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This paper looks to Plato for guidance on business and business leadership in the twenty-first century. It focuses on three themes. The first is the concept of ˵the market″ as an agora, a meeting place where economic, political and social themes, activities and values intersect and are engaged. The second theme revolves around the concept of a ˵social contract″ that dominates Plato's account in the Crito of the life, mission and responsibilities of Socrates faced with responding to a death penalty imposed at the conclusion of a judicial process in which Socrates was on trial for corrupting the youth. The focus of the final theme is Plato's attempt in The Republic to understand the proper relationship between and among what he defines as the three functions essential to any organized human society, functions that today we would identify as government or political leadership, the generation of economic wealth and the task of protecting the state from attack by external military forces, where the goal is the creation of a just and harmonious society. The paper concludes that Plato provides indirect but persuasive reasons for the view that business and the generation of material wealth must be harmoniously interwoven with the social and political dimensions of society and government if a just society is to be realized. What Plato's insights suggest is that to abstract economic markets from the wider sphere of human activity is bound to result in a misleading account of the nature of business and economic activity more generally, and, if put into practice, is likely to result in social conflict and social and political degeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents an introduction to a series of articles which deal with the study of accounting regulation. The various articles include assessments of the role of the state in regulating accounting and investigations into the process of setting accounting standards, as well as papers that develop a theoretical perspective on the need for regulation and others that report on empirical analyses of corporate behavior in the regulated environment.

Business schools have the responsibility to inspire professional culture in future managers. This means that they have to provide them not only with the expertise, knowledge and skills required in their field of specialization, but also with a sense of responsibility toward others and society at large. This need has been increasingly evident during the period of the global financial crisis, and a number of initiatives have been reported by business schools worldwide to address the issue. In this paper we examine the issue of professionalism in business management from two perspectives: business practice, and relation to ancient philosophy. Drawing from the literature, we propose a framework defining professionalism as composed of three patterns: (a) possession of a systematic body of knowledge, (b) commitment to a good broader than self-interest, and (c) an overall ethical character of the activity and ethical conduct. We show how these patterns are reflected to the expectations that corporations have from business practitioners. We further demonstrate that substantial elements of business professionalism are strongly related to core values and principles introduced in the social and political thought of ancient philosophers, and thus suggest that ancient philosophy could be used as a means for inspiring professionalism in business managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors report on ongoing work in developing a usability/user-experience maturity model, in particular, the results of a workshop about this subject held at the Usability Professionals Association 2009 national conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore the process of appropriation attempting to broaden the set of topics considered significant on it. We present a model of appropriation derived from two studies conducted in the UK, Japan, South Korea and China. We describe our model based on a characterisation of elements supportive of appropriation in the context of use (discussed in terms of space/place, social practices and activity) and in the ICT itself (described in terms of meaning, relevance and triviality). We emphasise the pre-eminence of context in achieving the appropriation of ICT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the analysis, design and implementation of security facilities within the edutain@grid infrastructure, to support secure hosting of Real-Time On-line Interactive Applications (ROIA). The edutain@grid project aims to develop a novel, sophisticated and service-oriented Grid infrastructure which provides a generic, scalable, reliable and secure service infrastructure for ROIA. The class of applications that comprise ROIA have requirements that present obvious challenges to security infrastructure design and implementation. In particular, the requirement to maintain real-time interactivity, particularly within the virtual world subclass of ROIA, precludes a heavyweight solution for securing ROIA. The edutain@grid project is extending `business Grid΄ infrastructure that supports Service Level Agreements (SLA) for non-real-time data storage and processing. This infrastructure is based on GRIA and uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Web Services Security to secure web service interactions for the provision of data storage and processing. The edutain@grid project is also developing the Real-Time Framework (RTF), which provides communication and parallelisation functionality and API for application developers to create distributed ROIA that can be deployed to and hosted by instances of edutain@grid. The requirements, analysis, design and implementation of security facilities within RTF and the upper business layers of edutain@grid are presented below. We argue that the security facilities provide a suitable compromise between security and performance that will be attractive to the edutain@grid actors and stake holders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between Information Technology and Business is something that has been growing over the years, materialized through investment increasing. IT investments typically have a negative connotation, as such companies have been seeking alternative models like Outsourcing, Managed Services or Cloud Computing. The aim of this paper is to inform a framework that aims to reconcile the benefits of IT Management Benefits who can give a different view of IT investments. On the other hand the advantage of having an Enterprise Architecture is to provide a guideline to the different projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter considers the setting of the appropriate level of insurance in a broader context of business decisions, concerning also risk transfer through reinsurance, and the rate of return on capital required to ensure solvability. An approach based on the distribution of the single year loss and the basic problem of joint decisions on premiums and capital needed to ensure safety in terms of shareholder's choice of the level of expected rate of return and risk, are presented. This chapter also presents in more details the problem of decomposition of the whole-portfolio premium into individual risk premiums. The problem extended by allowing for reinsurance, where competitiveness is a result of simultaneous choice of the amount of capital and retention level is also discussed.

