Call for papers: Recent Trends in M-Commerce with Innovative Mobile Communication Technologies and Services

A special issue of International Journal of Electronic Business

An increasing number of mobile communications and wireless network users generate strong demand for new mobile commerce applications and services. Mobile communications technologies are growing rapidly and will continue to do so in future, focusing on supporting high speed data transfer over communication networks. Business organizations and mobile communications networks service providers are forced to bring in new technologies which provide customers with more reliable and secure m-commerce and user-friendly, economical and affordable mobile services. With such mobility, users enhances their lives in many ways, through communications, data sharing, entertainment, e-learning, e-commerce and mobile application services. Customer demand and mobile communications service support provides many new business opportunities and challenges to m-commerce vendors, mobile network service providers, mobile content publishers, various market places, entertainment and the information world. Innovative applications and services will ease users’ needs for m-commerce transactions.

The increasing demands of mobile commerce have also seen increasing attention from academics and researchers. This special issue aims to cover latest developments in mobile communications and internet technologies supporting innovation in m-commerce. With this special issue researchers and practitioners can exchange ideas, issues, challenges, new business models and structures, and new technologies and solutions.

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit original and research papers addressing business and technical issues, challenges, solutions, and technologies for m-commerce systems and applications. All submissions will be peer-reviewed by distinguish reviewers.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• Ambient intelligent frameworks, platforms and systems
• Case studies of m-commerce innovative services
• Context-aware applications for m-commerce
• Customer relationship management in m-commerce
• Deployment, experience and lessons learned reports in m-commerce and services
• Finance/banking in m-commerce
• Future of m-commerce
• Innovative communication technologies for the m-commerce (e.g. 3G, NGN, IMS, LTE, SAE, 4G, HSPDA) environment
• Location based services (LBS) for m-commerce
• M-Commerce and "mobile 2.0" and/or mobile web 2.0 technology extensions
• M-commerce and regional language support
• M-commerce business models, processes, strategies, and market structure analysis
• M-Commerce in cloud computing environment
• M-Commerce in open source software and applications
• M-Commerce in pervasive computing environment
• M-commerce security problems, technologies, solutions and privacy
• Mobile advertising solutions, techniques, systems and platforms
• Mobile agents for m-commerce
• Mobile brokerage, management and service mechanisms
• Mobile computing models, technologies and solutions
• Mobile database retrieval techniques, transaction models and caching techniques for m-commerce
• Mobile digital home environment and intelligence
• Mobile enabled architectures, middleware supports m-commerce
• Mobile entertainment services and platforms for digital music, videos, tickets, and games
• Mobile instant messaging systems and services
• Mobile payment protocols, solutions, service systems and platforms
• Mobile personalization, mobile service management, and natural language support
• Mobile service middleware and platforms for m-commerce
• Mobile supply chain management
• Mobile-based e-learning and education environments
• New mobile enterprise systems and applications
• New mobile portals, mobile-based social networks, and marketplaces
• New wireless multimedia technologies and platforms for m-commerce, (e.g., DMB, DVB-H, mobile TV)
• Pricing and cost analysis of m-commerce services
• RFID and barcodes, barcode 2.0 for m-commerce and services
• Semantic web and services for m-commerce
• Tools for design, deployment and evaluation of tag-based systems for m-commerce
• Ubiquitous computing platform and services for mobile users

Important Dates
Final Date for Paper Submission: 1 May, 2011
Paper Acceptance Notification: 1 August, 2011
Submission of Revised Final Papers: 1 September, 2011

Call for papers: Organizational Sensing

A special issue of International Journal of Organisational Design and Engineering

People leave behind digital breadcrumbs as they use mobile phones, RFID badges, credit cards, and almost any other digital or electronic device. Data mining of email, for instance, has already provided important insights into how organizations function and what management practices lead to greater productivity. However, by analyzing the other types of digital breadcrumbs we can potentially know who talks to whom and even how they talk to each other. As a consequence, we can answer organizational questions such as: Does the sales department talk to the marketing department? Are all these meetings really useful? Are the team’s communication patterns effective?

