Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 175-186).

The Internet has enabled the collection, aggregation and analysis of personal data on a massive scale. It has also enabled the sharing of collected data in various ways: wholesale outsourcing of data warehousing, partnering with advertisers for targeted advertising, data publishing for exploratory research, etc. This has led to complex privacy questions related to the leakage of sensitive user data and mass harvesting of information by unscrupulous parties. These questions have information-theoretic, sociological and legal aspects and are often poorly understood. There are two fundamental paradigms for how the data is released: in the interactive setting, the data collector holds the data while third parties interact with the data collector to compute some function on the database. In the non-interactive setting, the database is somehow \sanitized" and then published. In this thesis, we conduct a thorough theoretical and empirical investigation of privacy issues involved in non-interactive data release. Both settings have been well analyzed in the academic literature, but simplicity of the non-interactive paradigm has resulted in its being used almost exclusively in actual data releases. We analyze several common applications including electronic directories, collaborative ltering and recommender systems, and social networks. Our investigation has two main foci. First, we present frameworks for privacy and anonymity in these dierent settings within which one might dene exactly when a privacy breach has occurred. Second, we use these frameworks to experimentally analyze actual large datasets and quantify privacy issues. The picture that has emerged from this research is a bleak one for noninteractivity. While a surprising level of privacy control is possible in a limited number of applications, the general sense is that protecting privacy in the non-interactive setting is not as easy as intuitively assumed in the absence of rigorous privacy denitions. While some applications can be salvaged either by moving to an interactive setting or by other means, in others a rethinking of the tradeos between utility and privacy that are currently taken for granted appears to be necessary. / text

Why and how much should we invest in this information technology (IT)? The difficulty to formulate well-justified, convincing answers to those questions asked by corporate decision-makers has been identified as a major impediment to one rapid adoption of IT innovations by the business community. This study investigates the fundamental construct underlying these questions by performing a formal assessment of the business value of financial electronic data interchange (EDI) technology for corporate adopters in Canada. Three major Canadian financial institutions, seven cross-industry financial EDI user organizations (originators and receivers), several reference firms and more than fifty individuals actively participated in this study which follows a triangulation data collection approach. Within a cohesive financial EDI value measurement framework based on the theory of capital budgeting, a set of realistic and flexible models for measuring the business value of financial EDI was developed from a rigorous, item-by-item analysis of the data. Following a scenario-based approach, the data and models were used to estimate the magnitude of potential net benefits of financial EDI to corporate adopters. A formal evaluation of the expected and actual costs and benefits of financial EDI to participating user firms was conducted using the models. Several major conclusions were drawn from this in-depth study of financial EDI investments including, among others, the substantiated observation that from a payment process perspective, financial EDI is potentially more beneficial to corporate receivers than originators. Compared to non-financial EDI applications, potential economic gains from reduced payment cycles accrue primarily to the supplier community, rather than the initiators of financial EDI systems. Major contributions of this study include first, the development of a theory-based value measurement framework, and second, the presentation and application of a structured, iterative methodology for the evaluation of financial EDI investments. The proposed financial EDI cost/benefit models also offer a useful, practical set of tools to potential and actual user firms in evaluating the organizational value of future or current financial EDI programs. Finally, the study is also intended to assist Canadian financial institutions in their financial EDI diffusion effort.

Hitherto the diffusion of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been limited due to high implementation and operational costs. On the other hand, the Extensible Markup Language (XML) has quickly become a generally accepted standard for integrating processing of formatted data - the literature is virtually unanimous that an integration of EDI into XML would make EDI more accessible and implementation faster and cheaper. The process of standardization of various EDI standard formats over XML is still underway and the question arises whether an early adoption of the technology would pay off. This thesis investigates the issue using real-options methodology. Starting from the well-known Black-Scholes model the parameters of the model are operationalized to decide about the best adoption timing: (i) project costs of implementation, (ii) value of savings of the project (substitutional, complementary, and strategic benefits), and (iii) project risk, expressed as the variance used in Black-Scholes. The latter considers both the external autonomy of the player in implementing new technology and internal properties in technology adoption. Discussing the technological properties of XML/EDI above parameters are operationalized step by step and integrated into a decision model to help each individual firm put the XML/EDI investment decision into real numbers. In order to better visualize the parameters of this decision framework, four company profiles, based on the theory of technology diffusion, will be introduced and mapped against the parameters of the Black-Scholes formula. (author's abstract)

Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2001.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Susan Fiorito, Florida State University, College of Human Sciences, Dept. of Textiles and Consumer Sciences. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 28, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 69-71).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1993. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-96).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (University of Texas Digital Repository, viewed on Sept. 17, 2009). Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Why and how much should we invest in this information technology (IT)? The difficulty to formulate well-justified, convincing answers to those questions asked by corporate decision-makers has been identified as a major impediment to one rapid adoption of IT innovations by the business community. This study investigates the fundamental construct underlying these questions by performing a formal assessment of the business value of financial electronic data interchange (EDI) technology for corporate adopters in Canada. Three major Canadian financial institutions, seven cross-industry financial EDI user organizations (originators and receivers), several reference firms and more than fifty individuals actively participated in this study which follows a triangulation data collection approach. Within a cohesive financial EDI value measurement framework based on the theory of capital budgeting, a set of realistic and flexible models for measuring the business value of financial EDI was developed from a rigorous, item-by-item analysis of the data. Following a scenario-based approach, the data and models were used to estimate the magnitude of potential net benefits of financial EDI to corporate adopters. A formal evaluation of the expected and actual costs and benefits of financial EDI to participating user firms was conducted using the models. Several major conclusions were drawn from this in-depth study of financial EDI investments including, among others, the substantiated observation that from a payment process perspective, financial EDI is potentially more beneficial to corporate receivers than originators. Compared to non-financial EDI applications, potential economic gains from reduced payment cycles accrue primarily to the supplier community, rather than the initiators of financial EDI systems. Major contributions of this study include first, the development of a theory-based value measurement framework, and second, the presentation and application of a structured, iterative methodology for the evaluation of financial EDI investments. The proposed financial EDI cost/benefit models also offer a useful, practical set of tools to potential and actual user firms in evaluating the organizational value of future or current financial EDI programs. Finally, the study is also intended to assist Canadian financial institutions in their financial EDI diffusion effort. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate