[spa] La tesis de doctorado explora analíticamente el vínculo entre migración, desarrollo y remesas mediante el estudio etnográfico del programa de contratación en origen y codesarrollo del sindicato agrario Unió de Pagesos (Catalunya, Estado Español). Éste se analiza como un sistema de trabajo migratorio (Burawoy, 1976) y como una experiencia de institucionalización de la migración (Goss y Linquist, 1997) en forma de empresa migratoria, que se articula en un campo social transnacional donde se conectan distintos actores con intereses lucrativos y políticos que fomentan la migración, instituciones estatales, ONGD y grupos domésticos. Este programa de migración circular se erige como un instrumento de control y regulación de flujos, y alberga la misión de intervenir sobre poblaciones mediante el formato de estimular el retorno y la orientación en la inversión productiva y empresarial de la remesa, para generar desarrollo local y atacar la pobreza causante de las migraciones. Describir su discurso y su misión de codesarrollo, así como analizar sus prácticas locales en un país de reclutamiento como Colombia, permite entrever un juego de lógicas e intereses entre distintos actores sociales, que se ubican en una estructura asimétrica y jerárquica, fundamentada en la desigualdad en la movilización global de mano obra. Y en esta misma estructura, la implementación del codesarrollo se asimila con las estructuras y los proyectos de cooperación internacional, ONGD y asociaciones campesinas que actúan en el país latinoamericano y que perciben el programa en términos de oportunidad de financiamiento. La investigación muestra que existe un enfoque economicista e institucional que guía la experiencia, y revela como el reclutamiento de mano de obra en origen en Colombia y sus suministro hacia la agricultura catalana su fusiona con procesos informales de contratación y otros factores extraeconómicos, como el clientelismo, el patronazgo andino y el asociacionismo campesino, que devienen claves en el negocio del reclutamiento de mano de obra a nivel global, e implementación de codesarrollo a nivel local. En la tesis se analiza el programa de reclutamiento y codesarrollo como una empresa de la migración, y focaliza en dos estudios de caso en el suroccidente del país andino (Norte del Cauca y Nariño), donde se implementaron proyectos colectivos de codesarrollo entre los años 2001 y 2013. Además, se observa el problema desde las poblaciones en origen y desde la posición de las personas –gran parte de ellas mujeres-, grupos domésticos y agentes sociales radicados en origen. Las obligaciones morales, el retorno de favores, la reciprocidad y las economías del cuidado impregnan sus estrategias migratorias familiares y colectivas, y los usos y significados de mandar y recibir remesas. Mediante la antropología económica y la economía feminista se analiza el fomento de comportamientos centrados en el homo oeconomicus para empresarizar a las poblaciones migrantes y hacerlas agentes de codesarrollo en sus localidades de origen. Este planteamiento invisibiliza una parte oculta de los procesos migratorios y la redistribución de los beneficios de la migración: el rol clave de los agentes locales, sus estrategias migratorias comunitarias, y el vínculo entre remesas sociales, diferenciación social y poder local. También, el hecho de que la mayoría de hogares involucrados en la experiencia transnacional se rigen por lógicas de la reproducción ampliada de la vida (Coraggio, 2004). Mirar desde la posición más oculta de este proceso glocal, revela la importancia de las lógicas basadas en la sostenibilidad de la vida (Carrasco, 2001). El papel de las mujeres y los grupos de parientes conectan el trabajo doméstico y las economías del cuidado con el trabajo asalariado en los países de destino. En un contexto de políticas neoliberales y control represivo de los flujos migratorios, las emprendimientos que fomenta esta experiencia de migración y codesarrollo se sustenta sobra las esferas más ocultas, pero más dinámicas, que forman parte de los procesos migratorios globales. ; [eng] The doctoral thesis explores analytically the link between migration, development and remittances through the ethnographic study of the recruitment in origin program and co-development program of agrarian trade Unió de Pagesos (Catalunya, Spain). This is analyzed as a migratory labor system (Burawoy, 1976) and as an institutionalization of migration experience (Goss and Linquist, 1997) that takes form of a migration company. This is articulated in a transnational social field where different actors are connected with profit and political interests that stimulate the migration, state institutions, NGO and domestic groups. This program of circular migration is built as an instrument of control and regulation of flows. Beside harbors the mission to intervene about population using the format to simulate the return and guide to the productive and entrepreneur investment of remittances. The main objective that pursuit is to generate local development and attack the poverty that cause migrations. Describe their discourse and their co-development mission, as well as analyze their local practices in a recruitment country as Colombia, allows us to glimpse a game of logic and interests among different social actors, which are located in a hierarchical and asymmetric structure. An structure founded in inequality in the global mobilization of the labor force. In this same structure, co-development implementation is integrated with the structures and projects of international cooperation, NGOD and peasant associations which acts in Colombia and perceive the program in terms of opportunity for financing. Research shows that an economicist and institutional approach that guide the experience exist. This reveals how the recruitment of labor force in Colombia and its supply to catalan agroindustry are merged with hire informal processes and another extra economic factors, such as patronage, clientelism and peasant asociationism. All of these become key in the labor recruitment business in a global level. Also, in the implementation of the co-development in a local level. The thesis analyzes the program as a migration Company and focuses on two case studies in the southwest Andean country (Northern Cauca and Nariño), where various collective projects have been implemented between 2001 and 2013. In addition, the problem is observed from local population and from positions people –mainly women-, domestic groups and social agents based in origin. The moral obligations, the return of favors, reciprocity and care economies permeate their family and collective migratory strategies, and the uses and meanings of sending and receiving remittances. Using anthropology economic and feminist economy it analyzes the promotion of behaviors focused in homo oeconomicus in migrant populations (for example to create business), and converse them to co-development agents in theirs origin localities. This approach hides a part of migration processes and the redistribution of the benefits of migration: the key role of local actors, the community migration strategies, and the link between social remittances, social differentiation and local power. Also, the fact that in the majority of households involved in transnational experiences is governed by the logic of extended reproduction of life (Coraggio, 2004). Observer from the part more hidden in this glocal process reveals the importance of the logics based on the sustainability of the life (Carrasco, 2001). The role of the women and the kin groups connect domestic work and care economies with wage labor in the countries of destination. In a context of neoliberal politics and repressive controls of migratory flows, the endeavors fomented by this experience of migration and co-development are defended in areas more hidden, but more dynamic, that are part of the process of global migration.
XXXII, 612 p. ; 24 cm ; Libro Electrónico ; En este documento se plantea un tema de interes general mas como lo es especificamente el tema de la evolucion de la sociedad en materia de industria y crecimiento de las actividades humanas en el aspecto de desarrollo de la creatividad enfocada a los mercados ; edited by Mark Tovey ; foreword by Yochai Benkler (re-mixed by Hassan Masum) ; prefaces by Thomas Malone, Tom Atlee & Pierre Levy ; afterword by Paul Martin & Thomas Homer-Dixon. ; The era of collective intelligence has begun in earnest. While others have written about the wisdom of crowds, an army of Davids, and smart mobs, this collection of essays for the first time brings together fifty-five pioneers in the emerging discipline of collective intelligence. They provide a base of tools for connecting people, producing high-functioning teams, collaborating at multiple scales, and encouraging effective peer-production. Emerging models are explored for digital deliberative democracy, self-governance, legislative transparency, true-cost accounting, and the ethical use of open sources and methods. Collective Intelligence is the first of a series of six books, which will also include volumes on Peace Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, and Global Intelligence. ; Table of Contents Dedication i Publisher's Preface iii Foreword by Yochai Benkler Remix Hassan Masum xi The Wealth of Networks: Highlights remixed Editor's Preface xxi Table of Contents xxv A What is collective intelligence and what will we do 1 about it? (Thomas W. Malone, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence) B Co-Intelligence, collective intelligence, and conscious 5 evolution (Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence Institute) C A metalanguage for computer augmented collective 15 intelligence (Prof. Pierre Lévy, Canada Research Chair in Collective Intelligence, FRSC) I INDIVIDUALS & GROUPS I-01 Foresight I-01-01 Safety Glass (Karl Schroeder, science fiction author 23 and foresight consultant) I-01-02 2007 State of the Future (Jerome C. Glenn & 29 Theodore J. Gordon, United Nations Millennium Project) I-02 Dialogue & Deliberation I-02-01 Thinking together without ego: Collective intelligence 39 as an evolutionary catalyst (Craig Hamilton and Claire Zammit, Collective-Intelligence.US) I-02-02 The World Café: Awakening collective intelligence 47 and committed action (Juanita Brown, David Isaacs and the World Café Community) I-02-03 Collective intelligence and the emergence of 55 wholeness (Peggy Holman, Nexus for Change, The Change Handbook) I-02-04 Knowledge creation in collective intelligence (Bruce 65 LaDuke, Fortune 500, HyperAdvance.com) I-02-05 The Circle Organization: Structuring for collective 75 wisdom (Jim Rough, Dynamic Facilitation & The Center for Wise Democracy) I-03 Civic Intelligence I-03-01 Civic intelligence and the public sphere (Douglas 83 Schuler, Evergreen State College, Public Sphere Project) I-03-02 Civic intelligence and the security of the homeland 95 (John Kesler with Carole and David Schwinn, IngeniusOnline) I-03-03 Creating a Smart Nation (Robert Steele, OSS.Net) 107 I-03-04 University 2.0: Informing our collective intelligence 131 (Nancy Glock-Grueneich, HIGHEREdge.org) I-03-05 Producing communities of communications and 145 foreknowledge (Jason "JZ" Liszkiewicz, Reconfigure.org) I-03-06 Global Vitality Report 2025: Learning to transform I-04 Electronic Communities & Distributed Cognition I-04-01 Attentional capital and the ecology of online social 163 conflict and think together effectively (Peter+Trudy networks (Derek Lomas, Social Movement Lab, Johnson-Lenz, Johnson-Lenz.com ) UCSD) I-04-02 A slice of life in my virtual community (Howard 173 Rheingold, Whole Earth Review, Author & Educator) I-04-03 Shared imagination (Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart, 197 Bootstrap) I-05 Privacy & Openness I-05-01 We're all swimming in media: End-users must be able 201 to keep secrets (Mitch Ratcliffe, BuzzLogic & Tetriad) I-05-02 Working openly (Lion Kimbro, Programmer and 205 Activist) I-06 Integral Approaches & Global Contexts I-06-01 Meta-intelligence for analyses, decisions, policy, and 213 action: The Integral Process for working on complex issues (Sara Nora Ross, Ph.D. ARINA & Integral Review) I-06-02 Collective intelligence: From pyramidal to global 225 (Jean-Francois Noubel, The Transitioner) I-06-03 Cultivating collective intelligence: A core leadership 235 competence in a complex world (George Pór, Fellow at Universiteit van Amsterdam) II LARGE-SCALE COLLABORATION II-01 Altruism, Group IQ, and Adaptation II-01-01 Empowering individuals towards collective online 245 production (Keith Hopper, KeithHopper.com) II-01-02 Who's smarter: chimps, baboons or bacteria? The 251 power of Group IQ (Howard Bloom, author) II-01-03 A collectively generated model of the world (Marko 261 A. Rodriguez, Los Alamos National Laboratory) II-02 Crowd Wisdom and Cognitive Bias II-02-01 Science of CI: Resources for change (Norman L 265 Johnson, Chief Scientist at Referentia Systems, former LANL) II-02-02 Collectively intelligent systems (Jennifer H. Watkins, 275 Los Alamos National Laboratory) II-02-03 A contrarian view (Jaron Lanier, scholar-in-residence, 279 CET, UC Berkeley & Discover Magazine) II-03 Semantic Structures & The Semantic Web II-03-01 Information Economy Meta Language (Interview with 283 Professor Pierre Lévy, by George Pór) II-03-02 Harnessing the collective intelligence of the World- 293 Wide Web (Nova Spivack, RadarNetworks, Web 3.0) II-03-03 The emergence of a global brain (Francis Heylighen, 305 Free University of Brussels) II-04 Information Networks II-04-01 Networking and mobilizing collective intelligence (G. Parker Rossman, Future of Learning Pioneer) II-04-02 Toward high-performance organizations: A strategic 333 role for Groupware (Douglas C. Engelbart, Bootstrap) II-04-03 Search panacea or ploy: Can collective intelligence 375 improve findability? (Stephen E. Arnold, Arnold IT, Inc.) II-05 Global Games, Local Economies, & WISER II-05-01 World Brain as EarthGame (Robert Steele and many 389 others, Earth Intelligence Network) II-05-02 The Interra Project (Jon Ramer and many others) 399 II-05-03 From corporate responsibility to Backstory 409 Management (Alex Steffen, Executive Editor, Worldchanging.com) II-05-04 World Index of Environmental & Social 413 Responsibility (WISER) By the Natural Capital Institute II-06 Peer-Production & Open Source Hardware II-06-01 The Makers' Bill of Rights (Jalopy, Torrone, and Hill) 421 II-06-02 3D Printing and open source design (James Duncan, 423 VP of Technology at Marketingisland) II-06-03 REBEARTHTM: 425 II-07 Free Wireless, Open Spectrum, and Peer-to-Peer II-07-01 Montréal Community Wi-Fi (Île Sans Fil) (Interview 433 with Michael Lenczner by Mark Tovey) II-07-02 The power of the peer-to-peer future (Jock Gill, 441 Founder, Penfield Gill Inc.) Growing a world 6.6 billion people would want to live in (Marc Stamos, B-Comm, LL.B) II-07-03 Open spectrum (David Weinberger) II-08 Mass Collaboration & Large-Scale Argumentation II-08-01 Mass collaboration, open source, and social 455 entrepreneurship (Mark Tovey, Advanced Cognitive Engineering Lab, Institute of Cognitive Science, Carleton University) II-08-02 Interview with Thomas Homer-Dixon (Hassan 467 Masum, McLaughlin-Rotman Center for Global Health) II-08-03 Achieving collective intelligence via large-scale argumentation (Mark Klein, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence) II-08-04 Scaling up open problem solving (Hassan Masum & 485 Mark Tovey) D Afterword: The Internet and the revitalization of 495 democracy (The Rt. Honourable Paul Martin & Thomas Homer-Dixon) E Epilogue by Tom Atlee 513 F Three Lists 515 1. Strategic Reading Categories 2. Synopsis of the New Progressives 3. Fifty-Two Questions that Matter G Glossary 519 H Index 525
In: Decision analysis: a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, INFORMS, Band 9, Heft 4, S. 373-379
ISSN: 1545-8504
Ali E. Abbas (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He received an M.S. in electrical engineering (1998), an M.S. in engineering economic systems and operations research (2001), a Ph.D. in management science and engineering (2003), and a Ph.D. (minor) in electrical engineering, all from Stanford University. He worked as a lecturer in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and worked in Schlumberger Oilfield Services, where he held several international positions in wireline logging, operations management, and international training. He has also worked on several consulting projects for mergers and acquisitions in California, and cotaught several executive seminars on decision analysis at Strategic Decisions Group in Menlo Park, California. His research interests include utility theory, decision making with incomplete information and preferences, dynamic programming, and information theory. Dr. Abbas is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He is also an associate editor for the Decision Analysis and Operations Research journals of INFORMS. Email: aliabbas@illinois.edu . Kash Barker (" Decision Trees with Single and Multiple Interval-Valued Objectives ") is an assistant professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. He holds a Ph.D. in systems engineering from the University of Virginia, where he was a research assistant in the Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems, and B.S. and M.S. degrees in industrial engineering from the University of Oklahoma. His primary research interests lie in modeling interdependent economic systems and decision making for large-scale system sustainment, with research funded by the National Science Foundation, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Army Research Office. Email: kashbarker@ou.edu . J. Eric Bickel (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus " and " A Simulation-Based Approach to Decision Making with Partial Information ") is an assistant professor in the Graduate Program in Operations Research (Department of Mechanical Engineering) at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition, Professor Bickel is a fellow in both the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy (CIEEP) and the Center for Petroleum Asset Risk Management (CPARM). His research interests include the theory and practice of decision analysis and its application in the energy and climate-change arenas. His work has addressed the modeling of probabilistic dependence, value of information, scoring rules, calibration, risk preference, decision education, decision making in sports, and climate engineering as a response to climate change. Prior to returning to academia, Professor Bickel was a senior engagement manager for Strategic Decisions Group. He has consulted around the world in a range of industries, including oil and gas, electricity generation/transmission/delivery, energy trading and marketing, commodity and specialty chemicals, life sciences, financial services, and metals and mining. Professor Bickel is the vice president/president-elect of the Decision Analysis Society and an associate editor for Decision Analysis. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering–Economic Systems at Stanford University. Email: ebickel@mail.utexas.edu . Vicki M. Bier (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") is a full professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she is currently department chair and also directs the Center for Human Performance and Risk Analysis. She is also the past president of the Decision Analysis Society and is an associate editor for Decision Analysis. Her research interests include applications of operations research, risk analysis, and decision analysis to problems of homeland security and critical infrastructure protection. Email: bier@engr.wisc.edu . Samuel E. Bodily (" Multiplicative Utilities for Health and Consumption ") is the John Tyler Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia's Darden School. He has published textbooks and more than 40 articles in journals ranging from Harvard Business Review to Management Science. His publications relate to decision and risk analysis, multiattribute utility, forecasting, strategy modeling, revenue management, and eStrategy. Along with Casey Lichtendahl, he was runner-up for the 2012 Decision Analysis Publication Award. He has edited special issues of Interfaces on Decision and Risk Analysis, and Strategy Modeling and Analysis. Professor Bodily has published well over 120 cases, including a couple of the 10 best-selling cases at Darden. He received the Distinguished Casewriter Wachovia award from Darden in 2005 and three other best case or research Wachovia awards. Professor Bodily is faculty leader for the executive program Strategic Thinking and Action. He is the course-head of and teaches in a highly valued first-year M.B.A. course in decision analysis; has a successful second-year elective, Management Decision Models; and has taught eStrategy and Strategy. He is a past winner of the Decision Sciences International Instructional Award. He has served as chair of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. He has taught numerous executive education programs for Darden and private companies, has consulted widely for business and government entities, and has served as an expert witness. Professor Bodily was on the faculties of MIT Sloan School of Management and Boston University and has been a visiting professor at INSEAD Singapore, Stanford University, and the University of Washington. He has Ph.D. and S.M. degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.S. in physics from Brigham Young University. Email: bodilys@virginia.edu . David V. Budescu (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") is the Anne Anastasi Professor of Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology at Fordham University. He held positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Haifa, and visiting positions at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Gothenburg, the Kellogg School at Northwestern University, the Hebrew University, and the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion). His research is in the areas of human judgment, individual and group decision making under uncertainty and with incomplete and vague information, and statistics for the behavioral and social sciences. He is on the editorial boards of Applied Psychological Measurement, Decision Analysis (associate editor), Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition (2000–2003), Multivariate Behavioral Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (1992–2002), and Psychological Methods (1996–2000). He is past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (2000–2001), fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and an elected member of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychologists. Email: budescu@fordham.edu . John C. Butler (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") is a clinical associate professor of finance and the academic director of the Energy Management and Innovation Center in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, the outgoing secretary/treasurer of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society, and an associate editor for Decision Analysis. Professor Butler received his Ph.D. in management science and information systems from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998. His research interests involve the use of decision science models to support decision making, with a particular emphasis on decision and risk analysis models with multiple-performance criteria. Professor Butler has consulted with a number of organizations regarding the application of decision analysis tools to a variety of practical problems. Most of his consulting projects involve use of Visual Basic for Applications and Excel to implement complex decision science models in a user-friendly format. Email: john.butler2@mccombs.utexas.edu . Enrico Diecidue (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") is an associate professor of Decision Sciences at INSEAD (France) and holds a Ph.D. from the CentER (Center for Economic Research), Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Since 2001 he has been a resident faculty member at INSEAD, except for 2008–2009 when he was a visiting professor at Wharton and 2010–2011 when he was on sabbatical at the Erasmus School of Economics (the Netherlands). His main research interests are in individual decision making under uncertainty, health decisions, and experimental economics. He is interested in the role of regret, aspiration levels, and time in individual decisions. His current research is also addressing the role of groups in complex and ambiguous decisions. Professor Diecidue's research has appeared in leading journals in economics and management. He is on the editorial board of Journal of Risk and Uncertainty and is an associate editor for Decision Analysis. He teaches M.B.A., executive M.B.A., and executive participants on topics such as uncertainty, data and judgment, decision making under uncertainty, risk management, and management decision making. He has won teaching awards at INSEAD and Wharton. Email: enrico.diecidue@insead.edu . Robin L. Dillon-Merrill (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") is an associate professor in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Professor Dillon-Merrill seeks to understand and explain how and why people make the decisions that they do under conditions of uncertainty and risk. This research specifically examines critical decisions that people have made following near-miss events in situations with severe outcomes (i.e., hurricane evacuation, terrorism, NASA mission management, etc.). She has received research funding from the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security through the University of Southern California's National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis for Terrorism Events. She has served as a risk analysis and project management expert on several National Academies Committees, including the review of the New Orleans regional hurricane protection projects and the application of risk-analysis techniques to securing the Department of Energy's special nuclear materials. She is an associate editor for Decision Analysis. Email: rld9@georgetown.edu . Raimo P. Hämäläinen (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") is a professor of operations research and director of the Systems Analysis Laboratory at Aalto University, Finland. He received his M.Sc. and Dr. Tech. degrees in systems theory and applied mathematics from the Helsinki University of Technology. His research interests include decision analysis, risk and game theory, and experimental economics, as well as dynamic optimization with aerospace applications. He is widely known for his work in environmental decision making and energy policy. He is the designer of widely used decision analysis software, including the first Web-based value tree software, Web-HIPRE; Smart-Swaps; and the Joint Gains negotiation support system. He has recently introduced the concept of Systems Intelligence, which opens a new perspective to organizational learning and personal growth. He is on the editorial board of a number of journals, including Decision Analysis (associate editor), European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Group Decision and Negotiation, and EURO Journal on Decision Processes. Dr. Hämäläinen has received the Edgeworth-Pareto Award of the International Society for Multiple Criteria Decision Making. He is also the honorary president of the Finnish Operations Research Society. Email: raimo.hamalainen@aalto.fi . Ralph L. Keeney (" Value-Focused Brainstorming ") is a research professor emeritus at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. His education includes a B.S. in engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in operations research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests are in the areas of decision making and risk analysis. He has applied such work to important personal decisions and as a consultant for private and public organizations addressing corporate management problems, environmental and risk studies, and decisions involving life-threatening risks. Prior to joining the Duke faculty, Professor Keeney was a faculty member in Management and Engineering at MIT and at the University of Southern California, a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and the founder of the decision and risk analysis group of a large geotechnical and environmental consulting firm. Professor Keeney is the author of many books and articles, including Value-Focused Thinking, Decisions with Multiple Objectives, coauthored with Howard Raiffa, and Smart Choices, coauthored with John S. Hammond and Howard Raiffa, which has been translated into 15 languages. Dr. Keeney was awarded the Ramsey Medal for distinguished contributions in decision analysis by the Decision Analysis Society and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. Email: keeney@duke.edu . L. Robin Keller (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") is a professor of operations and decision technologies in the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. and M.B.A. in management science and her B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has served as a program director for the Decision, Risk, and Management Science Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research is on decision analysis and risk analysis for business and policy decisions and has been funded by NSF and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her research interests cover multiple attribute decision making, riskiness, fairness, probability judgments, ambiguity of probabilities or outcomes, risk analysis (for terrorism, environmental, health, and safety risks), time preferences, problem structuring, cross-cultural decisions, and medical decision making. She is the outgoing Editor-in-Chief of Decision Analysis, published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). She is a Fellow of INFORMS and has held numerous roles in INFORMS, including board member and chair of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. She is a recipient of the George F. Kimball Medal from INFORMS. She has served as the decision analyst on three National Academy of Sciences committees. She has been appointed to the editorial board of the new EURO Journal on Decision Processes. Email: lrkeller@uci.edu . Anton Kühberger (" Explaining Risk Attitude in Framing Tasks by Regulatory Focus: A Verbal Protocol Analysis and a Simulation Using Fuzzy Logic ") is a professor of psychology at the University of Salzburg, Department of Cognition and Development, and a member of the Center of Neurocognitive Research at the University of Salzburg. His research interests include the following areas: judgment and decision making, in particular framing, and the role of risk, ambiguity, and uncertainty in decision making; thinking and reasoning, in particular counterfactual thinking and the notion of rationality; and social cognition, in particular the foundation of the understanding of oneself and others either by a theory of mind or by simulation. In addition, he is interested in the development of scientific methods such as verbal protocol analysis and in understanding the role statistics for the accumulation of knowledge. He is a member of the editorial board of several scholarly journals and currently is vice-dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Salzburg. Email: anton.kuehberger@sbg.ac.at . Kenneth C. Lichtendahl Jr. (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus " and " Multiplicative Utilities for Health and Consumption ") is an assistant professor of business administration at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. He is an associate editor for Decision Analysis. He received his Ph.D. in decision sciences from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. His research focuses on decision analysis, Bayesian statistics, game theory, and dynamic programming. Email: lichtendahlc@darden.virginia.edu . Jason R. W. Merrick (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") is a professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has a D.Sc. in operations research from George Washington University. He teaches courses in decision analysis, risk analysis, and simulation. His research is primarily in the area of decision analysis and Bayesian statistics. He has worked on projects ranging from assessing maritime oil transportation and ferry system safety, the environmental health of watersheds, and optimal replacement policies for rail tracks and machine tools. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the American Bureau of Shipping, British Petroleum, and Booz Allen Hamilton, among others. He has also performed training for Infineon Technologies, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and Capital One Services. He is an associate editor for Decision Analysis and the EURO Journal on Decision Processes. Email: jrmerric@vcu.edu . Luis Vicente Montiel (" A Simulation-Based Approach to Decision Making with Partial Information ") is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. His main research interest is mathematical modeling for optimization under uncertainty, with a special interest in decision analysis and simulation learning for optimization. His current research is dedicated to providing a theoretical and practical framework for approximating joint distributions under partial information. Luis has a Ph.D. in operations research from the University of Texas, an M.S. in financial engineering from Columbia University, and an M.S. in management science and engineering from Stanford University. Email: lvmontiel@utexas.edu . Jay R. Simon (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") is an assistant professor in the Defense Resources Management Institute of the Naval Postgraduate School. He holds a Ph.D. in operations and decision technologies from the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, an M.S. in management science and engineering, and a B.S. in mathematical and computational science from Stanford University. His primary research interest is multiattribute preference modeling, particularly involving outcomes that occur over time, space, or groups of people. His current and recent work includes a prostate cancer decision model, preference models for health decisions, preferences over geographical data, altruistic utility modeling, and multiattribute procurement. He is an associate editor for Decision Analysis and is the webmaster and social media officer for the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS. Email: jrsimon@nps.edu . Christian Wiener (" Explaining Risk Attitude in Framing Tasks by Regulatory Focus: A Verbal Protocol Analysis and a Simulation Using Fuzzy Logic ") received his doctorate from the University of Salzburg, Austria. His first research area was the application of the EEG in connection with dyslexia. Later he moved to the area of social cognition, where his research was focused on framing and especially the simulation of decision-making behavior using a fuzzy-logic expert system. Since the completion of his dissertation, he has been working as a clinical psychologist with developmentally delayed children. Email: christian.wiener@gmx.at . Kaycee J. Wilson (" Decision Trees with Single and Multiple Interval-Valued Objectives ") completed M.S. and B.S. degrees in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Oklahoma in 2012 and 2010, respectively. Her primary interests lie in healthcare operations and reliability-based decision making, and she holds a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Email: kaycee.j.wilson-1@ou.edu . George Wu (" From the Editors: Brainstorming, Multiplicative Utilities, Partial Information on Probabilities or Outcomes, and Regulatory Focus ") has been on the faculty of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business since September 1997. His degrees include an A.B. (applied mathematics, 1985), an S.M. (applied mathematics, 1987), and a Ph.D. (decision sciences, 1991), all from Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Chicago, Professor Wu was on the faculty at Harvard Business School. Professor Wu worked as a decision analyst at Procter & Gamble prior to starting graduate school. His research interests include descriptive and prescriptive aspects of decision making, in particular decision making involving risk; cognitive biases in bargaining and negotiation; and managerial and organizational decision making. Professor Wu is a coordinating editor for Theory and Decision, an advisory editor for Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, on the editorial boards of Decision Analysis (associate editor) and the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, and a former department editor of Management Science. Email: wu@chicagobooth.edu .
