Technology and Innovation Commons^™

Using Work System Theory To Achieve Greater Business Value From Erp By Exploring Alternative Design Spaces, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper explains how various aspects of work system theory (WST) can be applied to achieve greater business value from ERP by assuming that the underlying "design spaces" encompass much more than the features, configuration, and limitations of ERP software. It uses WST concepts to identify directions for achieving business value that might not be considered thoroughly in ERP implementations that focus primarily on converting from legacy software to ERP software.

This paper starts by summarizing basic premises concerning the relationship between work systems and ERP. Focusing on the context of ERP usage, it explains the elements of the two …

A Review Of Key Factors Affecting Consumers' Adoption And Usage Of Self-Service Technologies In The Tourism Sector, Jennifer Lawlor, Petranka Kelly, Michael Mulvey

Books / Book chapters

During the past ten years self-service technologies (SSTs) have attracted research attention especially in the banking, retail and airline sectors. The infusion of technology in the service encounter has been identified as being advantageous to both the service provider and the consumer, provided that SSTs gain adoption among consumers. In light of the importance of consumer participation in SSTs, this paper reviews the state of the SST adoption literature in an attempt to identify the most important influencing factors. Seven factors emerged as the ones of key research interest in the literature and they are discussed in more detail. These …

Annual Report 2011, Eastern Illinois University

Lumpkin College Annual Reports

This 2011 Annual Report records the achievements, outreach activities, and student honors work of the Eastern Illinois University's Lumpkin College of Business and Applied Sciences. It also includes reports from the School of Business, the School of Family and Consumer Science, the School of Technology, and the department of Military Science.

Will Work': The Role Of Intellectual Property In Transitional Economies -- From Coal To Content, Megan M. Carpenter

Law Faculty Scholarship

The development and exploitation of intellectual property, and participation in the global information economy, are not dependent upon geography. It can take place from anywhere, from the inside of an empty factory in Detroit, to a small country road, nestled between the rhododendron and the river. From the R&D lab at a university, to a barren plain in New Mexico. To move from coal to content, we must foster a dynamic and profitable environment for entrepreneurship, through a supportive and robust university community, through state legislation and institutional support and through effective utilization of intellectual property laws. Intellectual property and …

The Global Ecosystem For Social Innovation, Louise Pulford

Social Space

Louise Pulford shares how the social innovation industry is applying its own medicine to accelerate social innovation globally.

Clean Energy As A Platform For Interdisciplinary Collaborations Within A Technology-Driven Institution, Douglas Schauer, Isaac Slaven, Glen Robinson

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Using biodiesel production as the centerpiece, the efforts of multiple academic programs were combined to achieve a common objective, thus illustrating the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration. These programs include Chemical Technology, Sustainable Energy, Automotive Technology, HVAC, Biotechnology, and Agricultural Technology. By participating in the implementation of a closed-loop biodiesel supply chain, students learned the significance of communication and the interdependence of the myriad programs.

Clean Energy As A Platform For Interdisciplinary Collaborations Within A Technology-Driven Institution, Douglas J. Schauer, Isaac Slaven, Glen Robinson

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Using biodiesel production as the centerpiece, the efforts of multiple academic programs were combined to achieve a common objective, thus illustrating the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration. These programs include Chemical Technology, Sustainable Energy, Automotive Technology, HVAC, Biotechnology, and Agricultural Technology. By participating in the implementation of a closed-loop biodiesel supply chain, students learned the significance of communication and the interdependence of the myriad programs.

Properties Of Wood Waste Stored For Energy Production, Isaac Slaven, Eva Haviarova, Daniel Cassens

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Storage of wood biomass is not a new concern, but our current focus on using wood for renewable energy has brought it back to researchers’ attention. Since much of the past research done on pile storage relates to paper pulp chips, most of it dates to the 1960s and 1970s. Fiber shortages during that period caused increased interest in higher pulp yields (Zoch, Springer, & Hajny 1976). Further interest in the use of whole trees came about from the energy crisis of the late 1970s. Recent efforts by the government to create a U.S. energy portfolio rich in renewable resources …

Wind Power Technologies: A Need For Research And Development In Improving Vawt’S Airfoil Characteristics, Rigoberto Chinchilla, Samuel Guccione, Joseph Tillman

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Straight bladed fixed pitched vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) offer several potential advantages over the standard horizontal axis wind turbines which are now in common use worldwide. The purpose of this study was to determine the need for further research and develop on improved airfoil or blade characteristics for use on straight bladed fixed pitched VAWT. This need was demonstrated by the design and construction of an airfoil that was physically modeled and field tested. The test showed that asymmetric airfoils would enable SBVAWTs to self start.

Access To Business Research Resources Through Academic Library Web Sites: A Survey, John C. Gottfried

DLPS Faculty Publications

This study is an examination of access to business research resources through academic library Web sites, including research databases, catalog services, research guides, and business librarians. The Web sites of 114 academic libraries serving top business programs in the United States were studied. Results reveal a wide range of access to business research databases among the schools studied (anywhere from 11 to 100 business databases available). Over 95% of the schools provided business research guides, and nearly all schools provided at least some contact information for business librarians.

