This book establishes and explores existing and emerging theories on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and the adoption of IT/IS. It presents the latest empirical research findings in that area of IS research and explores new technologies and practices. The book is written for researchers and professionals working in the field of IS research or the research of SMEs. Moreover, the book will be a reference for researchers, professionals and students in management information systems ...

The single European market after 1992 presents a major challenge to small and medium-sized companies in the Community. Whether it is developing exports and/or fighting off new imports, Europe's entrepreneurs will have to `think European'. Moreover, the European Community institutions themselves have developed special policies designed to promote the interests of Europe's smaller companies. This volume explains how the EC's policies towards small and medium-sized enterprises have developed ...

Developed from a study commissioned by the European Capital Markets Institute, this book examines the impact of private equity and capital markets on the development of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the United States and the European Union. It also seeks to understand the nature of institutional policy towards SMEs and the extent to which it can aid development.This volume offers a strong introduction, glossary and international case-studies to aid the reader's unders...

SMEs need to become more sustainable. To reach such a goal they also need to become more professional in their outlook and approach. In this way they may be able to deal with the instability, complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty of change; and to cope with the ever increasing pressures brought by change. After outlining what is meant by sustainability and professionalism, some strategies for how SME owner/managers might become more professional by focussing on the development of their own...

Business process management is usually treated from two different perspectives: business administration and computer science. While business administration professionals tend to consider information technology as a subordinate aspect in business process management for experts to handle, by contrast computer science professionals often consider business goals and organizational regulations as terms that do not deserve much thought but require the appropriate level of abstraction.Mat...

It is 5 years since the publication of the seminal paper on “Design Science in Information Systems Research” by Hevner, March, Park, and Ram in MIS Quarterly and the initiation of the Information Technology and Systems department of the Communications of AIS. These events in 2004 are markers in the move of design science to the forefront of information systems research. A suf cient interval has elapsed since then to allow assessment of from where the eld has come and where it should go. De...

Enterprise modeling (EM) methods and techniques are indispensable for understanding the present situation of an enterprise and for preparing for its future – particularly in times of continuous organizational change, an increasing pace of innovation, new market challenges or technology advances.The authors combine a detailed description of the 4EM methodology with their concrete experience gathered in projects. Their book addresses the modeling procedure, modeling language and mode...

The issue of data quality is as old as data itself. However, the proliferation of diverse, large-scale and often publically available data on the Web has increased the risk of poor data quality and misleading data interpretations. On the other hand, data is now exposed at a much more strategic level e.g. through business intelligence systems, increasing manifold the stakes involved for individuals, corporations as well as government agencies. There, the lack of knowledge about data accurac...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2017, held in Vicenza, Italy, in September 2017.The 68 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 159 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of identified challenges and recent advances in various collaborative network (CN) domains and their applications, with a strong focus on the following areas: collaborative models, platforms an...

E-Commerce Strategy: Text and Cases provides the fundamental literature required for graduate students and practitioners to understand electronic commerce. Each chapter provides clearly designed learning objectives and review questions to highlight the major topics and goals. This book covers many of the new innovations and technologies that have been established for e-commerce site development. Unlike similar books, topics such as e-channel adoption, factors affecting e-commerce ...

Ontologies tend to be found everywhere. They are viewed as the silver bullet for many applications, such as database integration, peer-to-peer systems, e-commerce, semantic web services, or social networks. However, in open or evolving systems, such as the semantic web, different parties would, in general, adopt different ontologies. Thus, merely using ontologies, like using XML, does not reduce heterogeneity: it just raises heterogeneity problems to a higher level.Euzenat and Shva...

To enhance marketing analytics, approximate and inductive reasoning can be applied to handle uncertainty in individual marketing models. This book demonstrates the use of fuzzy logic for classification and segmentation in marketing campaigns. Based on practical experience as a data analyst and on theoretical studies as a researcher, the author explains fuzzy classification, inductive logic and the concept of likelihood and introduces a blend of Bayesian and Fuzzy Set approaches, allowing r...