Eine dauerhafte Verfügbarkeit ist nicht garantiert und liegt vollumfänglich in den Händen der Herausgeber:innen. Bitte erstellen Sie sich selbständig eine Kopie falls Sie diese Quelle zitieren möchten.
Mexico is privileged by geography. It is a country with a dual North American and Latin American identity that can serve as a bridge between the two regions. Mexico stands to gain from the current global geopolitical context that involves economic competition between the US and China, armed conflict in the Middle East and in Ukraine, and a desire for many companies to be close to the largest and most dynamic economy in the world, the United States. What Mexico does not have is a clearly articulated strategy to take advantage of the nearshoring opportunity, which, by definition, will not last forever. Given its geographical location and its vertical integration with the US and Canadian economies, enshrined under the USMCA, Mexico is by far the most obvious place to relocate manufacturing or service operations from China, but it is not the only option either. Various states in the US, and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and South East Asia will also be making their pitches to investors. Given the commercial and security tensions that exist with China, some authorities in the US realize that they need to up their game to consolidate relationships with other Western Hemisphere countries, which is why a group of both Republican and Democratic senators have put together the Americas Act. This legislation, which was introduced in early March, would establish programs to promote greater trade, investment, and people-to-people ties throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, potentially expanding the USMCA. "At its core, the Americas Act is a multi-billion-dollar job creation tool for the U.S. and its allies in Latin America and the Caribbean," said Representative Adriano Espaillat (D-NY). "With its reshoring and nearshoring loans, tax benefits, and other targeted grant assistance for workers at home and in our Western Hemisphere partner countries, the Americas Act will bring jobs and investment back to our Hemisphere and stem the root causes of migration by putting more money into the pockets of working families."While the idea of expanding the USMCA beyond North America might be an attractive idea for boosting regional competitiveness from a US perspective, it would erode the privileged trade advantages that Mexico currently enjoys in its relationship with the US and Canada, something the next presidential administration in Mexico should consider as plans are developed to push forward to proactively attract nearshoring foreign direct investment (FDI). As it stands, Mexico's FDI numbers sound encouraging. But of the $36 billion dollars registered in 2023, only $5bn were new investments [1], which means nearshoring may be happening, but the tide is bringing in soft waves, not the desired tsunami. Creating the optimal ecosystemPresident Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued an executive order on October 11th, 2023 that provides for fiscal incentives for particular industries, including the agricultural sector, auto parts manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and the film industry, among others, as well as incentives for worker training. [2] This decision gained little attention, and while it is better than nothing, it is too little too late. Given Mexico's geographical comparative advantages, fiscal incentives are not the core of what companies want when they analyze whether to locate their operations in the country. Rather, investors need a business and public policy ecosystem that allows them to optimize opportunities and minimize risks over long periods of time, something that Mexico's next government can do a lot to improve. Creating a winning nearshoring strategy for Mexico implies a complex series of considerations and a reinvigorated investment promotion strategy globally, something that fell apart with the elimination of ProMexico —a federal agency that had been charged with promoting foreign trade and investment— at the beginning of the AMLO administration. While the former ProMéxico's operations surely could have been optimized, eliminating the organization completely and leaving promotion to the already overly taxed embassies was a mistake. As a result, Mexico has lost precious time and valuable relationships, and the country now needs to interrupt its leisurely walk and start sprinting. Below are reflections on the core issues that should be addressed to create optimal conditions for attracting and retaining foreign investment. Embrace the energy transitionIn order to be able to receive significant new amounts of investment, Mexico will need to produce both larger quantities of energy and ensure that it comes from cleaner sources. Global companies that consider Mexico as a place to invest long term need access to low-emission hydrocarbons, as well as renewable energy, and Mexico is lacking in both. Given Mexico's complex history that views oil as a fundamental part of the country's sovereignty, embracing the energy transition from a political perspective has posed challenges. AMLO did all he could to roll back the opening up of the energy sector to private sector participation that began in 2014, and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds to prop up the ailing national oil monopoly, Pemex. He also strengthened the monopoly of the national electricity company, CFE, making it harder for companies to generate their own electricity resources or explore renewable options. Suffice it to say that instead of developing Mexico's comparative advantages in wind, solar, and geothermal renewable energy, in recent years Mexico has invested in the energy resources of the 20th Century, not the 21st. While highly frustrating from both a pragmatic energy production and climate change abatement perspective, it is not too late to make adjustments that can boost supply and offer lower emission hydrocarbons and renewable energy to the Mexican population. A good place to start to increase energy efficiency and security, would be to capture the methane emissions (natural gas) stemming from Pemex's oil production facilities. Based on their own scientific studies, the Environmental Defence Fund estimates that by capturing the emissions from Nuevo Pemex alone, Mexico could fill 50% of the country's residential demand for natural gas. At the moment, instead of capturing these emissions, Pemex burns the methane; the state-owned company's laser-focused aim is to produce oil. Foolhardy. Consistency in regulation and the rules of the gameI use the turn of phrase "consistency in regulation and the rules of the game" so as to avoid the also much-needed but more theoretical term, "rule of law." Businesses need to know that when they make a decision that will affect the long-term sustainability and profitability of their organizations, they are making a co-investment with the country where they have decided to do so. In fact, this is perfectly in line with the idea of attracting investment that will add to the well-being (bienestar) of the Mexican communities where these investments will be made. The investment needs to be good for both sides with a long-term view of success. As a result of the setbacks in the opening up of the energy sector and the suboptimal situations in which companies like Constellation Brands found themselves in recent years, yellow flags have been raised, making some in the private sector weary. Companies will be waiting to see how the next government views its own role in establishing a trustworthy business environment. Science and innovationGlobally we need to embrace science as a fact-based tool for providing the solutions that will allow our species to continue surviving on this planet. And Mexico is no exception. Taking a science-based approach is critical for issues like climate change, which is intimately tied to the energy sector mentioned above, and is also linked to urban planning, infrastructure investment, and human health. It is through science and innovation that we will find the solutions that can provide well-being for the communities that make up our nations and regions. In Mexico, the regulatory framework approach to issues like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity, tends to be short-sighted and focused on providing the government with the tools of control, which in this day and age is an exercise in futility. New trends in technology do need to be regulated to prevent threats to national security and critical infrastructure, ensure respect for human rights and to maintain market conditions that are competitive. Doing so requires ensuring the active involvement of the private sector, which understands these tools and their implications best. If the goal is to encourage more investors to see Mexico as a viable nearshoring hub, a policy of support for science and innovation is critical. Increase public investment In general the Mexican state needs to invest more in public goods and services across the board in areas like health, education and infrastructure. Mexico is the OECD country that invests the least, with a rate of public sector investment of 1.3% in 2020, 0.7% below the 2007 rate. Public sector investments lag because Mexico's public revenue generation is the least effective in the OECD and one of the lowest in the region. Mexico's tax-to-GDP ratio in 2021 stood at 16.7%, below the Latin America and Caribbean average of 22% and far below the OECD average of 34%. [3] A serious look at public finances is required to make the investments needed to decrease poverty and increase equality. Spurring investment in public goods and services will be a challenge for the next federal government given that Mexico faces a sizable budgetary deficit, which is forecasted to reach 5.9% of GDP in 2024 —a historic high according to the most recent official figures and an increase of 1.6% percentage points relative to 2023. [4]Human capital While the same could be said for many countries - the US included - Mexico's public education system is deficient, a fact that creates great social inequities as well as challenges for companies looking for talent. The most recent results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed that the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students in mathematics, reading and science has declined, with Mexico ranked 51st out of 81 countries analyzed.[5] Analysts tend to focus on the number of engineers in Mexico given its manufacturing base, and while their talents are certainly needed, there are other soft skills —effective communication, as well as analytical and creative thinking— that need to be emphasized more in Mexico's educational system if we intend to successfully integrate our economy into global supply chains and take advantage of emerging technologies. It must be okay to think innovatively and question the status quo, something that is still a rarity in the work culture of Mexico. Further, Mexico needs to consider female gender empowerment a cornerstone of its economic policy; a country cannot excel by leaving 51% of the population to languish in the informal sector. Mexico has one of the lowest workforce participation rates in Latin America (below Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica) because women shoulder the burden of care from birth to death.[6] This has to change. On a positive note, the feminist movement is stronger and better organized than ever in Mexico and is advocating for government programs that will provide assistance with the burdens related to family care. Oxfam has done particularly valuable work in this regard.[7] Invest in Infrastructure via PPPsAccording to some estimates, Mexico needs to invest around 5% of GDP[8] a year in infrastructure to meet the needs required for optimal competitiveness, a very tall order given that Mexico currently invests only 1.5% of GDP. Given limited public resources, embracing Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) provides an excellent option. PPPs help enable financing under long-term risk-sharing arrangements and are something that Mexico should utilize in order to attract nearshoring dollars that can establish valuable infrastructure assets for years to come. Foreign policy as a domestic policy toolThe administration of AMLO has been fond of saying that the best foreign policy is a domestic one, without explaining very clearly how that might work. What is clear, however, is that a wise foreign policy can significantly add to domestic policy goals, such as job creation. Mexico's incoming administration would do well to use Mexico's size and relevance to at the very least punch at its weight, something it has stopped doing globally over the last five years. Mexico needs to develop a strategy with respect to China and not just let things happen without intention. And that is not to say that Mexico has to adopt the same policies of the US, on the contrary. It may be in the best interests of Mexico to adopt a conscious strategy of "non-alignment," but at the moment we have a non-strategy, which makes us vulnerable to the long-term strategies of other countries that, without a doubt, are doing their own planning. Teamwork is goodAttracting nearshoring dollars should be viewed as a team effort in Mexico, with the public and private sectors communicating and strategizing together. The goal is to work as a team to encourage investment that will bring jobs, economic growth, new technologies and improved well-being. Like many societies globally, Mexico has been divided against itself in recent years. A team that has no clear plan and that mistrusts its own players, rarely wins. Loving one's country is about caring about the people who live in it. When that kind of solidarity is emphasized, it shows and leads to victories. The North American PowerhouseMexico, Canada and the US already have economies that are vertically integrated in many sectors, from the automotive industry to the agricultural sector. Given the complexities of current geopolitics, renewing the commitment to work together as a region behooves all three countries. The USMCA will be reviewed in 2026 and instead of seeing this as a moment to challenge the agreement's value, it should be viewed as an opportunity to strengthen the agreement for mutual benefit. The US economy has proved incredibly resilient in the wake of both the pandemic and global economic turbulence, something that is a big advantage for its neighbors to the north and the south. Further, the US has achieved energy independence over the last decade, and together with Canada and Mexico North America can build the next generation of energy solutions based on a transition toward multiple renewable energy solutions. This will indeed make North America the ideal place for investment for decades to come and a true global energy powerhouse. Opportunities do not last forever Mexico would do well to understand that opportunities do not last forever. As a nation, we need to hit the ground running in 2025, work together, and create a prosperous future that is in the interests of all citizens within and without the national borders. Between 30 and 40 million Mexicans live beyond the nation's borders and nearshoring opportunities will also provide them with the possibility of joining a team focused on achieving sustainable prosperity. Regional footnote: An exciting time to celebrate North America will take place the same year as the review of the USMCA, the World Cup 2026. The opening game will take place in the Azteca Stadium, a perfect moment to display the size, importance, and cultural significance of the Mexican nation, together with our North American counterparts. My hope is that via this celebratory event, more North Americans of the US, Canada, and Mexico will embrace a regional identity, making future cooperation more ambitious and politically viable. [1] Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad (www.imco.org.mx ). [2] Diario de la Federación, 11 de octubre de 2023: DECRETO por el que se otorgan estímulos fiscales a sectores clave de la industria exportadora consistentes en la deducción inmediata de la inversión en bienes nuevos de activo fijo y la deducción adicional de gastos de capacitación. [3] https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-mexico.pdf [4] Pre-criterios Generales de Política Económica 2025", Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, https://www.finanzaspublicas.hacienda.gob.mx/work/models/Finanzas_Publicas/docs/paquete_economico/precgpe/precgpe_2025.PDF [5] https://www.oecd.org/publication/pisa-2022-results/country-notes/mexico-519eaf88/ [6] The women's labor force participation rate in Mexico continues to be one of the most lagging in Latin America, at around 49%, well below the OECD average of 65% and 58% for the region.[7] https://oxfammexico.org/trabajo-de-cuidados-y-desigualdad/ [8]https://www.cnec.org.mx/blogs/post/declaración-de-méxico-sobre-la-importancia-de-la-infraestructura-y-su-planeación-a-largo-plazo-para
Eine dauerhafte Verfügbarkeit ist nicht garantiert und liegt vollumfänglich in den Händen der Herausgeber:innen. Bitte erstellen Sie sich selbständig eine Kopie falls Sie diese Quelle zitieren möchten.
Mexico is privileged by geography. It is a country with a dual North American and Latin American identity that can serve as a bridge between the two regions. Mexico stands to gain from the current global geopolitical context that involves economic competition between the US and China, armed conflict in the Middle East and in Ukraine, and a desire for many companies to be close to the largest and most dynamic economy in the world, the United States. What Mexico does not have is a clearly articulated strategy to take advantage of the nearshoring opportunity, which, by definition, will not last forever. Given its geographical location and its vertical integration with the US and Canadian economies, enshrined under the USMCA, Mexico is by far the most obvious place to relocate manufacturing or service operations from China, but it is not the only option either. Various states in the US, and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and South East Asia will also be making their pitches to investors. Given the commercial and security tensions that exist with China, some authorities in the US realize that they need to up their game to consolidate relationships with other Western Hemisphere countries, which is why a group of both Republican and Democratic senators have put together the Americas Act. This legislation, which was introduced in early March, would establish programs to promote greater trade, investment, and people-to-people ties throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, potentially expanding the USMCA. "At its core, the Americas Act is a multi-billion-dollar job creation tool for the U.S. and its allies in Latin America and the Caribbean," said Representative Adriano Espaillat (D-NY). "With its reshoring and nearshoring loans, tax benefits, and other targeted grant assistance for workers at home and in our Western Hemisphere partner countries, the Americas Act will bring jobs and investment back to our Hemisphere and stem the root causes of migration by putting more money into the pockets of working families."While the idea of expanding the USMCA beyond North America might be an attractive idea for boosting regional competitiveness from a US perspective, it would erode the privileged trade advantages that Mexico currently enjoys in its relationship with the US and Canada, something the next presidential administration in Mexico should consider as plans are developed to push forward to proactively attract nearshoring foreign direct investment (FDI). As it stands, Mexico's FDI numbers sound encouraging. But of the $36 billion dollars registered in 2023, only $5bn were new investments [1], which means nearshoring may be happening, but the tide is bringing in soft waves, not the desired tsunami. Creating the optimal ecosystemPresident Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued an executive order on October 11th, 2023 that provides for fiscal incentives for particular industries, including the agricultural sector, auto parts manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and the film industry, among others, as well as incentives for worker training. [2] This decision gained little attention, and while it is better than nothing, it is too little too late. Given Mexico's geographical comparative advantages, fiscal incentives are not the core of what companies want when they analyze whether to locate their operations in the country. Rather, investors need a business and public policy ecosystem that allows them to optimize opportunities and minimize risks over long periods of time, something that Mexico's next government can do a lot to improve. Creating a winning nearshoring strategy for Mexico implies a complex series of considerations and a reinvigorated investment promotion strategy globally, something that fell apart with the elimination of ProMexico —a federal agency that had been charged with promoting foreign trade and investment— at the beginning of the AMLO administration. While the former ProMéxico's operations surely could have been optimized, eliminating the organization completely and leaving promotion to the already overly taxed embassies was a mistake. As a result, Mexico has lost precious time and valuable relationships, and the country now needs to interrupt its leisurely walk and start sprinting. Below are reflections on the core issues that should be addressed to create optimal conditions for attracting and retaining foreign investment. Embrace the energy transitionIn order to be able to receive significant new amounts of investment, Mexico will need to produce both larger quantities of energy and ensure that it comes from cleaner sources. Global companies that consider Mexico as a place to invest long term need access to low-emission hydrocarbons, as well as renewable energy, and Mexico is lacking in both. Given Mexico's complex history that views oil as a fundamental part of the country's sovereignty, embracing the energy transition from a political perspective has posed challenges. AMLO did all he could to roll back the opening up of the energy sector to private sector participation that began in 2014, and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds to prop up the ailing national oil monopoly, Pemex. He also strengthened the monopoly of the national electricity company, CFE, making it harder for companies to generate their own electricity resources or explore renewable options. Suffice it to say that instead of developing Mexico's comparative advantages in wind, solar, and geothermal renewable energy, in recent years Mexico has invested in the energy resources of the 20th Century, not the 21st. While highly frustrating from both a pragmatic energy production and climate change abatement perspective, it is not too late to make adjustments that can boost supply and offer lower emission hydrocarbons and renewable energy to the Mexican population. A good place to start to increase energy efficiency and security, would be to capture the methane emissions (natural gas) stemming from Pemex's oil production facilities. Based on their own scientific studies, the Environmental Defence Fund estimates that by capturing the emissions from Nuevo Pemex alone, Mexico could fill 50% of the country's residential demand for natural gas. At the moment, instead of capturing these emissions, Pemex burns the methane; the state-owned company's laser-focused aim is to produce oil. Foolhardy. Consistency in regulation and the rules of the gameI use the turn of phrase "consistency in regulation and the rules of the game" so as to avoid the also much-needed but more theoretical term, "rule of law." Businesses need to know that when they make a decision that will affect the long-term sustainability and profitability of their organizations, they are making a co-investment with the country where they have decided to do so. In fact, this is perfectly in line with the idea of attracting investment that will add to the well-being (bienestar) of the Mexican communities where these investments will be made. The investment needs to be good for both sides with a long-term view of success. As a result of the setbacks in the opening up of the energy sector and the suboptimal situations in which companies like Constellation Brands found themselves in recent years, yellow flags have been raised, making some in the private sector weary. Companies will be waiting to see how the next government views its own role in establishing a trustworthy business environment. Science and innovationGlobally we need to embrace science as a fact-based tool for providing the solutions that will allow our species to continue surviving on this planet. And Mexico is no exception. Taking a science-based approach is critical for issues like climate change, which is intimately tied to the energy sector mentioned above, and is also linked to urban planning, infrastructure investment, and human health. It is through science and innovation that we will find the solutions that can provide well-being for the communities that make up our nations and regions. In Mexico, the regulatory framework approach to issues like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity, tends to be short-sighted and focused on providing the government with the tools of control, which in this day and age is an exercise in futility. New trends in technology do need to be regulated to prevent threats to national security and critical infrastructure, ensure respect for human rights and to maintain market conditions that are competitive. Doing so requires ensuring the active involvement of the private sector, which understands these tools and their implications best. If the goal is to encourage more investors to see Mexico as a viable nearshoring hub, a policy of support for science and innovation is critical. Increase public investment In general the Mexican state needs to invest more in public goods and services across the board in areas like health, education and infrastructure. Mexico is the OECD country that invests the least, with a rate of public sector investment of 1.3% in 2020, 0.7% below the 2007 rate. Public sector investments lag because Mexico's public revenue generation is the least effective in the OECD and one of the lowest in the region. Mexico's tax-to-GDP ratio in 2021 stood at 16.7%, below the Latin America and Caribbean average of 22% and far below the OECD average of 34%. [3] A serious look at public finances is required to make the investments needed to decrease poverty and increase equality. Spurring investment in public goods and services will be a challenge for the next federal government given that Mexico faces a sizable budgetary deficit, which is forecasted to reach 5.9% of GDP in 2024 —a historic high according to the most recent official figures and an increase of 1.6% percentage points relative to 2023. [4]Human capital While the same could be said for many countries - the US included - Mexico's public education system is deficient, a fact that creates great social inequities as well as challenges for companies looking for talent. The most recent results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed that the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students in mathematics, reading and science has declined, with Mexico ranked 51st out of 81 countries analyzed.[5] Analysts tend to focus on the number of engineers in Mexico given its manufacturing base, and while their talents are certainly needed, there are other soft skills —effective communication, as well as analytical and creative thinking— that need to be emphasized more in Mexico's educational system if we intend to successfully integrate our economy into global supply chains and take advantage of emerging technologies. It must be okay to think innovatively and question the status quo, something that is still a rarity in the work culture of Mexico. Further, Mexico needs to consider female gender empowerment a cornerstone of its economic policy; a country cannot excel by leaving 51% of the population to languish in the informal sector. Mexico has one of the lowest workforce participation rates in Latin America (below Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica) because women shoulder the burden of care from birth to death.[6] This has to change. On a positive note, the feminist movement is stronger and better organized than ever in Mexico and is advocating for government programs that will provide assistance with the burdens related to family care. Oxfam has done particularly valuable work in this regard.[7] Invest in Infrastructure via PPPsAccording to some estimates, Mexico needs to invest around 5% of GDP[8] a year in infrastructure to meet the needs required for optimal competitiveness, a very tall order given that Mexico currently invests only 1.5% of GDP. Given limited public resources, embracing Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) provides an excellent option. PPPs help enable financing under long-term risk-sharing arrangements and are something that Mexico should utilize in order to attract nearshoring dollars that can establish valuable infrastructure assets for years to come. Foreign policy as a domestic policy toolThe administration of AMLO has been fond of saying that the best foreign policy is a domestic one, without explaining very clearly how that might work. What is clear, however, is that a wise foreign policy can significantly add to domestic policy goals, such as job creation. Mexico's incoming administration would do well to use Mexico's size and relevance to at the very least punch at its weight, something it has stopped doing globally over the last five years. Mexico needs to develop a strategy with respect to China and not just let things happen without intention. And that is not to say that Mexico has to adopt the same policies of the US, on the contrary. It may be in the best interests of Mexico to adopt a conscious strategy of "non-alignment," but at the moment we have a non-strategy, which makes us vulnerable to the long-term strategies of other countries that, without a doubt, are doing their own planning. Teamwork is goodAttracting nearshoring dollars should be viewed as a team effort in Mexico, with the public and private sectors communicating and strategizing together. The goal is to work as a team to encourage investment that will bring jobs, economic growth, new technologies and improved well-being. Like many societies globally, Mexico has been divided against itself in recent years. A team that has no clear plan and that mistrusts its own players, rarely wins. Loving one's country is about caring about the people who live in it. When that kind of solidarity is emphasized, it shows and leads to victories. The North American PowerhouseMexico, Canada and the US already have economies that are vertically integrated in many sectors, from the automotive industry to the agricultural sector. Given the complexities of current geopolitics, renewing the commitment to work together as a region behooves all three countries. The USMCA will be reviewed in 2026 and instead of seeing this as a moment to challenge the agreement's value, it should be viewed as an opportunity to strengthen the agreement for mutual benefit. The US economy has proved incredibly resilient in the wake of both the pandemic and global economic turbulence, something that is a big advantage for its neighbors to the north and the south. Further, the US has achieved energy independence over the last decade, and together with Canada and Mexico North America can build the next generation of energy solutions based on a transition toward multiple renewable energy solutions. This will indeed make North America the ideal place for investment for decades to come and a true global energy powerhouse. Opportunities do not last forever Mexico would do well to understand that opportunities do not last forever. As a nation, we need to hit the ground running in 2025, work together, and create a prosperous future that is in the interests of all citizens within and without the national borders. Between 30 and 40 million Mexicans live beyond the nation's borders and nearshoring opportunities will also provide them with the possibility of joining a team focused on achieving sustainable prosperity. Regional footnote: An exciting time to celebrate North America will take place the same year as the review of the USMCA, the World Cup 2026. The opening game will take place in the Azteca Stadium, a perfect moment to display the size, importance, and cultural significance of the Mexican nation, together with our North American counterparts. My hope is that via this celebratory event, more North Americans of the US, Canada, and Mexico will embrace a regional identity, making future cooperation more ambitious and politically viable. [1] Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad (www.imco.org.mx ). [2] Diario de la Federación, 11 de octubre de 2023: DECRETO por el que se otorgan estímulos fiscales a sectores clave de la industria exportadora consistentes en la deducción inmediata de la inversión en bienes nuevos de activo fijo y la deducción adicional de gastos de capacitación. [3] https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-mexico.pdf [4] Pre-criterios Generales de Política Económica 2025", Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, https://www.finanzaspublicas.hacienda.gob.mx/work/models/Finanzas_Publicas/docs/paquete_economico/precgpe/precgpe_2025.PDF [5] https://www.oecd.org/publication/pisa-2022-results/country-notes/mexico-519eaf88/ [6] The women's labor force participation rate in Mexico continues to be one of the most lagging in Latin America, at around 49%, well below the OECD average of 65% and 58% for the region.[7] https://oxfammexico.org/trabajo-de-cuidados-y-desigualdad/ [8]https://www.cnec.org.mx/blogs/post/declaración-de-méxico-sobre-la-importancia-de-la-infraestructura-y-su-planeación-a-largo-plazo-para
