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on Information and Communication Technologies |
| By: | Salançon, A. |
| Abstract: | The very uneven development of electronic trade (BtoC) arouses a lot of questions, and more particularly in the agro food sector. From a training course for agro food firms on marketing via Internet , realised within the European program Interreg3b AgroIntec , we try to understand why this new type of marketing is being adopted by agro food firms, and especially in Languedoc wine and vine sector. ...French Abstract : Le développement contrasté du commerce électronique (B to C) suscite nombre d'interrogations en particulier dans le secteur agroalimentaire. A partir d'une opération de formation d'entreprises agroalimentaires à la commercialisation via Internet, réalisée dans le cadre du programme européen Interreg3b AgroIntec, l'article cherche à comprendre les raisons de l'adoption de ce nouveau mode de commercialisation par des entreprises agroalimentaires principalement du secteur vitivinicole languedocien désireuses de commercialiser leurs produits via Internet. |
| Keywords: | ELECTRONIC TRADE; AGRO FOOD FIRM; SME; WINE AGROINTEC |
| JEL: | D83 F19 L66 L68 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:umr:wpaper:200601&r=ict |
| By: | Flávio Nunes |
| Abstract: | The radical role of information and communication technology (ICT) is one of the most visible topic in the media today and seems to grow from day to day, as well as telecommunications are gradually becoming the central infrastructure tying together our society. The advent of these technologies during the past decades, and their widespread use, is radically transforming the dynamics of communication and our understanding of spatial relationships (by the reduce of distances and the increase of accessibility to information and new services). If there are many studies, attempting to show how city management and regional development policies can creatively address the complex linkages between ICT and urban and regional prosperity (influencing the objective of increasing urban living conditions, combating inwardness, promoting employment and economic competitiveness and supporting social integration policies), there are also many authors arguing that electronic communications reinforce existing patterns of physical communication rather than create new patterns. These suppositions are usually theoretical discussions, that needs to be rigorously tested with empirical analysis and comparative perspectives. The main objective of this paper is precisely to present a detailed study about Portugal, with the purpose of questioning the decrease of spatial disparities due to the potential influence of ICT’s. This research is mostly based on new spatial statistics, collected, mapped and analysed in order to understand the diffusion process of the most sophisticated, diverse and capable telecommunication infrastructures, and consequently verify the plasticity of space throughout Portugal, and the ways it has been stretched or compressed. We will be focusing the globally-interconnected set of computer networks, known as ‘The Internet’, which is widely used by millions of individuals, firms and institutions every day, as a way to get into an invisible domain, popularly known as cyberspace, in order to seek information, marketing new services and products, and as means of communication within and between organizations. We believe that this invisible territories of the cyberspace do have a geography and, in an attempt to reveal its topography, we should analyse the spatial patterns of the ownership of Internet space. Despite the rapid growth of Internet in recent years, and the gradually recognition of its implications, there is a lack of knowledge about its geographic diffusion and its attendant implication for regional urban development. Specially in what concerns to its effective role to generate substantial adjustments on traditional portuguese regional dichotomies, or instead, if it is an unexpected contribute to reinforce territorial disintegration tendencies. For the empirical research will try to find links between cyberspace and the portuguese physical geography. In our opinion a good way to achieve this goal is discovering which and where are located the portuguese entities that recognize the importance to distribute globally information, about their activities and services, through the use of the Internet. For that we will explore the compulsory registration of all .pt domain names on one single institution –Foundation for National Scientific Computing- (FNSC), which performs all the registration services for the geographical .pt domain. |
| Date: | 2004–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa04p513&r=ict |
| By: | Otto Raspe; Frank Van Oort |
| Abstract: | Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has had an undeniable impact on our society. Some people argue that technology has projected us onto a new wave of social and cultural change. Nevertheless, despite the growth of technology and the social significance of its applications, we have only a poor grasp of its actual impact on the use of physical space. The key question addressed in this paper is therefore: how will ICT influence the spatial-economic patterns of business activities in the Netherlands? In offering answers to this question, the paper develops a conceptual framework that distinguishes two roles of ICT in spatial-economic development: that of a ‘motor’, enhancing productivity and encourages the development of economic sectors, and that of an ‘enabler’ (of e-work, e-commerce and e-business), which may lead households and firms to adopt a different attitude to space requirements. The paper is based on a thorough survey of the current literature on the subject, the results of a recent survey of ICT’s impact on society, and original empirical research into specific factors such as ICT companies’ location preferences and the willingness of knowledge workers to commute. The paper presents an assessment of the usefulness of these concepts in terms of the Dutch situation, both today and in the future. We conclude that Information and Communication Technology has not yet had a marked visible impact on the use of space. To the contrary, despite predictions neither Dutch companies (particularly those in the ICT sector) nor knowledge workers display any unusual degree of