Design and Implementation of Business Objects for Automated Business Negotiations

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the specification, generation and exchange of business objects in the context of electronic commerce. Common business objects have been defined for product catalogs, purchase orders and other business entities. However, no business objects have been defined and implemented for supporting automated business negotiations even though business negotiation is very much an integral part of business activities. In this work, we have designed and implemented a set of business negotiation objects for supporting the bargaining type of business negotiations. These objects define the operations and information contents needed for negotiation parties to express their requirements and constraints during a bargaining process. They correspond to a set of negotiation primitives, which is a superset of the negotiation-related primitives defined in two popular languages: ACL and COOL. The implementation of these objects is patterned after the business object documents in the XML format proposed by the Open Applications Group, thus conforming to the established standard. The incorporation of several types of constraint specifications in these business negotiation objects provides the negotiation parties and the negotiation servers that represent them much expressive power in specifying callforproposals and proposals. Two synchronization problems and their solutions associated with the withdrawal and modification of negotiation proposals are addressed and presented in this paper. The use of these business negotiation objects in a bilateral bargaining protocol is also presented. We have validated the utility of these objects in an integrated network environment, which consists of two replicated negotiation servers, two commercial products, and some other university research systems that form a supply chain.     

中国商务职业经理人资格培训认证工作在全国展开

中国商务从业人员资格培训认证项目（简称CBMA）是由国家商务部指导，是经国务院国有资产监督管理委员会直属的中国城市商管会设立，由全国商务培训认证管理办公室负责具体执行的高层商务管理项目。该项目旨在结合商务管理实践，系统深入地学习与研究国外先进的管理理论和经验，培养适应中国社会主义市场经济发展需要的，     

中国商务职业经理人资格培训认证工作在全国展开

中国商务从业人员资格培训认证项目（简称CBMA）是由国家商务部指导，是经国务院国有资产监督管理委员会直属的中国城市商管会设立，由全国商务培训认证管理办公室负责具体执行的高层商务管理项目。该项目旨在结合商务管理实践，系统深入地学习与研究国外先进的管理理论和经验，培养适应中国社会主义市场经济发展需要的，适应WTO与国际接轨的新形势、能够独立从事某一行业或某一部门商务管理的中高级管理专业人才。     

中国商务职业经理人资格培训认证工作在全国展开

中国商务从业人员资格培训认证项目（简称CBMA）是由国家商务部指导，是经国务院国有资产监督管理委员会直属的中国城市商管会设立，由全国商务培训认证管理办公室负责具体执行的高层商务管理项目。该项目旨在结合商务管理实践，系统深入地学习与研究国外先进的管理理论和经验，培养适应中国社会主义市场经济发展需要的，适应WTO与国际接轨的新形势、能够独立从事某一行业或某一部门商务管理的中高级管理专业人才。学员通过商务管理领域必备的职业素养和管理技能的系统培训、     

通告

中国商务从业人员资格培训认证项目（简称CBMA）是由国家商务部指导，是经国务院国有资产监督管理委员会直属的中国城市商管会设立，由全国商务培训认证管理办公室负责具体执行的高层商务管理项目。     

中国商务职业经理人资格培训认证工作在全国展开

中国商务从业人员资格培认证项目（简称CBMA）是由国家商务部指导，是经国务院国有资产监督管理委员会直属的中国城市商管会设立，由全国商务培训认证管理办公室负责具体执行的高层商务管理项目。该项目旨在结合商务管理实践，系统深入地学习与研究国外先进的管理理论和经验，培养适应中国社会主义市场经济发展需要的，适应WTO与国际接轨的新形势、能够独立从事某一行业或某一部门商务管理的中高级管理专业人才。     

通告

中国商务从业人员资格培训认证项目（简称CBMA）是由国家商务部指导，是经国务院国有资产监督管理委员会直属的中国城市商管会设立，由全国商务培训认证管理办公室负责具体执行的高层商务管理项目。该项目旨在结合商务管理实践，系统深入地学习与研究国外先进的管理理论和经验，培养适应中国社会主义市场经济发展需要的，适应WTO与国际接轨的新形势、能够独立从事某一行业或某一部门商务管理的中高级管理专业人才。学员通过商务管理领域必备的职业素养和管理技能的系统培训、评定与考核后，     