In the rapid changing academic setting, language teachers are facing different issues and realities that require drastic and immediate measures for the improvement of language instruction. Gone are the days when traditional approaches and methods were being employed. Learners follow the trends and developments in technology and their attention spans keep on changing dramatically. It is not enough that language teachers will just provide assessment on grammar and speaking skills to evaluate the performances of the students, rather, they have to explore and uncover different factors that are pivotal in the teaching and learning process. The reviewers have decided to evaluate the book "The Impact of Multilingualism on Global Education and Language Learning" having the belief that in the contemporary period, multilingualism is such a formidable phenomenon that has tremendous impact on the lives of students, global education, and language learning and teaching. The ideas and insights crystalized from this review will help academicians, curriculum developers, language teachers, and educational leaders launch new projects for new directions in the field of education and language teaching. In a bigger world, people can see the effects of multilingualism due to spread of cultures, speedy communication, and diversity of learning climate. At the end of this book, the readers are able to imagine the power and influence of multilingualism and plurilingualism in changing educational landscape. The First Section is Multilingualism and Plurilingualism. In here, multilingualism is defined and explained. It brings abundant ideas and realities to people on the concepts and events they witness related to multilingualism and plurilingualism. Indeed, the rise of globalism and diffusion has led to interculturalism. Peoples around the globe have embraced common beliefs, fashion, ideas, and culture. Plurilingualism has been defined in this section with relevance to multilingualism. From this part, different ideas and insights are being offered. It brings and connects readers to possible existence of the phenomena such as multilingualism and plurilingualism in a diverse region or country. Also, the attitude of a group of people and community is being examined and described here. Through clear illustration, linguists and language teachers can get a picture of the phenomena and the ways they can do to revise and update their instructional materials and teaching methods. Further, the importance of having a lingua franca is clearly expounded here. Recent studies were explored on how new technologies can help spread English as a lingua franca. The section concludes the fact that because of the prevalence of multilingualism and plurilingualism, there is a great chance that multiculturalism also exists rapidly as it is occurring now. The Second Section of this book is the multilingual landscape. This section delves on how the concept of multilingualism significantly entered the world of sociolinguistics. It narrates the beginning of multilingualism, and how it was before monolingualism became a norm, from the beginning in the Old Testament to the rise of Roman Empire in the 7th century. The discussion is deemed to be very important for linguistics enthusiasts and researchers as it gives in-depth insights on historical foundation of multilingualism. We can no longer deny the fact that multilingualism is an important consideration in language policies and curriculum development. For instance, here in the Philippines, many linguists claim that learning English effectively is always attributed to the learner's mother tongue and how it highly influences the learners' second language acquisition. It is interesting to discover in the narrative that aside from many European nations like India, China, and Africa multilingualism is a norm. Nowadays, different countries have different official languages spoken on the record. We come to think about how these countries develop, plan, and implement their English language policies. The diversity of language all over the world is very evident. The world has 195 countries, but language spoken is several thousands more. Although languages are diverse, it not a hindrance in globalization. In this case, the role of English language plays a very important role in the aspiration of all the nations to globalize their citizens. The third section is the role of English. English plays an important role in communicating to different places. This section of the book highlights that all languages are mandatory in various places in the world; hence, English language cannot be an exemption. This portion somehow made us realize that proficiency in English is of utmost importance especially if a person wants to land on a high paying job. Moreover, English is already integrated in the various curricula from early childhood education up to high standards of entrance examination in different universities. The author cited different excerpts of several studies as evidences for a notion that English has been becoming more dominant while the world is getting more multilingual. Compared to Latin-Greek languages as discussed in the narrative of the second section, English is not the language of the elites, but an aspirational language for all. Since English plays a very important role in a person's life, English as a national language is pushed by the government officials. However, lack of preparation for materials is a big problem to teachers. For instance, in a case study by Rwanda, the French Government mandated that a switch from French to English, with only a year of preparation; thus, the proficiency to use English will of course may be compromised and cause a bigger problem, since some teachers are not as well proficient in French let alone another language. The lack of preparedness and English Proficiency will only multiply the problems which will make their life miserable as claimed in the excerpts shown. In addition to that, they claim that it could be more challenging as some students feel embarrassed and failure because of the mistakes they made using the English language. This section is concluded with a realization that English is not really a threat for establishing identity; instead, a powerful tool to enrich one's cultural uniqueness. The fourth section is the trends and issues in multilingual education. This portion talks about how English was viewed as just a subject by some, and in reality, is used in the learning process throughout the curriculum. This part scrutinizes reasons why English has been tagged as an important tool in a student's life. Many believe that students must possess higher order thinking skills such as hypothesizing, evaluating, inferring, generalizing, predicting or classifying. Through this, student's cognition will be developed and thus, they will not forget English. One example is the Tower Hamlets, a school in London who was reported to be the worst performing schools and now one of the best performing schools in the country. This was evident in their National Curriculum Test. During this test, students' grades in reading and writing surpasses Kent. This book also mentioned how learning English is not only limited to the educational establishment, but outside it through daily conversations and the use of internet. Since the diversity of the culture of European Union (EU), is very evident, the aim of the EU. To conclude this section, the author clearly explains about EU's language policy. He states that the main goal of Language Policy is that every European shall be able to speak at least two (2) more languages in addition to their mother tongue. This is due to the fact that in EU acquiring foreign language competence is a basic skill the citizen needs to improve their educational and employment opportunities. The last section is the recommendations for national systemic change. In this juncture, the author discusses the societal change to support multilingualism and educational change. We believe in the two main propositions made by the author here. The firs one being the overall societal context that is wider in scope than education; and lastly being the specific direction of educational provision and resource allocation. He explains it by mentioning Comenius (1657) and Piaget (1993). The former believed that the society's fate is dependent in the quality of education, while the latter claimed that education is not dependent to the action of school and family; instead, an essential building block of life in general. Human society is an educational society. The school system is constantly improved throughout the world to accommodate the demands of English proficiency. With this, the researcher suggested to the policy makers three (3) areas that they should consider: Validation, Practical Encouragement, and Specific Planning. This requires different language goals rather than one size fits all. Since each language require different approaches, in addition to that not all languages are learned formally. Anyone can learn language through listening to music, playing games, and watching films and of course communicating electronically. The new integrated language policies have lots of consideration. With this, the magnitude of these effects pale into insignificance compared with class/teacher effects. Since the teacher plays a very important role in the implementation of these policies. Conclusion The reviewers recommend this book because of its functional, practical, and authentic value. The sections are extensively and intensively discussed. They offer practical and theoretical examples that are felt and visualized by any reader who has growing interest in the field of linguistics and language education. Through this scholarly work, more language teachers can better understand the complex and dynamic transitions and developments in language teaching and learning. They can better design effective and appropriate materials and books that can address issues, challenges and problems in language education. In the years to come, more and more constructs will be discovered in relation to multilingualism and plurilingualism but language teachers and linguists have to do introspections on how education and stakeholders can remain attuned to global changes.
In: Decision analysis: a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, INFORMS, Band 8, Heft 3, S. 247-249
ISSN: 1545-8504
Ali E. Abbas (" The Multiattribute Utility Tree ") received his M.S. in electrical engineering, M.S. in engineering economic systems and operations research, Ph.D. in management science and engineering, and Ph.D. (minor) in electrical engineering, all from Stanford University. He is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His research interests include utility theory, decision making with incomplete information and preferences, dynamic programming, and information theory. He previously worked with Schlumberger Oilfield Services, where he held several international positions in wireline logging, operations management, and international training. He was also a lecturer in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford, and he was involved with several consulting projects for mergers and acquisitions in California. Dr. Abbas is a member of INFORMS, a senior member of the IEEE, and an associate editor for Decision Analysis and Operations Research. Address: Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 117 Transportation Building, MC-238, 104 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801; e-mail: aliabbas@uiuc.edu . James S. Dyer (" A Discrete Time Approach for Modeling Two-Factor Mean-Reverting Stochastic Processes ") occupies the Fondren Centennial Chair in Business in the Red McCombs School of Business Administration at the University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching interests are focused on applications of decision analysis and real options to problems of risk management and capital budgeting, and he has published extensively on these subjects in various journals, including Management Science and Operations Research. He is the former Chair of the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS, and the former area editor for decision analysis for Operations Research. He was awarded the Ramsey Medal by the Decision Analysis Society and the Edgeworth-Pareto Award by the International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making. Address: Information, Risk, and Operations Management Department, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712; e-mail: jim.dyer@mccombs.utexas.edu . Jeffery L. Guyse (" Consistency Among Elicitation Techniques for Intertemporal Choice: A Within-Subjects Investigation of the Anomalies ") is currently an associate professor in the Technology and Operations Management Department at the Cal Poly Pomona. He holds a Ph.D. from University of California, Irvine in management and an undergraduate degree in economics from California State University, San Marcos. His research interests are focused on the methodological issues involved with eliciting preferences for decisions that occur over time for both monetary and nonmonetary outcomes. Address: Technology and Operations Management Department, College of Business Administration, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 3801 West Temple Avenue, Pomona, CA 91768; e-mail: jlguyse@csupomona.edu . Warren J. Hahn (" A Discrete Time Approach for Modeling Two-Factor Mean-Reverting Stochastic Processes ") is an assistant professor of decision sciences in the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. He received his Ph.D. in management science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005, and he also holds an M.B.A., an M.S. in civil engineering, and a B.S. in petroleum engineering, all from the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include discrete-time modeling of stochastic processes and numerical techniques for solving decision analysis problems, with applications to commodity price modeling and valuation of real options. From 1991 through 2001, he held several engineering and financial management roles with firms in the energy industry, including ARCO, Vastar Resources, and BP. Address: Graziadio School of Business and Management, Pepperdine University, 24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, CA 90263; e-mail: joe.hahn@pepperdine.edu . Thomas W. Keelin (" Quantile-Parameterized Distributions ") is a cofounder and managing partner of Keelin Reeds Partners (KR), a management consulting firm that provides portfolio management, strategy, asset valuation, decision analysis, and business-development services. Over the last decade with KR, he has supervised such engagements for more than 80 venture-funded and emerging life sciences companies. Previously, Tom was the worldwide managing director of the Strategic Decisions Group (SDG), where he also served on the board of directors and executive committee. Over two decades at SDG, Tom founded the firm's electric utilities and life sciences practice areas and headed its strategy and strategy implementation consulting practices. He is a coauthor of the Harvard Business Review article "How SmithKline Beecham Makes Better Resource-Allocation Decisions" (March–April 1998), and he has testified before regulatory bodies in multiple U.S. states and internationally on issues of decision quality, investment risk analysis, and customer markets. He is also managing partner of Turning Point Asset Management, an investment management firm specializing in the acquisition and resolution of residential mortgages across the United States using an unusual combination of advance analytics and working with borrowers. Tom is a cofounder and is on the Board of Directors of the Decision Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that helps teens develop good decision making as a life skill. He holds three degrees from Stanford University: B.A. in economics and M.S. and Ph.D. in engineering-economic systems. Address: Keelin Reeds Partners, Menlo Park, CA 94025; e-mail: tomk@keelinreeds.com . L. Robin Keller (" From the Editor: Multiattribute and Intertemporal Preferences, Probability, and Stochastic Processes: Models and Assessment ") is a professor of operations and decision technologies in the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. and M.B.A. in management science and her B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has served as a program director for the Decision, Risk, and Management Science Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research is on decision analysis and risk analysis for business and policy decisions and has been funded by NSF and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her research interests cover multiple attribute decision making, riskiness, fairness, probability judgments, ambiguity of probabilities or outcomes, risk analysis (for terrorism, environmental, health, and safety risks), time preferences, problem structuring, cross-cultural decisions, and medical decision making. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Decision Analysis, published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). She is a Fellow of INFORMS and has held numerous roles in INFORMS, including board member and chair of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. She is a recipient of the George F. Kimball Medal from INFORMS. She has served as the decision analyst on three National Academy of Sciences committees. Address: Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-3125; e-mail: lrkeller@uci.edu . Francois Melese (" A Multiattribute Sealed-Bid Procurement Auction with Multiple Budgets for Government Vendor Selection ") is a professor of economics and the executive director of the Defense Resources Management Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School. He earned his B.A. in economics at the University of California, Berkeley; his M.A. at the University of British Columbia, Canada; and his Ph.D. at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. His research interests include public budgeting, public procurement, game theory, and defense economics. He is widely published in these areas and on other topics in economics and management. He has taught public executive management courses around the world, and he has been an advisor and consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD Director of Administration and Management), the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Comptroller), NATO's Political and Economics Directorate, and the Defense Business Board (Advisors to the Secretary of Defense). A frequent participant at NATO meetings, Dr. Melese has represented the United States as a speaker and moderator in countries throughout Europe. Dr. Melese is a member of the American Economic Association, Southern Economic Association, and Western Economic Association, and he is an elected member of the Research Society of American Scientists—Sigma Xi. Address: Defense Resources Management Institute, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943; e-mail: fmelese@nps.edu . Bradford W. Powley (" Quantile-Parameterized Distributions ") is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Brad holds an M.S. degree in management science and engineering from Stanford and a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering and materials science from the University of California, Davis. Brad consults on various portfolio management, strategy, asset valuation, and decision analysis engagements within the life sciences industry, and he has held various positions in manufacturing, design, and systems engineering in HP's Imaging and Printing and Medical Products Groups. His research interests include probability encoding and the application of decision analysis to asset valuation. Address: Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; e-mail: bpowley@stanford.edu . Jay Simon (" A Multiattribute Sealed-Bid Procurement Auction with Multiple Budgets for Government Vendor Selection " and " Consistency Among Elicitation Techniques for Intertemporal Choice: A Within-Subjects Investigation of the Anomalies ") is an assistant professor at the Defense Resources Management Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he teaches a wide range of topics in quantitative analysis, decision-maker preferences, uncertainty, risk, logistics, and economics. He received his Ph.D. in operations and decision technologies from the University of California, Irvine. His main research focus is multiattribute preference modeling, particularly involving outcomes that occur over time, space, or groups of people. His current work is on the topics of reference-dependent utility, preferences over geographical data, altruistic utility, use of military reserves, and resource usage in military operations. He is a member of INFORMS and the Decision Analysis Society. Address: Defense Resources Management Institute, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943; e-mail: jrsimon@nps.edu .
From Point to Pixel:A Genealogy of Digital AestheticsbyMeredith Anne HoyDoctor of Philosophy in RhetoricUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Whitney Davis, Co-chairProfessor Jeffrey Skoller, Co-chairWhen we say, in response to a still or moving picture, that it has a digital "look" about it, what exactly do we mean? How can the slick, color-saturated photographs of Jeff Wall and Andreas Gursky signal digitality, while the flattened, pixelated lanscapes of video games such as Super Mario Brothers convey ostensibly the same characteristic of "being digital," but in a completely different manner? In my dissertation, From Point to Pixel: A Genealogy of Digital Aesthetics, I argue for a definition of a "digital method" that can be articulated without reference to the technicalities of contemporary hardware and software. I allow, however, the possibility that this digital method can acquire new characteristics when it is performed by computational technology. I therefore treat the artworks covered in my dissertation as sensuous artifacts that are subject to change based on the constraints and affordances of the tools used in their making. But insofar as it describes a series of technological operations, the word digital often references the tool used to make the art but does not help a viewer/user relate to the art as a sensorially apprehensible artifact. Consequently, I gather together artworks that disclose visible evidence of their digital construction in order to identify the perceptible characteristics of digitally processed artifacts. I foreground not the hidden operations of computers--the intricacies of binary code and programming languages--but rather the surface qualities of digital graphics. While acknowledging that internal processes govern the aesthetic properties of these surfaces, I investigate the extent to which it is possible to encounter digitality at the level of the interface. Taking into account that the sensuous object will be informed by an underlying conceptual and technological framework or genotype, I set out to discover whether certain phenotypic aspects of digitality will be inherently accessible at a phenomenological level. Much of the best scholarship in media studies has offered cogent analyses of the political, social, and economic formations that emerge alongside digital technologies. These readings of "networked culture" focus on the systems of power/knowledge that arise from the Web 2.0 and a globalized world economy. Although this research proves invaluable to the understanding of a culture shaped by ubiquitous computing, a well-developed methodology for interpreting the role of digital technology in art practice must also situate digital artifacts in a specifically art historical and theoretical context. When do digital artifacts overcome their dubious status as mere demonstrations of technical novelty, and become artworks worthy of serious consideration? What is the importance of digital technology as an artistic medium, and how do affordances and constraints and technical parameters of digital processing influence the sensible configurations of computationally generated artifacts?Despite its foundation in immaterial electronic pulses, digital technology produces material effects on culture and communication. The assessment of digital images is often based on their "reality quotient"--the degree to which they accurately reproduce the optical and haptic conditions of external world. The fascination in digital cultural studies with virtual reality, second life, and other such practices supports this view, and also leans dangerously towards the notion that progress in art is achieved by producing ever more sophisticated techniques for rendering illusions of spatial depth. This concentration on the immersive capacities of digital graphics runs the risk of assuming a teleological progression in art towards "accurate" spatialization and virtualization. But this is not a tenable model for art historical investigation, given that the evaluation of art objects based on culturally determined signifiers of naturalism is exclusionary of alternate visual models and historical traditions. It is therefore imperative to consider depictions that exhibit visible evidence of digital construction--digital aesthetic characteristics--independently of the virtualizing capability of computational technology. My dissertation examines a subset of digital image-making practices that suppress virtualization in order to examine the structural principles undergirding digital graphics. In parsing these often abstract, highly formalized pictorial strategies, I conclude that they convey a different aesthetic and architectonic sensibility than analog depictions. Over the course of five chapters, my argument moves between theoretical analysis and case studies of artworks produced both with and without the aid of computers. Chapter One outlines the theoretical models used to differentiate digital and analog properties, and illustrates how and why art historical discourse has accorded value to artworks based on analog principles, such as fineness of color, texture, and line. It argues that discrete, particulate digital artifacts are constructed according to different principles than analog artifacts, which are relatively smooth and continuous with no absolute division between parts. My review of the formal characteristics of digital systems sets the stage for my argument that an observable model of digital facture--a digital method--preexists electronic, binary computers and that this digital process results in a digital aesthetic. Understanding this aesthetic is useful for theorizing the genealogy of contemporary computational graphics. Additionally, it provides for alternate theorizations of artifacts that have not traditionally found a secure place in the artistic canon, and it affords a new interpretive schema with which to examine artists and artworks whose position in the art historical demands renegotiation. In my second chapter, I support the claims of the preceding chapter by evaluating the extent to which the work of several modernist painters, including Paul Cezanne, Georges Seurat, and Paul Klee, exhibits constitutive features of a digital system. I use my findings to argue that understanding these artists' roles as experimenters with a digital method adds a new dimension to the theoretical, aesthetic, and historical significance of their work. The following two chapters provide comparisons between artists who apply a digital method without electronic computation and artists whose digital aesthetic is computationally driven. Chapter 3 attempts to recuperate the value and relevance of Op-Artist Victor Vasarely. Through an inspection of his writings and his algorithmic painting practices, I trace Vasarely's lifelong goal to develop a programmable visual language, and demonstrate how, without ever touching a computer, he was attempting in his practice to adopt a visual model of a digital system. In the second half of the chapter, I introduce the example of Marius Watz's computationally-generated homage to Vasarely's work in order to ascertain whether the use of a computer alters the visible qualities of Vasarely's plastic language. In Chapter 4, I examine Casey Reas's fraught and often contradictory response to the legacy of conceptual art in programming-based practices. Through a comparison between Reas and Sol LeWitt, I maintain that Reas occupies an oscillatory position with respect to the values traditionally attached to analog aesthetics, such as immediacy and uniqueness/irreproducibility. By mobilizing algorithmically encoded instructions to automate artistic production, Reas reinforces the turn away from the cult of the artist achieved in conceptual art. But at the same time, Reas's fascination with handmadeness and organicism preserves a link to analog aesthetic principles. Finally, my conclusion shifts away from direct comparison between computationally and non-computationally digital art, and instead assays the discursive resonances between Jason Salavon's software-based computational "paintings" and the increasingly widespread use of information visualization as primary mode of mapping the vast amounts of data produced by the mechanisms of the "culture industry".The works under consideration in my dissertation cohere around questions and problems related to painting. Part of the difficulty in defining "digital art" as a singular medium or genre is that the range of artifacts potentially contained under the rubric of digital art is massive and therefore resistant to canonization. A concentration on painting initially allowed me to refine my analytic method. However, the broader rationale behind this constraint grows out of the fact that the screen-based computational pictorialization analogizes painting. I contend that painting, despite, or perhaps due to its status as a two-dimensional mode of depiction, is deeply concerned with spatial and material architectonics. Painting is invested not only in the problem of how to graphically render volume and depth, but also the dynamic spatial relationship between bodies and concrete objects. Similarly, digital rendering must cope with the question of how to present the relationship between objects and spaces in two, three, or multiple dimensions. My goal is to discover whether the technical parameters of computation affect the way pictures are constructed, the kinds of subjects for which computers have the greatest representational facility, and by extension, the way digital pictures--the graphical index of digital technesis--will ultimately look. Overall, my dissertation offers a methodology for speaking about and contextualizing digital practices within the history of art and visual culture. While programming literacy is important for many scholars, producers, and users of digital hardware and software, if artifacts made using computational technology remain inaccessible to all viewers except those with a background in programming or engineering, we are faced with an art practice that is technically dexterous but phenomenologically bankrupt. Unless the possibility of translation between two languages is realized, a communicative gap will continue to yawn between art history and "media studies," which makes more urgent than ever the need to grant digital artifacts and processes the possibility of making a significant intervention into and contribution to the artistic canon.