mobility at the local or regional s 2perfect substitute for ‘traditional’ behavioural patterns. Nevertheless, there are clear indications that the ‘spatial order’ of the Netherlands is likely to change. Although it is likely that ICT will consolidate underlying spatial patterns, on the regional aggregate changes are occurring within those patterns. While (inner) cities have traditionally been the breeding ground for new ICT companies, this function has now largely been taken over by the outlying city regions, in which multiple clusters of economic activity are emerging: a process of ‘splintering urbanism’. However, despite this regionalized pattern of deconcentration, the traditional city centres continue to fulfil a number of essential functions. These centres remain the meeting places, and the shopping and entertainment centres for businesses and households (the ‘Consumer City’). In the processes of deconcentration and multimodality, ICT should be seen to play an important facilitating and strengthening role. cale. ICT does not function as a 2perfect substitute for ‘traditional’ behavioural patterns. Nevertheless, there are clear indications that the ‘spatial order’ of the Netherlands is likely to change. Although it is likely that ICT will consolidate underlying spatial patterns, on the regional aggregate changes are occurring within those patterns. While (inner) cities have traditionally been the breeding ground for new ICT companies, this function has now largely been taken over by the outlying city regions, in which multiple clusters of economic activity are emerging: a process of ‘splintering urbanism’. However, despite this regionalized pattern of deconcentration, the traditional city centres continue to fulfil a number of essential functions. These centres remain the meeting places, and the shopping and entertainment centres for businesses and households (the ‘Consumer City’). In the processes of deconcentration and multimodality, ICT should be seen to play an important facilitating and strengthening role. |
| Date: | 2004–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa04p101&r=ict |
| By: | Kuniaki Sasaki; Kazuo Nishii; Ryuichi Kitamura; Katsunao Kondo |
| Abstract: | Information and communications technology (ICT) has evolved substantially and impacted urban residents’ everyday life quite substantially in the past decade. The rapid spread of mobile telecommunications technologies has produced significant changes in relationships among communications, marketing and distribution, and transportation. As mobile technologies diminish time-space constraints that have governed telecommunication, they are prompting the emergence of new life styles with unprecedented ways in which urban space is consumed. The focus of this study is on how mobile telecommunication technologies have influenced daily activity and travel behaviors of urban residents. Temporal and spatial characteristics of their activity-travel patterns are empirically analyzed using activity diary data sets collected by the authors in the Kofu area of Japan. The survey is designed with the intent of capturing both patterns of movements in the urban area and patterns of activities that induced the movements. Questions regarding telecommunications activities are introduced into the activity-travel diary that had been developed by the authors to facilitate the acquisition of information on the occurrence and contents of telecommunications activities. The analytical framework of this study is formed by integrating urban residents’ time-space paths and virtual links representing telecommunications activities. Time-space paths are formed in a physical urban space while satisfying temporal and spatial constraints imposed by Hägerstrand’s prism. Conventional means of inter-individual communication (meeting, stationary telephones, mailed letters and telegrams) are all subject to certain constraints in the time-space domain. On the other hand, telecommunications activities by mobile technologies are not subjected to many of the constraints and can influence travel decisions more spontaneously than do conventional means of communication. Several hypotheses concerning ICT and activity patterns are postulated and empirically examined with the results of the diary surveys. Examples of the hypotheses are as follows. As the use of mobile telecommunications technologies increases, 1) the activity frequency tends to increase, 2) the spatial distribution of activities tends to spread out, that is, the action space tends to expand spatially, and 3) patterns of trip chaining tend to change themselves, with more stops incorporated into a home-based trip chain (i.e., a sequence of trips starting from and ending at home, through which a set of activity locations are visited). It is also hypothesized that 4) the way mobile technologies influence the individual’s activity-travel patterns varies by his personal characteristics, especially life cycle stage and life style. The Survey of Communication, Activity and Travel, denoted by “SCAT,” was conducted twice to form the database of this study. The first survey involved about 150 university students and data on weekly activity patterns and mobile telecommunication incidents were collected. The second survey addressed about 150 households (322 individuals) and activity diaries on two consecutive days and mobile telecommunication information were obtained. The first SCAT data are used to examine basic properties of ICT–activity-travel relationships of “heavy mobile-informed travelers” because students are certainly standing on the forefront of ICT use. On the other hand, the second SCAT data are used to analyze characteristics of joint activity engagement by household members as a result of ICT use among household members. Then, using both of the SCAT data sets, the hypotheses are examined and statistical evidence is presented. Finally, implications of the findings are summarized and directions are suggested for future research on ICT, activity and travel. |
| Date: | 2005–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa05p567&r=ict |
| By: | Choucri, Nazli; Madnick, Stuart; Siegel, Michael; Wang, Richard |
