Virtual Communities and E-Business Management

As a result of the new possibilities offered by Internet managers are increasing options provided by the new technologies in strategic planning. The virtual community has become one of the more interesting options. The general aim of this article is to explain the concept of virtual community, paying special attention to the most important strategies and management suggestions. Firstly, we will analyze the concept of community from a sociological viewpoint. We then define a virtual community and what causes an individual to belong to one. Secondly, we will show the main strategic implications of the development of virtual communities. Next we will detail a series of recommendations for the proper management of virtual communities. The two final sections present the future trends of research and the main conclusions of the article.

Using E-Book for Learning

The vocational education system in Hong Kong is seen as changing in step with the development in industry (O & Chu, 2003). At the beginning of the ’50s until the late ’60s, Hong Kong was an entrepôt trade economy. However, skills and technology transferred from Shanghai, a steady immigration came from Guangdong, and increasing amounts of local investment had promoted Hong Kong‘s industrial foundation. By the early ’50s, the Education Department of Hong Kong began to recognize “the increasing importance of Hong Kong as a manufacturing and industrial center,” and time and effort were being devoted to the development of technical education. During this period of time, we witnessed the building of a vocational school (1953) and technical college (1957); they had aimed at providing vocational education and training for post-Form 3 and -Form 5 leavers. Successful textile manufacturing, followed by new international investments in other infant industries including electronics through the 1960s and 1970s contributed to the socialization of the workforce. By the early 1960s, there was a widely recognized link between industry and technical education. By the mid-1970s, education discourse and documents professed the need to increase the proportion of the curriculum devoted to “practical education” in general secondary schools (White Paper: Secondary Education in Hong Kong over the Next Decade, 1974). Government land sales, efficient infrastructure planning, and the setting up of the economic zones in China all had contributed to a growth rate averaging 10% each year throughout the 1980s and the early 1990s; these achievements had further improved the investment climate. During this period of time, Hong Kong further expanded technical education at the tertiary level. The link between vocational education and training, and the newer infrastructure and high-technology-related forms of industrialization were clearly outlined in the Report of the Advisory Committee on Diversification of the Economy in 1979. All these changes in the economic environment had been well served by the corresponding changes in the vocational education system as evidenced by the rapid and high economic growth in the ’70s, ’80s, and the early ’90s. The VTC (Vocational Training Council) was established in 1982 under the Vocational Training Council Ordinance to provide and promote a cost-effective and comprehensive system of vocational education and training to meet the needs of the economy. Under VTC, preemployment and in-service education and training are provided by the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE), VTC School of Business and Information Systems (SBI) and its training and development centers. The mission of VTC is to provide cost-effective alternative routes and flexible pathways for school leavers and adult learners to acquire skills and knowledge for lifelong learning and enhanced employability (VTC, 2004). Since the late ’90s, the volatile employment market, declining industry, and desire to become a knowledge-based society have triggered yet another education reform. Two important documents have been published by the Hong Kong government to paint out the education reform and the blueprint for the education system in Hong Kong for the 21st century: Reform Proposals for the Education System in Hong Kong by the Education Commission (2000), and the Report on Higher Education in Hong Kong by Chairman Lord S. R. Sutherland (2002) of the University Grant Committee. In response to the Sutherland report (2002), the Vocational Training Council formulated a strategic plan for the change. The plan is to increase e-learning within the VTC to • promote an e-learning culture and to identify teaching staff who make effective use of the Web for teaching, • encourage staffs to build a learning community on their Web sites, • encourage staffs to provide students with an active Web site, and • encourage staffs to conduct virtual (online) tutorials and virtual help desks.

Unexpected Outcomes of Lean E-Collaboration

Over the years, many theories have been used to understand e-communication and e-collaboration behavior (Kock, 2004; Markus, 2005). Arguably, the most widely used among those theories has been media richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1986) even though there has been mounting evidence that its predictions do not hold in a number of situations (Markus, 1994).