In: Decision analysis: a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, INFORMS, Band 8, Heft 4, S. 322-327
ISSN: 1545-8504
Ali E. Abbas (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He received an M.S. in electrical engineering (1998), an M.S. in engineering economic systems and operations research (2001), a Ph.D. in management science and engineering (2003), and a Ph.D. (minor) in electrical engineering, all from Stanford University. He worked as a lecturer in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and in Schlumberger Oilfield Services, where he held several international positions in wireline logging, operations management, and international training. He has also worked on several consulting projects for mergers and acquisitions in California, and cotaught several executive seminars on decision analysis at Strategic Decisions Group in Menlo Park, California. His research interests include utility theory, decision making with incomplete information and preferences, dynamic programming, and information theory. Dr. Abbas is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He is also an associate editor for the Decision Analysis and Operations Research journals of INFORMS. Address: Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 117 Transportation Building, MC-238, 104 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801; e-mail: aliabbas@illinois.edu . J. Eric Bickel (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is an assistant professor in both the Graduate Program in Operations Research (Department of Mechanical Engineering) and the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition, Professor Bickel is a fellow in both the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy and the Center for Petroleum Asset Risk Management. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering–Economic Systems at Stanford University and a B.S. in mechanical engineering with a minor in economics from New Mexico State University. His research interests include the theory and practice of decision analysis and its application in the energy and climate-change arenas. His research has addressed the modeling of probabilistic dependence, value of information, scoring rules, calibration, risk preference, education, decision making in sports, and climate engineering as a response to climate change. Prior to returning to academia, Eric was a senior engagement manager for Strategic Decisions Group. He has consulted around the world in a range of industries, including oil and gas, electricity generation/transmission/delivery, energy trading and marketing, commodity and specialty chemicals, life sciences, financial services, and metals and mining. Address: Graduate Program in Operations Research, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, C2200, Austin, TX 78712-0292; e-mail: ebickel@mail.utexas.edu . Vicki M. Bier (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis" and "Target-Hardening Decisions Based on Uncertain Multiattribute Terrorist Utility ") is a full professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she is currently department chair and also directs the Center for Human Performance and Risk Analysis. She is also the president of the Decision Analysis Society. Her research interests include applications of operations research, risk analysis, and decision analysis to problems of homeland security and critical infrastructure protection. Address: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Mechanical Engineering Building, Room 3270A, 1513 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706; e-mail: bier@engr.wisc.edu . David V. Budescu (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is the Anne Anastasi Professor of Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology at Fordham University. He held positions at the University of Illinois and the University of Haifa, and visiting positions at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Gotheborg, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the Hebrew University, and the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion). His research is in the areas of human judgment, individual and group decision making under uncertainty and with incomplete and vague information, and statistics for the behavioral and social sciences. He is on the editorial boards of Applied Psychological Measurement; Decision Analysis; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Journal of Mathematical Psychology; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition (2000–2003); Multivariate Behavioral Research; Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (1992–2002); and Psychological Methods (1996–2000). He is past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (2000–2001), fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and an elected member of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychologists. Address: Department of Psychology, Fordham University, Bronx, New York, NY 10458; e-mail: budescu@fordham.edu . John C. Butler (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is a clinical associate professor of finance and the academic director of the Energy Management and Innovation Center in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and he is the secretary/treasurer of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. Butler received his Ph.D. in management science and information systems from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998. His research interests involve the use of decision science models to support decision making, with a particular emphasis on decision and risk analysis models with multiple performance criteria. Butler has consulted with a number of organizations regarding the application of decision analysis tools to a variety of practical problems. Most of his consulting projects involve use of Visual Basic for Applications and Excel to implement complex decision science models in a user friendly format. Address: Energy Management and Innovation Center, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1178; e-mail: john.butler2@mccombs.utexas.edu . Stephen P. Chambal (" A Practical Procedure for Customizable One-Way Sensitivity Analysis in Additive Value Models ") earned a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in industrial engineering and is vice president for the Perduco Group responsible for strategic business development for federal services. The Perduco Group provides high-end operations research and business intelligence support to the Department of Defense. Dr. Chambal recently retired from the U.S. Air Force after more than 24 years of honorable service. Most recently, he served as the director of Operational Analysis for the Air Force Institute of Technology. Dr. Chambal enlisted in the Air Force in 1986 and obtained his commission from the Air Force Academy in 1993. He held various assignments within the scientific analysis career field, including test, space, and special programs and has authored or coauthored numerous articles, white papers, and conference presentations. Address: 256 Earlsgate Road, Dayton, OH 45440; e-mail: stephen.chambal@theperducogroup.com . Philippe Delquié (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is an associate professor of decision sciences at the George Washington University and holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Delquié's teaching and research are in decision, risk, and multicriteria analysis. His work addresses behavioral and normative issues in preference assessment, value of information, nonexpected utility models of choice under risk, and risk measures. Prior to joining the George Washington University, Delquié held academic appointments at INSEAD, École Normale Supérieure, France, and the University of Texas at Austin, and visiting appointments at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Address: Department of Decision Sciences, The George Washington University, Funger Hall, Suite 415, Washington, DC 20052; e-mail: delquie@gwu.edu . Alex J. Gutman (" A Practical Procedure for Customizable One-Way Sensitivity Analysis in Additive Value Models ") is a research associate for the Air Force Institute of Technology's (AFIT) Center for Operational Analysis. He holds an M.S. and B.S. in mathematics from Wright State University and is currently a Ph.D. student at AFIT. His research interests include decision analysis, algorithm design, and design of experiments. He is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the Military Operations Research Society (MORS), and the International Test and Evaluation Association (ITEA). Address: Department of Operational Sciences, Air Force Institute of Technology, Dayton, OH 45433; e-mail: agutman@afit.edu . David J. Johnstone (" Tailored Scoring Rules for Probabilities ") is the National Australia Bank Professor of Finance at the University of Sydney. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney. His research is primarily in the statistical foundations of financial markets and financial decisions. His professional activities involve more conventional subjects in finance, particularly business valuation and capital budgeting. Address: Discipline of Finance H69, University of Sydney Business School, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia; e-mail: david.johnstone@sydney.edu.au . Victor Richmond R. Jose (" Tailored Scoring Rules for Probabilities ") is an assistant professor of Operations and Information Management in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. His main research interests lie in decision analysis and the use of Bayesian statistical methods in management science, operations research, and risk analysis. Address: Operations and Information Management Department, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057; e-mail: vrj2@georgetown.edu . Yucel R. Kahraman (" A Practical Procedure for Customizable One-Way Sensitivity Analysis in Additive Value Models ") is a recent graduate of the Air Force Institute of Technology, where he received his M.Sc. in operations research. He graduated from ISIKLAR Military High School in Bursa in 1985 and entered the Turkish Air Force Academy in Istanbul. He graduated in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering. He completed pilot training at Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, Texas, and has flown fighter aircraft for the Turkish Air Force for 10 years. Address: Department of Operational Sciences, Air Force Institute of Technology, 2950 Hobson Way, WPAFB, Ohio 45433-7765; e-mail: yucelrkahraman@gmail.com . L. Robin Keller (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is a professor of operations and decision technologies in the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. and M.B.A. in management science and her B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has served as a program director for the Decision, Risk, and Management Science Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research is on decision analysis and risk analysis for business and policy decisions and has been funded by NSF and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her research interests cover multiple attribute decision making, riskiness, fairness, probability judgments, ambiguity of probabilities or outcomes, risk analysis (for terrorism, environmental, health, and safety risks), time preferences, problem structuring, cross-cultural decisions, and medical decision making. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Decision Analysis, published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). She is a Fellow of INFORMS and has held numerous roles in INFORMS, including board member and chair of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. She is a recipient of the George F. Kimball Medal from INFORMS. She has served as the decision analyst on three National Academy of Sciences committees. Address: Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-3125; e-mail: lrkeller@uci.edu . Kenneth C. Lichtendahl Jr. (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is an assistant professor who teaches quantitative analysis courses in Darden's MBA program at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on eliciting, evaluating, and combining expert probability forecasts for use in dynamic decision situations. His current research projects include the performance of inference in Bayesian models of dynamic expert forecasts and the formulation optimal strategies in forecasting competitions. Lichtendahl joined the Darden faculty in 2006. Previously, he served as a visiting instructor in the economics department at Duke University. Currently, he also serves as a business consultant and director for the Tradewinds Beverage Company, which he cofounded in 1992. Address: Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, 100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA 22903; e-mail: lichtendahlc@darden.virginia.edu . Jason R. W. Merrick (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is a professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has a D.Sc. in operations research from George Washington University. He teaches courses in decision analysis, risk analysis, and simulation. His research is primarily in the area of decision analysis and Bayesian statistics. He has worked on projects ranging from assessing maritime oil transportation and ferry system safety, the environmental health of watersheds, and optimal replacement policies for rail tracks and machine tools. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the American Bureau of Shipping, British Petroleum, and Booz-Allen-Hamilton, among others. He has also performed training for Infineon Technologies, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and Capital One Services. He is an associate editor for Decision Analysis and Operations Research. He is the information officer for the Decision Analysis Society. Address: Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284; e-mail: jrmerric@vcu.edu . Ahti Salo (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is a professor of systems analysis in the Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis at Aalto University. His research interests include topics in portfolio decision analysis, multicriteria decision making, risk management, efficiency analysis, and technology foresight. He is currently president of the Finnish Operations Research Society (FORS) and represents Europe and the Middle East in the INFORMS International Activities Committee. Recently, he has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the EURO Journal on Decision Processes, launched by the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO). Professor Salo has been responsible for the methodological design and implementation of numerous high-impact decision and policy processes, including FinnSight 2015, the national foresight exercise of the Academy of Finland and the National Funding Agency for Technology and Innovations (Tekes). Address: Systems Analysis Laboratory, Aalto University, P.O. Box 11100, 00076 Aalto, Finland; e-mail: ahti.salo@aalto.fi . Chen Wang (" Target-Hardening Decisions Based on Uncertain Multiattribute Terrorist Utility ") is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She holds a master's degree in industrial engineering also from the same department. Chen works as a research assistant in the Center for Human Performance and Risk Analysis, under the supervision of Professor Vicki M. Bier. Her research interests include application of operations research and decision analysis in security problems and critical infrastructure protection. Address: 3239 Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1513 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706; e-mail: cwang37@wisc.edu . Jeffery D. Weir (" A Practical Procedure for Customizable One-Way Sensitivity Analysis in Additive Value Models ") is an associate professor in the Department of Operational Sciences at the Air Force Institute of Technology. He has a Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering from Georgia Tech. He teaches courses in decision analysis, risk analysis, and multiobjective optimization. His research interests are in the areas of decision analysis and transportation modeling. A former officer in the U.S. Air Force, he has worked on a wide variety of projects ranging from scheduling and routing aircraft, determining the value of future intelligence information, assessing the impact of FAA regulation changes to passenger and aircrew safety, and mode selection for multimodal multicommodity distribution networks. He has received grants from the Defense Intelligence Agency, U.S. Transportation Command, Air Force Material Command, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, Air Force Research Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, among others. Address: Department of Operational Sciences, Air Force Institute of Technology, Dayton, OH 45433; e-mail: jweir@afit.edu . Robert L. Winkler (" Tailored Scoring Rules for Probabilities ") is James B. Duke Professor in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and also holds an appointment in the Department of Statistical Science at Duke. His primary research areas include decision analysis, Bayesian statistics, probability forecasting, competitive decision making, and risk analysis. Address: Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 100 Fuqua Drive, Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120; e-mail: rwinkler@duke.edu . George Wu (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") has been on the faculty of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business since September 1997. His degrees include A.B. (applied mathematics, 1985), S.M. (applied mathematics, 1987), and Ph.D. (decision sciences, 1991), all from Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Chicago, Professor Wu was on the faculty at Harvard Business School. Wu worked as a decision analyst at Procter & Gamble prior to starting graduate school. His research interests include descriptive and prescriptive aspects of decision making, in particular, decision making involving risk, cognitive biases in bargaining and negotiation, and managerial and organizational decision making. Professor Wu is a coordinating editor for Theory and Decision, an advisory editor for Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, and an associate editor of Decision Analysis. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making and is a former department editor of Management Science. Address: Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60636; e-mail: wu@chicagobooth.edu . Alexander Zimper (" Do Bayesians Learn Their Way Out of Ambiguity? ") is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Pretoria and holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Mannheim. He started out as a specialist on iterative solution concepts for strategic games, but his current research interests concern topics in economic theory in the broadest sense. He does not believe that there is one big truth out there but rather that classical as well as bounded-rationality approaches provide us with structures that may improve—within their respective limits—our understanding of reality. His most recent work is on plausible refinements of Roy Radner's rational expectations equilibrium, existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium price function in a Lucas fruit-tree economy with ambiguous beliefs, overreaction and underreaction in asset markets, and optimal liquidity provision under demand deposit schemes. His work in decision theory mainly concerns dynamically inconsistent behavior arising from ambiguity attitudes and, in particular, Bayesian learning modeled within nonadditive probability spaces. Address: Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa; e-mail: alexander.zimper@up.ac.za .
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the literature on the political economy of policy instrument choice and relate it to the experiences in agriculture. The paper is therefore organized as follows. The second section provides a ranking of policies as to their transfer efficiency and determines the standard of evaluation, given that no policy is perfect in achieving its goals. The third section explores why political competition does not ensure that an efficient policy instrument is chosen. The following two sections explain the two key theories: enforcement and commitment problems in section four, and information and agency problems in section five. Section six presents the important Grossman-Helpman model of inefficient policy choice that falls outside these two general theories. Section seven describes how policy instrument choice in agriculture is often a discrete outcome in response to a crisis and therefore becomes path dependent, resulting in a status quo bias. Section eight describes how trade agreements can affect policy instrument choice. The final section gives some guidance as to the outstanding issues.
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A "second-class woman […] who aspires to be like a man". As Miriam Coronel-Ferrer recalls, this is just one example of the antagonistic behaviours received by the women who were part of the panel of the Bangsamoro peace talks, which resulted in a peace agreement in 2014 ending the decades-long war between the Philippines government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the majority-Muslim south.[1] Ferrer, who was the chief negotiator for the Philippines government (GoP), remembers that she was personally called a "traitor" and insulted on social media, with threats of physical and sexual violence and including demeaning comments such as calling her a "weak negotiator".[2] Unfortunately, this is only one instance of the difficulties women negotiators and mediators face across various conflict contexts.[3] Ferrer and her colleagues succeeded despite all the impediments and she became one of the few women signatories of a negotiated agreement. Like her, many other women develop strategies to deal with such barriers. Women who serve as negotiators and mediators (either at official talks or mediating local conflicts) constantly innovate ways to overcome various types of resistance to their inclusion in the talks. In previous research, I defined resistance to the inclusion of women as the behaviours of a particular person (or people) or group(s) that undermine women's inclusion in the peace or transition process, which can be categorised into three types of behaviour: implicit resistance, explicit resistance and coercive resistance.[4] The non-violent strategies used by women to react to these kinds of resistance can instead be grouped into two categories: contentious and non-contentious.[5] Contentious includes confrontational responses that do not refrain from escalating the verbal conflict with those who resist their participation; non-contentious include responses that address the resistance behaviour through dialogue and problem-solving approaches without escalating a conflict with the resisting actor.Contentious strategies Women negotiators use non-violent action to support their negotiating power vis-à-vis their opponents or competitors and to lobby for including accountability for conflict-related sexual violence as an action item in the negotiations. For example, in the negotiations over Kosovo with Serbia, Edita Tahiri, one of the Kosovar negotiators, organised the first Kosovar rally with more than 5,000 women against the occupation of Kosovo. This helped her to be nominated as a delegate for the convention to elect the presidency of the Democratic League of Kosovo (DLK) and secured her place as a member of the presidency, thus becoming the only woman in the leadership of the movement. Having a decision-making position enabled her to become the only woman negotiator at the Rambouillet Peace Conference in 1999. She also used non-violent action strategies like petitions to champion women's demands for justice concerning conflict-related sexual violence committed against Kosovar women during the conflict. Petitions and rallies were used by women in Sudan, too, to push the government actors to act in areas where they had promised to deliver on women's inclusion during the political transition talks and to hold them responsible for delaying implementation in this area. The second non-violent contentious strategy is creating alternative channels for information gathering in the negotiations. Women negotiators from different contexts have mentioned a lack of access to critical information in the negotiation process, especially if these women participate independently as part of civil society rather than as representatives of one of the central conflict parties. To overcome this problem, women across different contexts set up alternative channels to receive information about talks. In some cases, like the talks in Northern Ireland resulting in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition (NIWC) relied on an influential woman politician who was informed about the process. In Sudan, women activists relied on social media networks to get more information. In these and other cases, women created their own information systems to ensure they were informed of what was happening in the negotiations. Thus, it is crucial for assigned mediators to hold special information sessions for women negotiators in the talks to make sure they are fully informed and have up-to-date information. As mentioned, this strategy was sometimes combined with women using leverage through powerful "friends" or allies in the negotiation process. These powerful friends can be women in high positions or men in influential positions who are friendly to the women's demands. In addition to alliances and leveraging with influential men, women reported other alliance-building strategies during the peace process in multiple contexts to leverage their influence. These include galvanising the support of international actors or countries supporting women's inclusion, coalition-building with other societal actors, and women supporting other women through women networks. Coalition- and alliance-building has been a strategy that women's groups have employed in various settings to overcome barriers, such as in Liberia: here, women allied with religious actors when their initial efforts to get through to the president and the leader of the armed group became unsuccessful.[6] The third non-violent contentious strategy is direct verbal confrontation and assertive pushback. Such confrontation sometimes occurs as a "friendly reminder" but other times can be quite antagonistic. Verbal confrontation results in escalation when the type of resistance is more direct and intentional, as in the case of Afghan women negotiators during various talks they were involved with. In one case, in negotiations with an Islamic armed group operating in parts of Afghanistan, the resistance of the representatives of the armed group to the Afghan woman negotiator from the Afghan government who was meant to read the final statement to the press was only overcome after her male colleagues in the delegation took a solid position in her support. Her team insisted that either she read it, or no one did; only then did the resistors back down.Non-contentious strategies The most frequently mentioned strategy, cited by more than two-thirds of the women interviewed, alludes to the importance of "being an expert" or "gaining expertise" as a key leverage for meaningful inclusion in a high-level official negotiation or a local mediation process. Expertise in multiple contexts helped women enter the negotiations and sustain their presence on the teams when they met with suspicion and resistance. Some women suggested that they purposefully introduce themselves, emphasising the "Ph.D." in their title, after they realised that this prompted more respect and acceptance from others in the talks and enhanced their legitimacy. Other women initially involved in the talks in an administrative or support capacity, such as legal assistant, managed to climb up in the negotiation team and took a central position when their specialised lawyer skills were needed, and they became indispensable in drafting documents and agreements. In another context, a high-level mediator reported how the request for her involvement always started with "support" or "help" and later became a significant mediation role for her but only after her performance was seen or, in her words, "expertise is proven". Others mentioned that they purposefully educated themselves on issues women were excluded from, such as economic and security topics. In the Northern Ireland context, women were prepared for all the issues in the peace talks, like the release of prisoners, addressing the grievances of conflict victims, economic measures, etc., in the working groups the NIWC had formed. This was instrumental in empowering them in the talks, not just on women's issues but also building alliances on specific topics with other political parties and increasing their leverage. Similarly, in the Libyan context, preparation helped empower women to achieve parity and act more confidently around powerful men. The second most frequently mentioned non-contentious strategy is using various dialogue and negotiation skills to overcome resistance behaviour. Almost all the women interviewed highlighted good listening skills in overcoming unsympathetic behaviours toward women or in overcoming tensions in their communication with some traditional authorities, like religious figures or tribal leaders. Many women interviewed thought they had better listening skills than their male colleagues, and listening to marginalised groups or armed groups without any judgment was something these people experienced only with them. Some women gave examples of how specific mediation skills, like reframing, were used effectively to address challenging behaviours, especially objections to gender-specific text in the agreements.[7] Women used reframing to move from an adversarial and zero-sum understanding to a non-zero-sum and consensual frame. For example, in the Bangsamoro negotiations, the Liberation Front delegates were not comfortable with the term "non-discrimination based on sex", as the term "sex" was found offensive by the group referencing Islamic practice. They then reframed it to "gender" in the text,[8] which read as "non-discrimination on the basis of religion, class, gender", which was acceptable. The Liberation Front argued that "men and women are different biologically and cannot be the same". This objection was overcome when Ferrer reframed the concept as "parity of esteem", meaning "equal does not mean being the same biologically but that each sex receives the dignity it deserves equally", which had a similar meaning but a different semantic articulation and was indeed acceptable to all parties. In another reframing example, a Yemeni local mediator faced pushback when she presented herself as a mediator; she reframed her role and presented herself as "helping to fix the road problem and assisting the community", which allowed her to be accepted as a woman. Women also used goodwill gestures and humour as part of effective communication skills. Sometimes, women used gestures in a tit-for-tat manner, reciprocating a behaviour they found offensive. Other times, women used gestures to break ice and initiate fun that they thought would help communication. In Northern Ireland, women used jokes to deflect humiliating comments about their presence in the negotiations. For example, one of the women negotiators in the talks in Northern Ireland was told by a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) member to go home and have babies. She responded by singing, "Stand by Your Man".[9] In the Bangsamoro talks, Ferrer and her colleagues offered a box of chocolate to the Liberation Front representatives on Valentine's Day.[10] The third most frequent and most innovative strategy concerns various trust-building methods women use. Women from different contexts mentioned taking additional risks that pushed safety limits, which their male colleagues refrained from taking. Going the extra mile at women's own risk helped establish trust with conflict parties and facilitated their continued presence in the peace process. The idea of an "unarmed woman taking exceptional risks to her life but determined to pursue peace" had an impact in disarming or convincing the belligerent party and building trust with them. The parties later explicitly demanded these women as mediators or negotiators.Changing the behaviour to change the attitude A final strategy that taps into many of the already-mentioned ideas is "if you can't change the attitude, change the behaviour first, even in a minor way". Women reported this usually creates a ripple effect for a more significant and sustained impact. For instance, when a woman enters the process, even in a minor support role or as a technical expert, even though resistance occurs initially, it often subsides in time. It even changes the attitudes of those against her presence. It is more difficult to openly oppose someone's presence to her face, so when behaviours change, people usually adjust their attitudes accordingly. For example, because there were women negotiators on the GoP team in the Bangsamoro talks, the Liberation Front also brought a woman legal expert to reciprocate that. The same dynamic happened in the negotiations over Aceh between the armed group GAM and the Indonesian government. One woman's presence, which was opposed at the beginning of the talks, first triggered the inclusion of another woman in reciprocation and then, over time, turned into acceptance of their expertise. This dynamic has happened in many different contexts. A minor behavioural change may result in a ripple effect and snowball into an attitude change. These are only a few examples of how innovative women mediators and negotiators have become to overcome resistance to their inclusion in the negotiation processes. Although facing resistance is a distressing challenge to their presence and meaningful participation, it presents an opportunity, too, as resistance also pushes women to carve a role for themselves and leads to the development and innovation of new and cutting-edge negotiation techniques. This results in an added value for the negotiation and mediation processes as it equips women with specific features like being more adaptable and better-skilled mediators and negotiators compared to male mediators who hardly face such resistance while doing their work.Ç. Esra Çuhadar is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University and Head of Research of the Ottawa Dialogue, University of Ottawa. Çuhadar is a member of the Mediterranean Women Mediators Network (MWMN) and former UN standby team mediation adviser on process design and inclusion. Published with the support of the Mediterranean Women Mediators Network (MWMN), an initiative launched by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and implemented by Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and Women In International Security (WIIS) Italy. The views expressed in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Network or the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.[1] Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, "WOMAN at the Talks", in Kababaihan at Kapayapaan, No. 1 (March 2014), p. 3-7 at p. 5, https://peace.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Kababaihan-at-Kapayapaan-Issue-No-1.pdf.[2] Interview with Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, Washington DC, June 2018.[3] This article is based on in-depth interviews with 30 women negotiators and mediators around the world. Informed consent was obtained for the interviews. The project was supported by the Jennings Randolph Senior Fellowship granted to the author by the United States Institute of Peace to study resistance to inclusion in peace processes. For more information and further reading on the topic see Esra Çuhadar, "Understanding Resistance to Inclusion in Peace Processes", in Peaceworks, No. 159 (March 2020), https://www.usip.org/node/133636.[4] See ibid., p. 4-5, for more information.[5] Conflict transformation strategies were first categorised as contentious and non-contentious by Louis Kriesberg, Constructive Conflicts. From Escalation to Resolution, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.[6] Leymah Gbowee, Mighty Be Our Powers. How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War. A Memoir, New York, Beast Books, 2011; Julie Xuan Ouellet, "Women and Religion in Liberia's Peace and Reconciliation", in Critical Intersections in Education, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter 2013), p. 12-20, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cie/article/view/17063.[7] Reframing in a mediation setting is changing how a situation is presented or perceived semantically by changing the language used to describe it, in order to create a new perspective on the situation and open the way for problem-solving. For more information on reframing see Brad Spangler, "Reframing", in Beyond Intractability, November 2003, https://www.beyondintractability.org/node/665.[8] Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, "WOMAN at the Talks", cit., p. 4.[9] Esra Çuhadar, "Understanding Resistance to Inclusion in Peace Processes", cit., p. 25.[10] Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, "WOMAN at the Talks", cit., p. 5.
