Information Technology and Innovation Trends in Organizations

Adoption of inter-organizational e-services like e-Invoicing is not a simple task for SMEs. This work is an exploratory attempt to understand such complexity. Through the analysis of a case study the paper further points out that external pressures might induce SMEs to adopt e-services not matching their needs. New and probably underestimated questions arise: can pressures by trading counterparties generate market distortions and hidden inefficiencies also in e-service adoption? The paper will derive some preliminary conclusions and will propose directions for future research on the topic.

In today’s “wired world” the public sector and private sectors face competing pressures of price rises and scarcity of “territory”. So far, the public and private sector knowledge domains have large developed separately. A destination Management Organization perspective can accommodate the production facilities and e-services governance to represent the interests of both the public and private sectors. The notion of short-term lets of the territory must be assessed against perceived outside threats, such as food scarcity, that require self-sufficiency to protect the long-term interests of both the public and private sector stakeholders’. This paper develops an e-services “interactive” governance model to bridge gaps by trustworthy relations in the context of decision making by network stakeholders. Subsequently, it applies this model to the Trentino case study for examining conceptual constructs based on embedded governance as a vehicle to balance heritage and innovation and knowledge dissemination. It concludes by summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of sharing information within a destination management organization context amongst the public and private sectors as a step towards “reclaiming the narrative of the commons”.

This paper sheds light on the management of a research project in a new topic for IS like the one of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). It describes and discusses the methodology adopted for a survey designed by the authors and experimented during a recent research on ITS carried out on behalf of an Italian Ministry. The paper presents the first results of this research and draw some conclusions on the problems that have to be faced in order to successfully manage such type of research projects and to build a common knowledge base on ITS.

The present research has the objective to discover and understand potential sources of Sustained Competitive Advantage (SCA) for companies and exploit this potential in order to achieve and maintain the competitive advantage through operational innovation and especially through the implementation of IT-dependent strategic initiatives. A new strategic analysis methodology is proposed and described within the paper. The concept of Business Artifact (BA) already introduced and used for business process modeling within the Model Driven Business Transformation (MDBT) framework is the basic element of our methodology. The theoretical foundations of the work are provided by the Resource Based View (RBV) of the firm theory [Barney, J Manage 17(1):99–120, 1991] and by the Critical Success Factors (CSF) method [Rockart, Harv Bus Rev 57(2):81–93, 1979]. Considering that, by definition, each Business Artifact has a data model, in which all the resources it needs and uses during its lifecycle are specified, we want to identify which Business Artifacts are strategically relevant for a company and prioritize them according to the Sustained Competitive Advantage they could be able to provide. These key BAs should then be the target of any IT-dependent strategic initiative, that should include actions aimed at improving or transforming these BAs in order to achieve, maintain and exploit the company competitive advantage.

The Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) offers a special and potentially important means to facilitate public participation in the planning and decision making. The major problem is the lack of evaluation methods to verify the outcome of the effects of PPGIS on decision making processes. To fill this gap, the objective of the on-going research is to develop an analytical framework through which PPGIS initiatives can be evaluated.

Cloud computing and Software as a Service infrastructure are becoming important factors in E-commerce and E-business processes. Users may access simultaneously to different E-services supplied by several providers. An efficient approach to authenticate and authorize users is needed to avoid problems about trust and redundancy of procedure. In this paper we will focus on main approaches in managing Authentication and Authorization Infrastructures (AAI): i.e. federated and centralized and cloud based. Then we will discuss about related some critical issues in Cloud computing and SaaS contexts and will highlight the possible future researches.

The paper reconstructs the path taken by the reform of public procurement in Italy which has gradually evolved from a and centralized market to an open and accessible one. Despite the development of the Electronic Public Administration Market Place (MEPA), information regarding its performance is scant. There are no available collected data on firm satisfaction. The paper discusses the role Consip, a public company owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, has played (and continues to play) to guide the decentralization of public e-procurement. At the same time it shows the results of a sample investigation aimed at analysing the level of satisfaction of small/medium enterprises (SMEs) participating in the MEPA.

This paper addresses one of the most challenging tasks managers face, namely to implement information and communication technologies (ICT) effectively to a Large Event Organization (LEO), a special type of project organization. Such process requires people to absorb and implement factors which, in turn, demand an understanding of the organizational context characterized by “uncertainty” and ambiguous human behavior. Through the application of the Demand and Supply Governance (DSG) model, which has been tested in the products manufacturing industry (e.g. Supply Chain Management) and in steady state ICT-organizations we test the potential for application in the Large Event Organization (LEO) context with many sponsors, public sec-tor transport and tourism stakeholders. The results of our empirical investigation of DSG applied in a LEO afford a theoretical framework for understanding the ICT-related management: its characteristics, dilemmas, enablers and inhibitors. The study findings indicate that systematic data combination and division contribute to the potential for improving financial, resilience, reliability and security needs; special attention should be paid to prevent for example total information blackouts during LEO staging.

