There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

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 has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

物件導向軟體之架構(Object-Oriented Software Construction)探討

Recognizing the substantial development of information quality research, this review article analyzes three major aspects of information quality research: information quality assessment, information quality management and contextual information quality. Information quality assessment is analyzed by three components: information quality problem, dimension and assessment methodology. Information quality management is analyzed from three perspectives: quality management, information management and knowledge management. Following an overview of contextual information quality, this article analyzes information quality research in the context of information system and decision making. The analyzing results reveal the potential research streams and current research limitations of information quality. Aiming at bridging the research gaps, we conclude by providing the research issues for future information quality research and implications for empirical applications.

A Review of Information Quality Research - Develop a Research Agenda.

Many information quality initiatives and projects need to demonstrate the potential benefits of their IQrelated activities already in their planning stage. In doing so, practitioners rely on cost estimates based on current non-quality data effects (that are then compared to data quality improvement costs). In producing such estimates on costs caused by low quality data, it is difficult to identify all potential negative monetary effects that are the result of low quality data (as well as all possible costs associated with assuring high quality data and their progression). Consequently, this article reviews and categorizes the potential costs associated with low quality data and examines their progression. This analysis can help practitioners to identify cost saving potentials and argue a more convincing business case of their data quality imitative. For researchers, the proposed classification framework and the cost progression analyses can be helpful to develop quantifiable measures of data quality costs and to prepare – subsequently – benchmarking studies, comparing different cost levels in different organizations. Thus, the paper contributes elements of a future cost-benefit analysis method for data quality investments.

A Classification and Analysis of Data Quality Costs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline a framework for analyzing healthcare process management projects. By using this framework, it seeks to analyze a system implementation in Ireland. The system aims to standardize healthcare human resource and payroll for the Irish healthcare sector.Design/methodology/approach – A popular system and business process implementation is analyzed in Ireland. The research intends to use this case scenario to identify success and failure, which in turn forms the basis to propose a conceptual reference method for introducing healthcare process management.Findings – The healthcare sector has shown that it has, compared with other sectors, a relatively underdeveloped information system structure. In this context, the importance of reducing healthcare costs and streamlining workflows, processes, and care pathways is ever more seriously recognized. However, despite the importance of process management, currently, internationally very few guidelines are provided for int...

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Challenges of business processes management in healthcare: Experience in the Irish healthcare sector

Purpose – Open innovation is an emerging paradigm which exposes organisations to networked capabilities and competencies though collaboration relationships. The traditional view of the organisational environment raises concerns regarding the mismatch in the methods used to assess business value and understanding service process maturity. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap. Design/methodology/approach – This paper employs a systematic literature review to present a state-of-the-art literature review with particular focus on the applicability of capability maturity models (CMM) within an open innovation context. Findings – The authors present a conceptual account of our research developments and build on the state-of-the-art which bridges open innovation and CMM. The authors provide a comprehensive discussion on the literature and challenge the applicability of individual organisations evolving through maturity stages. The authors identify a significant gap in the emergence of open innovation ...

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Service capabilities within open innovation: Revisiting the applicability of capability maturity models

Known as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in recent years a concept for business that focuses customers is often discussed in research and practice. After initially extraordinary expectations, numerous CRM projects fail. Thereby as one of the major reasons an overestimated and poor data quality is very frequently mentioned. Many authors assume a positive correlation between data quality and CRM, but nevertheless this can often not be (obviously) justified. This article aims to contribute to this research and analyses data quality investments in customer relationship management. By providing an explanation model we analyze the interdependences. With this model, it can be shown that data quality investments do not necessarily result in lasting or intensive customer relationships. In addition to the scientific contribution provided by the model, it builds the basis for derive recommendations for practice.

Markus Helfert

Papers

A Review of Information Quality Research - Develop a Research Agenda.

A Classification and Analysis of Data Quality Costs

Challenges of business processes management in healthcare: Experience in the Irish healthcare sector

Service capabilities within open innovation: Revisiting the applicability of capability maturity models

Analyzing Data Quality Investments in CRM - A Model-based Approach