Thank you Chairman I would like to extend a warm welcome to our keynote speakers, David Byrne of the European Commission, Derek Yach from the World Health Organisation, and Paul Quinn representing Congressman Marty Meehan who sends his apologies. When we include the speakers who will address later sessions, this is, undoubtedly, one of the strongest teams that have been assembled on tobacco control in Europe. The very strength of the team underlines what I see as a shift – a very necessary shift – in the way we perceive the tobacco issue. For the last twenty years, we have lived out a paradox. It isnÃ'´t a social side issue. I make no apology for the bluntness of what IÃ'´m saying, and will come back, a little later, to the radicalism I believe we need to bring – nationally – to this issue. For starters, though, I want to lay it on the line that what weÃ'´re talking about is an epidemic as deadly as any suffered by human kind throughout the centuries. Slower than some of those epidemics in its lethal action, perhaps. But an epidemic, nonetheless. According to the World Health Organisation tobacco accounted for just over 3 million annual deaths in 1990, rising to 4.023 million annual deaths in 1998. The numbers of deaths due to tobacco will rise to 8.4 million in 2020 and reach roughly 10 million annually by 2030. This is quite simply ghastly. Tobacco kills. It kills in many different ways. It kills increasing numbers of women. It does its damage directly and indirectly. For children, much of the damage comes from smoking by adults where children live, study, play and work. The very least we should be able to offer every child is breathable air. Air that doesnÃ'´t do them damage. WeÃ'´re now seeing a global public health response to the tobacco epidemic. The Tobacco Free Initiative launched by the World Health Organisation was matched by significant tobacco control initiatives throughout the world. During this conference we will hear about the experiences our speakers had in driving these initiatives. This Tobacco Free Initiative poses unique challenges to our legal frameworks at both national and international levels; in particular it raises challenges about the legal context in which tobacco products are traded and asks questions about the impact of commercial speech especially on children, and the extent of the limitations that should be imposed on it. Politicians, supported by economists and lawyers as well as the medical profession, must continue to explore and develop this context to find innovative ways to wrap public health considerations around the trade in tobacco products – very tightly. We also have the right to demand a totally new paradigm from the tobacco industry. Bluntly, the tobacco industry plays the PR game at its cynical worst. The industry sells its products without regard to the harm these products cause. At the same time, to gain social acceptance, it gives donations, endowments and patronage to high profile events and people. Not good enough. This model of behaviour is no longer acceptable in a modern society. We need one where the industry integrates social responsibility and accountability into its day-to-day activities. We have waited for this change in behaviour from the tobacco industry for many decades. Unfortunately the documents disclosed during litigation in the USA and from other sources make very depressing reading; it is clear from them that any trust society placed in the tobacco industry in the past to address the health problems associated with its products was misplaced. This industry appears to lack the necessary leadership to guide it towards just and responsible action. Instead, it chooses evasion, deception and at times illegal activity to protect its profits at any price and to avoid its responsibilities to society and its customers. It has engaged in elaborate Ã'´spinÃ'´ to generate political tolerance, scientific uncertainty and public acceptance of its products. Legislators must act now. I see no reason why the global community should continue to wait. Effective legal controls must be laid on this errant industry. We should also keep these controls under review at regular intervals and if they are failing to achieve the desired outcomes we should be prepared to amend them. In Ireland, as Minister for Health and Children, I launched a comprehensive tobacco control policy entitled "Towards a Tobacco Free Society". OTT?Excessive?Unrealistic? On the contrary – I believe it to be imperative and inevitable. I honestly hold that, given the range of fatal diseases caused by tobacco use we have little alternative but to pursue the clear objective of creating a tobacco free society. Aiming at a tobacco free society means ensuring public and political opinion are properly informed. It requires help to be given to smokers to break the addiction. It demands that people are protected against environmental tobacco smoke and children are protected from any inducement to experiment with this product. Over the past year we have implemented a number of measures which will support these objectives; we have established an independent Office of Tobacco Control, we have introduced free nicotine replacement therapy for low-income earners, we have extended our existing prohibitions on tobacco advertising to the print media with some minor derogations for international publications. We have raised the legal age at which a person can be sold tobacco products to eighteen years. We have invested substantially more funds in health promotion activities and we have mounted sustained information campaigns. We have engaged in sponsorship arrangements, which are new and innovative for public bodies. I have provided health boards with additional resources to let them mount a sustained inspection and enforcement service. Health boards will engage new Directors of Tobacco Control responsible for coordinating each health boardÃ'´s response and for liasing with the Tobacco Control Agency I set up earlier this year. Most recently, I have published a comprehensive Bill – The Public Health (Tobacco) Bill, 2001. This Bill will, among other things, end all forms of product display and in-store advertising and will require all retailers to register with the new Tobacco Control Agency. Ten packs of cigarettes will be banned and transparent and independent testing procedures of tobacco products will be introduced. Enforcement officers will be given all the necessary powers to ensure there is full compliance with the law. On smoking in public places we will extend the existing areas covered and it is proposed that I, as Minister for Health and Children, will have the powers to introduce further prohibitions in public places such as pubs and the work place. I will also provide for the establishment of a Tobacco Free Council to advise and assist on an ongoing basis. I believe the measures already introduced and those additional ones proposed in the Bill have widespread community support. In fact, youÃ'´re going to hear a detailed presentation from the MRBI which will amply illustrate the extent of this support. The great thing is that the support comes from smokers and non-smokers alike. Bottom line, Ladies and Gentlemen, is that we are at a watershed. As a society (if youÃ'´ll allow me to play with a popular phrase) weÃ'´ve realised itÃ'´s time to Ã'´wake up and smell the cigarettes.Ã'´ Smell them. See them for what they are. And get real about destroying their hold on our people. The MRBI survey makes it clear that the single strongest weapon we have when it comes to preventing the habit among young people is price. Simple as that. Price. Up to now, the fear of inflation has been a real impediment to increasing taxes on tobacco. It sounds a serious, logical argument. Until you take it out and look at it a little more closely. Weigh it, as it were, in two hands. I believe – and I believe this with a great passion – that we must take cigarettes out of the equation we use when awarding wage increases. I am calling on IBEC and ICTU, on employers and trade unions alike, to move away from any kind of tolerance of a trade that is killing our citizens. At one point in industrial history, cigarettes were a staple of the workingmanÃ'´s life. So it was legitimate to include them in the Ã'´basketÃ'´ of goods that goes to make up the Consumer Price Index. It isnÃ'´t legitimate to include them any more. Today, IÃ'´m saying that society collectively must take the step to remove cigarettes from the basket of normality, from the list of elements which constitute necessary consumer spending. IÃ'´m saying: "We can no longer delude ourselves. We must exclude cigarettes from the considerations we address in central wage bargaining. We must price cigarettes out of the reach of the children those cigarettes will kill." Right now, in the monthly Central Statistics Office reports on consumer spending, the figures include cigarettes. But – right down at the bottom of the page – thereÃ'´s another figure. Calculated without including cigarettes. I believe that if we continue to use the first figure as our constant measure, it will be an indictment of us as legislators, as advocates for working people, as public health professionals. If, on the other hand, we move to the use of the second figure, we will be sending out a message of startling clarity to the nation. We will be saying "We donÃ'´t count an addictive, killer drug as part of normal consumer spending." Taking cigarettes out of the basket used to determine the Consumer Price Index will take away the inflation argument. It will not be easy, in its implications for the social partners. But it is morally inescapable. We must do it. Because it will help us stop the killer that is tobacco. If we can do it, we will give so much extra strength to health educators and the new Tobacco Control Association. This new organisation of young people who already have branches in over fifteen counties, is represented here today. The young adults who make up its membership are well placed to advise children of the dangers of tobacco addiction in a way that older generations cannot. It would strengthen their hand if cigarettes move – in price terms – out of the easy reach of our children Finally, I would like to commend so many public health advocates who have shown professional and indeed personal courage in their commitment to this critical public health issue down through the years. We need you to continue to challenge and confront this grave public health problem and to repudiate the questionable science of the tobacco industry. The Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society represents a new and dynamic form of partnership between government and civil society. It will provide an effective platform to engage and mobilise the many different professional and academic skills necessary to guide and challenge us. I wish the conference every success.
Transcript of an oral history interview with Madonna Commo, conducted by Sarah Yahm at the Sullivan Museum and History Center on 30 March 2015, as part of the Norwich Voices oral history project. The interview focuses on Commo's experiences working at the barbershop at Norwich University for the past thirty years. ; 1 Madonna Commo, Oral History Interview March 30, 2015 Sullivan Museum and History Center Interviewed by Sarah Yahm Transcribed by C.T. Haywood, NU '12, Mary 12, 2015 SARAH YAHM: Okay so I'm wondering if you could introduce yourself. MADONNA COMMO: I am Madonna Commo. I am in the barbershop. I've been in the barber shop for 30 years. SY: And today's March 30th? MC: Thirtieth I believe. SY: Okay it's March 30th and we're here at the Sullivan Museum and History Center. Okay so how did you first come to Norwich? MC: I first came to Norwich because they were looking for an individual that knew how to cut female's hair. The barbershop had male barbers for I'm sure the existence of the barbershop, but females were suddenly being introduced and so there was a new demand for someone that knew how to cut that female's hair. And so I suddenly had a job. SY: And did you see it advertised in the paper. How'd you know it was open? MC: He did advertise in the paper. He advertised for a—actually for a barber slash cosmetologist and I just happened to be reentering the field - I had been out of it for a number of years - and so I answered the call. I thought it would be a lot of fun and so he was quite demanding. He wanted me to go in and take barber college classes before I even started, which was pretty senseless. It cost me a lot of money to do and he could have done this as an apprenticeship, as a barber apprenticeship but he just didn't want to do it I guess or whatever. But I did what he asked me to do and so I did get a number of barber hours under my belt before I even started here at Norwich. But I was a licensed cosmetologist when I started here. SY: And what was your first day like? What was your experience working, it was an all-male bastion, right? MC: It was an all-male, yeah it was very--I'm not gonna say it wasn't intimidating. It was extremely intimidating. I wasn't sure I was gonna come back for the next few days. It was, and I'm not that easily intimidated. I was used to working around guys. But yeah, the whole atmosphere, the whole feeling was just very, very different from what I was used to. So it was, it was a very strong, dominating, loud. Between the military atmosphere which I was not used to, and the solid male pretty much influence, it was a real challenge to try to fit into the barber shop. SY: Did--were things said to you? Or was it more just a feeling? MC: Well, you know, it started out as a feeling. And there was, you know, definitely a, a dominance. The males were definitely dominating and of course they would be, I was the new kid on the block anyways. So I expected the dominance, but as the years went by and so forth they still wanted to continue to be extremely dominating and so forth. And it was more of a male dominance than it was an employee dominance that needed to be there. 2 SY: So how did you kind of assert yourself? How did you kinda make it a place that you were okay to work? MC: We were, we were so busy that I just I just kept cutting hair. I just came in and I just minded my business and I showed up on time, and I just, I just minded my business. And I tried to please both the Corps and my employer. I tried to do the best I could all the way around. I soon found that they you know, they didn't want me to wear certain things and I had to--he event told me not to have a conversation with the guys in my chair, that I didn't need to have a conversation with them. "Just put them in the chair. You don't need to talk to them, just cut their hair." And I'm like, "Okay," because my conversation might be flirting. And I'm like [laughs] "okay," and at one point it got it warmer you know I think it was a fairly warm day and so and I love dresses, so I just it wasn't a fancy dress, I put on a dress. We wore jackets anyway, and they completely flipped out on me, they just said, "Don't you ever show up here with a dress again. We don't want to be looking at those legs. You're giving the whole wrong influence on this barber shop." And I'm like, "o-kay." So it was yeah, it was very interesting job. SY: They sound terrified of women, just like terrified like the fact you and a dress could just "ah." MC: You know you're right it--at that point for me they were terrifying, okay? But as I look back at it they were the ones that were terrified of me, they were terrified of me even being in there they were--you know it's like putting a woman on a boat, it's just bad luck okay. And I got that feeling as the woman working in the barber shop it was just a sailor's bad luck, it was a barber's bad luck to have that woman in there [laughs]. Isn't that awful? SY: Sounds like the fifties in there huh? MC: Yeah let's go back to the thirties maybe, yeah. SY: Interesting. MC: Yeah. SY: Interesting, really strange. And then you left and you were back in Central Vermont where things were, yeah it's so strange. MC: Yeah. SY: Yeah, and so when did things start to change? MC: Well I just. you know I just stayed consistent [laughs] and held my ground as an employee I held my ground. And people came and went, in other words bosses came and went. He'd, they'd contract out the service and individuals would not get the contract and we would get other contractors. And the second gentleman that I worked for was much more a compliant, he was a wonderful boss actually, really liked him a lot and worked for a number of years for him. And ran the shop for him and enjoyed him a lot. So, he was a different, he was still old school but that influence was gone, and he allowed us to make the atmosphere of the barber shop a completely different atmosphere from what it was when I first started. SY: So how did you, how did you change the atmosphere? What was it like when you first started and what was it like when you changed it? MC: First started it was almost like they were sergeants in there, demanding and screaming and hollering at the kids to, you know. The kids were running to the chair, sitting down and staring into space and it was just [laughs] I don't know, that's a long day and I'm not supposed to talk to them. And so we realized 3 and after working there for a number of years I realized that this just ridiculous. So in talking to the commandants at the time I said, "I really don't want this to be a place where the military demand is influenced in here. I want this to be a relaxed atmosphere, you know even the Rooks, can they at ease in here? Can we have conversations with them?" and I believe it might have been Melville at the time or whoever, wonderful man and he's like, "Absolutely, that's ridiculous let's change this." So he took the initiative to allow us to just get rid of all of that and told the cadre or whoever that in the shop you're not to push a kid agonist the wall. Back in the day it was pretty aggressive and so that suddenly was not allowed and as that came into play the kids would come in and relax and then we would have the radio on, and the magazines and even the Rooks were allowed to sit down and relax and be people in there for their, you know, time that they were there. So that worked out much better. SY: So now do you think it's kind of a safe space? Do people look forward getting a haircut especially when they're Rooks? MC: You know I think they do. I think they have for quite a while. We--at this stage of the game if we compared what the shop was when I started compared to what it is now, it's done a complete turnover. I have two other ladies that are working for me with me and this shop right now is almost like the kids come in and they can almost talk to us, because they're away from their moms and it's comfortable and they even confide in us, you know, personal things that we don't let anyone else we'd never, nothing ever leave our shop and I think that's why I've been there 30 years too. But you know it's a completely different space and they're very comfortable there. I do think they are. SY: Isn't that, I mean, isn't that always the story that like hair salons and barbershops and bars are often where people confess things and tell. It's a very intimate relationship. MC: It is. I mean they're sitting in the chair and it's a one on one with the individual that you're cutting their hair. And you know young people today I think are very comfortable with a female barber or person cutting their hair versus the old school barber that was rough and tough, the tattoos and whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just, I think we've really set a nice atmosphere here at the University. And I think the University's happy with what we've done. I do. SY: And you took over the shop at some point? MC: We did, yes we, boy I think it was 1999 that we've had the contract. SY: And how did that happen? Was that, did you think considering the vibe when you started that they would let you run the show? MC: Well you know it -- again being a contractor was a man's world, and so we took a real big leap to go against the barbers that were in charge, the male barbers that had been in business for a long time. And it took us a couple of rounds to get the contract, but I think again the fact that we were constantly dependable, we were constantly reliable, we were doing the job, we had a good feeling about what we're doing, and I think we got the University's confidence in us as individuals and as employees that we would be able to handle the contract as a business. And I'm hoping that I won over there, you know, ability to think that I would able to be a good business person as well as a man. I think the world grew a little bit in those years. So we've had the contract ever since, yeah. SY: Yeah, so let's talk about, because you arrived when the first female Rooks arrived pretty much-- MC: Yes. 4 SY: And so what did you sort of witness? You sort of witnessed that changing campus. What was their experience like? Did you get to talk to them at all? MC: Well at first there was no conversations, but yeah I mean they were, golly gee those poor girls. I, you know, they would pretty much always be together. I don't think there were a lot them at the start and they pretty much always came in together. And you know what? It's still pretty routine that if one gal down another one will come with her. I think that bond here for the females is still pretty, pretty much there. We do have some regular gals that come in all the time and they're just so comfortable at this stage I mean one is graduating for sure, we cut her hair all the time, that she doesn't bring a friend in. But especially that freshman group, they're coming down they're always with another gal. So, yeah. SY: I guess I'm curious about the role that the haircut plays at Norwich 'cause you're there at the very first moment in that rite of passage. Can you talk about that, about Rook Week and haircuts? MC: You know, the haircut -- you can come into the college, you can sit down and take the test, you can look at kind of what's going on, you can put on the uniform and shine your shoes. But nothing is really completely life changing until you sit in that barber chair and we take your hair off. That is the moment that reality really hits not only the kids but the parents. Because the parents throughout the years on and off have still been around when we're cutting hair and I've seen students cry in my chair. I've seen students just literally almost break down in my chair. Students have left my chair because I say to them, I can tell if they're having a hard time and I give them a moment and it's like, and I tell them, I said, "this is the moment that you really need to decide whether you're gonna stay here and give it a shot or if you want to go back to mom and dad." I said, " because once I take this hair off its gonna be awhile coming back and so if you want a few minutes I'll go get your cadre, you can go over there and just take your time." Because this is life changing right here for these kids. And I've had kids get out of the chair, they've literally left the chair. I've had kids that I just cut their hair and I happen to walk out with them at the time and their parents were standing there and their parents just had, they just didn't even recognize them and then they start crying. So yeah I think that the haircut really is huge people don't think about it but it really plays a huge role in changing the whole mood of what they're doing at that, at that moment. SY: So do they come in, is it a somber atmosphere during Rook Week when they come in there? Are they sort of aware suddenly of the symbolism of it? MC: They come down with their company, and so there they come down. Our shop holds 30 at a time. Our shop is a huge shop so that they can sit down, and we just run them through. The cadre are in charge. The cadre tell them what to do but they're not working them in the shop because we don't allow that. But they're still, it's a very strict, there's no conversations between the kids and the individual beside of them. The cadre has very much in charge as we run these, these freshman through. So it's almost like they're in an assembly line and they really don't have any voice at that moment to just jump out of the chair until I give them the opportunity or my girls give them the opportunity. Because they're afraid to say anything to the cadre up until that point. SY: How do you read it? How do you know when need to tell someone that? MC: Oh you can tell. You can just read the kids. You know, yeah. SY: It's on their faces, their body posture? MC: Sure. They're sitting there and you're like, "Oh this kid's having a hard time, hard-hard time." SY: And have some gotten up and not come back? 5 MC: I think they have. I think they've gotten up and not come back. One of the most terrifying moments was this, this individual that marched to my chair, sat down, I caped them up and you know routinely you do so many haircuts that it just become,s your kind of almost in your own daze at the stage of the game, pushing them through. And I went to grab my, my clipper and almost ready to go to right down the center of their head and I happened to take a second look at them and look at their eyes and they were female. I literally almost had the clipper to the head and I just kind of panicked and I backed off, I shut my clipper off and I just like took a deep breath because I almost went right down to the middle. I mean she just looked so much - the uniform she looked like a male - you know I didn't pay attention to her walking. They all walk stiffly into the chair and she sat there and I just, yeah. And so I still - she was here the 4 years and she finally grew out her hair out, because her hair was short, she had a man's haircut then. And I, you know I honestly said to her I said, "I almost got that Rook haircut on you." She said, "Oh I know." She did not say a word to me, she was so afraid that she never said a word. She would have sat there and let me literally give her a high and tight because that's how terrified they are when they come through our shop. You need to realize that. But she graduated. She graduated and I said, "we got to grow your hair out" [laughs]. SY: I wonder because you seem like such a warm person I wonder what little things you do make them feel little better. It's an assembly line but is there still, like are you aware of attempting to transmit kindness or reassurance in some way? MC: The whole, my whole team does. My whole team's great, yeah. SY: Yeah. Just the smile? Like what is it? MC: Yup, yup. We make them feel welcome and comfortable and I even just they sit there and they're so stiff and I'll just even pat them on the shoulders and say, "Okay take a deep breath, relax, you know. This is a great cut, you're gonna love this. You're not gonna have to shampoo for a year." And I say, "and your pillow, it's gonna stick to the side of your heads, so." And they, and they crack a smile and then you know so you just kind of, yeah. But they're not even breathing when they hit your chair. Not even breathing and that's normal, that's normal for them at that stage. They've been running, they've been you know [inaudible] throughout the week, this is Rook Week. SY: Those aren't even the ones who you tell to get u,p those are just normal [laughs]. MC: Normal ones yes. SY: What about the girls. What control, what are the rules regulating their hair? MC: The girls need to have the hair above like the collar of your jacket or whatever, they kind of want it just above that so that it's not hanging down below like your coat or your sweater or your uniform. They call it a blouse, whatever. So that has to be up, so it either needs to be cut fairly short in the back especially and they also restricting how much, you know the new haircut is kind of long in the front there, they would have to pin that up too so. Or you can have it very long which is most of the gals do and they just put it up every day, and that destroys the hair. So they're constantly coming down because we need to constantly trim those ends, you know. SY: So when -- it seems like you would have to talk to the girls in your chair even during Rook Week because you have to figure out whether they want you to cut it or whether you-- MC: Right. SY: Yeah. 6 MC: Yeah. SY: Yeah, and so you are able to talk to them a little bit? MC: Oh we're able to talk to them at this stage in the game, absolutely. I pretty much every once in a while you get some cadre and they're young too, they're just learning. This is their cutting edge of learning their job, and they're, especially at the beginning, they're feeling the power, you know and that's okay. But they start getting a little aggressive and I look at them and say, "Let's just, when they're in here, they're ours. When they're out there, they're yours." And he just looks at me and he backs off so you know, they're, they, you know. SY: They're not messing with you? MC: No, no they don't and we don't. Every once in a while the kids will sit there waiting and you know they're teenagers basically coming out of high school, and the language will get a little you know and immediately we look at them and say, "Not acceptable in here. This a very G-rated shop, be careful with your language." And they'll immediately apologize. We just don't allow it, just don't allow any of that in the shop. SY: Yeah you're creating a culture? MC: We are creating a culture and you know what? We're creating adults, we're trying start creating adults and they need to realize that this not high school. SY: And that's a question too because you're part of training them also, right? MC: I feel we are. SY: So what are, what are you training them to be? MC: Hopefully training them to be good leaders and good adults. SY: And you, how do you think communicate through the language stuff—are there other ways that you sort of communicate that? MC: Yeah we're very strict in the shop I mean we, they would love to come in throw their backpacks in the chair and throw their coats and their covers over in the care, in the corner and we just don't allow it. So when they come through the door we train them - "There's hangers over there, you will put your backpack over there. You will hang up your jacket or whatever, then you will come over here and you will find your card." We have, we really work hard on getting the whole program in place so that when they walk in at this stage in the game they're so well trained you just see them follow the whole little pattern of getting their haircut, because we don't allow anything else. SY: Because it just would be chaos? MC: Yeah, "You're not gonna throw your coat here that's not, no you're not home. Hangers over here." "Oh yes ma'am." Because we're not doing them a favor by doing that, and we're also not doing our shop a favor. We can't have coats all over the place and then have 20 kids come down. Where are they sitting on the floor? You're gonna throw your coats on the floor? Your backpacks? Let's teach them to be adults. SY: Right. And also you have so many kids going through so quickly. MC: So many kids I think we're doing 1500 on a regular month, that's twice a month that's 3,000 haircuts a month. That's huge. 7 SY: That's huge and what do you, how do you keep it interesting? MC: Well every kid's interesting. Every kid is different. I mean it's just like anything else. I mean you're sitting in front of a