JMS-Java-Based Meeting Space

The convergence of business, technology, and market forces have brought about the computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) phenomena. Many CSCW systems adopt an inflexible style of collaboration and coordination. The problem becomes obvious when different application tools are integrated into a single, comprehensive CSCW system and various applications need different degrees of interaction mode. We introduce JMS (Java-based meeting space), an object-oriented framework for developing synchronous collaborative applications. The JMS framework provides a comprehensive collection of services that supports cooperative interaction at system level. The application developers can tailor some of these services to the specific needs of particular collaborative applications and usage situations. These services are grouped into three main categories. First, JMS provides session management service supporting dynamic integration of application tools as well as dynamic membership. Second, group awareness service guarantees allotted communications within a session. Third, JMS offers floor control service accommodating a set of policies as well as underlying mechanisms. The application developer can bind a floor control to an application tool and switch from one floor policy to another during the session. Our implementation is based on a fully, object-oriented replicated architecture in which the application and management services are replicated at each site. To illustrate the feasibility of JMS in a practical organizational environment, an electronic meeting incorporating voting has been built on the JMS framework. We also provide a brief overview of CSCW and its significance in organizational computing-in electronic meeting, in particular-and compare JMS with other related works.     

A Sorting Model for Group Decision Making: A Case Study of Water Losses in Brazil

Many water supply systems in Brazil have serious problems related to the high index of water losses, which provokes financial and environmental impacts. This is an immediate consequence of an inadequate maintenance plan, allied to natural and budgetary constraints. In addition, in these types of problems it is commonplace to consider the opinions of many managers, such as those from the operational, environmental and financial sectors of Water Companies. In view of this, a sorting multicriteria model to support group decision making is developed. We proposed an approach which sorts the areas of the system which are located in critical zones of water losses into categories, and which takes into account different points of view and considers uncertainty in criteria weights by using only ordinal information, so as to make it viable to manage the maintenance plan and to use the scant financial resources more efficiently. The SMAA-TRI method is used to tackle the group sorting problematic by categorizing the network into zones where losses are intense and thus to focus the managers’ effort on the most critical regions. A case study in Brazil is presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the approach proposed.     

关于电子商务网站中商品分类的分析

本文通过对现有电子商务网站的商品类目编排的简要分析,并作出一些合理的数学解释,然后根据现状预测出市场经济体制下电子商务类目的发展趋势,从“与时俱进”的统一化更新、全球经济化带来的启示和检索效用的提高来谈未来电子商务类目的发展。将会对现存的电子商务网站的运营观念带来适当的思考和启发并导致电子商务产业更好的发展。     

现代市场营销观念及方法的创新与发展

随着社会经济快速发展,传统的市场营销观念和方法正在被绿色营销、文化营销、知识营销、网络营销、关系营销等诸多新的营销观念和方法所代替,对企业的发展起到了巨大的推动作用。在构建和谐社会,倡导节约型社会,走可持续发展之路的新形势和环境下,企业更应大力创新营销观念和营销方法,不断提高自身的竞争优势。     

An Architecture for Advanced Services in Cyberspace Through Data Mining: A Framework With Case Studies in Finance and Engineering

The proliferation of online databases has led to a dramatic increase in the availability of services provided through the Internet. To date, however, online services have largely taken the form of supplying basic data or information on an "as is" basis. This is exemplified by the provision of magazine articles or stock prices in electronic form. The deployment of data mining tools, however, promises a new level of utility to harness the ocean of online data, to filter basic information, and to generate new knowledge. In this article, I present a generic architecture for constructing intelligent systems to provide knowledge-based services in cyberspace. The heart of the architecture consists of data mining tools to provide advanced services on the Internet. The ideas are presented through case studies in forecasting interest rates and in configuring personal computers.     

城市交通信息系统的设计

高新技术的智能交通系统（Intelligent Transport System，ITS）是改善世界性交通难题的希望所在。文中针对智能交通系统中的关键性问题的交通信息系统提出了构思，并深入研究了信息发布子系统，对无线数据传输提出了经济实用的方案，并予以实现。该文对提高我国城市交通系统的智能化水平具有参考意义。     

Decreased price clustering in FTSE100 futures contracts following a transfer from floor to electronic trading

The issues of price clustering and electronic trading have triggered important recent debates, and generated interest from regulators due to their potential implications for market quality, stability, and fairness. This paper brings together these issues by examining whether price‐clustering behavior differs following a transfer of futures contracts from open outcry trading to an electronic system. The results are unique in demonstrating a structural change in price clustering following the move to automated trading, with the level of price clustering dropping from around 98.5% of prices at even ticks under floor trading to approximately 75% under electronic trading. Such a change in pricing behavior amounts to a reduction in the effective tick size, and is an important factor in reducing observed bid‐ask spreads. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:647–659, 2003     

物流创新的灵魂:理念创新

物流理念是企业物流活动的指南,物流创新的灵魂是物流理念的创新。企业物流管理应关注若干物流新理念,注重运用哲学思维来思考物流理念的创新。     

基于改进智能水滴算法的多用户OFDMA系统资源分配

在正交频分多址（OFDMA）系统中，合理的资源分配对于提升系统的性能具有重要的意义。针对多用户OFDMA系统，对最大化系统容量为目标的资源分配算法进行研究，提出了一种基于智能水滴算法的无向全连通图资源分配模型，以无向全连通图的顶点集和边集来描述用户与子载波之间的匹配关系。在此基础上，进一步对智能水滴算法进行改进。仿真结果表明，在满足用户比例公平性的条件下，与蚁群算法相比，基于改进智能水滴算法的全连通图分配方案能够提高2.17%~4.91%的系统速率，同时具有更快的收敛速度，提高了系统性能。     

Electronic support for large groups

One of the key challenges in applying information technology to improve group performance lies in matching the capabilities of technology to the needs of the situation. Groups can choose meeting styles that use solely electronic communication, solely verbal communication, or a combination of both verbal and electronic communication. This paper reports on a series of ten case studies of large groups performing information generation tasks. For these groups and tasks, meeting styles with a greater proportion of electronic communication were found to result in higher perceived effectiveness, efficiency, and participant satisfaction. Qualitative evidence suggested that in this situation, the parallelism, direct access to the meeting memory, and anonymity offered by pure electronic communication outweighed its reduced media richness.     

Facilitation Methods for Collaborative Modeling Tools

This paper presents results of an ongoing research effort to support effective user involvement during modeling and analysis meetings. Productivity and user participation of traditional group meetings have been limitations imposed by chauffeured facilitation and single-user tools. These tools have been designed for analysts rather than for direct use by non-analyst users. Recently, electronic meeting systems (EMS) modeling tools that allow users to work in parallel to contribute directly during meetings have been developed. Such tools allow more domain experts to participate directly and productively during model development meetings than is possible using the traditional approach. Although previous research has demonstrated that EMS modeling tools may be used to develop some model content, little research had been done on collaborative facilitation methods that employ these tools. This paper presents a comparison of modeling approaches for use with EMS modeling tools and proposes an approach that overcomes significant problems inherent in other approaches. It leverages the productivity enhancement afforded by direct group access and still results in production of complete, integrated, high quality models. This approach allows models to be developed two to four times faster than with traditional modeling support and yet avoids model ambiguities and inconsistencies.     

The Meta Environment: A New Group Support System Structure

The greatest success of conventional group support systems (GSS) has been in meetings whose purpose is to extract and record the ideas that participants bring to the meeting. Research supports the usefulness of GSS when complexity is high and groups are large. Conventional GSS almost always require a facilitator or group leader to guide a group through a desired set of tasks. The next natural step beyond conventional GSS is to empower people to use even a broader set of tools in meetings. This article proposes a new GSS structure called the meta environment in which group members bring material into the meeting from their individual workstations, and interact dynamically not only to generate new material, but also to access and analyze existing computer-based information such as spreadsheets and documents. More importantly, a meta environment enables people to work both in synchronism and out of synchronism with the meeting, and adjust to and remember work across meetings. A prototype development project and user testing shows how meta environment components can be built and used. Results from the user testing suggest the need for a new cycle of empirical testing in GSS research to evaluate the effect of the meta environment on existing and new group structures.     

The Integrative Effect of Electronic Data Processing

Electronic data processing systems have been constructed based on the results of cybernetics and communication theory. They interpret the combination of several constructs as integrated systems that form integrated systems of a higher degree. This corresponds to the way modern economics looks at corporate functions, enterprises, the economy... This fundamental tendency is reflected by the idea that the most important factor in electronic data processing systems is not the speed of operation but the integrative effect. Therefore it is necessary to arrange workflows in a closed control system, under consideration of the most rational path. Thus IDP advances the aims of business organization to a higher level and at the same time provides means for reaching these aims. Reprint of an article from elektronische datenverarbeitung 1(1)1959:14–19. The original summary has been revised by the editorial staff. This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Kettner KH (2008) Der Integrationseffekt elektronischer Datenverarbeitung. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: .     

The Importance of Facilitator Role Behaviors

SUMMARY

Shifting the emphasis from working alone to working together in the classroom or on the job is a relatively simple idea. However, implementing collaborative work and learning has not been so easy!

