Track 4: e-Business and e-Commerce: Managerial Issues, Applications and Technology

Track co-chairs:
Jinghua Huang huangjh@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn, Tsinghua University,
Sean Xin Xu seanxu@ust.hk, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
Jing Zhao zhao5563@gmail.com, China University of Geosciences

e-Business or e-commerce is expanding at a rapid rate with global online revenues being measured in trillions of dollars. They have become valuable for many globalized companies and their customers. However, some obstacles for companies attempting to extend their e-business are to develop appropriate international business strategies including new business models, optimize existing workflows and supply chains, understand global consumers and overcome cultural barriers, and design innovative web-based or ubiquitous application systems.

The emerging e-Business/e-Commerce has serious implications for both research and management. The purpose of this track is to provide a forum for examining managerial to technical questions and issues related to e-Business/e-Commerce.

Track 5: Emerging E-business and Management Innovation

Track co-chairs:
Xiaobo Wu xbwu@zju.edu.cn, Zhejiang University
Deren Chen drchen@zju.edu.cn, Zhejiang University
Chouyong Chen cychen11@126.com, Hangzhou Electron Science and Technology University

Nowadays, with the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT), e-business appears to be much more important to the economy. Accompanied with the rapid global expansion of service economy and the diversification of market demands, the new platforms of emerging e-business are building new social networks, new business models, and new value-creation paradigms. The substantial progress of ICT enables profound changes in e-business related management, with its much more significant characteristics, such as its mobility, individualization, sociality, etc. The emerging e-business does not only change the market and customers’ behavior fundamentally, it also leads to the changes in organization structures, corporate governance, and enterprise management paradigms.

This track is trying to provide a platform for discussions on emerging e-business enabled management changes. The suggested topics are found in, although not limited to, the following list:

• The business model innovations based on emerging e-business
• Emerging e-business enabled management changes
• The value creation networks with newly emerging e-business
• Emerging e-business and process management
• Organization learning of enterprises under the new Internet surroundings
• The interface management among the players in the emerging e-business based economy
• New models of social network
• Customer behavior in the emerging e-business
• New payment patterns

Track 6: Knowledge Management in Global Enterprises

Track co-chairs:
Lina Zhou zhoul@umbc.edu, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA
Qing Li itqli@cityu.edu.hk, City University of Hong Kong, China

Knowledge management involves knowledge acquisition, representation, sharing, and reuse in modern organizations and enterprises. Knowledge management can help enterprises improve their performance and gain competitive advantages. The increasing trend of globalization has not only underlined the need for knowledge management but also posed new challenges to knowledge management practices and technologies. For example, in addition to internal knowledge of employees, there is great potential in tapping into the external knowledge obtained from customers and business partners. Many businesses, such as Amazon.com and Netflix.com, have been analyzing consumers' feedback, online discussion forums, and consumers' product reviews and ratings to acquire knowledge about user preferences for product recommendations and to improve consumer relationship management. Those types of informal knowledge have been shown to have great impact on business performance and consumer satisfaction. In addition, the diversity in language, culture, technology, and social environment also brings challenges to knowledge management in global enterprises.

This track encourages submission of original papers from researchers and practitioners. The topics of this track include, but not limited to, knowledge diffusion and sharing in enterprises, distributed team collaboration, the impact of knowledge management on global enterprises, managerial and technical challenges in global knowledge management, innovative techniques for global knowledge management, knowledge management in online social networks, success factors and performance measurements of knowledge management, cultural issues in global knowledge management, and case studies of knowledge management in global enterprises.

Track 7: Main Memory-Based Applications for Global Enterprises

Track co-chairs:
Alexander Zeier alexander.zeier@hpi.uni-potsdam.de, Hasso-Plattner-Institute, Germany
Dean Jacobs dean.jacobs@sap.com, SAP AG, Germany

The AMIGE'08 track on Main Memory-Based Applications for Global Enterprises addresses the application of main-memory column store database technology to problems in enterprise software. While column stores yield massive performance gains when exposed to On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) workloads, the columnar storage model is also useful for a set of On-Line Transactional Processing (OLTP) applications in enterprise computing.