typewriter all day, you're sitting in front of a computer all day. I think my job is a lot more fun [laughs], a lot more fun. SY: And it's the connecting to the kids that makes it fun? MC: It is connecting to the kids. It's, it can be a fun shop unlike when I started. We try to make it fun in there. I mean there's a lot of haircuts and a lot of hair to deal with and we have to get, productivity is very important in that shop. We've created systems that were not in place when I started to increase the productivity of the shop. SY: What are your systems? MC: I created a rolodex system which is very backwards still, but it's still very functional. So every kid has a card and they flip through it, and we realized that we needed to create a menu. We had a lot of foreign students at this particular time and trying to understand what they wanted for a haircut took a lot of time out of the haircut. So we took pictures and it was like, we called it the McDonald hair menu, and the tops are certain numbers and the bottoms are certain numbers. You can actually mix and match the tops with the bottoms, and you come up with a 2 number on your card. So a lot of kids get a 5-6 which is a half inch top and a zero on the sides faded up. So the number systems work very, very quickly. It's something we can write on the cards so when the kid flips through his card we know what he's getting for a haircut, he doesn't have to worry about what he's getting for a haircut because he picked this out a while ago. So it increased productivity, doubled it so we could get them in and out. The kids love it because they don't have to remember what they're getting all the time. Because I have people that graduate and they go into a barbershop and they say, "Well I want a 2-6," and the barber is like, "what?" [laughs] SY: How fast can do a haircut? MC: Depending on the haircut, yeah. For fun one time I think I decided that I would see how many haircuts I could get done in a half an hour, and if I remember correctly I believe I got 7 haircuts done in half an hour but they were fast ones. [laughs] SY: Is that the record? MC: I--you know I don't know. We're pretty fast. You'd have to go a long way to find barbers that are faster than we are. But we also we don't cut corners because we do a nice job, so yeah. SY: So I feel like you have a unique perspective in some ways on changes at Norwich over time. What changes have you seen? I mean in the student population, have you seen in the culture of the cadre? You said it was pretty intense when you first got there. What's the, what are the larger shifts? International students. What are the larger shifts that you've seen? MC: Oh boy, I'm hoping that the system that's in place is still working which is the students training the students to become leaders. I, I think that's what the whole school is about. It took me a long time to figure this out. But, you know, I think that we need to continue to take you know the kids come in and I've had individuals that I had lunch with that are, they can't understand why they go through the Rookdom: what purpose does this serve? Why are we taking everything away from them? And it became apparent to me that, you know, if we put these kids in the military what is it that they're fighting for? 8 They're fighting for freedom. How on earth you can fight for something when you've never understood what it's like to loose it in the first place. SY: That's interesting. MC: And, and, and you know it appears as though not a lot of people see this whole program as doing exactly that. That's what this is all about. These kids at this age, which I don't think I could have done when I was 18, lose pretty much their freedom: their cell phones, their freedom, they lose their freedom. But they grow so much from that because they become leaders and they earn their freedoms back, you see. But I don't think half the people understand what it's all about. You can't fight a war for freedom if you don't have any idea what freedom is. SY: I don't even think the trainers have put it that way. I don't think the military formulates it that way. I feel like that's the smartest justification of the system that I've ever heard and I don't think I've heard it anywhere else. [laughs] MC: I tell the kids that and you know what it's like a light bulb going off in their head. They're like getting so upset because, "When are we gonna get Recognized? When are we gonna do this? When are--" I said, "Stop it. This is a short term thing. How are you gonna go fight and risk your life for freedom if you have no idea what it's like not to have it? Lose your freedom?" SY: That's so smart [laughs]. MC: It's just common sense. SY: And when, did you sort of have an 'ah ha' moment when that occurred to you? MC: Oh my gosh, um yeah I don't know, just came to me. I mean it's just like, isn't that what it's all about? SY: I just spilled tea all over myself, just so you know and it's this weird tea that has twigs in it. MC: I see that. SY: I'm having like really a day [laughs]. I'm fine. I'm fine. I just was like, what, why am I like suddenly warm? Oh I spilled tea on myself. Let me go back to what you were saying because that's so interesting. So are there any memorable mo--when you sort of when people say, "Oh what do you do Madonna"? And you're like "Oh I'm actually a barber at Norwich." And they say, "Oh, what's your job like? Tell me some stories." What are the stories you tell people? MC: Oh you know [laughs] that's interesting because being a military barber is probably one of the least most respected professions that people seem to have. And it's, I've come to terms with it over the years because it's just been a pretty constant, almost a bullying type of situation. My co-worker just gets so annoyed with people. But as an example, we went to my husband - he's been at his job for 30 years too and we're at this very nice dinner with people in business, contractors, and all kinds of people. Sat beside this gentleman and came up and he says so, "What do you do?" And I explained to him that I work at a military university and I'm the barber. Well you could almost see a sarcastic chuckle on his face. "Oh well what kind of a job is that? You just stand there and shave heads all day. That's a heck of a job." And he actually verbally said that at the table with my husband's other business associates and so forth. My husband was extremely upset and I felt very bad because I felt as though that was making me look, making him look bad by this guy, you know, really rudely making me look very foolish, like my job was very unworthy, like there's no -- anybody could do that. And I just thought for a moment and my 9 husband was getting ready to, you know, defend me. He's so sweet. And I just stopped him and I looked at the man and I said, "You know," I said, "I really love my job." I said, "My job serves a great purpose at the university that I work at." And I said, "Not only does it serve a great purpose there." I said, "But it's done very well for me." And I said, "And I actually do very well as a contractor at the military university." And he just sort of sat there and didn't quite know what to, what to say about that and afterwards a lady over there she looked at me, she said, "I'm so glad you put him in his place." In other words, you know, he just thought he was something very special and just, you know, but we get that all the time. SY: Really? MC: Yeah, all the time. SY: Why do you think that is? MC: I don't know. I guess they think it's, I don't know they just, even here sometimes I feel as though that we are probably the least respected business or contractors here. Until you need us and then suddenly, "Oh wow we need the haircuts." But everyone else in fact we went to get these rolodex done, this was like recently, and the gal up on UP or Jackman Hall sent an email back to my co-partner letting her know that we were not a priority at this university. SY: That's hurtful. MC: It's, yeah, I mean we're huge, we're doing 3,000 haircuts a month, you know, and we don't ask a lot from the university. We've really focused on getting here and doing our job and, you know, but we do need their help with this rolodex because we don't have any way of getting the students names to get this set up and it's very important we get this set up. And they just that was an email that was sent back that we were definitely not a priority. SY: And you take care of every single student in the Corps. MC: We take care of every single student. SY: Multiple times a month. MC: Multiple times a month. SY: Mhm, huh. MC: Yeah. So it's interesting how people's perspective of the--our work is, and I don't know. SY: But at the same time lots of members of the community who aren't students also end up in your chair, right? And so you often-- MC: They do. SY: You probably cut the hair of the administration sometimes? MC: We do. SY: And does that change the dynamic in the relationship? MC: No I mean they come in, they're great customers, we service all of them, all of them. Any faculty that's in uniform gets served in our shop, you know. They get a haircut. 10 SY: Yeah I would imagine that it would--that maybe that might make you feel more respected at times. Like those relationships? MC: Well it's interesting because a lot of the faculty, you would think that Dave Magida and the president wants that service extended to the faculty because they want their hair to be in regulation with their uniform. So they figure if they offer this in our contract type of deal that they're gonna come down and get their haircut, okay? But it's interesting because especially with the professors, the students we certainly don't expect anything from the students, but the professors because they're getting their haircut for free they think the university, they even won't leave my girl a dollar tip, you know. Which that's not in good taste, you know? So obviously they don't respect. If they respect the fact that this young lady is really cutting their hair and even whatever as the university they should still show some sort of support to the young lady that's done the service to them. And I find that offensive when they're not leaving my girls a dollar for their haircut. They're doing beautiful haircuts on them. SY: Yeah and if you were going to get your haircut in town you would leave a tip for the barber. MC: You would certainly leave a tip for the barber. So I see that as disrespectful. SY: Yeah huh. MC: Yeah. SY: But it also sounds like you've managed not to internalize it. That like you know you do a good job, you feel good about it and mostly you're able to not take on that judgment or disrespect? MC: Yeah, we don't treat them any different. I mean they still come in and we were, you know we do their hair and it's up them, you know. I mean, I feel [coughs] excuse me that if they thought they were paying maybe they don't understand that tip especially for the girl should still be there. SY: Yeah maybe they don't know. There should be like a PR campaign you know what I mean? Like tip your barber [both laugh]. How did you get into cosmetology? What was your, when did you decide that is what you wanted to do? MC: Right out of high school. Yeah I went to college for that right out of high school and then ended up doing music pretty much full time for 10 years. And that's why ended up coming back into it. SY: I was just gonna say you also have a whole other career. MC: Yeah. SY: So can you talk about that a little bit? What is it that you do? MC: Oh music is just wonderful, you know, it's been a great gift. My dad was musician and passed it on and so music has been part of my life. It's been a lot of fun. SY: And you're a fiddler? MC: I am, but I also ran my own band. I've run my own band. I play a lot of different, like seven different instruments, yeah, bass player in my band. But I also wanted to reach out and do as much as I could as far as my profession goes to. So I've served on the board of Barbers and Cosmetologists. I was on the board for 5 and a half years, and they made me chairman of the board for like 3 of those years. I got to go to a barber convention which is really close to [laughs] what is the convention with all those really crazy guys well a barber convention is close to that. 11 SY: Like a Star Trek convention? MC: Like oh my gosh that was such a riot. And then I was chosen to be a subject matter expert and what the subject matter expert does is that go and we create the state boards, national state boards for the barber test. So I, that was kind of interesting to reach out in my field and learn a few more things. I fought for, I went to the legislature because our legislature here in Vermont wanted to combine the cosmetologist and the barber license all in one and call it a go. And I fought for the barbers because that would basically shut down every barbershop in the state, because those cosmetologists would eat them up and spit them out. And I knew that and the only reason he was fighting for it was because he had some cosmetologists that wanted to open up up a barbershop and you can't. The rule, the law says, there's separate licenses and so I had to really go and fight him at the legislature. And we won. So still they're separate licenses so the barber still has his business, and the cosmetologist has her business so. SY: Do you have both licenses? MC: I have both, yes. SY: You have both licenses. Oddly my grandfather is in the Cosmetology Hall of Fame, there's like a weird bust of his head. And who knew Cosmetology Hall of Fame existed? But apparently it does because he used to write the certification exams for cosmetologists in New York State in like the fifties. MC: There you go. SY: But anyway there's literally a bronze bust of his head. So odd [laughs]. MC: How neat is that? SY: It's very cool. Jacob J. Yahm in the Cosmetology Hall of Fame. Um I don't know if I, I feel this was like a short but sweet interview. I'm not sure if I have any more questions. Do you have any other sort of last thoughts about your time at Norwich? Do you plan on working here until you retire? What's next for you? MC: I'm hoping that Norwich is still pretty comfortable with us. I think we're certainly providing the service that they're hoping comes out of that barbershop. I, you know, I plan on hopefully being a contractor here as long as they'll let me. I may not always be the physical one standing behind the chair because as I get older here, it is a very physical job. SY: I was gonna ask about that. MC: So my body's starting to take toll. SY: Is there, are there things, like is it your arms and your wrists? MC: Yeah my arm, I've got you know my elbow is, tendonitis in my shoulder. These clippers are heavy and you're standing. It's really a job doing 3,000 haircuts, pushing that through. This is, you know, this is a huge physical job and so I'm starting to feel that. But that doesn't mean I won't make sure that the person standing behind my chair isn't well trained to take my place so. SY: And you also need to keep, you know, if you hurt yourself cutting hair that also means probably you can't play music right? 12 MC: Right their both pretty physical. The music is not as demanding as this 8 hour, you know, grueling haircutting is. This is a tough one. Twenty year old is perfect in there [laughs]. Pushing 60 not so much [laughs], so yeah. SY: I don't know if I have any more questions. Any other thoughts about women at Norwich and how their transition occurred? You said they seemed scared--did you sort of, did people talk to you? Did they say to you? Were you sort of like a mother confessor a little bit where they talked to you what they were going through? MC: It was so strict back then that no one dared have conversations. So the young ladies wouldn't have dared to confide in me at that stage in the game. But I'm very excited to see how young ladies have grown and they're, they're heading up our university. So I think we've grown a lot. SY: So you've seen them get much more confident? MC: Oh they're confident and they're smart and they're gonna be great leaders. SY: That's fabulous. I don't have any last questions that was terrific and now you still have a couple more minutes on your lunch hour. MC: There we go. [laughs]
Technical Report 2018-08-ECE-137 Technical Report 2002-09-ECE-006 Engineering of Enterprises a Transdisciplinary Activity Murat M. Tanik Ozgur Aktunc John Tanik This technical report is a reissue of a technical report issued September 2002 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Alabama at Birmingham August 2018 Technkal Report 2002-09-ECE-006 Engineering of Enter·prises A Transdisciplim•ry Activity Murat M. Tanik Ozgur Aktunc John Tanik TECHNICAL REPORT Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Alabama at Birmingham September 2002 ENGINEERING OF ENTERPRISES A TRANSDISCIPLINARY ACTIVITY OVERVIEW Contributed by: Murat M. Tanik, Ozgur Aktunc, and John U. Tanik This module is composed of two parts: Part I surveys and defines Enterprise Engineering in the context of transdiscipline. Part II introduces Internet Enterprise and addresses engineering implementation consider ations. PART I ENTERPRISE ENGINEERING ESSENTIALS 1 INTRODUCTION When Henry Ford rolJed out his first automobile assembly during 1913, he created the archetype of single-discipline enterprise. Ford's adventure was a self-contained and efficient exercise in mechankal engineering. With no competition, no regulatory constraints, and no pressing need for cross-disciplinary partnerships, from design development to process development, all ideas primarily originated from Ford's own engineers. The world is a different place today. Automobiles are complicated hybrids of mechanical, electrical, electronic, chemicaJ, and software components. Modern 4 manufacturers must now pay dose attention to new technological developments in hardware (mechanisms associated with physical world), software (mechanisms associated with computational world), netware (mechanisms associated with communications), and peopleware (mechanisms associated with human element). The changes experienced in the automotive industry exemplify the needs of the ever increasingly complex nature of today's modern enterprise. In other words, the ubiqui tous existence of the ";computing element" forces us to take into account disciplinary notions, ranging from psychology to ecology. In one word, the world is becoming transdisciplinary. In this world of transdisciplinary needs, we need to approach designing of enterprises as engineers, moving away from the traditional ad hoc approach of the past. This module expl ai n~ the changes to be made to current enterprise organization in order to be successful in the networked economy. A brief definition of Enterprise Engineering is given as an introduction, foJJowed by a summary of Enterprise Engineering subtopics, namely modeling, analysis, design, and implementation. In the last section of Part I, the definition of an intelJigent enterprise is made with an emphasis on knowledge management and integration using Extensible Markup Language (XML) technology [1]. 2 DEFINITION The Society for Enterprise Engineering (SEE) defined Enterprise Engineering as ";the body of knowledge, principles, and practices having to do with the analysis, design, implementation and operation of an enterprise" [2]. Enterprise Engineering methods include modeling, cost analysis, simulation, workflow analysis, and bottleneck analysis. 5 In a continually changing and unpredictable competitive environment, the Enterprise Engineer addresses a fundamental challen ge: ";How to design and improve all elements associated with the total enterprise through the use of engineering and analysis methods and tools to more effectively achieve itsgoals and objectives" [3]. Enterpr.ise Engineering has been considered as a disdpline after its establishment in the last decade of the 20th Century. The discipline has a wor]dvicw that is substantial enough to be divided into sub-areas, with a foundation resting on several reference disciplines. In the Enterprise Engineering worldview, the enterprise is viewed as a complex system of processes that can be engineered to accompli sh specific organizational objectives. Enterprise Engineering has used several reference disciplines to develop its methods, technologies, and theories. These reference disciplines can be listed as the following: Industrial Engineering, Systems Engineering, Information Systems, Information Technology, Business Process Reengineeling, Organizational Design, and Human Systems [2]. 2.1 Understanding Enterprise Engineering Like most engineering profession als, Enterprise Engineers work on four main areas: modeling, analyzing, design, and implementation. One important issue facing Enterprise Engi neering is the development of tools and techniques to support the work of analyzing, designing, and imp1ementjng organizational systems. These tools must assist enterprise engineers in the initial transformation of functional, often disjoint, operations into a set of integrated business processes replete with supporting information and control systems [4]. To develop new models of enterprises, the enterprise should be analyzed 6 using process analysis, simulation, activity-based analysis, and other tools. Also an abstract representation of the enterprise and the processes should be modeled in a graphical, textual, or a mathematical representation. The . design issues in Enterprise Engineering consist of developing vision and strategy, integration and improvement of the enterprise, and developing technology solutions. Lastly, implementation deals with the transformation of the entetprise, integration of corporate culture, strategic goals, enterprise processes, and technology. We will take a look at these areas in the fol1owing section: • Enterprise Engineering Modeling (EEM), • Analyzing Enterprises, • Design of Enterprises, and • Implementation. 2.2 Enterprise Engineering Modeling Enterprise Engineering Modeling (EEM) is basically dealing with the abstraction of engineering aspects of enterprises and connecting them to other business systems. The model encompasses engineering organizations' products, processes, projects, and, ultimately, the ";engineered assets" to be operated and managed. EEM coordinates design and deployment of products and assets at the enterprise level. It integrates engineering information across many disciplines, allows engineering and business data to be shared through the combinatjon of enterprise IT (information technology) and engineering IT, and simulates the behavior of intelligent, componentbased models [5). 7 The selection and design of enterprise processes for effective cooperation is a prime objective of Enterprise Engineering. Enterprise models can assist the goal of Enterprise Engineering by helping to represent and analyze the structure of activities and their interactions. Models eliminate the irrelevant details and enable focusing on one or more aspects at a time. Effective models also facilitate the discussions among different stakeholders in the enterprise, helping them to reach agreement on the key fundamentals and to work toward common goals. Also it can be a basis for other models and for different information systems that support the enterprise and the business. The enterprise model will differ according to the perspective of the pers.on creating the model, including the visions of the enterprise, its efficiency, and other various elements. The importance of an enterprise model is that it wm provide a simplified view of the business structure that will act as a basis for communication, improvements, or innovations and define the Information Systems requirements that are \ necessary to support the business. The term business in this context is used as a broad term. The businesses or the activities that can be represented with Enterprise Engineering models do not have to be profit making. For example, it can be a research environment with the properties of an enterprise. Any type of ongoing operation that has or uses resomces and has one or more goals, with positive or negative cash flow, can be referred to as a business [6]. The ideal business model would be a single diagram representing all aspects of a business. However this is impossible for most of businesses. The business processes are so complex that one diagram cannot capture all the information. Instead, a business model is composed of different views, diagrams, objects, and processes: A business 8 model is illustrated with a number of different views, and each captu~cs infmmation about one or more specific aspects of the businesses. Each view consists of a number of diagrams, each of which shows a specific part of the business structure. A diagram can show a ~1ructure (e.g., the organization of the business) or some dynamic collaboration (a number of objects and their interaction to demonstrate a process). Concepts are related in the diagrams through the use of different objects and processes. The objects may be physical such as people, machines, and products or more abstract such as instructions and services. Processes are the functions in the business that consume, refine, or use objects to affect or produce other objects. There are cunently hundreds of modeling tools for enterprises, and many modeling techniques such as Integrated Definition Language (IDEF), Petri-Net, Unified Mode1ing Language (UML), and meta-modeling. Modeling involves a modeling language and the associated modeling tools. Different enterprises may need different modeling tools according to the nature of the enterprise. Before selecting the modeling tool, a detailed analysis should be made to select the most appropriate modeling language and the tool. For the software industry, UML has become the standard modeJjng language [7]. 2.3 Enterprise Analysis The increasing complexity of enterprises has stimulated the development of sophisticated methods and tools for modeling and analysis of today's modern enterprises. Recent advances in information teclu1ology along with significant progress in analytical and computational techniques have facilitated the use of such methods in industry. 9 Applying Enterprise Analysis methods results in a documentation that supports a number of programs, which are as follows: strategic information resource planning, information architecture, technology and services acquisition, systems design and development, and functional process redesign. Most organizations have a wealth of data that can be used to answer the basic questions supporting strategic planning: who, what, where, and bow much. By modeling with these data using an Enterprise Analysis toolset, the enterptise models can be built incrementally and in less time. The most important use of Enterprise Analysis is that it presents the organization's own business, demographic, and workload data in a compelling manner to tell the story. Whether they are used to support programs for acquisitions, information architectures, or systems development, Enterprise Analysis studies are rooted in the business of the organization and thus are easily understood and supported by executive management. 2.4 Enterprise Design The design of an enterprise deaJs with many issues, including development of a vision and a strategy, the establishment of a corporate cu.lture and identity, integration and improvement of the enterprise, and development of technology solutions. Optimization of several perspectives within an enterprise is the objective of Enterprise Design. Examples of enterprise perspectives include quality, cost, efficiency, and agility ,. and management perspectives s uch as motivation, culture, and incentives. For example, consider the efficiency perspective. The modeling task will provide ontologies (i.e., object libraries) that can be used to construct a model of the activities of a process, such as its resource usages, constraints, and time. Based on these models the efficiency 10 perspective will provide tools to design, analyze, and evaluate organizational activities, processes, and structures. These tools will also be capable to represent and model the current status of an enterprise and to analyze and assess potential changes. One issue is wbetber there exists sufficient knowledge of the process of designing and optimizing business activities/processes to incorporate in knowledge-based tools. The main goal of an Enterprise Design application is to deveJ~p a software tool that enables a manager to explore alternative Enterprise Designs that encompass both the stmcture and behavior of the enterprise over extended periods of time. lssues such as motivation, culture, and incentives are explored, along with other relevant parameters such as organizational structure, functions, activity, cost, quality, and information [8]. 3 STRATEGY FORMULATION FORE-BUSINESS Electronic commerce is becoming a growing part of industry and commerce. The speed of technological change is enabling corporations large and small to transact business in a variety of ways. Today, it is routine practice to transact some aspect of business electronically from e-mail to exchanging data via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), World Wide Web (WWW), and various shades these technologies. Numerous benefits accrue to corporations when they use automated capabilities. In order to maximize such benefits, electronic enterprises must base their efforts on welJdeveloped strategies. In this manner, tbe probability of success is increased many folds. Embarking on electronic commerce or business should never be thought of as the sole quest of the information systems department. The following strategies are a synthesis of II best practices introduced to assist information systems departments to prepare the organization for the information age [9, 1 0]. 3.1 Strategy 1 - Improve Corporate System DeveJopment Skms In addition to developing technical skills, corporations must pay close attention to effective communication, eliminating cross-functional language barriers, and improving inadequate facilities in geographically dispersed systems. 3.2 Strategy 2 -Build a Proactive Infrastructure There must be a constant effort to keep up with technological changes. Frequently, these changes trickle down from the top as a result of various business strategies. For example, top managers may discover that they need video-conferencing capability, and the information technology people are under pressure to deliver it. This kind of approach will put the chief information officer(CIO) in a reactive posture, trying to put out fires as they appear. In putting out such fires, local resources may be used to satisfy higher level needs without any obvious benefits to local managers who may resent this fact and create barriers against success. CIOs should try to get the cooperation of all users in anticipating system needs. If users are not satisfied with an imposed system, they wiiJ try to build their bootleg systems for their own needs. Thus, project needs should be anticipated as far as possible and should be planned to meet both short-term goals of management and yield benefits for the development of the infrastmcture of the corporation in the Jong term. 12 3.3 Strategy 3 - Consolidate Data Centers A corporation embar1dng on developing an e-business system must realize that there do already exist semiautonomous data centers distributed throughout various geographical locations. There may have been a time when such data centers were desirable. Today, e-business demands integrated information systems, and the data centers must be consolidated. An integrated information system is far more effic ient in controlling corporate operations. Obviously, operating fewer facilities, maintaining minimum levels of inventory, and giving better service to customers will bring handsome returns to corporations. During the consolidation process, a number of problems of compatibility and standardization will occm, but tackling such problems is better than having semiautonomous data centers. 3.4 Strategy 4 - Standardize Data Structures As corporations grow, different data processing systems and data centers proliferate, especiaUy in transnational corporations. Consolidating data centers and systems as suggested in strategy 3 may not be sufficient. Corporations need to determine data needed at global levels and standarclize them. Standardization may not be possible for certain applications in an international setting since regulatory accounting of different countries may be a roadblock. However, this should not be taken as a signal for nonstandardization. Standardization will make useful information available throughout the corporation. For example, these days many corporations are adapting XML as part of data stmcture consolidation strategy. XML issues are addressed in the next section with more detail. 13 3.5 Strategy 5 - Accommodate Linkages with Cui-rent Strategic Allies and Provide Expansion for Future Str ategic Alliances Recent developments in globalization and Internet technology are spurring corporations to form sliategic alliances. Automobile manufacturers are, for example, forming alliances to influence prices and qualities of their raw materials and parts purchases. Similar alliances are growing at an accelerated pace in other industries. These alliances are designed to create not only purchasing power but also a variety of other mutual interests, from technological co-operation to joint production. 3.6 Strategy 6 - Globalize Human Resource Accounting As companies centralize their information systems through computerization, a global inventory of human skills should be developed. Frequent human resource problems arjse when Information Systems (IS) personnel focus locally rather than globally. Recmiting of specialists, for example, must be done not with a local perspective but with a global one. This will help eliminate possible redundancies with potential savings. 4 INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES Enterprises competing in global markets assume complex organizational forms such as supply chain, virtual enterprise, Web-based enterprise, production network, e-business, and e manufacturing. Common traits of these organizations are willingness to cooperate, global distributed product development and manufacturing, and high coordination and communication. These traits have led the trend of transformation from 14 capital intensive to intelligence intensive entetprises [1 1]. Visions of the organization's future e-Business roles as an intelligent enterprise could be formulated as follows [12]: • Transparent - Intelligent enterprises will contain substantial amounts of information on capabilities, capacities, inventories, and plans that can be exchanged between tools, servers, and optimizing agents that will augment capabilities of their human masters. • Timely - Intelligent enterprises will be designed to meet a customer need exactly when the customer wants it. • Tuned - Through collaboration and sharing of knowledge, the intel1igent enterprise wiJl serve customer needs with a mjnimum of wasted effort or assets. 4.1 Knowledge Management and Integration with XML One important challenge for enterprises today is storing and reusing knowledge. For many organizations, up-to-dale knowledge of what is relevant and important to customers distinguishes their offerings. The challenge is to assimilate this rapidly changing knowledge about products and services quickly and distribute it rapidly to leverage it for improved performance and quality service. This means finding all knowledge that is embedded in and accessed through technologies and processes and stored in documents and external repositories and being able to share it quickly with the customers. The capital-based organization needs to transform into bigh-perforrn.ing, processbased, knowledge-based enterprises, characterized by agility, f lexibility, adaptability, and willingness to learn. To overcome the difficulties during the transformation, powetful tools are needed to manage the knowledge within the enterprise and to develop the 15 communication between the company and the customers. The key tool to be used within this process is XML, which will set the standards of communication and wm help to manage the knowledge [13]. To understand how XML will help us managing the knowledge, a def111ition of a knowledge-based business is needed. 4.2 Knowledge-Based Businesses The following six characteristics of knowledge-based business were defined in Davis and Botkin [14]. ~hese characteristics are actually guidelines for businesses to put their information to productive use. 4.2.1 The More You Use Knowledge-Based Offerings, The Smarter They Get This characteristic fits in the customer-defined offerings the companies give. For example, a credit card company can build a system that could understand the buying patterns of a customer that can protect the customer from fraud. A news agency can change the interface of its system to give the type of news that a newspaper or journal requests. Knowledge-based systems not only get smcuter but also enable their users to learn. For example, General Motors' computer-aided maintenance system not only helps novice mechanics to repair automobiles but also helps expe1t mechanics to refine their knowledge. As the technology advances, the amount of information that a mechanic needs to know expands rapidly. With tllis system a mechanic can leverage the knowledge of all mechanics using the system. As a result, the system continually improves, as does the service quality. 16 4.2.2 Knowledge-Based Products And Services Adjust To Changing Circumstances When knowledge is built into a product, the product may adjust itself in a smart manner to changing conditions. For example, a glass window that may reflect or transmit sunlight according to temperature is such a product. Producing tbese producl:s will not only be marketed well but also have important economical advantages. Tbe smart pr~ducts will guide their users as well. 4.2.3 Knowledge-Based Businesses Can Customize l1teir Offerings Knowledge-based products and servkes can determine customers' changing paltems, idiosyncrasies, and specific needs. For example, a smart telephony system can understand which language will be used on specific num bers~ also by using the voice recognition system, the need for telephone credit cards can be diminished. 4.2.4 Knowledge-Based Products A11d Services Have Relatively Short Life Cycles Many knowledge-based products have short life cycles, because they depend on the existing market conditions; their viability is short-lived. For example, the foreign exchange advisory services offered by a commercial bank are highly specialized and customized for corporate clients. Such services should be constantly upgraded to keep the profits and the proprietary edge. 4.2.5 Knowledge-Based Businesses Enable Customers To Act In Real Time Information becomes more valuable when it can be acted on constantly. A system that will deliver the tour book information while you are driving the car will have a great 17 value. An interactivity. added to the system will make the product's value even higher. Knowledge-based products can also act in real time. For example, a copier machine that calJs the maintenance provider when an error occurs wiJJ have a great value in this sense. 4.3 XML's Role in Business Applications The smallest cluster of knowledge is data. These are basic building blocks of information that come in four particular forms: numbers, words, sounds, and images. Manipulation of the data determines its value. The arrangement of data into meaningful patterns is information. For example, numbers can be arranged in tables, which is information; a series of sounds, which is music, can also be considered as information. Today, an important challenge for Internet-based businesses is using the information efficiently and in a productive way that will upgrade the information to knowledge. Thus, we say that knowledge is the application and productive use of information. The shift from the information to knowledge age will be via technology. The new enabling technologies of software development such as XML, J2EE, and Visual Studio are forcing e-businesses to build knowledge-based businesses. Here we will explain the most important enabling technology, XML, within the development of e~businesses. XML can be used effecti~ely for exchanging of business documents and information over the Internet. XML is a standard language that simultaneously presents content for display on the Intemet and describes the content so that other software can understand and use the data. Therefore XML can be a medium through which any business application can share documents, transactions, and workload with any other 18 business application [15]. In other words, XML can become the common language of ebusi. ness and knowledge management. One impmtant property of XML is providing .information about the meaning of the data. Thus, an XML-Jonnatted document could trigger a software application at a receiving company to launch an activity such as shipment loading. But to provide that level of data integration, trading partners would have to agree on definiti ons for the various types of documents as well as standard ways of doing business. In addition to facilitating e-commerce, having common defini tions and uses for data also enable an enterprise to better leverage the .knowledge ctmenrly stored in information silos. XML supports the searching and browsing of such information sHos [16]. It structures documents for granularity, such as alJowing access to sections within documents and fine-tuning retrieval Also, it annotates documents, which enables users to not restrict themselves to what is in the document. XML organizes documents by classifying documents into groups and supports browsing them. AdditionaiJy, it has Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)-like linking options that help the information users to find the documents they arc seeking. Fig. I shows the tools that are common in the organization of information through XML. XML is the next evolution in knowledge management, and organizations are beginning to understand the potential of this technology to develop enterprise-wide information architectures. As a technology, XML does not bring any value to an organization. The value of XML wHI depend on how it js used within a company. The agreement on data definitions within an enterprise has always been a hard task. At rn.inlmum, XML should be implemented strategically within the organization. Ideally, the 19 Annotate Documents I RDF I Schemas J:: I XML I (.---, X-Poin- ter--, Fig. 1. Organization of information through XML. implementation should include strategic partners and other organizations that have a need to share data and information. XML is a majm advance in the standardization of information sharing across traditional information boundaries, both internal and external Information security and privacy issues are major concerns revolving around customer and corporate data flowing across wires. Successful knowledge management in a company often depends on having access to information outside the enterprise walls. XML can also be of value here by helping to improve the functioning of supply chains and the extranet. In conclusion, it becomes obvious that managing knowledge requires better tools. We need to create systems that manage documents, as people would do, and we know that better tools need better documents. Thus by building on a solid knowledge management strategy using XML, we believe an organization can gain competitive differentiation in the near future. 20 PART II INTERNET ENTERPRISE IMPLEMENTATION CONSIDERATIONS 1 INTRODUCTION In the first section of this module we introduced essential elements of enterprise engineering in abstract and general terms. Building on the notions explored in the first section, we will address here, specifics concerning designing and implementation of Internet enterprises. In this section, a review is provided of the key concepts and concerns an Internet enterprise engineering (IEE) project would encounter and need to address. Business engineering fundamentals, technologies, and strategies for the lrlternet such as Unified Modeling Language, Cosmos Model, Enterprise Maturity Model, Web Business . Models, Methods of Electronic Transaction, Online Contracts, Security Protocols, selected integrated development tools, Next Generation Internet, and Internet2 arc covered. Over 20 occupational roles within IEE are identified and described separately. A technology implementation platform and strategy are introduced, along with marketing and customer retention technologies and strategies on the Internet A detailed overview is provided of the various Internet business tools, technologies, and terminology for the systematic construction of new ventures on the Internet l7]. For convenience, all these issues are summarized in table fmm at the end of this section. 2 BUSINESS ENGINEERING FUNDAMENTALS 2.1 UML: Officially introduced in November 1997, UML has quickly become the standard modeling language for software development [6]. It bas a business model approach that provides a plan for engineering an orchestrated set of business functions. It 21 provjdes a framework by which business is to be performed, allowing for changes and various improvements in the process. The model is designed to be able to anticipate changes in business function in order to maintain an edge on the competition. One of the advantages of modeling in UML is that it can visually depict functions, relationships, and paradigms. UML is a recommended tool for business analysts to break down a large-scale business operation into its constituent parts. Capturing a business model in one diagram is not realistic, so it should be noted that a business model is actually composed of a number of different views. Each view is designed to capture a separate purpose or function without losing any important overall understanding of the business operation. A view is composed of a set of diagrams, each of which shows a specific aspect of the business structure. A diagram can show a structure or a kind of dynamic collaboration. The diagrams contain objects, processes, rules, goals, and visions as defined in the business analysis. Objects contain information about mechanisms in the business, and processes are functions that use objects to affect or produce other objects. Objectoriented techniques can be used to describe a business. There are similar concepts in business functions that mn parallel to object-oriented techniques of designconceptualization. Another advantage of UML is derived from the ability of business modelers and software developers to use the same conceplualization tools and techniques to achieve a common business end. Additionally, the power of UML is derived :from its ability to transcend tbe standard organizational chart [ 17]. 22 2.2 Cosmos Model: A generic approach for a business to manage change is through a holistic framework as described by Yeh in his three-dimensional model called Cosmos (Fig. 1). One of the important aspects of this model is that three dimensions exist interdependently because each dimension behaves as an enabler and an inhibitor to the other dimensions. The ";activity structure" dimension covers how work is structured in an organization, factoring in the steps and tasks that are taken to achieve an appropriate level of workflow. The ";infrastructure dimension" covers how resources are allocated and factors in the assets of an enterprise. The ";coordination dimension" covers how information is created, shared, and distributed. The cultural aspects of the enterprise are factored in here. The Cosmos model provides a conceptual space bounded by concrete factors for successfully navigating from one point of an organizational situation to another. Infrastructure Long-term vs. short-term objectives Activity Structure Stability vs. Flexibility Target Coordination Structure Modu]arity vs. Interconnectedness Fig. l. Cosmos model--holistic framework for managing change. [13) 23 The Cosmos model is an abstract tool for managers to guide their company along the best possible path. The trade-offs between the three dimensions at each point in the journey along the path are what the manager must determine to be most effective and best for the organization as a whole. In the case of work structure, there is an inherent tradeoff between stability and flexibility. In the case of a coordination structure, there is a tradeoff between strictly aligning of human resources with company objectives and providing each operating unit with sufficient autonomy. More autonomous organizations are generally organized with a greater degree of modularity, allowing for the ability to make rapid decisions by adapting to changing market conditions. In the case of infrastlucture, there is a trade-off between seeking short-term gain versus long-term gain. Overall, the Cosmos mode] provides an executive or project manager with another technique to visualize the overaJJ situation and path of an organization by laking into account the three dimensions that correspond to the three main forces that affect its future [ 18]. 2.3 Enterprise Maturity Model: In order to characterize a business in terms of its level of maturity, focus, activity, coordination, and infrastructure, please refer to Table l, provided by Yeh [18]. The table provides an overview of the various levels of enterprise maturity. 2.4 Web Business Models: Entrepreneurs who wish to start e-businesses need to be aware of e-business models and how to implement them effectively. The combination 24 of a company's policy, operations, technology, and ideology defines its business model. Table 2 describes in more detail the types of business models in existence today [6, 19]. 2.5 IVIethods of Elech·onic Transaction: There are various methods and mechanisms that merchants can collect income through electronic transactions. Table 3 provides the types of transactions covered such as credit card, e-walJets, debit cards, digital currency, peer-to-peer, smartcards, micro-payments, and e-billing [19]. 2.6 OnJine Contracts: An online contract can be accomplished throt1gh the use of a digital signature. Digital signatures are the electronic equivalent of written signatures. The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act of 2000 (E-sign Bi11) recently passed into law were developed for use in public-key cryptography to solve the problems of authentication and integrity. The purpose of a digital signature is for electronic authorization. The U.S. government's digital authentication standard is called the Digital Signature Algorithm. The U.S. government also recently passed digitalsignature legislation that makes digital signatures as legally bindiqg as handwritten signatures. This legislation is designed to promote more activity in e-business by legitimizing online contractual agreements. 2.7 Security Protocols: Netscape Communkations developed the SSL protocol, developed as a non-proprietary protocol commonly used to secure communication on the Internet and the Web. SSL is designed to use public-key technology and digital 25 certificates to authenticate the server. in a transaction and to protect private information as it passes from one party to another over the Tnternet. SSL can effectively protect information as it is passes through the Internet but does not necessarily protect private information once stored on the merchant's server. An example of private information would be credit card numbers. When a merchant receives credit-card information with an order, the information is often decrypted and stored on the merchant's server until the order is placed. An insecure server wi th data that are not encrypted is vulnerable to unauthorized access by a third party to that information. SET protocol was developed by Visa International and MasterCard and was designed speci.tically to protect e-commerce payment transactions [20]. SET uses digital certificates to authenticate each party in an e-commerce transaction, including the customer, merchant, and the merchant's bank. In order for SET to work, merchants must have a digital certificate and special SET software to process transactions. Additionally, customers must have complementary digital certificate and digital walJet software. A digital wallet is similar to a real wallet to the extent that it stores credit (or debit) card information for multiple cards, as well as a digital certificate verifying the cardholder's identity. Digital wallets add convenience to online shopping because customers no longer need to re-enter their credit card information at each shopping site. 2.8 Integrated Tool Example: Drumbeat 2000: Macromedia Drumbeat 2000 is a tool capable of accepting and delivering complex infmmation and functionality through a web-interface [21]. The tool aids a visually skilled Web designer in competitively building a website without necessarily having to do any coding, which is useful in the 26 initial prolotyping phase. It is a tool that can interact with the back-end database with the ability to build a user-friendly client-side using Active Server Page (ASP) Web technology. ASP technology enables a real-time connection to the database, so any changes made to the database are immediately re flected on the client side. Macromedia D1umbeat 2000 claims to provide everything needed to build dynamic Web applications and online stores visually at a fraction of the typical development time and expense. The designers of Drumbeat 2000 also cl aim that the development environment can keep up with continuously evolving web technology, thus making it a future-oriented technology. 2.9 NGI: This initiatjve is a mulli-agency Federal research and development program began on October 1, 1997 with the participation of the following agencies: DARPA, DOE, NASA, NIH, NIST, and NSF (Table 4). These agencies arc charged with the responsibility of developing advanced networking technologies and revolutionary applications that require advanced networkjng. 2.10 Internet2: The Intemet2 is a consortium of over 180 uruversit ies leading the way towards a partnership with industry and government to develop advanced network applications and technologies in order to accelerate formation of a more advanced Internet. The primary goals of Internct2 are to create a leading edge network capability for the national research community, enable revolutionary Internet applications, and ensure the rapid transfer of new network services and applications to the broader Internet community. Through Intemet2 working groups and initiatives, Internet2 members are 27 collaborating on advanced app.lications, middleware, new networking capabilities, advanced network infrastructure, partnerships, and alliances [22). 3 OCCUPATIONAL ROLES IN illE In order to build, deploy, and maintain an Internet Enterprise, certain roles and positions most be filled for the organization to be effective. Table 5 lists and describes many of the relevant roles required within an enterprise initiative, such as Chief Privacy Officer (CPO), in addition to the more traditional organizational roles such as Chief Executive Ofilcer (CEO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) [20, 23]. 4 TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATION AND STRATEGY 4.1 Microsoft Dotsmart Initiative: There are various approaches to imp.lementing strategic planning and technology implementations. For illustrative purposes, Microsoft is considered in this thesis to be one such approach for enterprise planning. Once the overall conceptualization and business pattern is created and a.ll the necessary occupational roles within the organization are identified, it is necessary to identify exactly which technology to utilize in order to build and implement the business venture. As the requirements of a business are analyzed, a useful guide is the Microsoft Dotsmarl Initiative. This mode of business analysis will help determine which business engineering concepts to use and what kinds of personnel are needed to 1un the operation. Additionally, the Microsoft Dotsmatt Initiative provides key points to address when building an Intemet operation from scratch. 28 4.2 Microsoft Technology Centers (MTCs): MTCs are areas designed for groups of entrepreneurs, Information Technology personnel, and businessmen for the rapid development. of robust e-commerce solutions. At these facilities, developers, entrepreneurs, and high-technology business persons use Microsoft Technology and the relevant knowledge to build enterprise solutions. The centers provide the essentials a team would need to develop an enterptise from the initial conception of the idea to launch. Microsoft provides essential equipment, support, and expe11ise, with an application of a ";best-practices" approach. These best practices have been tested before at MTCs, expediting the development progress and time to market. Laboratory sessions are designed to bring together an assortment of entrepreneurial individuals as they facilitate the development process using the latest Microsoft products. The MTCs offer customers wishing to capitalize on emerging Microsoft.NET technologies the service, infrastltlctme, and development environment to accelerate their projects and reduce thejr risk. The working laboratory is intended to help customers develop and test next-genera6on e-commerce technologies and demonstrate further the value of Windows platforms and other industry-standard systems for powering ebusiness. 4.3 Impact of XML: XML represents a more general way of defining text-based/ documents compared to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Both HTML and XML descend from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). The greatest difference between HTML and XML is the flexibi lity of the allowable tag found in XML. An XMLbased document can define its own tags, in addition to including a set of tags defined by a 29 third-party. This ability may become very useful for those applications that need to deal with very complex data structures. An example of an XML-based language is the Wireless Markup Language (WML). WML essentially allows text pm1ions of Web pages to be displayed on wireless devices, such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). WML works with the Wireless AppHcation Protocol (W AP) to deliver this content. WML is similar to HTML but does not require input devi ces such as a keyboard or mouse for navigation. In the case of a PDA thal requests a Web page on the Intemet, a WAP gateway receives the request, translates it, and sends it to the appropriate Internet server. In response, the server replies by sending the requested WML document. The WAP gateway parses this document's WML and sends the proper text to the PDA. This introduces the element of device portability. 4.4 Microsoft.Net Initiative: Microsoft announced a new generation of software called Microsoft .NET. This software is intended to enable every developer, business, and consumer to benefit from the combination of a variety of new Internet devices and programmable Web services that characte1ize NGI. Microsoft is trying to create an advanced new generation of software that wiiJ drive NGI. This initiative is called Microsoft.NET and it.s key purpose is to make information available at any time, in any place, and on any device. 4.5 Microsoft BizTalk 0 1·chestration: For IEE purposes, BizTalk Server 2000 is the considered a nex t-generation software that plays an important role in forming the infrastructure and tools for building successful e-commerce communities. The core of 30 BizTalk Server offers business document routing, transformation, and tracking infras tructure that is mles based. BizTalk Server offers many services that allow for quickly building dynamic business processes for smooth integration of applications and business partners while utilizing pubJic standards to ensure interoperability. Essentially, BizTalk server provides a method to build dynamic business processes quickly. 4.6 Back-end Configurations Using Microsoft Technology: In the design of the backend of a website, special considerations must be given to security. This is done by providing a kind of safety buffer from the greater world of the Internet using a demiUtarized-zone (DMZ) strategy. The components of a DMZ such as the firewall, the front-end network, the back-end nelwork, and the secure network function as a security buffer from the outside world. 4.7 Rapid Economic Justification (RE.fl: The REJ framework makes it possible for IT and business executives to demonstrate how specific investments in IT will eventually benefit the business, ensuring in the process that the IT projects are aligned with the specific business strategies and priorities. IT investments play a critical role in Internet enterprises. Important decision-making at the early stages of any venture does require an effective methodology to identify the best strategic IT investments. Leaders in the upper echelon of organizations such as CEOs, CTOs, and CFOs are being overwhelmed with complex information. REJ may prove to be a reliable method to quickly evaluate the true value worth and potential of a company by taking into consideration its intangible IT assets. 31 In the past, companies developed metrics for the valuation of IT investments on the basis of cost improvements. Metric methodologies have focused on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), whereas the strategic role of IT in boosting new opportunities for business has been largely ignored. Understandably, the benefits of IT can be traced to ways of measuring business value the traditional way. Unfortunately, current business practices are not necessarily adequately equipped to handle the complexities of the New Economy. Although the economic justification of IT projects has been researched extensively in the past decade, the problem is that these metiJods and techniques require too much data-crunching power and time to prepare. These unwieldy research techniques need to be replaced by a new and practical approach to quantify swiftly and accurately the true value of IT investments. 5 MARKETING AND CUSTOMER RETENTION 5.1 Online Marketing: The Internet provides marketers with new tools and convenience that can considerably increase the success of their marketing efforts. An Internet marketing campaign such as advertising, promotions, public relations, partnering and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are all an integral prut of the marketing process. Table 6 describes the various techniques at the marketer's disposal when using the Internet as the medium of customer information delivery [19]. 