According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

How to ... be a reflective practitioner.

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist

Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness

Digital Transformation Readiness in Higher Education Institutions (HEI): The Case of Kosovo

Privacy issues are an increasing concern in our society (Pedersen, 1999). As information and communications technology (ICT) becomes increasingly pervasive, these concerns are being intensified. Privacy is a fundamental human right (UN, 1948) that continues to be violated by intrusive and unethical applications of technology in society and the workplace (cf. Baase, 2003). However, in spite of the ethical concerns and the pivotal role ICT plays in gathering and processing information on people, privacy remains a misunderstood and undervalued concept in ISD. 
Although literature addresses many ethical issues associated with intrusive technologies, privacy has received very little attention from ISD researchers, with mainstream literature treating privacy as analogous to data security. Palen and Dourish (2003) note that social and design studies of technology often unknowingly conflate the many functions of privacy and consequently fail to provide sufficient analytical treatment. Current ISD approaches are failing to recognise the significance of privacy ...

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Towards a Privacy Framework for Information Systems Development

Modes of reasoning in theories of the social impact of advanced technology: A critique of ERP systems in healthcare

Post-conflict developing regions are special cases of developing countries which have received little attention in information systems research. They are emergency situations which attract significant aid designed to help create economic stability through, for example, the use of IT. This study compared the experiences of Electronic Data Interchange EDI adoption in the extreme environment of a post-conflict region to other developing regions. Presenting data gathered from 68 companies in Kosovo, this paper provides an in-depth examination of EDI technology adoption in a post-conflict region. The findings suggest that EDI adoption in Kosovo comprises different features when compared with other developing countries, indicating that current theories of technology adoption have not fully accounted for EDI adoption in post-conflict regions. From this finding, implications for interventions in post-conflict regions are drawn. This paper contributes to the understanding of technology adoption processes and offers new insight into the process of technology adoption in this context. This paper provides a starting point for further work which creates a basis for more effective interventions in post-conflict zones, contributing to economic development and stabilisation.

Technology Adoption in Post-Conflict Regions: EDI Adoption in Kosovo After the War

In the context of technology development and systems engineering, knowledge is typically treated as a complex information structure. In this view, knowledge can be stored in highly sophisticated data systems and processed by explicitly intelligent, software-based technologies. This paper argues that the current emphasis upon knowledge as information (or even data) is based upon a form of rationalism which is inappropriate for any comprehensive treatment of knowledge in the context of human-centred systems thinking. A human-centred perspective requires us to treat knowledge in human terms. The paper sets out the particular importance of tacit knowledge in this regard. It sets out two case studies which reveal the critical importance of a careful treatment of tacit knowledge for success in two complex, technology-driven projects.

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Larry Stapleton

Papers

Digital Transformation Readiness in Higher Education Institutions (HEI): The Case of Kosovo

Towards a Privacy Framework for Information Systems Development

Modes of reasoning in theories of the social impact of advanced technology: A critique of ERP systems in healthcare

Technology Adoption in Post-Conflict Regions: EDI Adoption in Kosovo After the War

Systems engineering methodologies, tacit knowledge and communities of practice