This paper argues that critical meeting facilitation skills and the appropriate use of Group Support Systems' (GSS) tools support the collaborative meeting and learning paradigm. These skills and tools greatly enhance the teacher's and meeting leaders? ability to create effective collaborative situations. The use of GSS with the case study methodology is discussed as one example of blending facilitation and technology to teach people to work together more productively in multinational settings.     

夏商周：贞节观念滥觞

母系社会群婚制的婚姻形式，不存在贞操观念。夏商周时代，在以父权为中心的私有制家庭取代以母子血缘为核心的自然形态的过程中，贞节观念产生了。早在先秦时期，儒家便提倡贞节观念。在先秦，礼仅适用于少数贵族妇女，贞节观念并不是很强。随着社会的发展，以孔子的三纲五常为核心的社会伦理道德逐渐完善。秦、汉以后，开始崇尚女子贞节，对女子婚前守贞的要求逐步强化。     

E-Business Method: A Cyclical-Model for Internet Commerce Development

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a methodology for designing and deploying electronic enterprises–a step beyond intuitive or rule-based approaches. As a starting point, the paper presents a cyclical-model consisting of three e-business development phases: conceptualization, simulation, and implementation. Since an e-business “idea” rarely springs forth complete and ready to go, realizing the idea–that is, turning it into a commercial product, system, process, or profitable enterprise–requires business development. Business development requires analysis of the potential organizational structures, IT architectures, HR policies and procedures, strategies, market niche, partnership agreements, and so on, until a satisfactory enterprise design is found. Such consideration and experimentation can be done mentally (intuitively), or by drawing on a napkin (informally), or more logically using strategic and marketing analysis, revenue/cost/asset/operational business models, computer simulations, and other quantitative and qualitative management practices and techniques. In any case, only rarely is the result of the first development effort completely satisfactory, perhaps the business system or process will be too difficult to develop, too complex, or too costly to implement, maintain, or sell. So, once again the business idea goes into the cycle of developing, testing, redeveloping, implementing, and re-testing. Succinctly, the methodology advocated in this paper provides a framework for guiding the e-business development process.     

Team Roles and Hierarchic System in Group Discussion

Conventional systems for classifying team roles refer only to the function criterion and two categories, task and social; in addition, roles and behaviors are unspecialized, a one-to-one correspondence being assumed between them. These theoretical problems have resulted in overly fragmented roles as well as oversimplified categories. Therefore, this article aims to reveal essential roles and a unified system to classify them. In order to elucidate the team roles essential for discussion, a questionnaire survey was administered for Study 1, with the result that just ten discussant-roles were identified. For Study 2, in order to verify a classification system for the discussant-roles, participant groups were asked to discuss itineraries for an overnight group trip during the winter holiday. The results showed that a three-criterion model based on the deep roles is superior to the traditional model. In this hierarchical system, characteristic behaviors are expressed according to ten discussant-roles, which are divided into six categories, using a combination of three criteria. This system not only solves the theoretical issues but also contributes to improving members’ discussion behaviors.     

Development of new technology-based services

In an environment where customers can hardly describe new technology-based services (TBSs) of the future and technological engineers are unlikely to understand how a new technology can work for new services, a guideline to generate ideas for TBS can be utilized to achieve successful service innovation. Thus, this paper aims to develop an ideation framework for TBS. Two methods – the technology tree and the function analysis systems technique – are employed to identify core utilities expected from a new technology. Then a new method, the service encounter value matrix, which is based on morphology analysis and is used for generating potential service ideas, is suggested. Finally, these ideas are evaluated, and only those that are of a high priority according to customers’ expectations of future society are selected. In this study, the framework is applied to telecommunication technology, which is timely and useful for designing future services.     

A logistic regression-based pairwise comparison method to aggregate preferences

In a group decision making process, several individuals or a committee have the responsibility to choose the best alternative from a set. The problem addressed in this paper is how to aggregate personal preferences to arrive at an optimal group decision. New technologies allow individuals that may seldom or never meet to make group decisions. This paper proposes a methodology to obtain the group preference ordering in two steps. Firstly, each individual studies the problem isolated, and then, in a possibly virtual meeting, the group must agree on the preferences on some pairs of alternatives. Then, the group criterion is achieved by using a logistic regression model within the pairwise comparison framework proposed here. Properties of the procedure are studied and two illustrative examples are presented.     

Computer-supported cooperative negotiations

This article describes an environment for interactive negotiations based on current and emerging information technology. Over the past few years a suite of methods, tools, and techniques have emerged which promise to revolutionize the negotiations planning and decision-making processes. Some of these technologies include collaborative computing, electronic publishing, intelligent systems, and networked communications—all supported by a network of processors, applications, and data bases. This article explores these opportunities by examining how the methods, tools, and techniques might all combine to facilitate “computer-supported cooperative negotiations.”