5.2 CRM Systems: CRM is a general but systematic methodology using both business and technological techniques to maintain and grow a business's customer base. CRM systems enable a business to keep detaj led records on the activity of its c ustomers 32 by using new, sophisticated tracking systems on the Internet. Table 7 shows various areas where CRM technology and CRM business techniques can assist in managing a customer base [19]. 5.3 Web Design Technology Example: Dreamweaver Technology: Macromedia Dreamweaver is Web technology for building websites on the Internet without the need for programming directly in HTivlL [21]. Also, Web designers are easily able to create Web-based leaming content with Dreamweaver 4.0. A Web designer has the ability to create site maps of the website that can be easily maintained and enhanced. This is a very popular technology available on the market that can be used to make professional quality websites for marketing and promotional purposes. 5.4 Web Enhancement Technology Example: Flash Technology: Macromedia Flash is a multimedia technology for applications on the Web. This technology gives the user, especially one not artistically talented, the ability to develop interactive animations that can look quite impressive. A flash movie can be embedded into a Web site or run as a standalone program, and Flash is compatible with Dreamweaver. Flash movies can be made with sound and animation, so it is useful as a software tool to produce demonstrations at the user-interface. Flash can be used on CD-ROMs and allows for the construction of cross-platform audio/video animations and still jmages. 33 \ 6 SUMI\-IARY TABLES We would like to reiterate emphasis areas for Electronic Enterprise as listed in the introduction of this module. These are a) hardware (mechanisms associated with physical world), b) software (mechanisms associated with computational world), c) netware (mechanisms associated with communications), and d) peopleware (mechanisms associated with human element) [23, 24]. Following tables provide a useful Jist in all these areas. For convenience, we include all summary tables in following order: Table 1 Enterprise Maturity Levels Table 2 Web Business Models Table 3 Electronic Transactions Table 4 NGI Participating Agencies Table 5 Occupational Roles in lEE Table 6 Marketing Techniques on the Internet Table 7 Customer Relationship Management 34 Table 1 Enterprise Maturity Levels Levels Focus Activity Coordination Infrastructure 5. Whole Human-society Process Self-directed teams Long-term oriented; in engineering dominate orientation, harmony with methodology workplace; toLal personal mastery, nature, people institutionalized; alignment; open, heavy investments routinely do the Flexible and honest in IT, continuous right things: predictable communication improvement change is second process, right the channels institutionalized nature first time, value- throughout adderl activities only 4. Wise Stakeholders and Process monitored Organjzational Organi:z.ation community automatically for structure based on competency oriented in high performance; cross-trained case management; harmony with dominated by teams; vision continuing community; value-added al igned with the education; team-people routinely activities; high needs of the based structure; doing things right. degrl:e of society tenm-oriented HR Changes are concurrency; few policy planned and handoffs mannged 3. Mature Customer oriented; Process defined Vision defined Integrated customer's needs and is measured with extensive capacity, are anticipated; buy-ins, multi- con sol ida ted people are proud to functional project function; work here teams exist; investment in participatory training and work culture with force planning; managers as flattened coaches organization 2. Stable Competition- Process under Internal focus, Short-term focus, oriented reactive statistical control; control oriented, fragmented bench-marking as functional division capacity, little IT, a result of reaction, hierarchical, inflexible process, difficult to get has many information, no handoffs and a formal HR policy substantial number of non-value-added tasks I . Ignorant Disoriented- Fire-fighting Ad- No clear vision, Don' t know where chaotic hoc, unpredictable, resources exist fragmented Rumor mill rampant 35 e-Business Model Storefront Model Auction Model Portal Model Dynamic Pricing Model Comparison Pricing Model Demand-Sensitive Pricing Model Table 2 Web Business Models Description The~ storefront model is what many persons think of when they bear the word ebusiness. The storefront model combines transaction processing, security, online payment and information storage to enable merchants to sell their products on lhe web. This is a basic form of e-commcrce where the buyer and seller interact directly. To conduct storefront c-commerce, merchants need to organize an online catalog of products, take orders through their Web sites, accept pnyments in a secure envi ronment, send merchandise to customers, and manage customer data. One of the most commonly used e-commercc enablers is the shopping cart. This order-processing technology allows customers to accumulate items they wish to buy as they continue to shop. www.amazon.com is a good example. Forrester Research reveals that an estimated $3.8 billion will be spent on online person-to-person auctions in the year 2000 alone. This number is expected to rise to $52 billion for Business-to-Business (B2B) auctions. Usually auction sites act as forums through which Internet users can log-on and assume the role of either bidder or seller. As a seller, you are able to post an item you wish to sell, the minimum price you require to sell it, your item, and a deadline to close the auction. As a bidder, you may search the site for availability of the item you are seeking, view lhe current bidding activity and place a bid. They usually do not involve themselves in payment and delivery. www.ebay.com is a good example. Portal sites give visitors the chance to find almost everything they are looking for in one place. They often offer news, sports, and weather, as weU as the ability to search the Web. Search engines are h01i zontal portals, or portals that aggregate information on a broad range of topics. Yahoo! at www.yahoo.com is an example of a horizontal portal. America Online (AOL) www.aol.com is an example of a vertical portal because it is a community-based site. The Web has changed the way business is done and the way products are priced. Companies such as Priceline (www.pricelinc.com) and Imandi (www.imandi.com) have enabled customers to name their prices for travel, homes, automobiles, and consumer goods. The name-your-price model empowers customers by allowing them to choose their price for products and services. The comparison pricing model allows customers to polJ a variety of merchants and find a desired product or service at the lowest price (i.e. www.bottomdollar.com). The Web has enabled customers to demand bener, faster service at cheaper prices. It has also empowered buyers to shop in large groups to achieve a group rate (i.e., www.rnercata.com). Customers become loyal to Mercata because it helps them save money. 36 e-Business Model Bartering Model Advertising Model Procurement Model B2B Service Provider Model · Online Trading Model Online Lending Model Online Recruiting Model Online Travel Service Model TabJe 2 (Continued) Description A popular method of conducting e-business is bartering, offering one item in exchange for anotiier. If a business is looking to get rid of an overstocked product, iSolve ~isolve.com) can help sell it PotenHal customers send their pricing pre ferences to the merchant who evaluates the offer. Deals are often part barter and part cash. Examples of items typically bartered are overstocked inventory items, factory surplus, and unneeded assets. Forming business models around advertising-driven revenue streams is the advertising model. Television networks, radio stations, magazines, and print media usc advertising to fund their operations and make a profit. www.Iwon.com is a portal site that rewards users with raffle points as they browse the site's content. www.freemerchant.com offers free hosting, a free store builder, a free shopping cart, free traffic logs, free auction tools and all the necessary elements for running an e-commerce storefront. Frccmerchanl makes money from its strategic partnerships and referrals. The procurement model means acquiring goods and services with effective supply chain management via a B2B Exchange. ICG Commerce Systems (www.icgcommerce.com) is a site that enables businesses, customers, suppliers, purchasers, and any combination of these to interact and conduct transactions over the Internet. The system supports B2B, B2C, and all variations of these models. · B2B service providers make B2B transactions on the Internet easier. These e-businesscs help other businesses improve policies, procedures, customer service, and general operations. Ariba (www.ariba.com) is a B2B service provider. The online trading model is essentially securities trading on the Internet. Trading sites allow you to research securities and to buy, sell, and manage all of your investments from your desktop; they usually cost less. Charles Schwab (www.schwab.com) is a notable example. Companies are now making loans online. E-loan (www.eloan.com) offers creditcard services, home equity loans, and the tools and calculators to help you make educated borrowing decisions. Recruiting and job searching can be done effectively on the Web whether you are an employer or a job seeker. Refer.com (www.refer.com) rewards visitors for successful job referrals. Web surfers can search for and arrange for all their travel and accommodations online, and can often save money doing so. Cheaptickets (www.cheaptic kets.com) .is a similar site that helps customers find discount fares for airl.ine tickets, hotel rooms, cruise vacations and rental cars. 37 e-Business Model Online Entertainment Model Energy Distribution Model Braintrust Model Online Learning Model Click-and-Mortar Model Table 2 (Continued) Description The entertainment industry has recognized this and has leveraged its power to sell movie tickets, albums and any other entertainment-related content they can fit on a Web page. ICast.corn (www.icast.com) is a multimedia-rich entertainment site. A number of companies have set up energy exchanges where buyers and sellers come together to corrununicate, buy, sell, and distribute energy. These companies sell crude oil, electricity, and the products and systems for distributing them. Altranet (_www.altranet.com) also sells energy commodities. Companies can buy patents and other intellectual property online. Yet2 (www.yct2.com) is an e-business designed to help companies raise capital by selling intellectuaJ property such as patents and trademarks. Universities and corporate-training companies offer high-quality distance education directly over the Web. Click2learn ~www.click2 1earn.com) has created a database of products and services to elp mdtvtdunls and companies fi.nd the education they need. Brick-and-mortar companies who wish to bring their businesses to the Web must determine the level of cooperation and integration the two separate entities will share. A company that can offer its services both offline and o nline is called click-and-mortar, such as Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com). 38 Electronic Transaction T e Credit Card Transactions E-wallets Debit cards Digital Currency Table 3 Electronic Transactions Descrjption Merchant must have a merchant. account with a bank. Specialized Internet merchant accounts have been established to handle online credit card transactions. These transactions are processed by banks or third-party services. To faci litate the credit card process, many companies are introducing electronic wallet services. E-wallets allow you to keep track of your billing and shipping information so it can be entered with one click. Banks and businesses are also creating options for online payment that do not involve credit cards. There are many forms of digital currency; digital cash is one example. It is stored electronically and can be used to make online electronic payments. Digjtal cash is often used with other payment technologies such as digital wallets. Digital cash allows people who do not have credit cards to shop online, and merchants accepting digital-cash payments avoid creditcard transaction fees. 39 Examples Companies like Cybercnsh (www.cybercash.com) and ICat (www.icat.com) enable merchants to accept credit card payments online like www.Charge.com. www. visa.com offers a variety of ewallets. Entrypoint.com offers a free, personalized desktop toolbar that includes an e-wallct to facltitate one click shopping at its affiliate stores. In order to standardize e-wallet technology and gain wider acceptance among vendors, Visa, Mastercard, and a group of e-wallet vendors have standardized the technology with the Electronic Commerce Modeling Language (ECML), unveiled in June 1999 and adopted by many online vendors. Companies such as AroeriNet allow merchants to accept a customer's checking-account number as a valid form of payment. AmeriNet provides authorization and account settlement, handles distribution and shipping (fulfi11ment), and manages customer service inquiries. E-Cash Technologies (www.ccas.b.com) is a secure digitalcash provider that allows you to withdraw funds from your traditional bank account. Gift cash is another form of digital currency that can be redeemed at leading shopping sites. Web. Flooz (www.Jlooz.wm) is an example of gift currency. Some companies offer points-based rewards. www.beenz.com is an international, points-based currency system. Electronic Transaction Peer-to-peer Smart Cards Micropaymenls Table 3 (Continued) Description Peer-to-peer transactions allow online monetary transfers between consumers. A card with a computer chip embedded on its face is able to hold more information than an ordinary credit card with a magnetic strip. There are contact and contactless smartcards. Similar to smart cards, ATM cards can be used to make purchases over the Internet. Merchants must pay for each credit card transaction that is processed. The cost of some items could be lower than the standard transaction fees, causing merchants to incur losses. Micropayments, or payments that generally do not exceed $10.00, offer a way for companies offering nominal.ly priced products and services to generate a profit. 40 Examples cCash runs a peer-to-peer payment services that allows the transfer of digital cash via email between two people who have accounts at eCashcnablcd banks. Pay Pal offers a digital payment system known as X payments. PayPal allows a user to send money to anyone with an email nddress, regardless of what bank either person uses or whether the recipient is pre-registered with the service. EConnect has technology in the form of a device that connects to your computer and scrambles financial data, making it secure to send the data over the Internet. EpocketPay is another product developed by eConnect that allows a consumer to make secure purchases from the ePocketPay portable device. This device acts as a cell phone with a card reader built into it and will allow you to make secure purchases anywhere. Millicent js a micropayment technology provider. Millicent handles all of the payment processing needed for the operation of an e-busi ness, customer support, and distribution services. Millicent's services are especially useful to companies that offer subscription fees and small pay-per-download fees for digjtal content. c-Billi ng Electronic llill Presentment and payment (EllPP) offers the ability to present a company's bill on multiple platforms online. Payments arc generally electronic transfers from consumer checking accounts. 41 The Automated Clearing House (ACH) is the current method for processing electronic monetary transfers. Table4 NGI Participating Agencies _A~c~ro~t~1Y~n_l_ _~ E_x~p_a_n_si~n --- ~ --- ~--~ --- DARPA Defense Advnnced Research Projects Agency DOE Department of Energy (beg inning in PY 1999) NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration NIH National Insti tutes of Health NIST National Institute of Standards and Tec hnology NSF National Science Foundation 42 Occupation Entrepreneur e-Commerce Program Manager Enterprise Architect Business and Infonnation Architect Table 5 Occupational Roles in illE Descdptjon An entrepreneur on the Internet is usually the person with the initial idea for the entire business and is involved in its early stages of inception before official management takes over. e-Commerce Program Managers are involved in enterprise-wide ecommerce initiatives and projects, managing e-cornmerce integration and overall business and technology architecture and infrastn1cture. Usually, they arc senior-level line managers who are effective at uniting the business and technology front by coordinating units within an organization and across the extended enterprise. Enterprise Arc hitects are involved in the definition, alignment, and refinement of the overall ente rprise architecture. Their responsibilities include seeing to it that many of the tasks of program management are can·ied out properly. More important, they must provide guidance so individual projects can make optimal use of infrastructure resources for e-Cornmerce. A balancing act between business requirements and tcchnologicnl capabilities is accomplished through their efforts . Enterprise Architects have a duty to identify the requirements, goals, and constraints of the project. They allocate responsibilities for each of the architectural elements. They are also responsible for lhe coordination of the modeling and design activities for the overall enterprise architecture. They are the chief e-commerce architects because they coordinate the work information, infrastructure and application architects. All architects and modelers should be completely capable in design patterns common to the many facets of business and technology. The design pattern movement has affected all aspects of analysis, design, and implementation of componentbased systems. Design patterns are the reusable material of architecture and have an important role in the complex distributed information systems lhat are conceived and developed today. Business and Information Architects have business domain knowledge, including business processes and logical information structures. They coordinate the work of business and technology analysts and modelers who develop abstract representations or business object models of the subjects, rules, roles, events, tasks, activities, and policies of the business domain. Application-neutral models that are built enable the reuse of business engineering analysis and design patterns and artifacts 43 Occupation Infrastructure Architect Application Architect Humru1 Factors Engineer Business Manager Internet Commerce Architect Table 5 (Continued) Description Infrastructure Architects identify the technical services required of the technology infrastructure to empower and support the logical busi ness and information architecture. They evaluate existing infrastructure services, s\~l ect those appropriate to a given project and acquire (via build or buy) new components needed in the infrastructure. They oversee the work of technical specialists in modeling the service architecture of the technical infrastmcturc. They maintain the technical components of the development repository. Application Architects coordinate the business process modeling activities across multiple projects and business domains. They coordinate the work of domain modelers and maintain the repository of business and component models. They evaluate existing business component services, sclectthose appropriate to a given project and (via build or buy) new components needed in the evolving business model. They maintain the business application components of thC development repository. Most importantly. tl1ey guide solution developers in blending the business object model with the infrastruchJre services needed to implement the models in an e~com merce platform. Human Factors Engineers are needed to design the next generation of user interfaces. While the graphical user Interface (GUD is recognized as the enabler of wide-spread personnl computing, task centered user interfaces provide assistance to end-users and can be a boon to productivity in the world of e-commerce. E-commerce transactions can involve a multitude of complex steps and processes. Well-designed user interfaces can help navigate and guide the user through these tasks, keeping track of the progress, and picking up where users leave off when transactions span multiple sessions of work. The Business Manager is responsible for the business approach on the Internet, creating and operating the Internet presence for the business, deciding what products and services are sold online, determining pricing, and establishing the key business relationships needed lo make a venture successful. This is primarily a business role, with particular attention paid to the success of the online business and bottom line. The Internet Commerce Architect is generally a systems analyst who turns the business requirements into a system design that incorporates the creation and management of content, the tnmsaction processing, fulfillment, and technical aspects of customer service 44 Occupation Solution Developer Content Designer Content Author Implementor Database Administrator Internet Sales and Marketing Customer Service Representative T~lble 5 (Continued) Description Solution Developers are application developers. They develop the use cases for the specific application at hand, compose solutions through extensive use of business object models, and use repositories. They assemble application components to implement c-commercc application. Unlike conventional programmers or programmer/analysts, they do not build or pmgram components. Instead, they assemble or glue together business solut ions from prefabricated components. They use highly integrated development environments (IDEs) such as IBM's VisuaiAge, Symantec's Visual Caf6, Sybase's PowcrJ, and Inprise's Jbuilder. Emerging Computer Assisted Software Engineering (CASE) tools and related methods will likely appear that tighten the link between business modeling and software development. Tools for understanding and managing business processes, such as Inte11icorp's LiveModel allows solution developers to build logical business that can automate the configuration and management of the SAP/R3 ERP system. The Content Designer is responsible for the look and feel of an Internet commerce system, including the graphic design, page layout, and user experience. The Content Author creates or adapts product information into a form that can be used for internet commerce, working within the design laid out by the content designer. The Impleme::ntor is responsible for creating any programs or software extensions needed to make the Internet commerce system work. For example, an Implementor might write the software or construct an ASP page using Drumbeat 2000 that takes product information from a database and dynamically renders it into a Web page. In the case that a database is used in the back-end, the Database Administrator (DBA) manages the creation and operation of the database to ensure its reliability, integrity, and performance. The Sales and Marketing team is responsible for focused efforts in promoting Internet-based commerce. Customer Service Representatives answer questions about products, assist buyers with registration or the purchasing of goods and services. 45 Occupation Component Developer Operations Manager System Supervisor System Administrator Security Officer Fulfillment Agent CPO Internet Lawyer Internet Accountant Table 5 (Continued) Description Component Developers usually build components in the form of coding projects. They are masters of component technology and know the intricacies of composition, delegation, and object-oriented systems analysis and design. They are proficient in component development languages (such as Java and C++), modeling standards (such as UMLand XMI), and distributed computing platforms (such as CORBA, DCOM, EJB). They understand and think in terms of architectural design patterns. In the meanti me, they will close the gap between business requirements and available components. Component developers must be highly qualified software engineers since quality'components do not just happen. They are carefully constructed using quality soflware engineering disciplines. Component Developers, therefore, must be highly trained specialists and masters of software quality processes such as CMM and ISO, as well as masters of component-based development methods. The Operations Manager is responsible for managing all service activities for the Internet commerce system. The System Supervisor manages the system staff. The System Administrator is responsible for the technical operations of the computer systems and networks. The Security Officer ensures that appropriate security measures have been taken in the design and implementation of the Internet commerce system. The Fulfillment Agent is responsible for shipping and handling of physical goods or delivery of services. In the case of digital goods, the fulfillment agent is responsible for overseeing the operation of the fulfillment system. The Chief Privacy Officer is io charge of measures for ensuring the security of vital company information, such as customer credit card numbers remains secure within the company network. An Internet Lawyer is a legal expert for Internet fu nctions. The .importance of this position cannot be overstated, because new laws and regulations could ki ll a company without legal assistance, prevention, or intervention. The Internet Accountant is responsible for ensuring that the proper accounting procedures have been followed for Internet-based transactions. 46 Technique Domain name FAQ Forum Networking Faci litation Promotions c-Business advertising Pay-per-click Pay-per-lead Pay-per-sale Webcasting Interactive Advertising Public Relations and press releases Trade shows Table 6 Marketing Techniques on the Internet Description The Universal Resource Locator (URL) represents the address of the domain name, which must be chosen with care because it reflects the company's values immediately and connotes immediate meaning to customers with its first impression. One can purchose a domain name at www.networksolutions.com. A frequently asked questions (FAQ) section contributes to a userfiiendly site. An onli ne forum on the website enables customers to congregate at a pre-de~ign at cd place on the site to post comments and to share ideas. This promotes site activi ty. It is important to make it easy for the customer to recommend a site to a friend. This can be accomplished with a quick button that brings up an email exchange. c-Business promotions can attract visitors to your s ite and can influence purchasing. Netcenlives.com is a company that can provide your business with customer reward programs. P ublicizing through traditional channels such as television slots, movies, newspapers, and magazines is effective. Pay-per-click is a mode of operation that calls for paying the host according to the number of click-throughs to a site. Pay-per-lead is a mode of operation that pays the host for every lead generated from the advertisement. Pay-per-sale is a mode of operation that pays the host for every sale resulting from a click through. Webcasting is a broadcasting technique on the Web that uses streaming media to broadcast an event over the Web. Interactive Advertising involves consumers in the advertising campaign. An example is WebRIOT, a game show on MTV. The game is aired on television, and viewers can join in the game at the same time by playing online. Public Relations (PR) and press releases keep customers and your company's employees current on the latest information about products, services, and intemal and external issues such as company promotions and consumer reactions. Trade shows arc excellent opportunities to generate site interest by speaking at conferences, which increases brand awareness 47 Table 7 Customer Relationship Management CR.M:Area Handling Sales tracking Transaction support Data-mining Call center Log-file analysis Cookie Customer registrntion Personalization One-to-one marketing Onsite Search engine Registering with Internet search engines Partnering Afffiiate Programs Culture management Description Handling is essentially the maintenance of out-bound and in-bound calls from customers and service representatives. Sales tracking is the process of tracing and recording all sales made. Transaction support entails technology and personnel used for conducting transactions. Data-mini ng is a wny to analyze information collected from visitors. Data-mining uses algorithms and statistical tools to find patterns in data gathered from customer visits. A call center gathers customer-service representatives who can be reached by an 800 number or through email, online text chatting, or real-time voice communications. A log-file analysis is a useful way to keep track of your visitors in tenns of site visits, including each visitor's location, IP address, time of visit, frequency of visits, and other key indicators. A cookie is a technology that keeps a profile on each visitor. Customer registration is an excellent method to create customer profiles because visitors fi ll out a form with personal information. Personalization technology can help a company understand the needs of its customers and the effectiveness of its website, thereby catering to the whims of the customer. One-to-one marketing such as e-mails confirms purchases and offers new products, showing customers that the business appreciates their patronage. Onsite Search engines allow people to find information relative to a subject of interest amidst the large amounts of information available on a personal website. Registering with Internet search engines is important because there are reportedly over 400 se::arch engines in usc on the Internet. This process makes a website known to the world by submitting the website as a searchable domain name in a sea of domain names. Partncring is a way of forming a strategic union with another company. Generally, legal contracts are usually written to define the relationship in a wf'ly to help a company provide customers with complimentary services and product<;. An Affiliate Program is an agreement between two parties that one will pay the other a commission based on a designated consumer action. Affi liate programs establish new income streams for companies and individuals that host the advertising affili ate websites. Culture management is the ability to understand and cater lo a target audience's patronage and culture, especially in global enterprises. 48 LIST OF REFERENCES [1] 0. Aktunc, ";The Role of Component Technologies on Enterprise Engineering,"; Masters Thesis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2002. [2] D.H. Liles, M.E. Johnson, L.M. Meade, and D.R. Underdown, ";Enterprise Engineering: A Discipline?"; Society for Ente1prise Engineering Conference Proceedings, June 1995. [3] L. Whitman, Enterprise Engineeiing IE8801 class webpage, http://webs.twsu. edu/enteng, 2002. [4] W.D. Barnett and M.K. 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