Moving towards open standards

Standards are designed to promote the interoperability of products and systems by enabling different parties to develop technologies that can be used together. There is an increasing expectation in many technical communities, including open source communities, that standards will be ‘open’. However, standards are subject to legal rights which impact upon, not only their development, but also their implementation. Of central importance are intellectual property rights: technical standards may incorporate patented technologies, while the specification documents of standards are protected by copyright. This article provides an overview of the processes by which standards are developed and considers the concept of ‘interoperability’, the meaning of the term ‘open standard’ and how open standards contribute to interoperability. It explains how intellectual property rights operate in relation to standards and how they can be managed to create standards that are open, not only during their development, but also in implementation.

Open Access and Public Sector Information : Policy Developments in Australia and Key Jurisdictions

This book chapter considers recent developments in Australia and key jurisdictions both in relation to the formation of a national information strategy and the management of legal rights in public sector information.

Open content creation : the issues of voice and the challenges of listening

This paper examines the proposition that increased ability to have a voice and be listened to, through ‘open ICT4D’ and ‘open content creation’ can be an effective mechanism for development. The paper discusses empirical work that strongly indicates that this only happens when voice is appropriately valued in the development process. Having a voice in development processes are less effective when participation is limited. Open ICT allows for more and more voices to be heard, but it is open ICT4D that has the obligation to ensure voices are listened to. In the paper I first explore participatory development and the idea of open ICT4D before elaborating on issues of voice and thinking about voice as process, and voice as value. Research findings are presented from research that experimented with participatory (or open) content creation, discussed in relation to notions of openness and voice. I then consider the challenges of listening, before drawing some conclusions about opening up ICT4D research.

Open standards-based system integration for asset management decision support

Over the last decade, system integration has grown in popularity as it allows organisations to streamline business processes. Traditionally, system integration has been conducted through point-to-point solutions – as a new integration scenario requirement arises, a custom solution is built between the relevant systems. Bus-based solutions are now preferred, whereby all systems communicate via an intermediary system such as an enterprise service bus, using a common data exchange model. This research investigates the use of a common data exchange model based on open standards, specifically MIMOSA OSA-EAI, for asset management system integration. A case study is conducted that involves the integration of processes between a SCADA, maintenance decision support and work management system. A diverse number of software platforms are employed in developing the final solution, all tied together through MIMOSA OSA-EAI-based XML web services. The lessons learned from the exercise are presented throughout the paper.

Critical discourse analysis and political economy of communication : understanding the new corporate order

This article uses critical discourse analysis to analyse material shifts in the political economy of communications. It examines texts of major corporations to describe four key changes in political economy: (1) the separation of ownership from control; (2) the separation of business from industry; (3) the separation of accountability from responsibility; and (4) the subjugation of ‘going concerns’ by overriding concerns. The authors argue that this amounts to a political economic shift from traditional concepts of ‘capitalism’ to a new ‘corporatism’ in which the relationships between public and private, state and individual interests have become redefined and obscured through new discourse strategies. They conclude that the present financial and regulatory ‘crisis’ cannot be adequately resolved without a new analytic framework for examining the relationships between corporation, discourse and political economy.

Complex modelling of open system design for sustainable architecture

This paper argues a model of complex system design for sustainable architecture within a framework of entropy evolution. The spectrum of sustainable architecture consists of the efficient use of energy and material resource in life-cycle of buildings, the active involvement of the occupants in micro-climate control within buildings, and the natural environmental context. The interactions of the parameters compose a complex system of sustainable architectural design, of which the conventional linear and fragmented design technologies are insufficient to indicate holistic and ongoing environmental performance. The complexity theory of dissipative structure states a microscopic formulation of open system evolution, which provides a system design framework for the evolution of building environmental performance towards an optimization of sustainability in architecture.

Micro-family-owned business : transitory survival mechanism or long term wealth creator?

