Social Resilience in Action

Recent statistics about the mobile phone market in Brazil state that for every 100 inhabitants there are 130 mobile phones. Despite the euphoria that those numbers bring to business, the social uses of mobile technology in Brazil tells a lot about Brazilian society and culture itself, and show a more complex picture than merely a marketing phenomenon. The authors examine subversive cell phone use in Brazil against the background of the cell phone use worldwide and the social implications of that cell phone use. As soon as a technology is implemented in a culture, it is possible to observe uses that were not intended by the inventors or producers of that technology. People create different strategies to take advantage of the new resource. Using social interaction theories and an ethnographic approach in the natural setting of cell phone use in Brazil, the authors observed how people use the mobile phone technology for interpersonal communication. This chapter addresses three subversive uses of mobile technology, namely, i.) strategies of mobile phone coding; ii) SIM card management; and iii) criminal uses of mobile phones.

Internal Control Considerations for Information System Changes and Patches

The dependence of businesses on properly functioning information systems to allow organizational personnel and outside investors to make important decisions has never been more pronounced. Information systems are constantly evolving due to operational and security requirements. These changes to information systems involve a risk that they could occur in a way that results in improper processing of information and/or security issues. The purpose of this chapter is to consider related guidance provided in a Global Technology Audit Guide (GTAG) from The Institute of Internal Auditors in conjunction with current change and patch management literature in order to assist internal auditors and organizational personnel in better understanding a process that leads to efficient and effective information system changes. The authors describe how internal auditors and information technology professionals can work together with organization management to form a mature approach in addressing both major information system changes and patches.

Web Strategy in the Digital Economy

The Internet, for many businesses, has become as invaluable as human resources, equipment, and distribution channels. Continued current use and implementation of new Internet tools will further enhance business and continue to improve the business model and the return on investment. A good Web strategy works with an organizations' business strategy to design and implement a Website that meets the goals of its business strategy. After building a Web presence, the thought process is on continuous improvement of the business model and its value chain. The Web strategy, as explored in this chapter, includes enhancement of the online community, personalization, content, ecommerce, extranets, and intranets.

Model-Driven Reverse Engineering of Open Source Systems

Open source software systems have poor or inexistent documentation and contributors are often scattered or missing. The reuse-based composition and maintenance of open source software systems therefore implies that program comprehension becomes a critical activity if all the embedded behavior is to be preserved. Program comprehension has traditionally been addressed by reverse engineering techniques which retrieve system design models such as class diagrams. These abstract representations provide a key artifact during migration or evolution. However, this method may retrieve large complex class diagrams which do not ensure a suitable program comprehension. This chapter attempts to improve program comprehension by providing a model-driven reverse engineering technique with which to obtain business processes models that can be used in combination with system design models such as class diagrams. The advantage of this approach is that business processes provide a simple system viewpoint at a higher abstraction level and filter out particular technical details related to source code. The technique is fully developed and tool-supported within an R&D project about global software development in which collaborate two universities and five companies. The automation of the approach facilitates its validation and transference through an industrial case study involving two open source systems.

A Traditional Organization Towards a New Dimension of Labour

Organizations have suffered a large (r)evolution at the social, economic and technological levels. A change of paradigm in the information systems and technologies (IST) used in the day-to-day life of every citizen cannot sustain such a transformation by itself; a change of culture and behaviour is therefore necessary. The use of IST in an appropriate and integrated way with the organization's processes will depend on an individual and collective effort. The younger generation, accustomed to sharing personal information on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms,often through mobile devices, enters the job market looking for similar tools. These new “social tools” allow the production, sharing and management of information and knowledge within the organization between peers and other stakeholders, eliminating the barriers of communication and sharing. Taking advantage of these technologies for organizations within the context of Social Business, in particular nomadic workers, requires a comprehension exercise in how to demonstrate its usefulness with regard to the creation, access and sharing of contents in a safe way. To this end, this chapter provides a comprehensive view of a new context of labour faced by traditional organizations (i.e. social business supported by mobile IST – m_CSDT) in order to improve the well-being of these organizations through the collective intelligence and agility dimensions.

