The dissertation examines a case of industrial espionage by one of the parties involved in a forthcoming international negotiation. We want to know what consequences a burglary has for the actual negotiation. The dissertation consist of five hypothesis, of which the three first were empirically tested. The discussion of thesis four and five is supported basically by research literature, but have also found indirect support in the empirical study. A game theoretical model of four information sets is used. Thesis 1: Pay-offs do not change significantly from one information set to the other. confirmed Thesis 2: Behavior do not change significantly from one information set to the other. confirmed Thesis 3: The perception of fairness do not change significantly from one information set to the other. confirmed Thesis 4: International negotiations is socially so complex that it only makes sense to study the phenomena from an interdisciplinary angle. confirmed Thesis 5: A descriptive evolutionary approach can be an alternative to neoclassical economic theory in understanding the study of international negotiations. confirmed The study also confirms that economic theory is correct in excluding the ethical dimension from their models, as these factors have little influence on the end price. Fairness plays only a minor role in international negotiations. ** / <p>Forskarens hemsida: http://www.bth.se/iem/kss.nsf Disputerat vid Universität Leipzig, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät, http://www.uni-leipzig.de/ Avhandlingen utgiven av BTH.</p>

If knowledge has been gathered by the practitioners’ community in the area of health data warehousing evaluation, it is mostly relying on anecdotal evidence instead of academic research. Isolated dimensions have received more attention and benefit from definitions and performance measures. However, very few cases can be found in the literature which describe how the assessment of the technology can be made, and these cases do not provide insight on how to systematize such assessment. The research in this dissertation is aimed at bridging this knowledge gap by developing an evaluation framework, and conducting an empirical study to further investigate the state of health data warehousing evaluation and the use of the technology to improve healthcare efficiency, as well as to compare these findings with the proposed framework. The empirical study involved an exploratory approach and used a qualitative method, i.e. audio-taped semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted in collaboration with the Healthcare Data Warehousing Association and involved 21 participants who were members of the Association working in a mid- to upper-level management capacity on the development and implementation of health data warehousing. All audio-taped interviews were transcribed and transcripts were coded using a qualitative analysis software package (NVivo, QSR International). Results were obtained in three areas. First, the study established that current health data warehousing systems are typically not formally evaluated. Systematic assessments relying on predetermined indicators and commonly accepted evaluation methods are very seldom performed and Critical Success Factors are not used as a reference to guide the system’s evaluation. This finding appears to explain why a literature review on the topic returns so few publications. Second, from patient throughput to productivity tracking and cost optimization, the study provided evidence of the contribution of data warehousing to the improvement of healthcare systems’ efficiency. Multiple examples were given by participants to illustrate the ways in which the technology contributed to streamlining the care process and increase healthcare efficiency in their respective organizations. Third, the study compared the proposed framework with current practices. Because formal evaluations were seldom performed, the empirical study offered limited feedback on the framework’s structure and rather informed its content and the assessment factors initially defined. / Graduate

Given its relative infancy, there is a dearth of research on a comprehensive view of business social media analytics (SMA). This dissertation first examines current literature related to SMA and develops an integrated, unifying definition of business SMA, providing a nuanced starting point for future business SMA research. This dissertation identifies several benefits of business SMA, and elaborates on some of them, while presenting recent empirical evidence in support of foregoing observations. The dissertation also describes several challenges facing business SMA today, along with supporting evidence from the literature, some of which also offer mitigating solutions in particular contexts. The second part of this dissertation studies one SMA implication focusing on identifying social influencer. Growing social media usage, accompanied by explosive growth in SMA, has resulted in increasing interest in finding automated ways of discovering influencers in online social interactions. Beginning 2008, many variants of multiple basic approaches have been proposed. Yet, there is no comprehensive study investigating the relative efficacy of these methods in specific settings. This dissertation investigates and reports on the relative performance of multiple methods on Twitter datasets containing between them tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of tweets. Accordingly, the second part of the dissertation helps further an understanding of business SMA and its many aspects, grounded in recent empirical work, and is a basis for further research and development. This dissertation provides a relatively comprehensive understanding of SMA and the implementation SMA in influencer identification.