Business process change and information systems development are usually associated in best business practices. However, it is not ever clear if the quality of business process change really impacts on quality and value of information systems. To realize value from business process change through information systems quality, it is necessary to clearly define an improvement strategy regarding both business activities and operations and the IT applications embedding them.

Davenport et al. [8] identified three most important key factors driving IS value, deriving from business process change: integrate, optimize and informate.

We suggest to add a key factor driving IS value deriving from business process change:

Identify Knowledge

.

Identify Knowledge

, means to identify knowledge, when and how users need it, improving services and process decision. Information Technologies bear the potential of new uses. These uses provoke a new organisation which induces a new vision of IS strategy. Under the influence of globalization, and the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that radically modifies our relationship with space and time, the hierarchical company locked up on its local borders becomes an Extended Company, without borders, opened and adaptable. In this context, this paper proposes a shift in the way the design of Information Systems is viewed based on business process. The adopted approach is a global philosophy based on Business Process Management (BPM) within the framework of all the methodological principles.

Empirical evidences are available, by an Italian large company, using business process management and knowledge capturing as an improvement strategy for IS value.

This article reports the results of a research aimed at investigating the impact of an ERP system on organizational processes and individual employees in a public sector organization (Italian Regional Council). Through a qualitative method (Focus Groups – FG) interesting results have come out: system introduction planning, organizational and technical aspects seem to be relevant issues to be addressed in order to improve ERP system’s effectiveness. Through a structured questionnaire, a larger sample of employees will be involved in the second phase, aimed at testing the constructs which emerged with the FG analysis and the relationships among them.

The evaluation RFId business value has become widely recognized and compelling. However, both academics and practitioners are still striving to conceive and agree on a general model to frame its main components. From a rich review of the existing literature, this paper advances a model to evaluate the RFId business value on the base of (1) the objectives of the investment, (2) the results achieved and (3) the possible effects of contextual moderating factors. The model has been applied to assess 64 successful RFId projects presented at the last two editions of the RFId Italia Award. The results highlight that the main contribution of RFId systems to business value is expected and generated through the improvement in business process performances, whereas financial aspects obtain just little relevance. Taken together, these findings extend the RFId business value literature, by identifying and underlining the importance of the intangible benefits of an RFId system.

Detecting outliers which are grossly different from or inconsistent with the remaining spatio–temporal data set is a major challenge in real-world knowledge discovery and data mining applications. In this paper, we face the outlier detection problem in spatio–temporal data. The proposed non parametric method rely on a new fusion approach able to discover outliers according to the spatial and temporal features, at the same time: the user can decide the importance to give to both components (spatial and temporal) depending upon the kind of data to be analyzed and/or the kind of analysis to be performed. Experiments on synthetic and real world data sets to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach are reported.

The design of Business Intelligence (BI) systems needs the integration of different enterprise figures: on the one hand, business managers give their information requirements in terms of Key Performance Indicators (KPI). On the other hand, Information Technology (IT) experts provide the technical skill to compute KPI from transactional data. The gap between managerial and technical views of information is one of the main problems in BI systems design. In this paper we tackle the problem from the perspective of mathematical structures of KPI, and discuss the advantages that a semantic representation able to explicitly manage such structures can give in different phases of the design activity. In particular we propose a novel model of ontology for KPI, and show how this model can be exploited to support KPI elicitation and to analyze dependencies among indicators in terms of common components, thus giving the manager a structured overall picture of her requirements, and the IT personnel a valuable support for source selection and data mart design.

In this paper, we propose a semantic framework to support enterprise mashup within or across collaborative partners. The aim is to enable effective searching and finding of mashup components and their composition, by making possible proactive suggestion of mashup components and progressive mashup composition. The framework is constituted by a model of component semantic descriptor, apt to abstract from the heterogeneity of underlying APIs, and by techniques for building a mashup ontology where semantic descriptors are semantically organized according to similarity and coupling links. The semantic framework can be exploited to support an exploratory perspective, where the user has not exactly in mind what is the mashup application to build, but new components are suggested on the basis of their similarity or coupling with respect to already selected ones.

In this paper, we propose a similarity-based approach for microdata classification based on tagging, matching and clouding techniques. The goal is to construct

entity-centric microdata clouds

where similar microdata items can be properly arranged to highlight their relevance with respect to a selected target entity according to different notions of relevance defined in the paper. An application example is provided, based on a microdata collection extracted from a real microblogging system.