Traditional and Internet EDI Adoption Barriers

Electronic data interchange (EDI) is a conduit to innovative ways of conducting e-business processes, as well as facilitating e-business applications and services. EDI is the electronic exchange of business documents using standardized document formats (Blackstone & Cox, 2004). Traditional EDI, based on proprietary value added networks (VANs), went through the early adoption stages in the 1990s (Clinkunbroomer, 1991; Premkumar, Ramamurthy, & Crum, 1997). Many factors caused the slow diffusion of the technology, including, but not limited to, high investment costs (Wilde, 1997), proprietary standards, poor integration capability with existing corporate systems, rigidity, poor scalability (Peters, 2000), poor performance in auditing trails, document certification needs, and the perceived need for hardcopies of the documents (Banerjee & Golhar, 1994). Despite these adoption obstacles, many large and small organizations have been leveraging the open architecture of the Internet to improve their agility and competitiveness. Unlike traditional EDI, Internet EDI adopts an open standard (extensive markup language or XML) and entails higher business agility by integrating the information systems of the business partners. Internet EDI is becoming an alternative to traditional EDI. Their natural differences pose an interesting, timely, relevant, and applicable research question: What would it take to accelerate the adoption of traditional and Internet EDI to support electronic business? This article proposes a theoretical framework based on Rogers’ (1983; 2004) innovation diffusion model and interorganizational theories. Major technological and managerial obstacles confronting widespread adoption of traditional EDI and Internet EDI are addressed. Future trends of these technologies are discussed as a conclusion.

Tailorable E-Government Information Systems

Real-world information, knowledge, and procedures after which information systems are modeled are generally of dynamic nature and subject to changes, due to the emergence of new requirements or revisions to initial specifications. E-government information systems (eGIS) present a higher degree of volatility in their environment, since requirement changes may stem from multiple sources, including legislation changes, organizational reforms, end-user needs, interoperability, and distribution concerns, etc. (Jansen, 2004; Prisma Project, 2002; Scholl, Klischewski, & Moon, 2005. To this end, the design and implementation of eGIS must adhere to paradigms and practices that facilitate the accommodation of changes to the eGIS as they occur in the real world. Object-oriented technologies have been extensively used to encapsulate reusable, tailorable software architectures as a collection of collaborating, extensible object classes; however the inherent conflict between software reuse and tailorability has inhibited the development of frameworks and models that would effectively support all requirements exposed by eGIS (Demeyer, Meijler, Nierstrasz, & Steyaert, 1997). The lack of such frameworks has lead to eGIS that cannot easily be adapted to the new requirements, mainly because only the predetermined specifications are taken into account and design decisions are fixed during the implementation phase (Stamoulis, Theotokis, Martakos, & Gyftodimos, 2003). A key issue to a viable solution eGIS modeling is the provision of the ability to multiple public authorities (PAs) to represent different aspects of the same real-world entity, while maintaining at the same time information consistency. Aspect representation is not only limited to data elements that describe the particular entity, but may extend to behavior alterations, when the entity is examined in different contexts. For example, an entity representing the citizen is expected to assume the behavior of beneficiary, when used in the context of the Ministry of Social Security, and the behavior of taxpayer, when accessed from the Ministry of Finance’s eGIS. Distinct behaviors may rely on different data representations and/or respond differently in requests. In this work we present a role-based modeling and implementation framework, which can be used for building eGIS and we argue that this model promotes the tailorability and maintainability of eGIS.

Structure and Components of E-Commerce Business Model

A successful e-commerce venture requires a viable business model and a long-term sustainable strategy. When planning and implementing e-commerce ventures, business executives must address several strategic questions, such as: What are the functions and components of a viable business model? How does one capture and capitalize on the unique features of the Internet and e-commerce to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and profits? How are values being created in the Digital Economy? How can network effects and scope economies change a company’s competitive position in e-commerce? How can cost, revenue, and growth models in e-commerce differ from the traditional businesses? This article extends Lee (2001) and Lee and Vonortas’ (2004) works on business model and strategy to discuss the structure, components, and key issues of a viable e-commerce business model.

Spreading Use of Digital Cash

Approximately 10 years have passed since the words such as digital cash, digital money, electronic money, and e-cash have been introduced. Progress has increased rapidly in the fields of communication and information technology (IT) and in the field of digital cash; its use and transaction volume have been increasing. However, little analysis has been done about this phenomenon especially from the academic field. The continued increase in its use is inevitable, and it is important to investigate its influence and problems from both practical and theoretical perspectives. The spread of the use of digital cash impacts economic activity and social structure. This article considers both the merits and the problems of digital cash in the modern economy. This article analyzes characteristics of relationships between digital money, financial institutions, and financial authorities; considers the relation between digital cash and financial institutions; and analyzes the relation between digital cash and monetary policy authorities.

Service-Oriented Architecture

The established global business environment is under intense pressure from Asian countries such as Korea, China, and India. This forces businesses to concentrate on their core competencies and adopt leaner management structures. The coordination of activities both within companies and with suppliers and customers has become a crucial competitive advantage. At the same time, the Internet has transformed the way in which businesses run. As the Internet becomes a cheap and effective communication channel, businesses are quick to adopt the Web for integrating their systems together and linking them with their suppliers and customers. Current enterprise computing using J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) has yielded systems in which the coupling between various components in them are too tight to be effective for ubiquitous B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) e-business over the Internet. This approach requires too much agreement and shared context between business systems from different organizations. There is a need to move away from tightly coupled, monolithic systems and toward systems of loosely coupled, dynamically bound components. The emerging technology, Web services, provides the tools to accomplish this integration, but this approach presents many new challenges and problems that must be overcome. In this article, we will discuss the current approaches in enterprise application integration (EAI) and the limitations. There is also a need for service-oriented applications, that is, Web services. Finally, the challenges in implementing Web services are outlined.