The focus of this special issue is on new technologies for sensing organizational behaviour that go beyond analysis of electronic communication, as well as on how to apply data mining, social network analysis and simulation techniques to these new sensing technologies in order to reinvent organizational engineering and management practices.

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Next generation sensing technologies for organizational behaviour studies
• Social network analysis for organizational design and engineering applications
• Data mining and pattern recognition methods in organizational design and engineering
• Data visualization and feedback mechanisms to support organizational change
• Data-supported organizational intervention design
• Simulation and optimization techniques for organizational design
• Collective behaviour in organizations

Important Dates
Submission Deadline: 15 May, 2011
Reviews: 15 July, 2011
Camera ready paper due: 15 August, 2011

Call for papers: Organizational Design and Engineering for Inter-organizational Collaboration and Competition

A special issue of International Journal of Organisational Design and Engineering

Globalization, market deregulation, shorter product life cycles, the pressure to constantly innovate, and the need to follow the customer require businesses to decentralize, distribute work, collaborate with stakeholders and establish new organizational structures. Firms have to manage numerous external collaborative relationships with corporate partners such as other companies, customers, or even politics. Furthermore, traditional internal structures are being broken up in order to give way to more flexible and responsive work setups.

Innovative technologies provide new opportunities and tools for companies to manage these challenges. Enterprise systems as well as social software are used to collaboratively produce knowledge and content. It is time for organizations to implement these novel tools and philosophies to create new collaboration models, realize cooperative concepts such as open innovation and customer integration approaches, and to manage, govern, and actively maintain inter- and intra-organizational collaboration. The new collaboration technologies can be used - when properly applied – to help businesses solve pressing problems, capture dispersed and fast-changing knowledge, highlight and leverage expertise, generate and refine ideas.

We are pleased to invite scholars from any methodological background to contribute papers that advance our knowledge of the diffusion, appropriation, usage, impact, and role of collaboration technologies, in the context usage of social software in intra- and inter-organizational networks. We welcome theoretical, conceptual, design-oriented and especially empirical contributions using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Research efforts may focus on different organization relations such as business to business, business to customer or business to other stakeholder.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:

* Theory Foundations

• Innovative collaborative methods and science
• Innovative concepts, models and frameworks for intra- and inter-organizational collaborations technologies and management concepts
• Shared knowledge representation, discovery and management with respect to innovative collaborations technologies and management concepts
• Social networks, collective intelligence, security, trust

* Technical infrastructures

• Context-aware infrastructures
• Situation aware infrastructures
• Distributed systems and technologies
• Next generation technologies, web 2.0, social software
• P2P, Grid and cloud computing
• Web services
• Mobile and wireless collaboration systems

* Environments, tools and applications

• Enterprise systems
• Collaborative working environments
• Collaborative management tools
• Social software, web 2.0, virtual worlds
• CSCW, groupware and decision tools
• Data management and sharing tools
• Intra/inter collaborative tagging
• Knowledge management tools
• Massively distributed collaboration
• Designing collaborative and virtual organizations

* Benefits realization and social implications

• Collaborative strategies and policies
• Scientific and business models
• Accessibility and user interfaces
• Trust, compliance, policies and QoS
• Cross organizational studies
• Human and market dynamics
• Privacy and identity management
• Support for vulnerable communities
• User acceptance and use
• Community engineering, community governance

Important Dates
Deadline for submission: 15 March 2011

Call for papers: Collaborative Modelling

A special issue of International Journal of Organisational Design and Engineering

For decades, the information systems discipline has focused on the IT artefact as such: its organizational requirements, its development and management and its impact on business. Only recently we have begun to understand that information systems cannot be studied as either drivers of or driven by business. Information systems change the way we do business and businesses have changing requirements on information systems. We therefore need to co-design and co-engineer the organisations themselves together with the systems that support them.

In order to manage the co-design of organisations and information systems we need a powerful layer of abstraction that allows us to discuss different options for shaping an organisation and their respective merits and drawbacks before we put the most promising one into practice. In other words: we need a blueprint of an organisation in the same way that an architect needs a blueprint of a house, as an embodiment of design decisions and the consequences they have for the thing we are going to build.

