Information and Knowledge

Defining data, information, knowledge and their relationships is mainly a point of view matter. Indeed, the same entity may be related to any of these concepts depending on the use of it. This is true, at least as long as the entity is communicable through some means (text, voice, gesture, signal, object, or media, for example). By restricting our attention to symbolic entities and to the World Wide Web in particular, we can learn much about these concepts, their interconnections, the functions that apply on them and their values.

Governance of Virtual Networks

Technological and organizational excellence is the key element for business success in a modern business environment. In contemporary business environments, companies will restore and keep their competition capability not only by optimizing their own potentials, but mainly by utilizing capability of foreign resources and their connection to complete business process in the so called network organizations. Virtual organizations are a special form of network organizations. Among virtual organizations the so called Living Laboratory takes place. This chapter presents the findings of the research regarding the state of development and application of laser living laboratory management and governance system in Toolmakers Cluster of Slovenia.

Designing Collaborative Infrastructures to get Business Value from Collaboration in Large Scale Networks

Collaboration is playing an increasing role in business especially given an increase in business networking. Such networks are formed to gain business advantage by combining expertise from many businesses or organizational units to quickly create new and competitive products and services. Most processes in business networks now consist of a number of activities whose processes must be coordinated to reach enterprises goals. This chapter addresses ways of supporting such activities using technology and proposes a collaboration infrastructure that encourages collaboration and sharing of knowledge across the activities.

Ethics of Information in Distributed Business Environment

The aim of this chapter is to examine some of the issues of ethics related to information in DBE. The ethical issue of what is moral to do in order to optimize the use of information in DBE is dealt with. The varied ways of integrating and putting into the practice information in DBE is discussed as well as the great variety of ethical approaches. In the field of ethics of information in DBE we are no longer confronted with “policy vacuum”; we are facing dissipation of ethical responsibility (DER) and this phenomenon leads to difficult and usually late localisation and solving of ethical dilemmas within the system.

New Forms of Work in the Light of Globalization in Software Development

Globalization in software development introduced significant changes in the way organizations operate today. Software is now produced by team members from geographically, temporally and culturally remote sites. Organizations seek benefits that global markets offer and face new challenges. Naturally resistant to change, these organizations often do not realize the necessity for tailoring existing methods for distributed collaboration. Our empirical investigation shows a great variety in the ways organizations distribute responsibilities across remote sites and conclude that these can be divided into two main categories: joint collaboration that requires investments in team building and independent collaboration that requires investments in knowledge management and transfer. Finally, we discuss practices that are applied in industry to overcome these challenges and emphasize necessity to fully understand the pros and cons of different ways to organize distributed software projects before starting a project in this new environment.

The Information Sector in the Economy and its Strategic Value

This discussion focuses on the idea of an information society studied in view of economic aspects. The subject matter of inquiry is a strategic sector decisive for the situation of economy, society and the state: the so-called information sector in the economy. Its importance and intrinsic value are discussed. Studies on economics of the information sector are brought to light as well as relationships with other disciplines, including economics of information (information systems) and information ecology. Based on the Polish Classification of Activities (PKD), the methodology of classification and categorization of the information sector is developed and used to evaluate its development and, indirectly, the development of the information society in Poland. Research is based on available statistics on the number of employed persons and employment in 1997-2006. It is evidenced that the information sector dominates in Poland today (in the four-sector model of the economy) and the trend of its regular growth is observed.

Accounting and Billing in Computing Environments

This chapter gives a comprehensive overview of the current status of accounting and billing for up-todate computing environments. Accounting is the key for the management of information system resources. At this stage of evolution of accounting systems it is adequate not to separate computing environments into High Performance Computing and Grid Computing environments for allowing a “holistic” view showing the different approaches and the state of the art for integrated accounting and billing in distributed computing environments. Requirements resulting from a public survey within all communities of the German Grid infrastructure, as well as from computing centres and resource providers of High Performance Computing resources like HLRN, and ZIVGrid, within the German e-Science framework, have been considered as well as requirements resulting from various information systems and the virtualisation of organisations and resources. Additionally, conceptual, technical, economical, and legal questions also had to be taken into consideration. After the requirements have been consolidated and implementations have been done over one year ago, now the overall results and conclusions are presented in the following sections showing a case study based on the GISIG framework and the Grid- GIS framework. The focus is on how an integrated architecture can be built and used in heterogeneous environments. A prototypical implementation is outlined that is able to manage and visualise relevant accounting and billing information based on suitable monitoring data in a virtual organisation (VO) specific way regarding basic business, economic, and security issues.

Health Infonomics

Researchers are currently challenged to document the economic aspects of information across an array of contexts. While some lessons can be applied generally, certain contexts present unique challenges for researchers interested in the acquisition, management, and use of information. Health is one such field currently undergoing a revolution driven by new applications of information-based technologies and services. This chapter provides background on health informatics and current issues as health informatics impacts the provision of health in doctors’ offices, shifts the provision of healthcare services into patients’ homes, and presents new opportunities to address public health concerns. An outline of a future research agenda in health informatics and a look at the prospect of health informatics applications provides the necessary foundation for focused work on the economic impact of this information-driven transformation in healthcare delivery.

Methodological Aspects of the Evaluation of Individual E-Banking Services for Selected Banks in Poland

The main purpose of this chapter is the comparison of differences between results of three methods used for quality evaluation of individual e-banking services. The comparison has been conducted for selected sixteen banks in Poland. The author uses three types of research: traditional expert scoring method, AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method and conversion method. After a general introduction, a detailed report of the results arising from this research is presented and analyzed. Finally, the author draws general conclusions from the analysis. He also discusses the future research regarding this topic.

Virtual Heterarchy

The rapid development of information communication technology (ICT) encourages companies to compete. However, those competitive development goals should enable people to satisfy their own needs and enjoy a better quality of work and life without compromising the quality of life of other people and future generations. Corporate governance models are needed to concentrate on changes of existing rules, customs, practices and rights as the subject matter of governance to be influenced. Governance models must recognize the limitations of the overburdened state and the consequent need to take advantage of existing institutions and structures that promote sustainability. An increasing number of companies are moving into new forms of competition which can be described as information-based competition, knowledge-based competition, technology–based competition and ICT relationship-based competition. However, unlimited supply of information from Internet and other sources, easiness to register and transfer the information, reduced prices of ICT devices result in increase of information processing and its overload. Therefore, information governance model proposed in the chapter seems to be a pattern to deal with information in contemporary common organizations i.e. virtual heterarchical organizations where access to information is democratically permitted. The proposed model is to be an answer to ensure sustainable governance of information i.e. balance, stability and progress of information processing.