Business metadata (BM) plays a crucial role in increasing data quality of information systems (IS), especially in terms of data believability, ease of understanding, and accessibility. Despite its importance BM is primarily discussed from a technical perspective, while its business value is scarcely addressed. Therefore, this article aims to contribute to the further development of existing research by providing a conceptual framework of qualitative and quantitative benefits. A financial service provider case is presented that demonstrates how this conceptual framework has successfully been applied in a two-stage cost-benefit analysis.

Pay-per-click advertising is one of the most paved ways of online advertising today. However the top ranking keywords are extremely costly. Since search terms have a “long tail” behaviour, they may be used for a more cost-effective way of selecting the right keywords, achieving similar traffic, and reducing the cost considerably. This paper proposes a methodology that, exploiting linguistic knowledge, identifies cost effective bid keyword in the long tail distribution. The experiments show that these keywords are highly relevant (90% average precision) and better targeted than those suggested by other methods, while enabling reduced cost of an ad campaign.

We present the approach to green information systems adopted in the Green Active Management of Energy in IT Service centres (GAMES) Project. The goal of GAMES is to develop methodologies, models, and tools to reduce the environmental impact of information systems at all levels, from application and services to physical machines and IT plants. This paper focuses on models and methods for the analysis and reduction of the energy consumption associated with applications which are made energy-aware through

annotations

and

Green Performance Indicators

(

GPI

) in applications.

Today CIOs and IS departments in general are struggling to find a framework to evaluate the performance and the return of their IS investments. Notwithstanding a long-term research tradition on the topic of the business value impact of IS, so far the identification of the returns of the investments of IS is still an open issue. Even though a consistent body of literature has examined the problem over a time frame of more than 20 years, the IS business value research has produced so far a plethora of theoretical contributions with few practical applications. Starting from the assumption that real-world experiences differ from theoretical explications, and with the intent to contribute in the IS business value research field bringing evidences and witnesses from the reality, this paper presents a case of an IS Performance Management System used to assess the value delivered by IT in RFI (Rete Ferroviaria Italiana), the manager of the Italian railroad infrastructure.

Planning activities are a relevant instrument to carry out sustainable and valuable eGovernment initiatives. The set of expertise needed for the design of eGovernment systems ranges from social to legal, economic, organizational, and technological perspectives, which have to be faced in a unique framework. The aim of the eG4M framework is to bring out these issues with an integrated approach. In this paper we focus in particular on legal issues in the strategic planning phase, aiming to show their relevance for the choice of appropriate solutions in terms of legal framework and enterprise architecture for service provision. The paper provides an example of application of the framework on experiences carried out in Italy.

This paper presents a method that models Enterprise Information Architecture with the objective of integrating overall Enterprise Architecture Modeling frameworks such as TOGAF. The method, called SIRE (Strategic Information Requirements Elicitation), includes elicitation and modeling of strategic information requirements, that are an abstraction level higher than traditional conceptual level. Elicitation is based on a framework that identifies information classes in enterprises, by using two logical categories, Information Domains and Information Types. Specifically the paper considers the method by which SIRE schemata are mapped and transformed into Entity Relationship schemata, using a set of predefined rules and an open source tool. The method is validated by a real life case study. The novelty of the approach is its universality. Furthermore it shortens times and is very easy understood by user managers.

Use cases are recommended as a powerful tool to carry out applications when moving from requirements analysis to design. In this contribution, we start from a recent software methodology that has been modified to pursue a strictly model-driven engineering approach. The work focuses on relevant elements of use cases in UML modeling, adapted and extended to support business modeling activities. Specifically, we introduce the idea of performing a “double tracing” between business modeling and system modeling: in this way a strong link between business requirements and the software solution to be developed is established.

Nowadays the availability of virtually infinite information sources over the web makes information overload a severe problem to be addressed by tools able to aggregate and deliver information from selected channels in a personalized way. The support provided by portals (e.g., iGoogle) forces users to abandon primary tasks to monitor useful information. Feed readers are sometimes based on peripheral notifications that do not interfere with primary tasks but are often mostly textual. In this paper we present a customizable glanceable peripheral display able to aggregate notifications from multiple sources (e.g., email, news, weather forecast) as well as to provide quick access to information sources. The design is based on state-of-the-art guidelines and on preliminary usability studies conducted at mockup level both on the abstract model and on its realization.

In this paper we present a dialogue interface for investigating human activities in surveillance videos. The interface exploits the information computed by the recognition system to support users in the investigation process. The interaction dialogue is supported by a sketch language enabling users to easily specify various kinds of questions about both actions and states, and the nature of the response one wishes. The contribution of this research is twofold (1) proposing an intuitive interaction mechanism for surveillance video investigation, and (2) proposing a novel question–answering model to support users during the information-seeking process.

