A Hub System for Cloud-Computing Based Business-Collaboration: Automating Ontology-Enabled Electronic Business-Service Discovery

The management and coordination of business-process collaboration experiences changes because of globalization, specialization, and innovation. Service-oriented computing (SOC) is a means towards businessprocess automation and recently, many industry standards emerged to become part of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) stack. In a globalized world, organizations face new challenges for setting up and carrying out collaborations in semi-automating ecosystems for business services. For being efficient and effective, many companies express their services electronically in what we term business-process as a service (BPaaS). Companies then source BPaaS on the fly from third parties if they are not able to create all service-value inhouse because of reasons such as lack of reasoures, lack of know-how, cost- and time-reduction needs. Thus, a need emerges for BPaaS-HUBs that not only store service offers and requests together with information about their issuing organizations and assigned owners, but that also allow an evaluation of trust and reputation in an anonymized electronic service marketplace. In this paper, we analyze the requirements, design architecture and system behavior of such a BPaaS-HUB to enable a fast setup and enactment of business-process collaboration. Moving into a cloud-computing setting, the results of this paper allow system designers to quickly evaluate which services they need for instantiationg the BPaaS-HUB architecture. Furthermore, the results also show what the protocol of a backbone service bus is that allows a communication between services that implement the BPaaS-HUB. Finally, the paper analyzes where an instantiation must assign additional computing resources vor the avoidance of performance bottlenecks.

Bridging East and West : The Establishment of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in the United States Foreign Policy of Bridge Building, 1964-1972.

The dissertation examines the foreign policies of the United States through the prism of science and technology. In the focal point of scrutiny is the policy establishing the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the development of the multilateral part of bridge building in American foreign policy during the 1960s and early 1970s. After a long and arduous negotiation process, the institute was finally established by twelve national member organizations from the following countries: Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), France, German Democratic Republic (GDR), Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Poland, Soviet Union and United States; a few years later Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands also joined. It is said that the goal of the institute was to bring together researchers from East and West to solve pertinent problems caused by the modernization process experienced in industrialized world. It originates from President Lyndon B. Johnson s bridge building policies that were launched in 1964, and was set in a well-contested and crowded domain of other international organizations of environmental and social planning. Since the distinct need for yet another organization was not evident, the process of negotiations in this multinational environment enlightens the foreign policy ambitions of the United States on the road to the Cold War détente. The study places this project within its political era, and juxtaposes it with other international organizations, especially that of the OECD, ECE and NATO. Conventionally, Lyndon Johnson s bridge building policies have been seen as a means to normalize its international relations bilaterally with different East European countries, and the multilateral dimension of the policy has been ignored. This is why IIASA s establishment process in this multilateral environment brings forth new information on US foreign policy goals, the means to achieve these goals, as well as its relations to other advanced industrialized societies before the time of détente, during the 1960s and early 1970s. Furthermore, the substance of the institute applied systems analysis illuminates the differences between European and American methodological thinking in social planning. Systems analysis is closely associated with (American) science and technology policies of the 1960s, especially in its military administrative applications, thus analysis within the foreign policy environment of the United States proved particularly fruitful. In the 1960s the institutional structures of European continent with faltering, and the growing tendencies of integration were in flux. One example of this was the long, drawn-out process of British membership in the EEC, another is de Gaulle s withdrawal from NATO s military-political cooperation. On the other hand, however, economic cooperation in Europe between East and West, and especially with the Soviet Union was expanding rapidly. This American initiative to form a new institutional actor has to be seen in that structural context, showing that bridge building was needed not only to the East, but also to the West. The narrative amounts to an analysis of how the United States managed both cooperation and conflict in its hegemonic aspirations in the emerging modern world, and how it used its special relationship with the United Kingdom to achieve its goals. The research is based on the archives of the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, and IIASA. The primary sources have been complemented with both contemporary and present day research literature, periodicals, and interviews.

A Reference Architecture for Electronic Business-to-Business Collaboration Setup and Enactment Systems

The question what a business-to-business (B2B) collaboration setup and enactment application-system should look like remains open. An important element of such collaboration constitutes the inter-organizational disclosure of business-process details so that the opposing parties may protect their business secrets. For that purpose, eSourcing [37] has been developed as a general businessprocess collaboration concept in the framework of the EU research project Cross- Work. The eSourcing characteristics are guiding for the design and evaluation of an eSourcing Reference Architecture (eSRA) that serves as a starting point for software developers of B2B-collaboration systems. In this paper we present the results of a scenario-based evaluation method conducted with the earlier specified eSourcing Architecture (eSA) that generates as results risks, sensitivity, and tradeoff points that must be paid attention to if eSA is implemented. Additionally, the evaluation method detects shortcomings of eSA in terms of integrated components that are required for electronic B2B-collaboration. The evaluation results are used for the specification of eSRA, which comprises all extensions for incorporating the results of the scenario-based evaluation, on three refinement levels.