Information visualization (InfoViz) is an essential component of decision support systems (DSS). Sparklines is a visualization tool. This study examines if Sparklines in digital financial reports aids novice investors and if so under what circumstances? Does it enhances decision-making performance and facilitates effective decision-making experience? Additionally, does it lowers decision making effort; reduces dilution effect from non-relevant data in financial reports and mitigates recency bias in using digital financial reports? The hypothesis is guided by the theory of Proximity Compatibility Principle and the Theory of Cognitive Fit. The research methodology for this study is a repeated measure, controlled laboratory based experiment. A pilot test was conducted in with a sample of forty undergraduate students from Gatton College of Business and Economics. The sample size for this study was 275 subjects. The result revealed that there was significant effect of sparklines on decision making performance and it provides an incremental value over a tabular format. Sparklines makes an important contribution towards mitigating recency bias. The results also suggested that the irrelevant information cue in the shareholder’s report were not able to weaken the impact of relevant information in the audited financial data reported using sparklines. Sparklines increased the attention of the readers to the tables. Subjects performed the integrative tasks and spatial better when using Sparklines. For tasks such as symbolic tasks, Sparkline does not necessarily improve decision performance. It was also found out that decision makers experience greater satisfaction when using sparklines. The overall cognitive load experienced by subjects was lower using sparklines when task demands are high (such as in a bankruptcy prediction task). Interestingly, the results indicate that there is no significant effect of sparkline on decision confidence and time. In conclusion, recall of facts and pattern among subjects was found superior with use of sparkline. This study provides an empirical and justifiable basis for policy makers to make explicit recommendations about use of novel graphics such as sparkline in digital financial reports. Limitations of this study are noted.

隨著大者恆大的營運觀念，很多企業邁向連鎖體系，藥妝業亦是。根據MBA智庫百科(2015)指出，現代企業比任何時候都更依賴供應鏈的有效管理方能成功。而藥妝連鎖業的營運品項比任何產業都廣，其供應商更是多類與複雜，如何運用資訊化之力，尤其是日臻成熟又能快速掌握營運與競爭資訊的商業智慧，以提升供應鏈運作效能，而利於決策分析與競爭力，已是藥妝連鎖業當務之急。 有鑑於此，本研究首先針對研究主體之Y公司藥妝連鎖業營運及其供應鏈現況等進行個案研究，次而針對連鎖經營業、供應鏈及其管理、商業智慧與相關議題進行文獻探討，再者採行IDEF0與IDEF3進行Y公司供應鏈流程分析與資訊系統探討，並規劃與設計其商業智慧運作之資料倉儲的觀念模型、邏輯模型、實體模型、系統雛型及應用模型，最後綜整上述研究所得而分析與歸納個案公司供應鏈發展商業智慧重要與注意事項，其結論與建議如下： 結論方面，藥妝連鎖業供應鏈商業智慧之發展，現況是配銷缺乏統籌、供應鏈資訊化低、決策資源不足。而所需是建立基本藥品供應模式與資料倉儲，以收集大量資料發展商業智慧。而個案公司欲發展供應鏈商業智慧，需要了解產業現況與所需、掌握供應鏈商業智慧運作流程與模式、改進資料倉儲模型設計、奠立資訊化基礎、促進運作人才培養。 對Y公司的建議，可從1商業智慧發展之系統化、合理化 、標準化 、配送中心作業整合化投入，2品類管理發展之整合個案公司資訊系統，供應商和第三方資料投入，3企業整體營運面-資源配置優質化、提高市場占有率、提高市場占有率、提高競爭力、降低經營費用、引導生產領域、保護消費者權益投入。而對未來研究的建議是研究資料的增加、研究方法的改變與研究方向的拓展等。 / It becomes an important trend that firms invest to develop chain-operation. The drug & cosmetic also invest to develop chain-operation. Based on MBA encyclopedia (2015), firms much more depend on effective SCM now. And commodities of the Drug & Cosmetic are much more & complicated than any industry, they much more invest computerization to develop business-intelligence (BI) and improve SCM performance. Therefore, the study based on Y firm to explore the operation & supply-chain of the drug & cosmetic, invested to the chain-operation, SCM & BI literature review, then used IDEF0 & IDEF3 to analyze the supply-chain process & information system of Y firm, and plans concept model, logical model, physical model, system prototype & application model of Yfirm. In the end, the study obtained the following conclusion & suggestion： Conclusions: To BI development of the drug & cosmetic supply-chain: 1.distribution was lacking of integration 2.computerization level was too low 3.decision recourses was enough. Y firm wanted to develop supply-chain BI, it had to master needs of the industry and process & model of supply-chain BI, improved design of data-mining, built computerization base, invested train & education of human-recourse. Suggestions: To Y firm: 1.to develop BI system 2.to develop category management 3.to improve operation performance. To future research: 1.to add the research data 2.to change the research method 3.to expand the research direstion.