In the present paper we analyze the role that a dynamic user model may play in simplifying query formulation and solving in an existing audio-visual map interaction technique conceived for mobile devices. We have re-designed the system functionalities devoted to gain summary information about off-screen data and to suggest the best direction towards a target. We show that customizing a query on the basis of the current user profile may give the user the advantage of making queries simpler and may avoid similar steps meant to refine the results.

Computer based training represents an effective way to learn and virtually practice the procedures related to a specific surgical intervention exploiting a virtual reproduction of the anatomy involved and of the tools required. Though a “visual-only” level of simulation can already be very useful, there is no doubt that, as long as the technology would allow it, a visual-haptic simulator providing kinesthetic feedback to augment the virtual experience would represent a key factor in fostering the development of manual skills in trainees. This kind of approach to virtual training is exploited in this work to simulate Embryo Transfer, a crucial step of the In Vitro Fertilization procedure which is become very popular to address several infertility conditions. We present a novel training system based on a haptic device allowing the user to handle a virtual replica of the catheter required to insert the simulated embryo through the cervix until the optimal site in the womb is reached. The system proposed exploits deformability-mapping to represent local stiffness in the contact surfaces and simulates an ultrasound live image to approach the visual appearance of the actual diagnostic imagery.

In recent years, end users are increasingly requiring to adapt and shape the software artifacts they use, thus becoming developers of their tools without being or willing to become computer experts. Capitalizing on the experience gained in the collaboration with an Italian research and certification institution, this paper proposes a Task Management System based on a Web service architecture, aimed at supporting the activities of workflow designers of this institution. The objective is to create a system that assists such domain experts in designing workflows through semantic orchestration of existing Web services, permitting them to use the knowledge and expertise they possess.

The advantage of many web publishing tools is the flexibility for the user to arrange the available widgets and modules. Nevertheless, the freedom to insert and arrange components in the creation of web pages sometimes leads the designer to make usability and/or accessibility mistakes that emerge only after the interface has been built and subjected to automatic, semi-automatic or manual evaluation processes. Several systems include features to perform accessibility controls of the web sites implemented, analyzing syntactic properties rather that provide guidelines to control the usability metrics. In this work, we propose a methodology to develop web interfaces that integrates the advantages of a top–down approach to implement HTML pages with functionalities to perform usability controls analyzing an abstraction level of formal specification based upon Symbol-Relation Action grammars (SR-Action grammars, for short) (Cassino and Tucci, Information Systems: People, Organizations, Institutions, and Technologies, 2009). In particular, the visual models adopted to develop both the static characteristics and the interactive tasks of the web application, makes more intuitive the design and the development. Again, a SR-Action grammar defining the scenes of the implemented site is used to control a subset of the Nielsen heuristics at abstraction level: completeness, correctness, aesthetic and minimalist design, user control, consistency, and metrics desirable in an interactive visual interface. The analysis at formal level and the report of the usability controls allow the designer to run feedback reviews of the visual environment under consideration and to perform usability evaluation before of the canonical testing techniques. Then, we describe an implementation prototype of the development environment born of the integration of two systems previously realized: TAGIVE (Cassino et al., WSEAS Trans Inform Sci Appl J, 2006) and VALUTA (Cassino and Tucci, Information Systems: People, Organizations, Institutions, and Technologies, 2009).

We present a Crawljax based approach to automatically evaluate the accessibility of AJAX applications. Crawljax is a tool able to crawl an AJAX application for inferring a corresponding state-flow graph. Thus, combining Crawljax with a traditional tool for accessibility testing we realized a plugin that provides an automatic generation of accessibility evaluation reports for AJAX applications. The proposed approach has been experimented carrying out a case study that highlighted its effectiveness. Nevertheless, the case study also revealed some shortcomings of the current implementation of Crawljax.

Augmented Reality interfaces allow user to interact with a mixed reality where virtual information is superimposed to the physical environment. The technological evolution of mobile devices offers accelerometers and magnetic field sensors as input controllers permitting to transform mobile devices in 3D User Interfaces. In this paper, we investigate how Augmented Reality and 3D User Interfaces, provided only by mobile devices, can support co-located teams in face-to-face interaction during meetings. Following the “Cooperative Building” metaphor, users collaboratively create multimedia content in Augmented Reality areas and lately present it during the meeting. Multiple coordinated areas have been designed to provide support to group discussion. All these areas are associated to a specific physical location in the meeting room. Specific augmented areas are also available to support content projection and sharing.

