A rapidly aging population, combined with restrictions on public spending, is creating strong latent demands for eHealth. For many older people, institutionalised inpatient care is not only expensive, but also less attractive than their being cared for in their own homes. eHealth innovations offer promising new avenues that will allow health and social care systems to cope with these challenges and improve the quality of life for older people. However, the user uptake of eHealth is surprisingly low, and successful deployment is not guaranteed unless the interests of key stakeholders are better addressed. While many previous studies have addressed technological aspects of eHealth innovations, the business models underpinning these innovations are often overlooked. This study thus examines the key characteristics of eHealth market from the dual perspectives of business model and information systems success model to contribute to more sustainable and scalable market development of eHealth innovations. A multiple-case study design based on 20 UK and 13 international cases in combination with expert workshops was used to formulate the main barriers and challenges for the commercialisation of eHealth innovations in UK and propose frameworks for more sustainable eHealth innovations. The implications for both management practice and policy are also discussed.

This chapter examines previous studies of alignment between business and information systems holistically in relation to the development of working associations among professionals from information system and business backgrounds in business organization and eGovernment sectors while investigating alignment research that permits the development and growth of information system, which is appropriate, within budget and on-time development. The process of alignment plays a key role in the construction of dependent associations among individuals from two different groups, and the progress of alignment could be enhanced by emerging an information system according to the investors' prospects. The chapter presents system theory to gather and analyze the data across the designated platforms. The outcomes classify that alignment among business and information system departments remains a priority and is of worry in different ways in diverse areas, which provides prospects for the forthcoming discussion and research.

Inhabitant's implementation of eGovernment services is a key objective for the Government of developed and developing countries. However, to improve the eGovernment services it is important for any Government to align all stakeholders so that the needs of citizens can be examined and addressed. This paper proposed a framework of an ideal pattern of alignment for the Government of Saudi Arabia. The framework has been validated empirically and the result indicates that the Government of Saudi Arabia is spending a huge amount of budget to improve the Government services, but still many services are slow and are not as per expectations. Therefore, citizens of KSA recommended alignment between eGovernment agencies and IS department.

Over the past few years, governments from all over the world are losing general public trust.This lack of public trust presents a significant challenge to public officers, citizens and politicians as it decreases community confidence in public officers and political performance and generates disappointment with community support and services.Alignment is a process where every stakeholder in the government infrastructure works together to achieve common business objectives.The aim of this paper is to study a comprehensive pattern (strategic, structural, social and cultural) of alignment with the aim of improving government services in Saudi Arabia.The data has been collected from different e-government experts from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.Study result indicates that public trust and e-government goals can be attained through establishing strong alignment between information systems (IS) departments and other government agencies.

Demographic trends with extended life expectancy are placing increasing pressures on the UK state-funded healthcare budgets. eHealth innovations are expected to facilitate new avenues for cost-effective and safe methods of care, for enabling elderly people to live independently at their own homes and for assisting governments to cope with the demographic challenges. However, despite heavy investment in these innovations, large-scale deployment of eHealth continues to face significant obstacles, and lack of sustainable business models (BMs) is widely regarded as part of the greatest barriers. Through various empirical methods that include facilitated workshops, case studies of relevant organizations, and user groups, this paper investigates the reasons the private market of eHealth innovations has proved difficult to establish, and therefore it develops a framework for sustainable BMs that could elimiesnate barriers of eHealth innovation commercialization. Results of the study suggest that to achieve sustainable commercialization, BM frameworks and innovation diffusion characteristics should be considered complements but not substitutes.

Knowledge mobilisation has been proven crucial to increasing organisation's efficiency, improving profitability and achieving competitive advantage. The paper aims to explore an approach to integrating knowledge mobilisation within agri-food supply chains to enhance collaboration of all value chain actors and achieving a holistic reduction of waste. The research focus will be on the identification of knowledge brokers, artefacts and channels in order to facilitate knowledge mobilisation crossing boundaries to reduce agri-food wastes. Cauliflower from Brittany, France's largest cauliflower production and export region, provides the data underlying the following analysis. Research methods include semi-structured interview and documentation for data collection and thematic analysis for data analysis. This study has great potential in helping make the right supply chain decisions for eliminating lean wastes in agri-food industry.