Reconciling The Social/Human And Technical/Material In Is Research Without Trying Too Hard, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This contribution to the SIGPHIL workshop on reconciling the social and technical in IS research proposes a sociotechnical approach that addresses many issues related to the long-standing duality of the social/human versus the technical/material. It shows that a sociotechnical approach based on work system concepts 1) highlights and potentially bypasses extremely basic ontological stumbling blocks in IS research, 2) incorporates many of the topics and concerns of the original sociotechnical school, 3) illuminates issues related to the duality of the social/human versus the technical/material, and 4) addresses these topics using concepts and terminology that are much easier to understand than …

The Work System Method: Systems Thinking For Business Professionals, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Properties Of Wood Waste Stored For Energy Production, Isaac Slaven, Eva Haviarova, Daniel Cassens

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Storage of wood biomass is not a new concern, but our current focus on using wood for renewable energy has brought it back to researchers’ attention. Since much of the past research done on pile storage relates to paper pulp chips, most of it dates to the 1960s and 1970s. Fiber shortages during that period caused increased interest in higher pulp yields (Zoch, Springer, & Hajny 1976). Further interest in the use of whole trees came about from the energy crisis of the late 1970s. Recent efforts by the government to create a U.S. energy portfolio rich in renewable resources …

The Impact Of 3pl’S Green Initiatives On The Purchasing Of Transport And Logistics Services: An Exploratory Study, Pietro Evangelista, Maria Huge-Brodin, Karin Isaksson, Edward Sweeney

Conference papers

There is a lack of research investigating the interaction and reciprocal influences between the buyer perspective and the supplier of transport and logistics services. Studies on the buyer perspective analyse the selection criteria to buy 3PL services, while research focused on green 3PL services examine initiatives undertaken by these companies to provide more environmentally sustainable services. The objective of this paper is to fill this void through an explorative case study analysis on the environmental attitude of 3PL companies in order to derive relevant implications for buyer’s behaviour. The results provide useful guidelines to buyers for understanding awareness, initiatives as …

Towards Evaluating The Quality Of A Spreadsheet: The Case Of The Analytical Spreadsheet Model, Thomas A. Grossman Jr., Vijay Mehrotra, J Sander

Business Analytics and Information Systems

We consider the challenge of creating guidelines to evaluate the quality of a spreadsheet model. We suggest four principles. First, state the domain—the spreadsheets to which the guidelines apply. Second, distinguish between the process by which a spreadsheet is constructed from the resulting spreadsheet artifact. Third, guidelines should be written in terms of the artifact, independent of the process. Fourth, the meaning of “quality” must be defined. We illustrate these principles with an example. We define the domain of “analytical spreadsheet models”, which are used in business, finance, engineering, and science. We propose for discussion a framework and terminology for …

The Security Implications Of Ubiquitous Social Media, Chris Rose

Walden Faculty and Staff Publications

Social media web sites allow users to share information, communicate with each other, network and interact but because of the easy transfer of information between different social media sites, information that should be private becomes public and opens the users to serious security risks. In addition, there is also massive over-sharing of information by the users of these sites, and if this is combined with the increased availability of location-based information, then all this can be aggregated causing an unacceptable risks and unintended consequences for users.

Brighter Future On The Way For Batteries, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Performance Modeling Of Distributed Collaboration Services, Toqeer A. Israr, Gregor V. Bochmann

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

This paper deals with performance modeling of distributed applications, service compositions and workflow systems. From the functional perspective, the distributed application is modeled as a collaboration involving several roles, and its behavior is defined in terms of a composition from several sub-collaborations using the standard sequencing operators found in UML Activity Diagrams and similar formalisms. For the performance perspective, each collaboration is characterized by a certain number of independent input events and dependent output events, and the performance of the collaboration is defined by the minimum delays that apply for a given output event in respect to each input event …

Corporate Reputation And The Commercialization Of Innovation: Does Reputation Match Reality, And Does Innovation Matter?, Avimanyu Datta, Len Jessup, Richard Reed

Business Faculty Publications

We seek to understand which firms excel at innovation and commercialization. In doing so, we first ranked companies that performed well on four measures: spending on R&D Spending (2006), Patenting (cumulative 2006 and 2007) and Commercialization of Innovations (Cumulative for 2007 and 2008). We then compared our rankings with that of Business Week/Boston Consulting Group’s annual ranking of the most innovative companies, which primarily is based on reputation measured as perceptions among sitting CEO’s. Somewhat surprisingly, there is not complete overlap between our more quantitative ranking and the one done by Business Week/BCG, and we highlight the reasons why. Second, …

A Break In The Clouds: Towards A Cloud Definition, Chris Rose

Walden Faculty and Staff Publications

This paper discusses the concept of Cloud Computing to achieve a complete definition of what a Cloud is, using the main characteristics typically associated with this paradigm in the literature. More than 20 definitions have been studied allowing for the extraction of a consensus definition as well as a minimum definition containing the essential characteris- tics. This paper pays much attention to the Grid paradigm, as it is often confused with Cloud technologies. We also de- scribe the relationships and distinctions between the Grid and Cloud approaches.