Increasing globalization has created tremendous opportunities and challenges for organizations and society. Organizations attempt to draw on people’s varied experience, skills, and creativity, regardless of their location; consequently, a broad range of information technologies to better support the collaboration of diverse, and increasingly distributed, sets of participants are ever more utilized. However, research on cross-cultural computer-mediated collaboration has thus far remained sparse. To this end, this research-in-progress paper reports on a study that will examine the effectiveness of modifications of a group collaboration environment’s human–computer interface on group performance, taking into consideration the effects of national culture of the group members. We will test different levels of feedback as a mechanism to increase performance in a controlled laboratory experiment with participants from the USA and East Asia, so as to examine their differential effects across cultures differing widely on the individualism/collectivism dimension. Finally, we will discuss the implications of the findings for the design of the human–computer interface for cross-cultural computer-mediated idea generation and computer-mediated collaboration in general.

Source code tracking, analysis and comprehension are difficult tasks because of the complex nature of software. Source code metrics evaluate some aspects of software artefacts and provide synthetic measures related to the examined characteristics. In this paper, we introduce an approach for obtaining raster images starting from source code metrics. With this method, the paper presents some images obtained from different releases of a software product and starts a preliminary discussion on how these images can be useful for underlining interesting features of analyzed code and for improving the software development process. Indeed IE best practices, when applied to source code metrics as proposed, may suggest a way to change or hybridize the classical point of view on code, providing both a way to visualize metric information and alternative approaches to operate on these data.

The Competence Center ICT-SUD (for short, ICT-SUD) is a SME that was founded in December 2006 as a non-profit consortium company within the framework of the National Operational Program (PON), launched by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research. ICT-SUD is a network of Competence Centres over five regions of Southern Italy, aimed at providing technological transfer services for qualification or requalification of the demand and for the promotion of the offer of solutions that employ ICT technologies. This paper illustrates the Consortium’s strategy in technology transfer, describes preliminaries experiences matured in the implementation of the strategy and presents on-going initiatives.

The authors offer a synthetic overview of some publicly funded organisations involved in actions of Research and Development (R&D) and Technology Transfer (TT) in Italy and, in particular, in the Southern areas. Some judgements have been formulated basing on several Stakeholders’ opinions, crucial factors have been identified in the Italian TT experiences. The work illustrates a case of success in the ICT sector: the Pole in L&K, based in the Province of Salerno. This experience, was born within a department of the University of Salerno from the intuition of a Leader and a Team of young researchers, has conveyed into the creation of a non profit, public/private Consortium (CRMPA), which has lived the phases of a SME, characterised as an oscillating system: from the Entrepreneurial Model, to a model centred on Corporate Technology Assets. A participattory model spin-off, has been implemented, giving birth to other Consortia, and the CRMPA has evolved into a network structure over the National territory. The current phase presents a virtual organisation whose core is composed of the Embryo group and some spin-off structures, and the permanent halo strictly connected to the core. The model is inspired to the SMEs lifecycle to create an ITC Business Ecosystem in Central-Southern Italy. The work ends with some considerations about the desirability to use the Cases of Success model to implement TT actions, supported by both politics and concessional financing, able to improve the the competitiveness National Economic System.

iTravel is an e-tourism system conceived for helping both employees and customers of a travel agency in finding the best possible travel solution in a short time. The core of iTravel is an ontology which models the domain of the touristic offers. The key features of the system are (1) the automatic population of the ontology of the travel offers, obtained by extracting the information contained in the touristic leaflets which are sent by the tour operators to the travel agencies; (2) the intelligent touristic-package search, which mimics the typical deductions of a travel agent. Both features were designed and developed by using two logic-based technologies founded on DLV, a state-of-the-art Answer Set Programming system, namely OntoDLV and

H

ι

L

ε

X

. The system is developed under PIA project funded by the Calabrian Region, and is a successful result of technological transfer program aimed at a commercial and practical use of basic research on ontology and logic programming. In the paper we describe the key features of iTravel and report the results of some benchmarks on both the accuracy of the information extraction process and the efficiency of the reasoning process. Experiments are carried out on real-world data, and confirm the effectiveness of our solution. We also discuss practices and experiences of innovation transfer within the project.

This paper discusses the applicability of von Hippel’s lead user concept in a constellation of blogs. The lead user model represents a formal theory designed specifically for identify innovators. In order to examine the applicability of the lead user method, we proposed an approach based on Social Network Analysis. We chose blogs’ constellation based on Architecture to achieve our purpose. In this perspective, Architecture is only an example of creativity and of sharing interest among the sources of innovation.

The results of study indicates that the method of Social Network Analysis may be suitable for identifying the likely source of innovation. This paper illustrates the importance of quantitative approaches as tool to join theoretical and classical framework with actual growth of virtual communities, web-applications commonly associated with the term Web 2.0.

