It still remains unclear whether the decision to outsource IT is governed by rule of efficiency or from institutional constraints imposed by the state and the professions in order to gain legitimacy through institutional isomorphism. Our analysis is based on a unique data set that contains all first-time decisions of publicly listed German firms to engage in large-scale IT outsourcing between 1...

Water authorities around the world are faced with the problem of ageing distribution networks and often only limited historical data on which to base a sound long term, cost efficient replacement policy. The LICAN approach to whole of life costing is introduced and a hypothetical case study is used to demonstrate the importance of such an approach. A selection of pipe networks utilizing differe...

Creating and monitoring a competitive and cost-effective pay-per-click advertisement campaign through the web-search channel is a resource demanding task in terms of expertise and effort. Assisting or even automating the work of an advertising specialist will have an unrivaled commercial value. In this paper we propose a methodology, an architecture, and a fully functional prototype for semiand...

Although banking has been widely studied using standard DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) models and its variations, these models do not in fact account for the internal structure relative to measures characterizing banking operations performance. In this paper, efficiency in Brazilian banking is measured using a two-stage process. In the first stage, called cost efficiency, number of branches an...

This paper examines the current state of IT benchmarking and the problem of using conventional IT benchmarking models to benchmark Information Security environments. A framework is presented as a starting point for further development to obtain a fully-fledged, operational Information Security benchmark model. This model will determine what money companies are spending on Information Security a...

To address current difficulties of SMEs that are reluctant to invest in information security due to cost, this paper intends to provide an information security guideline that will allow SMEs to adopt cost efficient security measures. In particular, the information security guideline categorizes SMEs by their informatization level, presents an architecture for determining the level of security r...

In this paper, we present a cluster computing environment established at a minority serving institution that aims to provide services for research and education in an undergraduate student body. We will address the cost efficiency of the cluster computing environment; student participation in the configuration of the lab; and research activities performed on the cluster that involves faculty/st...

Biomonitoring of waterbodies is vital as the number of anthropogenic stressors on aquatic ecosystems keeps growing. However, the continuous decrease in funding makes it impossible to meet monitoring goals or sustain traditional manual sample processing. In this paper, we review what kind of statistical tools can be used to enhance the cost efficiency of biomonitoring: We explore automated ident...

In the field of aeronautics, shape morphing has been used to identify those aircraft that undergo substantial geometrical changes in their external shape to enhance or adapt to their mission profiles during flight. This creates superior system capabilities not possible without morphing shape changes. The objective of morphing concepts is to develop high performance aircraft with lifting surface...

Public hospitals in Greece are part of a National Health System, established in 1983. This paper presents the hospital sector changes in Greece over the last 20 years, emphasizing cost efficiency. We break down its historical developments into two periods: 1983-1999 and 2000-2008. From the historical review, it is concluded that the system is cost inefficient, based on two components. First, a ...