Exploring a framework for advanced electronic business transactions

With the emergence of service-oriented computing technology, companies embrace new ways of carrying out business transactions electronically. Since the parties involved in an electronic business transaction (eBT) manage a heterogeneous information-systems infrastructure within their organizational domains, the collaboration complexity is considerable and safeguarding an interorganizational collaboration with an eBT is difficult, but of high significance. This paper describes a conceptual framework that pays attention to the complexities of an eBT and its differentiating characteristics that go further than traditional database transactions. Since the eBT is a framework that comprises separate levels, pre-existing transaction concepts are explored for populating the respective levels. To show the feasibility of the described eBT framework, industry initiatives that are aspiring to become business-transaction standards, are checked for eBT compatible characteristics. Since realizing an eBT framework raises many tricky issues, the paper maps out important research areas that require scientific attention. Essentially, it is required to investigate how the business semantics influences the nature of an eBT throughout its lifecycle.

Strategic Sales Process Adaptation: Relationship Orientation of the Sales Process in a Business-to-Business Context

Although previous research has recognised adaptation as a central aspect in relationships, the adaptation of the sales process to the buying process has not been studied. Furthermore, the linking of relationship orientation as mindset with adaptation as a strategy and forming the means has not been elaborated upon in previous research. Adaptation in the context of relationships has mostly been studied in relationship marketing. In sales and sales management research, adaptation has been studied with reference to personal selling. This study focuses on adaptation of the sales process to strategically match it to the buyer’s mindset and buying process. The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for strategic adaptation of the seller’s sales process to match the buyer’s buying process in a business-to-business context to make sales processes more relationship oriented. In order to arrive at a holistic view of adaptation of the sales process during relationship initiation, both the seller and buyer are included in an extensive case analysed in the study. However, the selected perspective is primarily that of the seller, and the level focused on is that of the sales process. The epistemological perspective adopted is constructivism. The study is a qualitative one applying a retrospective case study, where the main sources of information are in-depth semi-structured interviews with key informants representing the counterparts at the seller and the buyer in the software development and telecommunications industries. The main theoretical contributions of this research involve targeting a new area in the crossroads of relationship marketing, sales and sales management, and buying and purchasing by studying adaptation in a business-to-business context from a new perspective. Primarily, this study contributes to research in sales and sales management with reference to relationship orientation and strategic sales process adaptation. This research fills three research gaps. Firstly, linking the relationship orientation mindset with adaptation as strategy. Secondly, extending adaptation in sales from adaptation in selling to strategic adaptation of the sales process. Thirdly, extending adaptation to include facilitation of adaptation. The approach applied in the study, systematic combining, is characterised by continuously moving back and forth between theory and empirical data. The framework that emerges, in which linking mindset with strategy with mindset and means forms a central aspect, includes three layers: purchasing portfolio, seller-buyer relationship orientation, and strategic sales process adaptation. Linking the three layers enables an analysis of where sales process adaptation can make a contribution. Furthermore, implications for managerial use are demonstrated, for example how sellers can avoid the ‘trap’ of ad-hoc adaptation. This includes involving the company, embracing the buyer’s purchasing portfolio, understanding the current position that the seller has in this portfolio, and possibly educating the buyer about advantages of adopting a relationship-oriented approach.

Effect of a specific estrogen antibody on pregnancy establishment in the bonnet monkey (Macaca radiata)

The requirement for estrogen for pregnancy establishment has not been conclusively demonstrated in primates. Selective neutralization of estrogens was achieved in mated female monkeys during preimplantation and postimplantation periods by injecting characterized estrogen antiserum from either day 14 to 18 or day 28 to 32 of cycle. While estrogen deprivation during preimplantation period in 5 animals exposed to 14 ovulatory cycles resulted in only one pregnancy, only 3 of 13 monkeys treated during postimplantation period continued pregnancy to term. In comparison with controls (4 of 5 monkeys becoming pregnant), the percent protection against pregnancy in animals treated during preimplantation period was 93. The pregnancy termination in 10 of 13 monkeys treated during postimplantation period when compared with normal postimplantation pregnancy wastage in our colony (2%) is also highly significant (P less than 0.01). The present study demonstrates a critical need for estrogen during the peri-implantation period for a successful pregnancy establishment in primates.