The process of technological change takes a wide variety of forms. Propositions that may be accurate when referring to the pharmaceutical industry may be totally inappropriate when applied to the aircraft industry or to computers or forest products. The central theme of Nathan Rosenberg's new book is the idea that technological changes are often 'path dependent', in the sense that their form and direction tend to be influenced strongly by the particular sequence of earlier events out of which a new technology has emerged. The book advances the understanding of technological change by explictly recognising its essential diversity and path-dependent nature. Individual chapters explore the particular features of new technologies in different historical and sectoral contexts. This book presents a unique account of how technological change is generated and the processes by which improved technologies are introduced.

Every day, corporations are connecting the dots about our personal behavior—silently scrutinizing clues left behind by our work habits and Internet use. The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive. But who connects the dots about what firms are doing with this information? The Black Box Society argues that we all need to be able to do so—and to set limits on how big data affects our lives. Hidden algorithms can make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. Shrouded in secrecy and complexity, decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms were long assumed to be neutral and technical. But leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on automated judgment. Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy. Even after billions of dollars of fines have been levied, underfunded regulators may have only scratched the surface of this troubling behavior. Frank Pasquale exposes how powerful interests abuse secrecy for profit and explains ways to rein them in. Demanding transparency is only the first step. An intelligible society would assure that key decisions of its most important firms are fair, nondiscriminatory, and open to criticism. Silicon Valley and Wall Street need to accept as much accountability as they impose on others.

In recent years, the world witnessed the rise of big digital platforms like Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber. The emerging research field of platform urbanism focuses on these developments and concentrates on platforms and their impact on everyday life in urban space. This book introduces a novel approach to the problems of accessibility and opacity in this area of research. In order to explore the black box platform urbanism more thoroughly, different participatory mapping approaches of critical cartography are examined. The potential of so-called counter-mapping practices and related approaches for a deeper exploration of platform urbanism is discussed. The author thus establishes the nexus between participatory mapping approaches of critical cartography and their application potential for platform urbanism and provides numerous starting points for future research.

This book explores and builds on the extraordinary work of Professor Paul Black across assessment and pedagogy across the curriculum, including STEM, humanities and social science subjects. This book explores the influence that Black has had within educational settings focusing on interpretations of the work and scholarship he has achieved across a range of settings and on the ways scholars, who have worked with him or been influenced by his ideas, have developed their research and teaching. The contributions are presented under three thematic sections, each of which reflects a set of shared educational concerns and values drawing on the natural and social sciences and developments in public policy. These concerns and values, with their emphasis on teacher assessment, provide a basis for a strategic, informed and coherent response to challenges in education, such as the cancellation of public examinations in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Uncover surprises, risks, and potentially serious bugs with exploratory testing. Rather than designing all tests in advance, explorers design and execute small, rapid experiments, using what they learned from the last little experiment to inform the next. Learn essential skills of a master explorer, including how to analyze software to discover key points of vulnerability, how to design experiments on the fly, how to hone your observation skills, and how to focus your efforts. Software is full of surprises. No matter how careful or skilled you are, when you create software it can behave differently than you intended. Exploratory testing mitigates those risks. Part 1 introduces the core, essential skills of a master explorer. You'll learn to craft charters to guide your exploration, to observe what's really happening (hint: it's harder than it sounds), to identify interesting variations, and to determine what expected behavior should be when exercising software in unexpected ways. Part 2 builds on that foundation. You'll learn how to explore by varying interactions, sequences, data, timing, and configurations. Along the way you'll see how to incorporate analysis techniques like state modeling, data modeling, and defining context diagrams into your explorer's arsenal. Part 3 brings the techniques back into the context of a software project. You'll apply the skills and techniques in a variety of contexts and integrate exploration into the development cycle from the very beginning. You can apply the techniques in this book to any kind of software. Whether you work on embedded systems, Web applications, desktop applications, APIs, or something else, you'll find this book contains a wealth of concrete and practical advice about exploring your software to discover its capabilities, limitations, and risks.

This book provides new ideas on how to work with and constructively transform shame on a theoretical and practical level, and in various socio-cultural contexts and professions. It provides practical guidelines on dealing with shame on the basis of reflection, counselling models, exercises, simulations, specific psychotherapeutic approaches, and auto-didactical learning material, so as to transform shame from a negatively experienced emotion into a mental health resource. The book challenges theorists to adopt an interdisciplinary stance and to think “outside the box.” Further, it provides practitioners, such as coaches, counsellors, therapists, trainers and medical personnel, with practical tools for transforming negative experiences and emotions. In brief, the book shows practitioners how to unlock the growth potential of individuals, teams, and organisations, allowing them to develop constructively and positively.

This book is based on a selection of thoroughly revised and extended best papers from the 8th Workshop on E-Business (WEB 2009) held in Phoenix, AZ, USA, on December 15th, 2009. The 29 papers, which were selected from 70 presentations at the workshop, highlight the enormous developments and potential of e-business at a time when new technologies like cloud computing, collective intelligence, and multi-sided platforms are burgeoning. Among the topics covered are Web-based information systems, RFID and supply chain management, process modeling and standardization, security and privacy issues, social networking and mobility, e-services and market mechanisms, IT portfolio management, and other special topics in e-business such as electronic invoicing.

The second edition of this popular shortform book provides a concise expert summary of key issues in the theory and practice of the management of human resources (HR) – one of the most crucial drivers of organizational performance. As human resource management strategies evolve over time, this new edition pays special regard to the HR challenges arising from radically altering contexts – economic, social, and technological. For example, the book examines research reports on the impact of the COVID pandemic and other disruptions to the global world of work. It assesses recent HR initiatives and priorities such as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and the HR implications of remote and hybrid working. The book evaluates contemporary critiques that HR practice and research can be part of the problem. In sum, the book offers a route map through the extensive terrain of contemporary research project findings. Serving as a unique researcher’s guide, this concise book enables readers to develop their own ideas for future research and such is essential reading for management scholars and reflective practitioners.

Web browsing would not be what it is today without the use of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Although much has been written about SOA methodology, this emerging platform is continuously under development. Exploring Enterprise Service Bus in the Service-Oriented Architecture Paradigm is a detailed reference source that examines current aspects and research methodologies that enable enterprise service bus to unify and connect services efficiently on a common platform. Featuring relevant topics such as SOA reference architecture, grid computing applications, complex event computing, and java business integration, this is an ideal resource for all practitioners, academicians, graduate students, and researchers interested in the discoveries on the relationship that Service-Oriented architecture and enterprise service bus share.

In this book Florian Andresen aims to unpack the “capability rigidity paradox” within the dynamic capability view. Consequently, he tackles one of the core challenges in strategic management of the past decades. Providing a novel and thorough literature review on dynamic capabilities from the point of this paradox, the author discusses the current state of the literature to derive the core shortcomings meticulously. A case study of capability evolution in the German Armed Forces is interpreted against the backdrop of a strategy as process and practice lens, thus, allowing to propose the concept of meso‐level dynamic capabilities without falling prey to the capability rigidity paradox.