The development of an interfirm cooperative relationship leads to the creation of accounting information flows between firms, that have to exchange their accounting information in order to achieve cost reduction and to create value. As a consequence, firms should implement both new management accounting techniques and modify their accounting information systems. This paper analyzes a specific management accounting technique, i.e. open-book accounting, and its relationship with accounting information systems. In particular, the paper first uses organizational theories to classify interfirm relationships in order to define cooperative relationships which can benefit most from the implementation of open-book accounting. Secondly, the paper shows the logic used in implementing open-book accounting, in order to control the accounting information flows between firms. Finally, the paper describes the relationship between open-book accounting and accounting information systems within interfirm cooperative relationships.

Changes in accounting information systems (AIS) could be triggered by several factors, in this paper the authors consider the mandatory changes required by legislative measures. Previous researches have shown that companies have different behaviors when complying with the same law requirement and that some factors determine the companies’ different ability to seize opportunities coming from legislative acts. In this paper the authors investigate and interpret the impacts of two Italian law (L. 38/05; L. 262/05) on AIS: by checking the accounting technological and organizational impacts, by verifying the effectiveness of behavioral approaches, by identifying the factors that could influence these approaches.

In Italy, in the last few years the legislator has acted, in the public sector, as a promoter of change of the accounting information system (AIS). The public administrations (PA), in fact, have been the recipient of legislative measures aimed at increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of management processes. These interventions have concerned, directly or indirectly, AIS. The aim of this research is to build an interpretive model of Italian not university research institutions (RI) behavior in adopting legislator acts in order to: understand the extent of the law impacts on RI’s AIS; investigate the determinant factors affecting this behavior.

The research question of this study attempts to identify which are the enabling factors for the adoption of a sourcing SaaS (Software as a Service) model for Business Intelligence applications. The objective of this paper is to propose a model containing enabling factors for the adoption of BI solutions. We seek to expand on the Benlian et al. model [1] which is based on a theoretical framework including axioms from Transaction Cost Theory, Resource Based View and Theory of Planned Behavior. It is a theoretical research in progress which provides a first step towards a qualitative approach, based on case study, for the practical evaluation of the proposed model. The new model will consider all the three categories of factors: organizational, economic and technological and their relationships with the hypotheses explained in the paper.

Many studies acknowledge the growing role of Business Intelligence Systems (BIS) deployment in supporting business decision-making processes. This development involves both transactional systems, such as the implementation of ERPs, and BI models, as well as reporting tools, business analytics, and data mining.

The hypothesis is that the decision making process depends on the quality of all the links before the BIS implementation, such as the ERP implementation and upgrade, the organization of the business data, the deep awareness of the business, the desired level of BIS implementation and upgrading (i.e. reporting, predictive analysis, data mining, and so forth).

The aim of the research is to evaluate the main reasons that drive companies to implement and upgrade ERP and BIS, in light of potential relationships among them. A comparative case study, made for the purpose of this research, shows two different approaches to ERP/BIS. At the end, some considerations about them are discussed.

R&D strategy formulation represents a critical task for those firms that base their competitive advantage on innovation. Different sources of information must be accessed in this respect, among which patents. Conventional patent analysis has commonly focused on factual information, while less scholarly attention has been devoted to the strategic role of patent analysis in supporting R&D strategic planning. Accordingly to this view, we conducted a case study of a multinational company that performed several patent analysis to enter in a new market domain. Although these findings can not be generalized, they shed new lights on the several tasks patent analysis might perform and the relevance to conceive patent information as a source of Business Intelligence Systems. In this respect, firms might include patent analysis as part of their Decision Support Systems and, consequently, invest in new competences and skills in order to handle complexity linked to the increasing amount of available patent data.

The concept of “virtual organization” is more and more interesting in the literature especially focusing on virtual teams. There are two most important components within virtual teams: The organizational trust because of the decentralization and the increasing use of Information Technologies in order to share knowledge and information, and conflict management. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the trust topic and conflict in terms of factors and typologies of trust in virtual team organizations in order to understand context and individual factors of virtual collaborative relationships among employees geographically distributed and how these factors can affect conflict management within virtual teams regarding their own specific characteristics.

The emergence of virtual environments that support collaborative work has inspired this study. We believe that relationship quality (TMX) among dispersed people positively affects individual creativity. We also assume that media used for interaction play a significant role in reinforcing social relationships. We conducted a pilot study on Ubuntu-it open source community. Findings suggest the key role of TMX in determining individual creativity, assuming a particular significant in the context investigated.

