Agent-oriented programming (AOP) is a client/server paradigm that currently gains increasing attention. Recently emerging AOP platforms claim to provide suitable technical support for the implementation of electronic market (EM) systems. EM systems allow both demanders and suppliers of services and goods in worldwide communication networks to cooperate freely based on electronic contracting and...

The Internet also represents one of the most successful examples of sustained investment and commitment to research and development in information infrastructure. Beginning with early research in packet switching, the government, industry, and academia have been partners in evolving and deploying this exciting new technology. Today, terms like “[email protected]” and “http://www.acm.org” trip ligh...

CIRANO is a private non-profit organization incorporated under the Québec Companies Act. Its infrastructure and research activities are funded through fees paid by member organizations, an infrastructure grant from the Ministère de l’Industrie, du Commerce, de la Science et de la Technologie, and grants and research mandates obtained by its research teams. The Scientific Series fulfils one of t...

Networked organizations are becoming a trend particularly for globalization strategies. The organization's resources and capabilities are extended by a network of suppliers, customers and partners. Internal and external relationships have to be connected with the organization by means of effective communication media and synergistic work processes. To sustain their competitive advantage, networ...

Traffic congestion is a large and growing problem in many countries due to an ever increasing number of vehicles. Increasing capacity by simply extending the road infrastructure is in many places impossible due to space and cost limitations. Everyday, people spend countless hours in car queues all over the world. The existing road infrastructure must be better utilized to save time and to reduc...

Variants of the same process may be encountered in different organizations, e.g., any municipality will have a process to handle building permits. New paradigms such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing stimulate organizations to share a BPM infrastructure. The shared infrastructure has to support many processes and their variants. Dealing with such large collections of similar p...

Open access is sometimes seen as promoting rail competition effectively when infrastructure geography and market demand restricts routings — e.g. in Europe. European railways are passenger-oriented, highly scheduled, poorly standardized, and lines serve specialized functions. Conversely, American railroads are freight-oriented, flexible, and highly standardized. Consequently, optimal forms of o...

It is a comparative study regarding job satisfaction among librarians who are serving in public (government) and private sector universities/degree awarding institutes in Lahore. Questionnaires were used to collect data from librarians serving in ten HEC (Higher Education Commission) recognized public and private sector universities/institutes in Lahore. The eight components of job satisfaction...

Residents of the Hudson-Mohawk River Watershed and the state of New York face serious challenges during coming years to maintain water infrastructure, including both water supply and sewage treatment. For example, maintaining wastewater infrastructure is expected to cost more than $36 billion by 2028 (NY-DEC 2008). Given this extremely high cost, one of the few potential opportunities for subst...