Comparative Analysis on the Usage of Business Information Systems among Portuguese and Hungarian Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

It has become obvious that corporate management, administration, planning, cash flow, and other business activities could hardly function without information technology in the organization of society. Relationships between human activities and the people themselves are reliant more and more broadly on electronic devices. In terms of using information technology devices and services, the development of enterprises are significantly different in the European Union. This has led to a strong and significant relationship with the added value created by micro, small-, and medium-sized enterprises. In order to meet the needs of corporations, enterprise resource planning and integrated management systems have evolved and have become more and more widespread among small- and medium-sized enterprises as well. Although Portugal in the group of Southern European countries and Hungary in the group of Eastern European countries lag behind the other countries belonging to their group, it turns out that in terms of using and intending to use business information systems, Portuguese enterprises are more advanced in the categories of small- and medium-sized enterprises. This chapter explores this.

How Social Media Tools are Used in Research

Social media tools are being widely used. Every day we witness new tools appearing or new features being added to already existing tools. Their characteristics allow us to communicate and collaborate without time and space constraints. Moreover, they also help us in the development and creation of new content as well as in the sharing and publishing of it. Since they are so popular, can it be that researchers are also using them in the research workflow process? If they use them, what are the most commonly used tools and their reasons for use? These are some of the questions addressed in this chapter. The authors analyse responses given by a higher education institution to a questionnaire on the use of social media tools. These findings contribute to a greater understanding of the importance of these tools for research purposes.

Implementing Cloud Information Systems

In today's competitive business environment, Information Systems are not a luxury; rather they are vital for survival. High costs of licensing, implementation issues, and missed opportunities in legacy systems led to the development of a new generation of Information System platforms called “Cloud” domain. However, Cloud, if not understood properly by managers, has many shortcomings. Moving toward Cloud is not the goal and even competitive advantage may suffer. Managers and change agents should undertake deep study over Cloud Information Systems and Software as a Service (SaaS) before deciding to move toward migration. In this chapter, the main elements and features in which CEOs and IT managers should consider in evaluating the SaaS migration option are provided, and enterprises may be acquainted with the concept, goals, and theoretical foundations of SaaS as a main Cloud-based service in the business environment.

The Contribution of Information and Information Technology in Building Organizational Resilience

This chapter presents an approach to the strategic role of information and information technology in enterprises through alignment with organizational strategic planning and the contribution in building organizational resilience. It is important for companies to realize the deployment of strategic planning through organizational strategic planning of information and information technology, with the aim of identifying information needs, actions and solutions that will contribute to the monitoring and tracking of defined strategic objectives, and also in building organizational resilience. The chapter also discusses the contribution of information technology to the information systems of companies, through the resources and solutions currently available, such as business management systems - ERP, Sales Force Automation - SFA, Business Intelligence - BI and calculating the need for productive resources - MRPII. The research method is a survey conducted in firms located in an industrial Brazilian shoe industry. This study develops a framework for the analysis and deployment of strategic planning on organizational strategic planning information and information technology.

Organizational Memory

Nowadays, the major challenge to organizations managers is that they must make appropriate decisions in a turbulent environment while it is hard to recognize whether information is good or bad, because actions resulting from wrong decisions may place the organization at risk of survival. That is why organizations managers try to avoid making wrong decisions. In order to improve this, managers should use collective knowledge and experiences shared through Organizational Memory (OM) effectively to reduce the rate of unsuccessful decision making. In this sense, Business Intelligence (BI) tools allow managers to improve the effectiveness of decision making and problem solving. In the light of these motivations, the aim of this chapter is to comprehend the role of BI systems in supporting OM effectively in the real context of a crowdsourcing academic initiative called CrowdUM.