Crowdsourcing is a relatively new topic and it presents a number of potential applications, open to future developments. The number of SMEs using crowdsourcing is still low, however some recent examples include fund-raising, new products development and customer service management. But what are the potential benefits of crowdsourcing for SMEs? What are the challenges? The aim of this paper is to present some initial answers to these research questions: first by delineating and analyzing the characteristics, the strengths and the risks of crowdsourcing; second by developing preliminary reflections on the adoption of crowdsourcing by SMEs. The main limitation of the paper is that the research is at an initial status. The present contribution is therefore an exploratory work. Due also to space constraints, a second limitation lies in the lack of empirical data. However, the authors intend to further develop the preliminary reflections here proposed to form the basis an actual model of crowdsourcing adoption in SMEs.

In this paper, authors focus on the open innovation and crowdsourcing experience of an Italian firm the Mulino Bianco. Crowdsourcing is currently one of the most discussed keywords within the open innovation community. Crowdsourcing opens the company’s innovation funnel – the scope for screening ideas. Therefore, the firms gain more ideas for innovations. The major question for both research and business is how to find and lever the enormous potential of the collective intelligence to broaden the scope of open the R&D process.

The diffusion of collaborative principles and cognitive-strategic interactions for the innovation are phenomena that are not limited to private business contexts, but can also involve the public sector. The modernization action of the public administration (PA), in fact, gets through to a new innovation governance that puts to system resources, processes and actors, these last still too fragmented in their strategies and action models for interactive and collaborative innovation concept. Nevertheless, the full deployment of strategies and public politics inspired to the network innovation and open innovation logics requires appropriate conditions and the adoption of specific managerial tools [2]. This work try to evaluate the efficiency of a groupware as management tool to organize and manage inter-institutional networks, create participatory and collaborative conditions for innovation processes in public administrations. The research methodology is theoretical-deductive. The dissertation departs in fact from the enucleation of theories and general principles to come, through the integrated cases strategy which places emphasis on holistic main aspects of the case [13], to the empirical analysis of the experiences tested at DigitPA (ex CNIPA) and to the analysis of some innovation projects.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how virtual communities of practice support learning and knowledge sharing among individuals. We focused on virtual professional communities, examining how they support learning and knowledge sharing. We conducted a descriptive and explanatory study analysing the case of the “

Comunità dei giudici e delle procedure esecutive concorsuali

”. Finally, we present a discussion on the findings.

This paper explores the evolution in the last decades of scientific knowledge evaluation processes. Both technological improvements (due to the Internet and the Web 2.0) and new theoretical frameworks (e.g., open innovation, open access initiatives, and crowd-sourcing) call for the exploration of new models of scientific knowledge evaluation. Analyzing second-hand data and a representative sample of scientific publishing initiatives, we show that the evaluation processes might be categorized in both incremental and radical innovations. The second group of innovations generates a radical change in the way scientific knowledge is evaluated, by making the process more collaborative, open and interactive. Although the shift to more collaborative approaches is moving slowly, we analyze how these innovative opportunities might have a huge impact on the creativity of the scientific publishing sector.

The present paper aims at reflecting on the role of weblogs in fostering employee’s creativity. After having reflected briefly on the relationship between creativity at work and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), we present a typology of organizational weblogs, and finally we propose some preliminary considerations on weblogs as both opportunity and obstacle to employee’s creativity. In particular, the present paper aims at presenting challenges, opportunities and risks, in terms of employees freedom and self-expression, involving in blogging. A following section is devoted to understanding doocing and recommendations for setting blog policies. The paper ends with the formulation of some research questions and with the articulation of future research agenda on such a topic.

Securing the organization critical information assets from sophisticated insider threats and outsider attacks is essential to ensure business continuity and efficiency. The information security risk management (ISRM) is the process that identifies the threats and vulnerabilities of an enterprise information system, evaluates the likelihood of their occurrence and estimates their potential business impact. It is a continuous process that allows cost effectiveness of implemented security controls and provides a dynamic set of tools to monitor the security level of the information system. However, the examination of existing practices of the enterprises reveals a poor effectiveness of information security management processes such as stated in the information security breaches surveys. In particular, the enterprises experience difficulties in assessing and managing their security risks, in implementing appropriate security controls, as well as in preventing security threats. The available ISRM models and frameworks mainly focus on the technical modules related to the development of security mitigation and prevention and do not pay much attention to the influence of business variables affecting the reliability of the provided solutions. This paper discusses the major business related factors for risk analysis and shows their interference in the ISRM process. These factors include the enterprise strategic environment, the organizational structure features, the customer relationship and the value chain configuration.