Principal Topic: Entrepreneurship is key to employment, innovation and growth (Acs & Mueller, 2008), and as such, has been the subject of tremendous research in both the economic and management literatures since Solow (1957), Schumpeter (1934, 1943), and Penrose (1959). The presence of entrepreneurs in the economy is a key factor in the success or failure of countries to grow (Audretsch and Thurik, 2001; Dejardin, 2001). Further studies focus on the conditions of existence of entrepreneurship, influential factors invoked are historical, cultural, social, institutional, or purely economic (North, 1997; Thurik 1996 & 1999). Of particular interest, beyond the reasons behind the existence of entrepreneurship, are entrepreneurial survival and good ''performance'' factors. Using cross-country firm data analysis, La Porta & Schleifer (2008) confirm that informal micro-businesses provide on average half of all economic activity in developing countries. They find that these are utterly unproductive compared to formal firms, and conclude that the informal sector serves as a social security net ''keep[ing] millions of people alive, but disappearing over time'' (abstract). Robison (1986), Hill (1996, 1997) posit that the Indonesian government under Suharto always pointed to the lack of indigenous entrepreneurship , thereby motivating the nationalisation of all industries. Furthermore, the same literature also points to the fact that small businesses were mostly left out of development programmes because they were supposed less productive and having less productivity potential than larger ones. Vial (2008) challenges this view and shows that small firms represent about 70% of firms, 12% of total output, but contribute to 25% of total factor productivity growth on average over the period 1975-94 in the industrial sector (Table 10, p.316). ---------- Methodology/Key Propositions: A review of the empirical literature points at several under-researched questions. Firstly, we assess whether there is, evidence of small family-business entrepreneurship in Indonesia. Secondly, we examine and present the characteristics of these enterprises, along with the size of the sector, and its dynamics. Thirdly, we study whether these enterprises underperform compared to the larger scale industrial sector, as it is suggested in the literature. We reconsider performance measurements for micro-family owned businesses. We suggest that, beside productivity measures, performance could be appraised by both the survival probability of the firm, and by the amount of household assets formation. We compare micro-family-owned and larger industrial firms' survival probabilities after the 1997 crisis, their capital productivity, then compare household assets of families involved in business with those who do not. Finally, we examine human and social capital as moderators of enterprises' performance. In particular, we assess whether a higher level of education and community participation have an effect on the likelihood of running a family business, and whether it has an impact on households' assets level. We use the IFLS database compiled and published by RAND Corporation. The data is a rich community, households, and individuals panel dataset in four waves: 1993, 1997, 2000, 2007. We now focus on the waves 1997 and 2000 in order to investigate entrepreneurship behaviours in turbulent times, i.e. the 1997 Asian crisis. We use aggregate individual data, and focus on households data in order to study micro-family-owned businesses. IFLS data covers roughly 7,600 households in 1997 and over 10,000 households in 2000, with about 95% of 1997 households re-interviewed in 2000. Households were interviewed in 13 of the 27 provinces as defined before 2001. Those 13 provinces were targeted because accounting for 83% of the population. A full description of the data is provided in Frankenberg and Thomas (2000), and Strauss et alii (2004). We deflate all monetary values in Rupiah with the World Development Indicators Consumer Price Index base 100 in 2000. ---------- Results and Implications: We find that in Indonesia, entrepreneurship is widespread and two thirds of households hold one or several family businesses. In rural areas, in 2000, 75% of households run one or several businesses. The proportion of households holding both a farm and a non farm business is higher in rural areas, underlining the reliance of rural households on self-employment, especially after the crisis. Those businesses come in various sizes from very small to larger ones. The median business production value represents less than the annual national minimum wage. Figures show that at least 75% of farm businesses produce less than the annual minimum wage, with non farm businesses being more numerous to produce the minimum wage. However, this is only one part of the story, as production is not the only ''output'' or effect of the business. We show that the survival rate of those businesses ranks between 70 and 82% after the 1997 crisis, which contrasts with the 67% survival rate for the formal industrial sector (Ter Wengel & Rodriguez, 2006). Micro Family Owned Businesses might be relatively small in terms of production, they also provide stability in times of crisis. For those businesses that provide business assets figures, we show that capital productivity is fairly high, with rates that are ten times higher for non farm businesses. Results show that households running a business have larger family assets, and households are better off in urban areas. We run a panel logit model in order to test the effect of human and social capital on the existence of businesses among households. We find that non farm businesses are more likely to appear in households with higher human and social capital situated in urban areas. Farm businesses are more likely to appear in lower human capital and rural contexts, while still being supported by community participation. The estimation of our panel data model confirm that households are more likely to have higher family assets if situated in urban area, the higher the education level, the larger the assets, and running a business increase the likelihood of having larger assets. This is especially true for non farm businesses that have a clearly larger and more significant effect on assets than farm businesses. Finally, social capital in the form of community participation also has a positive effect on assets. Those results confirm the existence of a strong entrepreneurship culture among Indonesian households. Investigating survival rates also shows that those businesses are quite stable, even in the face of a violent crisis such as the 1997 one, and as a result, can provide a safety net. Finally, considering household assets - the returns of business to the household, rather than profit or productivity - the returns of business to itself, shows that households running a business are better off. While we demonstrate that uman and social capital are key to business existence, survival and performance, those results open avenues for further research regarding the factors that could hamper growth of those businesses in terms of output and employment.