In organisational design and engineering, this blue-print is called an enterprise model. Enterprise models have a large number of stakeholders with vested and often conflicting interests in the way the organisation and its systems are designed: representatives from different involved departments and other organisational units, process managers, change managers, IT project managers, business analysts, and software developers, to name but a few. Enterprise modelling is therefore a social and highly collaborative process that involves collective sense-making, ideation, negotiation, consensus building and the like. In this special issue we therefore solicit research work that highlights the collaborative nature of enterprise modelling.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:

• The nature of the collaborative modelling process
• Collaborative modelling methods and tools
• Measures of model quality and quality of the modelling process
• Methods for controlling and improving model(ling) quality
• Methods for consensus building
• Negotiation and decision support in collaborative modelling
• Supporting collaborative sense-making and mutual understanding in modelling
• Supporting idea creation and evaluation as well as idea convergence
• Other issues related to collaborative modelling

Important Dates
Deadline for submission of papers: 15 February 2011
Deadline for peer reviewing: 15 April 2011
Deadline for submission of final versions: 15 May 2011
Final acceptance of papers: 15 June 2011

Special issue: Managing relations in the process of value creation

World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development 6(4) 2010

• Perceived value as a basis for shaping the offer of service provider: cases from UK and Croatia
• Value creation through new technologies vs. offer digitalisation
• Positive reputation – a factor of success – using the example of German food retail companies
• Managing core competences to create value for customers
• Managing B2B relationships in the Croatian pharmaceutical industry
• Bank shares restore under recent industry bailouts

Special issue: Family Firms

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing 2(3/4) 2010

• Resources supporting entrepreneurial orientation in multigenerational family firms
• Factors influencing the stocks and flows of bonding social capital in family firms
• The definitional dilemma in family business research: outlines of an ongoing debate
• Family small businesses: definition, 'essence' and 'true' prevalence
• Small family business performance: comparison between family and non-family enterprises
• Toward a better understanding of family enterprising
• Father-daughter succession issues in family business among regional economies of Asia
• Strategic renewal after ownership transfers in SMEs: do successors' actions pay off?
• Are family firms fit for innovation? Towards an agenda for empirical research
• Innovation in family and non-family businesses: a resource perspective
• Internationalisation of family-owned businesses in the Czech Republic

Call for papers: Systems Theory in Economics and Business: Theory Development, Application, Impact, and Future

A special issue of International Journal of Economics and Business Research

The purpose of this special issue is to explore past, present, and particularly future uses of systems theory in economics and business research and practice. As the theory of systems, in its various manifestations, continues to develop and to be applied across multiple disciplines, it is proving ever more useful in illuminating and solving diverse problems. In turn, feedback from the different applications of general systems theory is helping to further develop systems theory and its cognates. On the one hand, observing the past and present of systems theory from some perspectives, it would seem still to be on the periphery of contemporary economics and business research and practice, if not languishing out of favour. On the other hand, observing the development of systems theory and its uses from other perspectives, there appears to be a growing awareness of its power, potential, and absolute necessity, especially as widespread awareness increases regarding the complex interdependencies and dynamics of national and international society, economics, and business.

For this issue, we encourage submissions of theoretical and empirical papers, meta-analytic reviews, and narrative literature reviews on new developments in the theory of systems; its relationship to other approaches to learning, knowing, problem-solving, and practicing; and the consequent new uses of systems theory and its cognates in economics and business.

The following are illustrative topics that are consistent with the spirit of the special issue, but other topics may be suitable as well, as long as they relate to the use of systems theory and its cognates and applications in economics and business:

• History of the development of systems theory and its practical uses in economics and business
• Contemporary developments in systems theory and/or any of its cognates such as structural-functionalism, autopoiesis, cybernetics, social systems theory, complex adaptive systems, etc., and their relevant use in economics and business
• Applications or uses of systems theory such as systems engineering, system dynamics, viable system models, management cybernetics, soft systems methodology, systems thinking, learning organizations, etc.
• Conceptual map or ordering of interrelationships between systems theory and its cognates and applications, and the implications for use in economics and business
• Relationship of general systems theory and other approaches to learning, knowing, and problem-solving, including the scientific method and philosophical hermeneutics
• Assessment of contemporary impact and future prospects for systems theory and its cognates and applications, including prescriptions for advancing its widespread use in economics and business
• Identification and impact of long-term reinforcing feedback processes in social, political, economic, and business history, including observations of normative implications for current practice
• The phenomena of dispersed and exploding knowledge, market mechanisms, complex adaptive systems, and the necessary use of systems theory and especially system dynamics in economics and business
• Use of systems theory in nation building and the development of emerging countries
• Implications of systems theory on macroeconomic theories, various theories of political economy, as well as national and multi-national economic policy
• How systems theory helps explain and address the current global financial crisis, and how it may help illuminate ways to prevent future crises
• What systems theory says about the development of economic policies and practices for long-term prosperity
• The use of systems theory and its implications upon various theories of the firm
• Environmental issues, management for competitive and sustainable business success, and the use of systems theory
• Use of systems theory and its cognates and applications to drive individual and organizational learning, development of intellectual capital, and value creation in the global, knowledge age economy
• Organizational theory, design, behaviour, development and change, and the use of systems theory and its cognates and applications
• Dynamic vs. episodic strategic leadership and management approaches using systems theory, especially open, social, and adaptive systems concepts
• The use of general systems theory in the process of developing management theories and in synthesizing a comprehensive theory of management
• Education strategies and methods for increasing the widespread and skillful use of systems theory and its cognates and applications in economics and business

Important Dates
Deadline for submission: 28 February 2011

Call for papers: Business Process Improvement from a Chinese Perspective

A special issue of International Journal of Enterprise Network Management

In mid-2010, China became the world’s second largest economy to the USA, overtaking Germany and Japan. There are huge opportunities in the Chinese markets for local and overseas businesses. Many overseas firms are looking for ways to enter the Chinese market. On the other hand, many organizations in China are seeking new ways to grow in the Chinese market. Organizations in China are taking initiatives in order to optimize their underlying processes to achieve more efficient results.

Business process improvement (BPI) is a systematic approach to help any organization make significant changes in the way it does business. BPI can be undertaken by implementing business process projects such as total quality management (TQM) and business process re-engineering (BPR). However, many Chinese businesses adopt practices that differ from common international processes. The results of some BPI projects were below expectations. Hence, the concept and applications of BPI still needs to be researched further from a Chinese perspective.

This special issue aims to attract high quality papers covering current research and practice in the field of business processes improvement from a Chinese prospective.

Key issues include but are not limited to:

• Business processes in extended enterprises
• Total quality management (TQM)
• Business process re-engineering (BPR)
• Business process modelling
• Business process improvement techniques
• Business process interoperability
• Business process performance
• Business process risk management
• Critical success factors for business process improvement
• Information processing in business processes
• Industry case studies on business processes

Important Dates
Deadline for submission: 15 May, 2011
Papers reviewed by: 15 July, 2011
Final re-submission: 15 September, 2011

Call for papers: Sliding Mode Control Theory and Applications

A special issue of International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control

Variable structure systems with sliding modes have recently become one of the most exciting research topics in variety of fields. This is mainly due to their inherent robustness with respect to the plant model uncertainty, parameter perturbation and external disturbance which are unavoidable in any industrial environment. Furthermore, numerous very successful engineering applications of the systems have recently been reported.

Therefore, the purpose of the special issue is focused on state-of-the-art solutions in the field of sliding mode control system design and their industrial applications. We welcome original research papers that describe new ideas and approaches in theory and applications.