Mobile device privacy is becoming increasingly important, as business information and personal information moves from personal computer to laptop and handheld devices. These data, enhanced with the raising computational and storage power of current mobile devices, lead to prefigure an enlarged scenario, where people will use massively smartphones for daily activities, regardless they are personal affairs or work. Hence, mobile devices represent an attractive target for attacks to the privacy of their owners. In particular, SpyPhone applications represent a big concern for confidential activities, acting as a bug and menacing both voice calls and data exchanged/stored mainly in form of text and multimedia messages and electronic mails. This paper proposes a new methodological approach to protect mobile devices from threats related to the privacy of mobile device owner. In particular, we suggest the cooperation of SecureMyDroid, a customized release of the Android OS, and the open source forensic tool Mobile Internal Acquisition Tool, to prevent privacy leaks related to SpyPhone applications attacks. Experimental results show the suitability of the proposed strategy in order to support the detection of SpyPhone application installed on the mobile device.

We present the design issues which are encountered when addressing risks in working environments. Risks occur when changes in the working environment alter some ordinary working parameters. The management of risks requires design decisions which influence the performances of the system. In this paper we present the issues concerning: the definition of risks and the risk levels, the management of complex risks, and the design issues suitable for such a system by focusing on the challenges we have addressed in our prototype Risk Prevention and Management System.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for exploring and studying extraordinary creativity when it comes to an organizational response to digital security. Three areas – inspiration, transformational leadership, and social capital – are argued to significantly impact the creative ability of IT professionals charged with the task of responding to digital security threats. Drawing from diverse literature, the framework offered has the potential to form a foundation for future research to enhance creativity to extraordinary levels when it comes to digital security.

This paper examines the use of information to facilitate supply chain management by Chinese companies. It examines the barriers and drivers of information technology in both the upstream and downstream supply chains. It also examines the types of applications that are being used by Chinese companies to help them manage their supply chains.

This paper is a contribution in investigating how Enterprise Systems (ES) are evolving in supporting “cases of work,” and if this evolution can be seen as an incremental development of current workflow management platforms. To this aim, we present an historical account of the emergence of the concept of case in service providing enterprises by taking the case of healthcare and hospital work as paradigmatic. In so doing, we stress the subtle relationship between cases and the documental artifacts that reify them, and between case management and continuous activities of ad-hoc interpretation and situated negotiation that can occur between actors even outside rigid protocolized and role-based interactions. This paper is then a first contribution toward the critical appraisal of case management technologies that give due visibility to unanticipated interdependencies and the opportunity to consider them as complementary components of ESs with respect to standard solutions based on workflow management middlewares.

There is evidence to suggest that small businesses often start with innovative business ideas but fail within the first 3 years because the proprietors lack the expertise to make them thrive. In this context, it has been suggested that SMEs would benefit from support to select suitable ICTs that can help them to make the most of their business potential. Such suggestions tend to overlook a need to design a system for use of these ICTs within the context of a particular business. Technology alone solves no problems. Managers need to develop relevant expertise to exploit all the assembled resources available to them, and design of an Information System that will be experienced as useful is a prerequisite for successful development of business opportunities. While the technical aspects of e.g. data processing and storage can be consigned to a contractor, responsibility for a customer’s experience in interacting with the business cannot. It is necessary to design business processes and technologies in synergy, paying as much attention to design of effective use of ICTs as to the technologies themselves. The authors believe it is vital for the proprietors of small to medium-sized enterprises to consider what may be the unintended consequences of investment in ICTs and to devote due time and effort to development of effective systems for use.

Information and Communication Technologies are often regarded as powerful enablers for long-term organizational sustainability of SMEs. If at the policy level we can observe a general consensus about the benefits of ICTs for SMEs, on the other side the relatively low diffusion rates, the less optimistic stance proposed by part of the organizational literature and the lack of research on this specific theme suggest that further inquiry is needed. The paper is still a research in progress, at its initial stage. The aim is to shed light on how the adoption process unfolds in smaller enterprises: by overcoming a so-called technological expansionist view, it suggests a shift from trying to find generalized adoption factors towards a deeper understanding of ICT adoption in practice. Considering also that the academic literature mainly focuses on large corporations, the paper proposes to explore this gap and to outline potential directions for future research.

The paper aims to analyse and discuss the usage of simulated and virtual environment for the start up of fashion Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) considering the case of ETNI, KK Personal Robe (KK) and New Fashion Perspectives (NFP) created in Second Life (SL) by the Simulation Laboratory of Bologna University – Forlì Faculty of Economics. In recent years the Enterprise Simulation models and Virtual Worlds (VWs) such as SL had an increasing diffusion in public and private organizations, mainly in SMEs’ start up phase, in which the visibility of products and services plays a central role. The approach WYSIWYG (What You see is what You get) mostly used in informatics assumed in the fashion sector a managerial relevance when the enterprise moves its first step with the purpose of consolidating its business promoting not only the products but also the production processes simulating the real handcraft environment. The Author, who participated to the still in progress experimentations, compares these three experiences by focusing on material assets, information and human resources identified as the key factors for the innovation in an enterprise.