Semi-Automated Seeding of Personal Privacy Policies in E-Services

The rapid growth of the Internet has been accompanied by a proliferation of e-services targeting consumers. E-services are available for banking, shopping, learning, government online, and healthcare. However, each of these services requires a consumer’s personally identifiable information (PII) in one form or another. This leads to concerns over privacy. In order for e-services to be successful, privacy must be protected (Ackerman, Cranor, & Reagle, 1999). An effective and flexible way of handling privacy is management via privacy policies. In this approach, a consumer of an e-service has a personal privacy policy that describes what private information the consumer is willing to give up to the e-service, with which parties the provider of the e-service may share the private information, and how long the private information may be kept by the provider. The provider likewise has a provider privacy policy describing similar privacy constraints as in the consumer’s policy, but from the viewpoint of the provider, (i.e., the nature of the private information and the disclosure/retention requirements that are needed by the e-service). Before the consumer engages the e-service, the provider’s privacy policy must match with the consumer’s privacy policy. In this way, the consumer’s privacy is protected, assuming that the provider complies with the consumer’s privacy policy. Note that policy compliance is outside the scope of this work but see Yee and Korba (July, 2004). Initial attempts at conserving consumer privacy for e-services over the last few years have focused on the use of Web site privacy policies that state the privacy rules or preferences of the Web site or service provider. Some of these policies are merely statements in plain English and it is up to the consumer to read it. This has the drawback that very few consumers take the trouble to read it. Even when they do take the time to look at it, online privacy policies have been far too complicated for consumers to understand and suffer from other deficiencies (Lichtenstein, Swatman, & Babu, 2003; Jensen & Potts, 2004). Still other privacy policies are specified using P3P (W3C) that allows a consumer’s browser to automatically check the privacy policy via a browser plug-in. This, of course, is better than plain English policies but a major drawback is that it is a “take-it-or-leave-it” approach. There is no recourse for the consumer who has a conflict with the Web site’s P3P policy, except to try another Web site. In this case, we have advocated a negotiations approach to resolve the conflict (Yee & Korba, Jan., May, 2003). However, this requires a machine-processable personal privacy policy for the consumer. We assume that providers in general have sufficient resources to generate their privacy policies. Certainly, the literature is full of works relating to enterprise privacy policies and models (e.g., Barth & Mitchell, 2005; Karjoth & Schunter 2002). Consumers, on the other hand, need help in formulating machine-processable privacy policies. In addition, the creation of such policies needs to be as easy as possible or consumers would simply avoid using them. Existing privacy specification languages such as P3P, APPEL (W3C; W3C, 2002), and EPAL (IBM) are far too complicated for the average internet user to understand. Understanding or changing a privacy policy expressed in these languages effectively requires knowing how to program. Moreover, most of these languages suffer from inadequate expressiveness (Stufflebeam, Anton, He, & Jain, 2004). What is needed is an easy, semi-automated way of seeding a personal privacy policy with a consumer’s privacy preferences. In this work, we present two semi-automated approaches for obtaining consumer personal privacy policies for e-services through seeding. This article is based on our work in Yee and Korba (2004). The section “Background” examines related work and the content of personal privacy policies. The section “Semi-Automated Seeding of Personal Privacy Policies” shows how personal privacy policies can be semi-automatically seeded or generated. The section “Future Trends” identifies some of the developments we see in this area over the next few years. We end with ”Conclusion”.

Ontology-Based Query Formation and Information Retrieval

M-commerce is largely unrealized to date because there still does not exist a single killer application that can attract wireless users to use wireless services. According to a recent survey by the Gartner, Inc. (Wong, 2005), besides the importance of coverage of wireless network and pricing issues, the wireless Internet and data services is the next crucial factor that attracts users to wireless service. As such, there is a need to improve the data services over the wireless network. One of these services is the information retrieval service. This article discusses the usage of ontology to create an efficient environment for m-commerce users to form queries. The establishment of a method that combines keyword searches with using ontology to perform query formation tasks further allows a more flexible m-commerce environment for users. Also, with the use of genetic algorithm, it is hoped that query effectiveness can be achieved, at the same time saving computational time.