| Abstract: | A recent National Research Council study found that: "Although there are many private and public databases that contain information potentially relevant to counter terrorism programs, they lack the necessary context definitions (i.e., metadata) and access tools to enable interoperation with other databases and the extraction of meaningful and timely information" [NRC02, p.304, emphasis added] That sentence succinctly describes the objectives of this project. Improved access and use of information are essential to better identify and anticipate threats, protect against and respond to threats, and enhance national and homeland security (NHS), as well as other national priority areas, such as Economic Prosperity and a Vibrant Civil Society (ECS) and Advances in Science and Engineering (ASE). This project focuses on the creation and contributions of a Laboratory for Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies (LIGHT) with two interrelated goals: (1) Theory and Technologies: To research, design, develop, test, and implement theory and technologies for improving the reliability, quality, and responsiveness of automated mechanisms for reasoning and resolving semantic differences that hinder the rapid and effective integration (int) of systems and data (dmc) across multiple autonomous sources, and the use of that information by public and private agencies involved in national and homeland security and the other national priority areas involving complex and interdependent social systems (soc). This work builds on our research on the COntext INterchange (COIN) project, which focused on the integration of diverse distributed heterogeneous information sources using ontologies, databases, context mediation algorithms, and wrapper technologies to overcome information representational conflicts. The COIN approach makes it substantially easier and more transparent for individual receivers (e.g., applications, users) to access and exploit distributed sources. Receivers specify their desired context to reduce ambiguities in the interpretation of information coming from heterogeneous sources. This approach significantly reduces the overhead involved in the integration of multiple sources, improves data quality, increases the speed of integration, and simplifies maintenance in an environment of changing source and receiver context - which will lead to an effective and novel distributed information grid infrastructure. This research also builds on our Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD), an Internet platform for information generation, provision, and integration of multiple domains, regions, languages, and epistemologies relevant to international relations and national security. (2) National Priority Studies: To experiment with and test the developed theory and technologies on practical problems of data integration in national priority areas. Particular focus will be on national and homeland security, including data sources about conflict and war, modes of instability and threat, international and regional demographic, economic, and military statistics, money flows, and contextualizing terrorism defense and response. Although LIGHT will leverage the results of our successful prior research projects, this will be the first research effort to simultaneously and effectively address ontological and temporal information conflicts as well as dramatically enhance information quality. Addressing problems of national priorities in such rapidly changing complex environments requires extraction of observations from disparate sources, using different interpretations, at different points in times, for different purposes, with different biases, and for a wide range of different uses and users. This research will focus on integrating information both over individual domains and across multiple domains. Another innovation is the concept and implementation of Collaborative Domain Spaces (CDS), within which applications in a common domain can share, analyze, modify, and develop information. Applications also can span multiple domains via Linked CDSs. The PIs have considerable experience with these research areas and the organization and management of such large scale international and diverse research projects. The PIs come from three different Schools at MIT: Management, Engineering, and Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences. The faculty and graduate students come from about a dozen nationalities and diverse ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. The currently identified external collaborators come from over 20 different organizations and many different countries, industrial as well as developing. Specific efforts are proposed to engage even more women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities. The anticipated results apply to any complex domain that relies on heterogeneous distributed data to address and resolve compelling problems. This initiative is supported by international collaborators from (a) scientific and research institutions, (b) business and industry, and (c) national and international agencies. Research products include: a System for Harmonized Information Processing (SHIP), a software platform, and diverse applications in research and education which are anticipated to significantly impact the way complex organizations, and society in general, understand and manage critical challenges in NHS, ECS, and ASE. |
| Keywords: | Homeland Security, Information Globalization and Harmonization Technologies, |
| Date: | 2004–11–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mit:sloanp:7350&r=ict |
| By: | Stephane Verani (Department of Economics, The University of Western Australia) |
| Abstract: | Open source software is released under an open source licence giving individuals the right to use, modify, and redistribute freely the programs. This paper proposes a model of differentiated duopoly in which firms invest in the development of proprietary or open source software. The main findings are: (i) firms invest more when the products are substitutes; (ii) for substitute products, firms' investment in software development is greatest when the software is open source; (iii) for close to perfect complements, firms' investment in software development is greatest when the software is proprietary; and (iv) for substitute products, investment in open source software yields higher profits than investment in proprietary software. |
| Keywords: | Open Source Software, Differentiated Duopoly, Two-Stage Game, Bertrand Competition |
| JEL: | C72 D21 D43 L11 L13 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwa:wpaper:06-05&r=ict |