Making the right decisions for food supply chain is extremely important towards achieving sustainability in agricultural businesses. This paper explores that knowledge sharing to support food supply chain decisions to achieve lean performance (i.e. to reduce/eliminate non-value-adding activities, or “waste” in lean term). The focus of the paper is on defining new knowledge networks and mobilisation approaches to address the network and community nature of current supply chains. Based on critical analysis of the state-of-the-art in the topic area, a knowledge network and mobilisation framework for lean supply chain management has been developed. The framework has then been evaluated using a case study from the food supply chain. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been used to incorporate expert's view on the defined knowledge networks and mobilisation approaches with respect to their contribution to achieving various lean performance objectives. The results from the work have a number of implications for current knowledge management and supply chain management in theory and in practice.

Alignment between business and information systems plays a vital role in the formation of dependent relationships between different departments in a government organization and the process of alignment can be improved by developing an information system (IS) according to the stakeholders' expectations. However, establishing strong alignment in the context of the eGovernment environment can be difficult. It is widely accepted that business processes in the government environment plays a pivotal role in capturing the details of IS requirements. This paper presents a method of business process modelling through UML which can help to visualise and capture the IS requirements for the system development. A series of UML models have been developed and discussed. A case study on patient visits to a healthcare clinic in the context of eGovernment has been used to validate the models.

Making the right decisions for food supply chain is extremely important towards achieving sustainability in agricultural businesses. This paper is concerned with knowledge sharing to support food supply chain decisions to achieve lean performance (i.e. to reduce/eliminate non-value-adding activities, or “waste” in lean term). The focus of the paper is on defining new knowledge networks and mobilisation approaches to address the network and community nature of current supply chains. Based on critical analysis of the state-of-the-art in the topic area, a knowledge network and mobilisation framework for lean supply chain management has been developed. The framework has then been evaluated using a case study from the food supply chain. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been used to incorporate expert’s view on the defined knowledge networks and mobilisation approaches with respect to their contribution to achieving various lean performance objectives. The results from the work have a number of implications for current knowledge management and supply chain management in theory and in practice.

Despite heavy investment in health and social care sectors in the UK, large scale deployment of assisted living technologies and services (ALTS) continues to face significant obstacles, and the lack of sustainable business models (BM) is widely regarded as one of the greatest hindrances. Based on a systematic review of previous studies, this paper identifies current trends in digital technologies and how they are used in assisted living. We categorise and analyse these technologies and through the lens of diffusion of innovation theory (DOI), we review the concepts and frameworks of BM as used in the literature to suggest conceptual frameworks for sustainable BMs for scalable ALTS in digital economy. This is expected to help in reducing the pressure on the already stretched health and social care services in the UK and other similar economies. Our approach suggests that BM canvas and DOI innovation diffusion characteristics are complements, not substitutes.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Decision Support Systems Technology, ICDSST 2016, held in Plymouth, UK, May 23-25. The theme of the event was Decision Support Systems Addressing Sustainability & Societal Challenges, organized by the EURO (Association of European Operational Research Societies) working group of Decision Support Systems (EWG-DSS). The 15 full papers presented in this book were selected out of 51 submissions after being carefully reviewed by internationally experts from the ICDSST 2016 Program Committee and external invited reviewers. The selected papers are representative of current and relevant research activities in various areas of decision support systems, such as sustainability and societal challenges; risk management and project portfolio management; business intelligence and knowledge management; and technologies to improve system usability.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Decision Support Systems Technology, ICDSST 2016, held in Plymouth, UK, May 23-25. The theme of the event was "

In recent times, diverse uncertainties in the global economic environment have made it difficult for most countries to meet their financial obligations. For example, according to statistics from European Commission, 24 out of 29 recorded European Economic Area member countries had budget deficits in 2014. Therefore through modelling and simulations, this paper proposes flexible decision support schemes that could be used in managing the uncertainties in budgeting. Rather than entirely relying on estimates of anticipated revenues (which are uncertain and difficult to predict) in government budgeting, the scheme proposes incorporating fuzzy inference systems (which is able to capture both the present and future uncertainty) in predicting the anticipated revenues and consequently, in proposing government expenditures. The accuracy of fuzzy rule base helps in mitigating adverse effects of uncertainties in budgeting. We illustrated the proposed scheme with a case study which could easily be adapted and implemented in any budgeting scenarios.

