Management Information Systems provides comprehensive and integrative coverage of essential new technologies, information system applications, and their impact on business models and managerial decision-making in an exciting and interactive manner. The twelfth edition focuses on the major changes that have been made in information technology over the past two years, and includes new opening, closing, and Interactive Session cases.

Enterprise operation efficiency is seriously constrained by the inability to provide the right information, in the right place, at the right time. In spite of significant advances in technology it is still difficult to access information used or produced by different applications due to the hardware and software incompatibilities of manufacturing and information processing equipment. But it is this information and operational knowledge which makes up most of the business value of the enterprise and which enables it to compete in the marketplace. Therefore, sufficient and timely information access is a prerequisite for its efficient use in the operation of enterprises. It is the aim of the ESPRIT project AMICE to make this knowledge base available enterprise-wide. During several ESPRIT contracts the project has developed and validated CIMOSA: Open System Architecture for CIM. The CIMOSA concepts provide operation structuring based on cooperating processes. Enterprise operations are represented in terms of functionality and dynamic behaviour (control flow). Information needed and produced, as well as resources and organisational aspects relevant in the course of the operation are modelled in the process model. However, the different aspects may be viewed separately for additional structuring and detailing during the enterprise engineering process.

Service chain management enables service organisations to improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs. In this book, Christos Voudouris and his BT colleagues together with experts from industry and academia present the latest innovations and technologies used to manage the operations of a service company. The viewpoints presented are based on the BT experience and on associated research and development. Service chain management is looked at both from the enterprise perspective and from the standpoints of the service professional and customer. The focus is on real-world challenges.

Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try and improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant - or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a colleague from student days - Jonah - to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done. Described by Fortune as a 'guru to industry' and by Businessweek as a 'genius', Eliyahu M. Goldratt was an internationally recognized leader in the development of new business management concepts and systems. This 20th anniversary edition includes a series of detailed case study interviews by David Whitford, Editor at Large, Fortune Small Business, which explore how organizations around the world have been transformed by Eli Goldratt's ideas. The story of Alex's fight to save his plant contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas which underline the Theory of Constraints (TOC) developed by Eli Goldratt. Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal is the gripping novel which is transforming management thinking throughout the Western world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry - even to your bosses - but not to your competitors!

First Published in 1997. The second in the readers' series, Resources for the Knowledge-Based Economy, Knowledge In Organisations gives an overview of how knowledge is valued and used in organisations. It gives readers excellent grounding in how best to understand the highest valued asset they have in their organisations.

Acknowledgements -- Overview -- Workers in southeast Asia are on the move -- Migration in ASEAN -- The determinants of migration in ASEAN and the importance of labor mobility costs -- The impacts of migration in ASEAN -- Trade integration and labor mobility in the ASEAN economic community -- Migration policy in the ASEAN region -- Reducing migration costs in ASEAN -- List of figures

The years since the global financial crisis have seen something of a renaissance in the manufacturing industry. The United States has launched its Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, and China owes much of its spectacular economic boom in the last decades to its being the 'world's factory'. Is there room for the EU in this landscape? This timely new book explores Europe’s role in this evolving environment. It argues that on the one hand, in terms of sheer numbers, the role of the manufacturing industry in the EU is on a par with other major global economies. However, the book also states that Europe falls short of its global competitors (the USA in particular) in terms of its involvement in the most innovative manufacturing sectors. The volume therefore argues that this creates the opportunity for a new European industrial policy. Exploring the development of current EU policy, the book puts forward suggestions as to how the EU can improve in terms of the competitiveness of its technology policy. Placing the EU’s position in the context of the industrial structures of the USA, Japan and the BRICs, the book blends theoretical models and practical examples in order to offer a the state of the art look at the current and future direction of Europe’s industrial policy. This book will be of relevance to all those with an interest in European economics, industrial economics, public policy, European politics and European studies.