Suitable topics, include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Sliding mode control in power electronics
• Sliding mode control applications in robotics and complex motion steering systems
• Sliding mode observers and their applications
• Higher order sliding modes
• Output feedback sliding mode controllers
• Discrete time sliding mode controllers
• Combination artificial intelligence and sliding mode controllers
• Chattering analysis

Important Date
Submission deadline: August 31, 2011

Special issue: TIEMS 2009 and 2010

International Journal of Emergency Management 7(3/4) 2010

Papers from annual conferences of the International Emergency Management Society (TIEMS): the 16th held in Istanbul, Turkey, 9-11 June 2009 and the 17th held in Beijing, China, 8-12 June 2010.

• Disaster preparedness and response: a challenge for hospitals in earthquake-prone countries
• Design of district emergency operations centres, and the case study of Indian Oil Corporation Jaipur depot explosion
• Sensor data processing for emergency response
• Dangers of nanotechnology: potential fire concerns and safety frameworks
• GuideKeeper security concept of operation
• Issues in identifying climate change adaptation within community hazard mitigation
• Coping with consular emergencies: four key governmental coordination relationships
• An overview of developing tribal emergency management in the USA
• Structure versus freedom of action: leadership during the rescue operation following the 2004 tsunami
• A system dynamics model of the fire department EMS in Taiwan

Special issue: Modelling, identification and control of industrial applications

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control 11(3/4) 2010

Papers from the Hebei University of Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang City, China.

• Robust passive for uncertain Markovian jump system with mode-dependent time delays
• Robust H∞ control for uncertain delta system with time delays and non-linear perturbations based on delta operators approach
• New delay-dependent stability criterion for stochastic recurrent neural networks
• Non-linear system identification of gear crack failure based on second order Volterra kernel
• Study on the all-coefficient adaptive sequential decoupling control
• Adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control for uncertain non-linear system with input non-linearity
• Fuzzy PID control of mould non-sinusoidal oscillator driven by permanent magnet synchronous motor
• Study on low voltage electrical apparatus switching arc's image gathering and processing
• Influence of fabric structural model on shielding effectiveness of electromagnetic radiation shielding fabric
• Research on modelling and optimisation of RBF neural network based on particle filter
• The cooperation model for multi-agents and the identification on replicated collections for web crawler
• H∞ filtering design for network control systems with jump parameters
• Finite element analysis of JCO forming process for longitudinal seam submerged arc welded pipes
• Improved observer-based reliable guaranteed cost control for neutral systems
• The modelling of rectangular hole flow with downwards baffle
• Advances in the modelling and simulation of emulsion polymerisation

Special issue: Bio-inspired computation for engineering applications

International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation 2(6) 2010

• Evaluating software cost estimation models using particle swarm optimisation and fuzzy logic for NASA projects: a comparative study
• Modelling spatial self-organisation with swarm intelligence processes
• ACO approach with learning for preemptive scheduling of real-time tasks
• Modified PSO and wavelet transform-based fault classification on transmission systems
• Differential evolution algorithm for simultaneous tuning of excitation and FACTS-based controller
• An evolutionary approach for biclustering of gene expression data
• A dynamic max-min ant system for solving the travelling salesman problem
• Resolving the pursuit evasion problem in known environment using graph theory

Call for papers: Complex Project Management

A special issue of International Journal of Project Organisation and Management

Today there is a concern over the relevance of the more conventional project management approaches to problems that are increasingly complex and constrained. Complex and large-scale projects are inherently risky because of long planning horizons and as decision-making processes often involve multiple actors with conflicting interests. Cash flow, material procurement and transportation may also be more difficult to manage in complex projects. Multiple sites also force project team to change their traditional way of planning, managing and coordinating manpower and logistics operations. In addition, the project scope often changes significantly over time and interdependencies between different projects tend to be underestimated.

Consequently, approaches, methodologies, and tools commonly adopted for project evaluation, selection, planning, scheduling and control may not be successful with complex and large-scale projects. Fortunately, an increasing amount of research has been conducted recently in this area. This special session proposes to provide a forum to investigate, exchange novel ideas and disseminate knowledge covering the broad area of complex project management.

While research in this area encompasses a wide range of topics and methodologies, we expect this special issue to provide a good snapshot of current and emerging concepts, tools, techniques, approaches, issues, and trends within the field. Authors are encouraged to submit papers that employ both quantitative and quality research methodologies such as modeling, optimization, algorithms, simulation, questionnaire surveys, case studies etc., addressing the theme of the special issue.

Some papers will be selected from among the best papers presented in the area of complex project management at the 4th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Systems Management (Metz, France), but the Call welcomes suitable papers submitted from beyond this conference.

Suitable topics for papers include but are not limited to:

• Scope management of large-scale projects
• Control and performance measures and methodologies for complex projects
• Economic and financial evaluation techniques and methodologies
• Forecasting and estimation techniques and methodologies
• Learning-based project evaluation techniques
• Manpower planning and resource allocation
• Multi-project planning
• Probabilistic cost-benefit analysis
• Project management information systems
• Project planning, scheduling and rescheduling models
• Project selection techniques
• Quantitative and qualitative risk analysis methodologies

Important Dates
Submission Deadline: 31 July, 2011
Acceptance Notification: 31 December, 2011
Deadline for Sending Camera-ready Manuscripts: 1 February 2012

Call for papers: Durability of Concrete Structures

A special issue of International Journal of Structural Engineering

Concrete structures are the most widely used construction in the world. Over ten times more concrete is produced than all other construction materials put together. Concrete structures were traditionally viewed as being maintenance-free with a practically unlimited life. However, over the past several decades, a number of durability-related problems have emerged and stimulated research into the key factors relating to durability of concrete structures globally. It is now generally accepted that the concrete structures deteriorates with time. In fact, premature deterioration of concrete structures has been a major and growing world-wide problem. This special issue focuses on the durability of concrete structures in structural engineering.

Original papers reporting new theoretical and experimental development are welcome, including but not limited to the following areas:

• Influence of environments on durability
• Ionic/molecular transport modeling
• Materials for durability enhancement
• Material deterioration
• Performance of deteriorated structures
• Durability design
• Life-cycle management of concrete structures
• Testing, inspection and monitoring methods
• Repair and maintenance
• Practical application

Important Dates
Deadline for paper submission: 31 January, 2011

Special issue: Business and entrepreneurship development in global era

Journal for International Business and Entrepreneurship Development 5(2) 2010

Papers from 2009 Academy for Global Business Advancement (AGBA) 6th World Congress held in Kedah Darul Ama, Malaysia, 28–31 December 2009.

• Market trend of advanced preventative medical care
• The impact of the global economic crisis on the Islamic banks and financial institutions across UAE
• Global career aspirations: the case of business graduate students in Brunei
• Group decision making through nominal group technique: an empirical study
• The efficiency of Islamic banks: empirical evidence from the Asian countries' Islamic banking sectors
• Organisational justice and employee work engagement: LMX as mediator

Special issue: Intelligent technologies in modern telecommunications

International Journal of Intelligent Information and Database Systems 4(6) 2010

Papers from the 10th International Conference on Telecommunications (ConTEL 2009), held in Zagreb, Croatia, 8-10 June 2009

• RFID-based solution for galleries and museums visit modelling using Markov model, BBN's and MAP decisions
• On the security of reliable server pooling systems
• Communicating with multiple users for embodied conversational agents in quiz game context
• Agent-based social networking for mobile user
• Improve feature selection method of web page language identification using fuzzy ARTMAP
• Logical inventory database integration into alarm correlations discovery environment
• Online charging in IMS for multimedia services with negotiable QoS requirements based on service agreements

Special issue: Evolving the e-marketing mindset towards the social web model – Part 2

International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing 3(4) 2010

[For Part 1 see International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing 3(3) 2010]

• Online social networks in the travel sector
• Can avatars enhance consumer trust and emotion in online retail sales?
• Putting a face with a name: avatars, relationship marketing and service failure/recovery
• Resolving the paradox of choice by leveraging the long tail of micro-communities – the case of the mass customising company Spreadshirt.com
• Marketing in a Web 2.0 world with a Web 1.0 mentality: the challenge of social web marketing in academic institutions
• Going with the consumer towards the social web environment: a review of extant knowledge

Special issue: Interactive media in education

International Journal of Innovation in Education 1(2) 2010


New school and university practices

• Using web 2.0 technology in entrepreneurship education: Wikis as a tool for collaborative and collective learning
• Writing a book with students, using Google docs as shared learning environment: an experience
• Creating value through IT – emerging patterns in brick-and-mortar b-schools
• Designing and facilitating learning communities in immersive virtual environments

Technologies

• Using digital pens to expedite the marking procedure
• Towards automated lecture capture, navigation and delivery system for web lecture on demand
• Mathematics Divide: an educational software for learning division in the primary school

Special issue: Applications of intelligent systems

International Journal of Reasoning-based Intelligent Systems 2(3/4) 2010

Papers from INISTA 2009 - International Symposium on Innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications, held in Trabzon, Turkey, 9 June to 1 July 2009.

• General regression neural network approach to prediction of electric field level in the reverberation chamber
• A fuzzy logic controller for a hybrid PV/FC green power system
• Particle swarm optimisation (PSO)-based controller strategies for energy efficient PMDC motor drives
• Particle swarm optimisation-based neuro-controller design for DC/DC buck converter
• Analysis of automated systems by using coloured Petri Nets
• Percolation enhanced prioritised multi-robot exploration of unstructured environments
• Radar-aware path planning with B-spline trajectory generation for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
• Parameter optimisation in fuzzy flip-flop-based neural networks
• Genetic programming application to generate technical trading rules in stock markets
• Implementation of on-chip training system for cellular neural networks using iterative annealing optimisation method
• A continuous GA+LDA for training set enhancement in illumination and scale invariant face recognition
• Fuzzy-neural networks for medical diagnosis
• Classification of the heart sounds via artificial neural network
• Classification of Parkinson's disease by using voice measurements
• Intelligent optimisation of batch fermentations' initial conditions
• Design of an embedded fuzzy PD controller for thermal comfort applications
• Towards a correct translation from ASN.1 into CafeOBJ
• Determination of rheological characteristics of flow concrete by artificial neural networks method

Call for papers: Contextualizing Top Management Teams

A special issue of European Journal of International Management

Top managers are considered the most influential decision-makers for firms’ strategy and a large body of research presents evidence for executive effects in different settings. Yet only recently have researchers started to pay attention to the role of the social and environmental contexts in which top management teams (TMTs) are embedded. Top executives are often informed, influenced and sometimes constrained by others both inside and outside the organization. As a result, upper echelons face diverse challenges and opportunities when operating in a variety of different contexts. Contextual factors at the team, organizational, industry and country level are considered not only important determinants of executive composition but also moderating forces shaping the consequences of executive characteristics for firm strategy and performance. In addition, the extent to which top managers matter and exert an influence on their firms differ with national level institutional settings and there is an increased interest in the cross-national variation in executive effects.

This special issue aims to advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of the interplay between top management teams and different layers of context as well as the dynamic interactions between the contexts and firm strategies (such as international and business strategies). We encourage in particular new theoretical and empirical approaches that introduce a more European perspective.

Selected papers will be published from the 2011 Workshop on Top Management Teams & Business Strategy: Contextualizing TMTs, Istanbul, 31 March–1 April, 2011. At the same time, we also welcome submitted papers from authors from all over the world. We invite submissions that discuss implications for international management in Europe and beyond.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Literature reviews and state-of-the-art papers, which will encourage the debate about the role of context in top management team research and discuss theoretical and empirical challenges for future TMT research.
• Conceptual papers focusing on the theme of the special issue. We particularly welcome papers that use an interdisciplinary approach and combine different theoretical perspectives to explain the impact of contextual factors on the antecedents and consequences of TMT strategic behavior.
• Empirical papers contextualizing different TMT research topics, such as:
  - the role of social, organizational, national, global and environmental contexts on TMT motivational and cognitive bases
  
- TMT dynamics and behaviour;
- interactions and power relations between TMT and other stakeholders
- executive compensation, turnover and succession

Important Date
Final paper submission deadline: 31 July, 2011