Examples include financials and material management applications, which traditionally rely heavily on the use aggregates for performance reasons. At the same, the use of aggregates impacts the up-to-dateness of the information these applications provide, while the continuous maintenance of the aggregates is challenging. By the use of column store technology for appropriate OLTP applications, the functionality of these applications can be extended towards ad-hoc analytics capabilities. This new breed of applications will be especially useful for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for which conventional data warehouse installations including the management of Extracting, Transforming, and Loading (ETL) the warehouse are too expensive. Thus, original papers are solicited which show how the functionality of OLTP applications can be extended towards OLAP capabilities using column store databases. Topics include but are not limited to:

Track 8: Service-Oriented Enterprise Applications

Track co-chairs:
Minqiang Li mqli@tju.edu.cn, Jinlan Liu liujinlan@tju.edu.cn, Tianjin University, China, Harry Jiannan Wang hjwang@lerner.udel.edu, University of Delaware, USA

In order to be competitive in today's highly dynamic business environment, organizations need to adapt and respond to changes efficiently and effectively. Enabled by the services computing technologies such as service oriented architectures, web services, service composition, and service orchestration, organizations are transforming their IT infrastructures and applications to be service-oriented in order to achieve higher level of enterprise agility. According to Gartner, by 2011, 63% of products in the software infrastructure market and 56% in the software application market will support web services. This track provides an outlet for researchers and practitioners who are interested in presenting their work in the area of service-oriented enterprise applications. The suggested topics are found in, although not limited to, the following list:

Track 9: Workflow Technologies

Track co-chairs:
Wanchun Dou douwc@nju.edu.cn, Nanjing University, China
Yu Yang Sun Yat-Sen University, China

Workflow is making important contributions to many types of business in both intra-organizational and inter-organizational processes. Workflow technology is a mechanism to integrate data, application and services and is being increasingly applied in discovery informatics to organize and analyze data. The use of workflow technology in this context promises significant efficiency gains for the enterprise through the automated coordination of activities, process participants and the integration of applications. Recently, the use of software architecture frameworks such as the Service-Oriented Architecture enables workflow systems to easily integrate both legacy systems and internet technology (such as web services and grid infrastructure).

The main goal of the Conference Track is to discuss workflow systems, and to analyze technologies and methodologies useful to develop such systems in various environments. In particular, this Conference Track aims at offering a forum of discussion where researchers could present their research activities, either at an early or mature phase.

Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:

Track 10: Information Search and Management in Global Economies

Track co-chairs:
Choon Ling Sia iscl@cityu.edu.hk, Weiquan Wang weiquan@cityu.edu.hk, City University of Hong Kong, China

Information search and management strategies for firms operating in a globalized economy are the themes of this track. How global enterprises can best design and present information in ways amenable to effective searching and trust/image building from information seekers and stakeholders, how these activities can be more effectively managed and strategized, what kinds of behavioral patterns for information seekers, what technological features can effectively facilitate these activities, and the impact of the environmental and organizational factors such as cultures (both national and organizational) and policies/norms, are some interesting areas of research that would fit the theme of this track.

In addition, the emergence of virtual worlds (such as Second Life) and online marketplaces (such as Alibaba.com) provides huge opportunities/challenges of procurement, marketing, and operations for global enterprises. For example, in the virtual world Second Life, many multinational organizations (such as Adidas, BMW, IBM, and Vodafone) conduct operations and marketing campaigns; Alibaba.com has over 27.6 million registered firms in 2007. An effective management of information and organizational presence in these new channels can deliver strategic advantages to global enterprises. This conference track also aims at stimulating discussions and investigations into the management of information in virtual worlds and online global marketplaces.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Track 11: Global Services: Computing, Management, and Strategies

Track co-chairs:
Michael Chau, mchau@business.hku.hk, University of Hong Kong, China
Paul Maglio, pmaglio@almaden.ibm.com, IBM Service Research, USA
J. Leon Zhao, jlzhao@u.arizona.edu, University of Arizona, USA

The world has become a complex service system as information technology has led to a global service economy, in which information computing and consultation services can be relocated in a different country. Furthermore, corporations in the developed countries such as the US have moved into the third stage of globalization, i.e., taking advantage of the talent in a foreign market to develop new products beyond selling products (stage 1), and manufacturing products overseas (stage 2). As a result, corporations must deal with globalized operations and decisions. However, little research has been done in this new business domain. This track provides a forum for researchers to share their research results in various computational, managerial, and strategic issues in global services. Specific topics are suggested in, but not limited to, the following list: