studies to analyze the diffusion of different flexibility options under varying regulatory settings. These case studies cover some central aspects of the European electricity market, most importantly capacity remuneration mechanisms, the interaction of day-ahead market and congestion management, and the role of regulation for residential self-consumption. Results of the case studies confirm that by designing the regulatory framework, policymakers and regulators can substantially affect quantity, composition, location, and operation of technologies – both, on the supply side and the demand side. At the same time, changes and amendments to market design are frequent and will continue to be so in the years ahead. Moreover, given the increasing level of market integration in Europe, the role of cross-border effects of national market designs will gain further in importance. In this context, agent-based simulation models are a valuable tool to better understand potential long-term effects of market designs in the interconnected European electricity system and can therefore support the European energy transition

Building e-literate societies through e-governance in Kerala

E-Governance as a concept defines and assesses the impact of technologies on the practices and administration of governments and the relationships between public servants and society. E-government solutions have the ability to reduce the costs of providing<br /

Time is of the Essence: Machine Learning-based Intrusion Detection in Industrial Time Series Data

The Industrial Internet of Things drastically increases connectivity of devices in industrial applications. In addition to the benefits in efficiency, scalability and ease of use, this creates novel attack surfaces. Historically, industrial networks and protocols do not contain means of security, such as authentication and encryption, that are made necessary by this development. Thus, industrial IT-security is needed. In this work, emulated industrial network data is transformed into a time series and analysed with three different algorithms. The data contains labeled attacks, so the performance can be evaluated. Matrix Profiles perform well with almost no parameterisation needed. Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average performs well in the presence of noise, requiring parameterisation effort. Long Short Term Memory-based neural networks perform mediocre while requiring a high training- and parameterisation effort.Comment: Extended version of a publication in the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops (ICDMW

Project quality management for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in trade

Managing project quality is becoming focal issue in major enterprises as popular quality programs from International Standard Organization (ISO) such as ISO9000 certification processes gain momentum. Large organizations as well as small-medium enterprises (SMEs) seem to implement this program, albeit for varied reasons. In this paper, we have reported the findings from an action research project conducted in SMEs who are implementing quality management. The findings indicate that external pressures such as regulations, competition and perceived success - defined on their own parameters, may be the drivers and the certification does not necessarily result in better performance. We are in the process of developing a cost-effective guideline/framework - based on this research, for SMEs involved in the certification process. In addition, the results are aimed at informing academia as well as certification bodies of specific concerns with SMEs.<br /

Women in ICT project management and society : snapshot of a decade and a conduit for sustainable progress

In the past decade, the power of pervasive Internet has permeated global businesses, as the world became interconnected. During this momentous decade, the proportion of women working in the information communication technology (ICT) industry as project managers increased, triggered by the opportunities presented by this brave new networked world. This trend posed new complexities in organizations and resulted in some significant changes in the societal composition. This paper provides a snapshot of the progress of women project managers in the ICT sector over the past decade, their challenges and the approach of some businesses to address these, leveraging on opportunities presented by emerging or evolving technologies. The research reported in this paper synthesizes literature reviews, previous research and a cross-sectional global survey that was conducted in 2010, within ICT sector that sought perceptions of women who work in the ICT sector regarding the constructive role of organizations and ICTs in their progress over the decade.<br /