Grid Technology for Smart Organizations

This chapter summarizes the most relevant results that grid research achieved in the last decade, it presents the actual issues of the topic, and it outlines how current and future results from this area can contribute to smart organizations. At the first place the basic goal of the Grid is presented and its state-of-the-art, service-based realization is discussed. This global infrastructure will one day connect together diverse types of hardware and software elements, abstracting them out as intelligent autonomous agents that can discover and collaborate with each other on demand. The middle part of the chapter introduces two potential middleware technologies that service grids can be built on. They are the Web services-based open grid services architecture (OGSA) and Jini. The final part of the chapter presents the future of service grids and the important role these flexible infrastructures will probably have in the life of smart organizations.

Bridging Diversity across Time and Space

The uniqueness of multidisciplinary teamwork is in its potential to integrate different bodies of knowledge into a new synergy. However, previous empirical studies have shown that member heterogeneity and geographic separation hinder effective sharing and use of team knowledge. The chapter explores how such teams interact to overcome the barriers and take advantage of their “built in” knowledge diversity. The findings indicate that often teams lack common background knowledge at the beginning of the projects, and in order to resolve differences members rely on their external intellectual and social communities. The reported research establishes a positive correlation between team members’ participation in multiple professional and social networks and teams’ abilities to successfully build on their knowledge diversity. The findings also suggest a need to reconceptualize the boundaries of multidisciplinary teams and to consider the processes of sharing diverse knowledge in a wider social context.

Knowledge Management in Smart Organizations

This chapter looks at the deployment of appropriate information and communication technologies in helping smart organizations to manage knowledge. Taking a management perspective, smart organizations can be regarded as those that can make smart strategic decisions and put into practice such managerial principles as value creation, continual learning, embracing uncertainty, and empowerment. Making good decisions would involve gathering and synthesizing the appropriate knowledge—knowledge about the market, products, suppliers, customers, competitors, and others. Different schools of knowledge management theories and the related technologies will be discussed. The author hopes that understanding the knowledge management technologies and related practices would assist researchers and practitioners in gaining some insights into managing the knowledge required for making smart decisions in organizations.

Infrastructure Support for Smart Organizations

In a rapidly changing world, continuous adoption of new practices is crucial for survival; organizations embracing the latest technologies have a competitive edge. Smart organizations readily take on board new organizational forms and practices, those in particular that offer agility and responsiveness. The Internet and the World Wide Web offer a new way of collaboration via Web services, but heterogeneity of different service components make cooperation difficult. This chapter describes a new approach to combine Web services by employing a layered structure, in which composition of a value-added service can be built from individual components, and each service component can have semantically equivalent but syntactically different alternatives.

Applications of Agent-Based Technologies in Smart Organizations

This chapter introduces agent technology as a means of creating dynamic software systems for the changing needs of smart organizations. The notion of agency is introduced, and individual and collective agent architectures are described. Agent interaction methods and agent system design techniques are discussed. Application areas of agent technology are overviewed. The chapter argues that the autonomous and proactive nature of agent systems make them suitable as the new information infrastructure for the networked components of dynamically changing smart organizations.

The HUB as an Enabling IT Strategy to Achieve Smart Organizations

This chapter introduces the concept of virtual enterprise broker (VEB) supported by the use of a “HUB” of integrated e-services as an enabling IT strategy to design and create smart organizations. The VEB model is described in terms of core processes, success measures, and supporting ICT (information and communication technologies). The VEB is a business entity that enables the design, configuration, creation, and operation of smart organizations. VEB core processes are supported by e-services integrated in a “HUB” (The concept of HUB refers to a proposed centre of integrated e-services for virtual business) that is supported by Web-based applications and technologies. Six integrated e-services have been defined, based on the concept of on-demand services for value added industrial networks: e-marketing, e-brokerage, e-planning, e-engineering, e-supply, and e-productivity. The conjunction of these e-services improves industrial networks performance. A description of the e-services and HUB architecture is presented in detail.

Smart Organizations in the Digital Age

The chapter aims to present and explain the concept of the smart organization. This concept arose from the need for organizations to respond dynamically to the changing landscape of a digital economy. A smart organization is understood to be both internetworked and knowledge-driven, and therefore able to adapt to new organizational challenges rapidly. It is sufficiently agile to respond to opportunities of the digital age. The three networking dimensions of smart organizations, ICT-enabled virtuality, organizational teaming, and knowledge hyperlinking, are elaborated. This networking capability allows smart organizations to cope with complexity and with rapidly changing economic environments. The paper also shows how managing the smart organization requires a more “fuzzy” approach to managing smart resources: people, information, knowledge, and creativity. Research is also presented, mainly from the European perspective. It has been key to creating the conditions for organizations to become smart.

Communication Security Technologies in Smart Organizations

In this chapter, we discuss the security technologies that are important in guaranteeing the good quality of communication within smart organizations. We first briefly review the various forms of communication that can be used in the current information age, before outlining the possible threats that can be faced in each communication medium. We then describe the relevant security technologies that help to protect communication media from common threats, as well as the security tools available in the market that implement these technologies. The topics discussed in this chapter would serve to educate the smart organizations towards securing their various means of communication, which is vital for a business establishment to exist and coexist with peers and partners.

New Challenges for Smart Organizations

The chapter introduces the different types of wireless technologies that can be applied in smart organizations. Smart organization (SO) is an outstanding representative of networked organizations, as its organization structure, communication, and knowledge-based applications are coordinated and all networked. The chapter describes the communication demands of SO, taking care on wired and especially wireless networks that offer mobility for users. Access at anytime from anywhere to enterprise information for registered users guarantees mobility that is a basic demand for a dynamic organization today. Security, trust, and interoperability aspects are also discussed as important characteristics ofthe up-to-date infocom systems. Finally, the main impacts of wireless technologies on smart organizations are summarized. Through the survey of the structure and operation of wireless technologies and their impacts, it is easy to understand that wireless communication technology has a strategic role in the effective, competitive operation of networked organizations.

Neural Data Mining System for Trust-Based Evaluation in Smart Organizations

Nowadays, many enterprises manufacture and distribute their products or services globally, and quite a number of smart organizations are formed on the Internet and are expected to evolve to a strategically important e-business model. Although information and communication technologies (ICT) and knowledge management plays an important role in linking the core and partner companies, it remains subservient to the humans that form the smart organizations. This chapter identifies two instances in which trust-based evaluations of partners in the smart organizations are applicable. A review of the literature indicates that neither researchers nor practitioners agree on a single model of interfirm trust that applies to all partner evaluation contexts. A decision-support system based on neural network and data mining technologies is proposed. A case example is given to illustrate a trust-based evaluation in real situation.