Religion and economy : a comment

McCleary and Barro (2206) analyse whether Max Weber was right in emphasizing the religious impact on work ethic. Thery find a positive correltion between belief in hell and work ethic (p=0.98). They conclude that "Weber may have been right in emphasizing the religion link with work ethic"(p.71). Howevern they fail to explore the link to Max Weber's work on Protestant ethic as they don't explore for denomination differences. Weber's hypotheses would suggest that we would mainly observe an effect for Protestantism within a society. Thus, compared to McCleary and Barro's findings such a result is very much in line with Max Weber's link between religion and work ethic.

A political economy perspective on persistent inequality, inflation, and redistribution

In this paper we examine the dynamics of the link between inequality and inflation from a political economy perspective. We consider a simple dynamic general equilibrium model in which agents vote over the desired inflation rate in each period, and inequality is persistent. Inflation in our model is a mechanism of redistribution, and we find that the link between inequality and inflation within any period or over time depends on institutional and preference related parameters. Furthermore, we find that differences in the initial distributions of wealth can yield a diverse set of patterns for the evolution of the inflation and inequality link. Relative to existing literature, our model leads to more precise predictions about the inflation-inequality correlation. To that end, results in the extant empirical literature on the inflation and inequality link need to be interpreted with caution.

Understanding legitimacy in a changing global economy

In a knowledge economy where technologically mediated information plays an important role, greater understanding is required of its impact on organisational sustainability. This paper examines the link between mediated information within a global economy and its relationship to a key to long-term organisational success– legitimacy. Aligning organisational legitimacy and the demands of a range of internal and external stakeholders is a central concern for managers when challenges to legitimacy continue to arise. Particularly during times of internally or environmentally driven change, challenges are created for managers seeking to ensure their organisation avoids questioning about its legitimacy. This paper presents the proposition that the perceptions of collective opinion derived from mass media provide a lens to a global world upon which managers base decisions to protect and repair organisational legitimacy. Legitimacy is determined from a broad social arena that can cross national and international boundaries (Lomi, 2000). Experience of legitimacy concerns, therefore, are often outside the traditional realms of managerial knowledge, and experience and of local business association networks (Aldrich, 1999). While the organisational landscape has been changing, at the same time, mass media have increased the focus on bringing news about events, and interpretations of events, from a broad and even global social area (Mutz, 1998). In addition, electronically facilitated media have exposed both organisational stakeholders and managers to views and interpretations of the world more quickly and more explicitly than in previous times. This paper proposes a relationship between perceptions of collective opinion derived from mass media and organisational legitimacy in such an environment.

Making a match: Combining theory and evidence in policy-oriented macroeconomic modeling

A persistent question in the development of models for macroeconomic policy analysis has been the relative role of economic theory and evidence in their construction. This paper looks at some popular strategies that involve setting up a theoretical or conceptual model (CM) which is transformed to match the data and then made operational for policy analysis. A dynamic general equilibrium model is constructed that is similar to standard CMs. After calibration to UK data it is used to examine the utility of formal econometric methods in assessing the match of the CM to the data and also to evaluate some standard model-building strategies. Keywords: Policy oriented economic modeling; Model evaluation; VAR models

Post-WTO China : competition and technology transfer laws in the 'new' socialist market economy

China has been the focus of much academic and business scrutiny of late. Its economic climate is changing and its huge new market opportunities seem quite tantalizing to the would-be 'technology entrepreneur'. But China's market is a relatively immature one; it is still in the process of being opened up to real competition. The corollary of this is that, at this stage of the transitional process, there is still significant State control of market function. This article discusses Chinese competition law, the technology transfer system, how the laws are being reformed and how the technology entrepreneur fares under them. The bottom line is that while opportunities beckon, the wise entrepreneur will nevertheless continue to exercise caution.