This study investigates the development of a structured knowledge network model in information technology (IT) innovative and implementable projects to facilitate knowledge sharing and transfer in a multi-organization context. The study employs a practice-based perspective by using an exploratory case study approach and a combination of thematic analysis and comparative analysis to analyze the data across public organizations, private organizations, and international companies. The results identify organizational factors and their influence on knowledge channels and knowledge networks. The study contributes to organizational, administrative and knowledge management theories regarding organizational strategy, organizational culture, organizational capacity, knowledge network externalities, knowledge network intermediaries, and knowledge network infrastructures.

This paper focuses on knowledge management to enhance decision support systems for strategic intervention in information technology (IT) project-oriented change management. It proposes a model of change management knowledge networks (CMKNM) to support decision by tackling three existing issues: insufficient knowledge traceability based on the relationships between knowledge elements and key factors, lack of procedural knowledge to provide adequate policies to guide changes, and lack of 'lessons learned' documentation in knowledge bases. A qualitative method was used to investigate issues surrounding knowledge mobilisation and knowledge networks. Empirical study was undertaken with industries to test the CMKNM. Results are presented from the empirical study on the key factors influencing knowledge mobilisation in IT project-oriented change management, knowledge networks and connections. The CMKNM model allows key knowledge mobilisation factors to be aligned with each other; it also defines the connections between knowledge networks allowing knowledge to be mobilised by tracing knowledge channels to support decision.

The increasing challenges and complexity of business environments are making business decisions and operations more difficult for entrepreneurs to predict the outcomes of these processes. Therefore, we developed a decision support scheme that could be used and adapted to various business decision processes. These involve decisions that are made under uncertain situations such as business competition in the market or wage negotiation within a firm. The scheme uses game strategies and fuzzy inference concepts to effectively grasp the variables in these uncertain situations. The games are played between human and fuzzy players. The accuracy of the fuzzy rule base and the game strategies help to mitigate the adverse effects that a business may suffer from these uncertain factors. We also introduced learning which enables the fuzzy player to adapt over time. We tested this scheme in different scenarios and discover that it could be an invaluable tool in the hand of entrepreneurs that are operating under uncertain and competitive business environments.

We propose a flexible decision support scheme which could be used in managing the wage negotiation between employers and employees. This scheme uses fuzzy inference systems and game theory concepts in arriving at decisions on future wage increase which could be more mutually agreeable. For example, rather than specifying 5% yearly increase of wages, we propose that the uncertain factors which are mostly difficult to predict and that could affect wage decisions need to be taken into consideration by the wage formula. These include business revenues or (profit), inflation rate, number of competitors, cost of production, and other uncertain factors that may affect business operations. The accuracy of the fuzzy rule base and the game strategies will help to mitigate the adverse effects that a business may suffer from these uncertain factors. Based on our scheme, we propose that employers and employees should calculate their future wage by using a fuzzy rule base and strategies that take into consideration these uncertain variables. The proposed approach is illustrated with a case study and the procedure and methodology may be easily implemented by business organizations in their wage bargaining and decision processes.

We developed a decision support scheme that could be used and adapted to various business decision processes. These involve decisions that are made under uncertain situations such as business competition in the market or wage negotiation within a firm. The scheme uses game strategies and fuzzy inference concepts to effectively grasp the variables in these uncertain situations. The games are played between human and fuzzy players. The accuracy of the fuzzy rule base and the game strategies help to mitigate the adverse effects that a business may suffer from these uncertain factors We also introduced learning which enables the fuzzy player to adapt over time. We tested this scheme in different scenarios and discover that it could be an invaluable tool in the hand of entrepreneurs that are operating under uncertain and competitive business environments.

We proposed a profit sharing strategic game approach to wage negotiation and decision problems in business organisations. In the scheme, both the employer and the union choose their strategies and the game is played in five rounds. We refer to our model as automated game approach to wage negotiation and decision problems (AGAW). Our method proposes profit (positive or negative) sharing sequential game approach in modeling wage increase decisions within a firm in a competitive industry and this game is played between the firm's management and the union. The proposed approach is illustrated with a case study. The procedure and methodology proposed in this research may be easily implemented by business organisations in their wage bargaining and decision processes.