Online customer reviews are web content voluntarily posted by the users of a product (e.g. camera) or service (e.g. hotel) to express their opinions about the product or service. Online reviews are important resources for businesses and consumers. This dissertation focuses on the important consumer concern of review utility, i.e., the helpfulness or usefulness of online reviews to inform consumer purchase decisions. Review utility concerns consumers since not all online reviews are useful or helpful. And, the quantity of the online reviews of a product/service tends to be very large. Manual assessment of review utility is not only time consuming but also information overloading. To address this issue, review helpfulness research (RHR) has become a very active research stream dedicated to study utility-sensitive review analysis (USRA) techniques for automating review utility assessment. Unfortunately, prior RHR solution is inadequate. RHR researchers call for more suitable USRA approaches. Our current research responds to this urgent call by addressing the research problem: What is an adequate USRA approach? We address this problem by offering novel Design Science (DS) artifacts for personalized USRA (PUSRA). Our proposed solution extends not only RHR research but also web personalization research (WPR), which studies web-based solutions for personalized web provision. We have evaluated the proposed solution by applying three evaluation methods: analytical, descriptive, and experimental. The evaluations corroborate the practical efficacy of our proposed solution. This research contributes what we believe (1) the first DS artifacts to the knowledge body of RHR and WPR, and (2) the first PUSRA contribution to USRA practice. Moreover, we consider our evaluations of the proposed solution the first comprehensive assessment of USRA solutions. In addition, this research contributes to the advancement of decision support research and practice. The proposed solution is a web-based decision support artifact with the capability to substantially improve accurate personalized webpage provision. Also, website designers can apply our research solution to transform their works fundamentally. Such transformation can add substantial value to businesses.

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The aim of this thesis is to analyze the global market with Business Intelligence, recognize the most significant companies running a business in this area and try to estimate the future trends and development of the market and then to analyze BI tools of two important companies on the market, Microsoft and Oracle. Analysis and comparison of these tools will be done according to specified metrics, which will focus on both technological and business features of the tools. The main contribution should be complex comparison of quality of tools from two big competitors on the market.

Corporate Performance Management (CPM) is currently one of the most developing branches of informatics due to the fact that it is a tool that allows managers to effectively manage their company and thereby increase its competitiveness in the market. This thesis focuses on the individual elements of the CPM, particularly on the managerial methods, metrics and business processes, which are generally characterized first and then applied to business organizations that operate in the area of retailing. There is also a fourth CPM element - CPM applications, but a detailed description is not covered by this work. The aim of this thesis is mainly to define the basic (core) processes in retailing and describe their characteristics using informatics approaches. Each process is then assigned to managerial methods that can be used in evaluating the performance of these processes and to specific examples of metrics for which appropriate dimensions are further defined. The main contribution of this work is the analysis of processes in the retailing industry, using methods and approaches used in informatics - characteristics such as purpose of the process, events that trigger the process, inputs and outputs of the process and metrics, which are assigned to the corresponding dimensions, are defined for each process.

The diploma thesis Business Intelligence in Supply Chain Management deals on the edge of IT and logistics with designing conceptual solution for BI in SCM. It covers specific needs of Supply-Chains, usage of BI in logistics, analyses the connection to the SCOR model developed by Supply-Chain Council, and designs & describes basic dimensions and relationships in the dimensional model. The primary goal is to create a general BI model solution that respects the specifics of various types of Supply-Chains in order to serve as a theoretical framework. The resulting model links to existing models designed for the Supply-Chain Management such as SCOR, Balanced Scorecard etc. To fulfil the primary goal first it is necessary to identify the specifics of various types of supply-chains, define BI use case and requirements in logistics; and by incorporating these parameters and SCOR model the BI model solution will emerge. The biggest contribution is the fulfilment of the primary goal - the creation of BI solution reference model for Supply-Chain with specific needs according to suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers. With the help of this model it should be easier to coordinate, clarify goals, activities and relationships of methods used in the pre-analytical stage and implementation of the BI technologies in the Supply-Chains.