中国商务职业经理人资格培训认证工作在全国展开

中国商务从业人员资格培训认证项目（简称CBMA）是由国家商务部指导，是经国务院国有资产监督管理委员会直属的中国城市商管会设立，由全国商务培训认证管理办公室负责具体执行的高层商务管理项目。     

FOCUS: Ethical Business: Thinking Thoughts and Facilitating Processes

Doing business ethics and conducting ethical business has to be much more than conducting a rational enquiry. Much also depends on the motivation of individuals and how a positive moral vision of business can unite intellectual and affective approaches to the conduct of business. The author is a lecturer in Philosophy at Warwick University, Coventry CV4 7AL, and a Research Associate at the Local Government Centre at Warwick Business School. He is also an independent organisation development consultant specialising in helping organisations develop their learning processes and value-based forms of leadership.     

Socially Responsible Processes of Small Family Business Owners: Exploratory Evidence from the National Family Business Survey

The purpose of this exploratory study is to ascertain the impact of family, business, and community factors on the socially responsible processes of small family businesses, and investigate the influence of financial success and attitudes toward community on these processes. The research is grounded in the Sustainable Family Business Theory, which has been enhanced to include the interactive and collaborative action, both economically and socially, of family businesses and their communities. Data are from the National Family Business Survey, 2000 panel. The processes studied include interpersonal transactions in the form of community leadership and holding an elected or appointed office, and resource transactions in the form of providing financial or technical assistance in community development, and providing donations to local programs. Models assessed the probability and intensity of assistance provided by family businesses. The findings indicate that the social and economic climate of the community may contribute to the performance of responsible actions by businesses because human, social and financial capital resources from both the family and the business can be used to solve problems in the community. The most robust result was that individuals with very positive attitudes about their local communities were more likely to serve in leadership positions and make financial and technical contributions to the community. Business owners in economically vulnerable communities were willing to assume more responsibility to fill leadership positions in the community and make substantial contributions of financial and technical assistance than those in less vulnerable communities. Policymakers must recognize the many contributions of family businesses and forge rural developmentpolicies that not only help sustain existing businesses and fuel the engine of economic growth, but encourage human capital development, and, in turn, enhance the contributions of the family and the business to their community.     

Capturing Knightian Advantages of Large Business Organisations Through Group Decision-making Processes

This paper develops an explanation of how large business organisations may achieve advantages of size by virtue of decision-making procedures. The argument is inspired by Knight's (Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, NewYork: Houghton Mifflin, 1921) model of internal business organisation, together with his explanation of profits pertaining to large business organisations by being connected with situations that he characterises as uncertain rather than risky. Capturing the decision-making advantages is fairly straightforward in Knight's explanation. Decision making is internalised to individuals who cope with uncertain situations— beyond the range of normal experience— in a manner consistent with managerial/entrepreneurial vision. Recent organisation theory has drawn attention to the use of groups as an integral part of decision making within large business organisations and this has important implications for economics. This paper highlights the role of groups in achieving Knightian advantages. The argument loosens the identification of organisation with a managerial/entrepreneurial vision, adding different levels and types of deliberate and automatic selection, the alignment of which is likely to be problematic.     

Incorporating Freud’s Theory on Cognitive Processes into Business Ethics Education

Most educators in business ethics tend toconcentrate on various philosophical theories and theapplication of these theories to ethical dilemmas. Anumber of pedagogical techniques are often used forthis purpose. These approaches concentrate on(conscious) reasoning and decision making. It is thecontention of this paper that an understanding ofFreudian psychology would help students to develop agreater awareness of the unconscious mechanisms thatsometimes come into play when an individual is facedwith a stressful ethical dilemma. Freud and histheories are widely known and have been influential inthe development of many other theoreticalperspectives. Freud demonstrated the importance ofthe unconscious mind on human behaviour. Included inhis theory was an explanation of how various defensemechanisms such as rationalization anddenial are sometimes (unconsciously) used toalleviate feelings of guilt when an individual isconfronted with a particularly stressful moraldilemma. The paper offers suggestions on how egodefense mechanisms can be incorporated into businessethics education.     