Based on an examination of best-practice organizations, five stages common to successful KM implementation are identified. Together, they form the APQC Road Map to Knowledge Management Results. A quiz is provided to help an organization assess its current stage of KM development. Each stage is described and illustrated with examples from best-practice organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, there is a growing recognition by researchers and practitioners about the importance of managing knowledge as a critical source for competitive advantage. Various assertions about competitiveness through knowledge management (KM) are consistent with results of empirical studies and lessons learned on the knowledge highways and byways. In spite of these macro-level contentions and success stories, there has been little investigation of a systematic means for studying connections between KM activity and competitiveness. This chapter advances a knowledge chain model that identifies and characterizes KM activities an organization can focus on to achieve competitiveness. The model is analogous to Porter's value chain and is grounded in a descriptive KM framework developed via a Delphi-study involving international KM experts. It is comprised of five primary activities that an organization's knowledge processors perform in manipulating knowledge resources, plus four secondary activities that support and guide their performance. Each activity is discussed in detail, including examples. Evidence is provided from the literature illustrating each activity's role in adding value to an organization to increase its competitiveness through improved productivity, agility, reputation, and innovation. In conclusion, we present some observations about avenues for future research to extend, test, and apply the model in business practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An expanded paradigm is needed to explain how competitive advantage is gained and held. Firms resorting to 'resource-based strategy' attempt to accumulate valuable technology assets and employ an aggressive intellectual property stance. However, winners in the global marketplace have been firms demonstrating timely responsiveness and rapid and flexible product innovation, along with the management capability to effectively coordinate and redeploy internal and external competences. This source of competitive advantage, 'dynamic capabilities', emphasizes two aspects. First, it refers to the shifting character of the environment; second, it emphasizes the key role of strategic management in appropriately adapting, integrating, and re-configuring internal and external organizational skills, resources, and functional competences toward a changing environment. Only recently have researchers begun to focus on the specifics of developing firm-specific capabilities and the manner in which competences are renewed to respond to shifts in the business environment. The dynamic capabilities approach provides a coherent framework to integrate existing conceptual and empirical knowledge, and facilitate prescription. This chapter argues that the competitive advantage of firms stems from dynamic capabilities rooted in high performance routines operating inside the firm, embedded in the firm's processes, and conditioned by its history. It offers dynamic capabilities as an emerging paradigm of the modem business firm that draws on multiple disciplines and advances, with the help of industry studies in the USA and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theses supported in this essay are that the world is to some extent constructed by each of us, that it can and ought to be constructed in a more benign way, that such construction will require more trust than most people are currently willing to grant, and that most of us will be better off if most of us can manage to be more trusting in spite of our doubts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter examines the characteristics of those who formally involve themselves in the standard setting process of the Accounting Standards Board in Great Britain by making submissions regarding its proposals for accounting standards. The chapter contributes to a view of the public consultation that shapes accounting standards.

This chapter examines the development of standard on related party transactions in Great Britain. Related party transactions occur as part of the normal activities a company conducts and refers to those transactions that occur between entitles where a relationship of control or significant influence exists.

This chapter provides an analysis of the context within which accounting standard setters appear to operate. For this purpose, regulatory agency theory and practice has been utilized. The justifications for classifying accounting standard setting bodies as regulatory agencies are twofold and based on both structure and function.

This chapter examines an approach to international accounting regulation. It provided an attempt to evaluate the performance of different possible rules when the imperfect nature of the information possessed by the reporting firm prevents the possibility of having perfect information transmission in equilibrium.