Ethics in Strategic Thinking: Business Processes and the Global Market Collapse

The authors discussed the reasons for the recent economic collapse as caused by the lack of large businesses and global corporations losing touch with the people they serve. Losing touch has caused a distancing of understanding of the customers as people by these businesses and corporations. An antidote to this is that decisions that have to be made in global businesses as well as domestic organizations reflect some level of empathy. The objective is to highlight the fact that these businesses are corporate citizens and in themselves must be aware of the culture in which they conduct themselves. The authors discuss how empathic decision-making can become part of the corporate fabric without losing any sense of appropriate business judgment. A process is defined to enable the empathic process. Finally, a straw man is set up to fund/enable the process while creating a positive and profitable business environment.     

Processes and Consequences in Business EthicalDilemmas: The Oil Industry and Climate Change

We present a model of rational behavior by which we characterize business ethical dilemmas as trade-offs between processes and consequences. As an illustration, we formulate the oil industry's business ethical dilemma as a trade-off between a socially detrimental process (emitting greenhouse gases, hence inducing a risk of climate change) and a self-interested consequence (profits). The proposed framework allows us to specify two types of strategies, differing by whether priority is given to the consequences or to the processes. We analyze and illustrate these strategies at both the behavioral and the discursive levels. In particular, communication strategies raise questions about good faith in business argumentation, in the sense that business discourse may or may not be consistent with actual assumptions and/or actual behaviors. We conclude on possible drivers of more ethical business behavior.     

Exploring the Interplay of the Design and Emergence of Business Processes as Organizational Routines

Much of the BPM literature views business process design and implementation as a top-down process that is built on strategic alignment and managerial control. While this view has enabled the design of many IT artifacts for business processes, it is inconsistent with the observation that information infrastructures, including a company’s business process infrastructure, are at drift, a term that refers to the lack of top-down management control. The paper contributes to resolving this inconsistency by developing a meta-framework that conceptualizes business processes as emergent organizational routines that are represented, enabled, and constrained by IT artifacts. IT artifacts are developed in processes of functional-hierarchical decomposition and social design processes. Organizational routines have ostensive and performative aspects, forming a mutually constitutive duality. A literature review demonstrates that the propositions offered by the meta-framework have been insufficiently considered in the BPM field. The paper concludes with an outlook to applying the meta-framework to theorize about the interplay of design projects with the subsequent emergence of business processes in organizations.     

Semantic Process Modeling – Design and Implementation of an Ontology-based Representation of Business Processes

An extension of process modeling languages is designed which allows representing the semantics of model element labels which are formulated in natural language by using concepts of a formal ontology. This combination of semiformal models with formal ontologies will be characterized as semantic process modeling. The approach is exemplarily applied to the languages EPC (Event-driven Process Chain), BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) and OWL (Web Ontology Language) and is generalized by means of an information model. The proposed formalization of the semantics of individual model elements in conjunction with the usage of inference engines allows the improvement of query functionalities in modeling tools and enables new possibilities of model validation. The integration of the approach in the IT-based work environments of modelers is demonstrated by a system architecture and a prototypical implementation. Evidently, advantages in the areas of modeling, model management, IT-business alignment, and compliance can be achieved by the application of modeling tools augmented with semantic technologies.     

An Unusual Decade for China's Certification Cause

On August 29, 2001, the Cer-tification and Accreditation Administration of the People's Republic of China (CNCA) was founded, which signifies the quality of Chinese products, and the certification and accreditation in China having entered into a new phase.On the inaugural meet-ing, the State Councilor Wu Yi said in her speech, " China is going to join WTO.As a member of WTO, China will abide by the rules of WTO.     

电子商务商业方法专利战略

网络的出现在很大程度上改变了现行的经济运行模式。电子商务在全球范围内迅速发展起来,而商业方法专利也成为人们研究的一个新课题。在论述电子商务商业方法专利的相关理论问题的基础上,分析我国商业方法专利的保护现状,针对目前国外强大的商业方法专利的攻势,我国政府和企业的应对策略之一便是建立电子商务商业方法专利保护法。