ABSTRACT. To achieve competitive advantage in the market is important task for companies. Competitive strategy is effective when products is in the Introduction, Growth and Maturity Stage of the product life cycle. It provides us how to achieve a company’s competitive advantage in the specific market. In the Decline Stage of the product life cycle, companies need to create new market, because in this stage, the demand of current products is decreasing. Therefore, Growth strategy is required in this stage.

In the age of information society, the cycle of products is getting shorter. So new market is more important. In the definition of Innovation by Schumpeter, creation of new market is involved. Therefore, innovation can be positioned as an important role in the growth strategy.

As a comprehensive theory of marketing, Transvection is introduced by Alderson. In this theory, the value of product is decided when consumers buy it through the process of sorting and transformation of products. This process can be seen as a process of increasing of product’s value. Red Queen Effect is a concept of competitive advantage by van Valen. This concept tells that competition between companies lead to achieve competitive advantage in the market. This presentation describes creation of innovation using Red Queen Effect on Transvection.

ABSTRACT. With the popularization of smart devices, people have become major players equipped for innovation. By broadcast sowing of innovation seed on the smart devices, users can directly empower themselves to produce innovation dynamically and instantly in collaboration with specialists. In an integrated fashion with seamless integrity and efficiency on the smart devices, multi-agent platform is becoming a reality by adaptive radiations in a variety of industries, as follows: Innovation seeds are connected on the smart devices and hence dispersed in a variety of industries by the following steps:

1. Simultaneously processing and integration of multiple pieces of information into businesses, 2. User specialization, 3. Dynamic instant innovation by users, and 4. Dispersal of innovation on smart devices as industrial cradle.

Smart devices disperse innovation in various industries by radiating various kinds of the seeds of new industries. Successive adaptive radiations have played a pivotal role in the industrial diversity. The effects of adaptive radiation are often seen in the personalized businesses on the smart devices. This transforms the structure of the relevant industry and break up the position of makers by the power of personalization and personification on the smart devices. The dynamic and instant innovation is empowered beyond user innovation as users could experiment, implement and personify an innovation opportunity at the same instant. Its power exceeds that of open innovation. The power of the personalization affects all industries by removing the industrial barriers. Personalized needs/wants enhance the simultaneously processing multiple information by reciprocal information exchange between users and specialists. Through the cloud-sourcing process, smart mobiles inspire the autonomy of users and make them innovators for producing their own products. The industrial diversification is achieved by personalizing goods and services. Innovation is also personalized and therefore achieved dynamically and instantly. A power shift is undertaken by advanced media, which act as a tool for self-transformational innovation, while shifting power balances and changing winners. This power shift is enforced by an open-integral system instead of open innovation. This power shift is enforced by modularization power of an open-integral system between users and specialists instead of open innovation. The power shift by the smart devices has changed innovation paradigm by the following schemes:

1. Balance the problem of a trade-off between open system and integral system, and 2. Work smart devices as industrial cradle for industrial divrsity.

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the role of the smart devices that connects the missing link of adaptive radiation and industrial diversity.

ABSTRACT. This study deals with the risks related to the development and utilisation of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) and the vacuum of responsibility concerning them. The study was highly inspired by the detection of serious bugs which had hidden for a length of time in the codes of Open-SSL, a FLOSS module that is widely used for encryption and certification of personal information flown in the Internet space. It is alleged that Open-SSL is used in two thirds of webserver systems. Therefore, many people were afraid that the detected bugs could have led to a good deal of harm. Their afraid is symbolised by the names of these bugs, Heartbleed and Freak.

It is an unquestionable fact that the society deeply depends on Information and Communication Technology (ICT); ICT has play a pivotal role as a social as well as economic infrastructure. The ICT dependent society and economy have required ICT engineers, especially software engineers, to establish their professional outlook. Ensuring professionalism among ICT engineers is considered vital for maintaining high quality of development, implementation and operation of information systems. In fact, professional codes of conduct for ICT engineers, especially software engineers, have been developed, and educational schemes based on such codes have been created and implemented at many Western universities.

On the other hand, FLOSS modules has been widely used in order to save time and cost for developing information systems and to ensure the quality of them. It is often alleged that thanks to the bazaar-type development scheme of FLOSS its quality is likely to be highly maintained. Therefore, the bugs detected in the Open SSL codes have brought about significant unrest amongst ICT engineers and information system users. However, a more serious aspect of the detections is that it is very difficult to clarify who should take a responsibility, or a liability, for the possible harm caused by the bugs in FLOSS codes in the current information system development environment in which the use of FLOSS as a submodule of an information system has already become standard practice. A typical “many hands” situation has arisen there. (349 words)

ABSTRACT. Recently, Japanese companies and institutions are eager to build their CSIRTs (Computer Security Incident Response Teams) because social and business impacts of cyber security rapidly increased. NCA (Nippon CSIRT Association) which is a CSIRTs' community in Japan founded in 2007, now has over100 teams (as of Dec. 2015) and more than half of them have joined in NCA within the past few years. Their business backgrounds cover a broad range. Not only ICT related venders/providers, but also ICT user companies such as manufacture, bank, insurance, construction, airline, hotel companies are participating NCA. Another classification can be done. Some of the NCA member teams are "Incident Response Providers" (Security Vendors) and most of the others are "Internal CSIRTs". We focus on the latter. In these conditions, the definition of “CSIRT activities” is now becoming blurred though “The Handbook for Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs)” ( West-Brown et.al., 1998,2003: Japanese translation by JPCERT/CC) guide them how to build and operate CSIRTs. Besides, a new serious problem are occurring―“CSIRTs in name only” which do not possess enough skills and/or functions as a Computer Security Incident Response Team. We have been discussing the characteristics and activities of Japanese "Internal CSIRTs" from the perspective of organization and management. Many of "Internal CSIRTs" have a structure "virtual team" which consists of several members from multiple divisions like IT/IS, R&D, corporate planning, administration, public relations, legal, etc. We have studied these characteristics on the basis of significant interviews with members of some Japanese CSIRTs of different industries (Takagi et.al., 2013; Kondo et.al., 2013a/b; Terajima, 2013; Teramoto and Nakanishi, 2014）.Also we conduct an empirical questionnaire survey to clarify the trends and issues of NCA members (Sugihara, 2015). In addition, another survey by JPCERT/CC, NCA and the University of Tokyo are conducted based on maturity model and other original questions. In this presentation we introduce and analysis of these two surveys to clarify the current situation and issues of CSIRTs in Japan.

ABSTRACT. Progress of urbanization in Southeast Asia led to the concentration and the depopulation of Japan similar population, there is a fear that the development of motorization is leading to Japan as well shopping district and city centers of the decline of the region. For this reason, in the essay, it recalls the relationship between the regional creation and shopping district in japan consider the use of smart phones such as ICT for shopping street promotion. Virtual shopping mall is a safe and secure environment by customer．Mall is for server security is kept but this is it. Therefore you must keep the Security Server and the data management company that manages the virtual shopping mall. For comparing research before shopping streets goes shops where the actual content is aggregated into a portal site by aggregating leads to prosperity of the shopping street. You can also thrive in safe; secure shopping, virtual shopping mall with shopping streets to Coexistence and Symbiosis.

ABSTRACT. Kobayashi City in Miyazaki Prefecture is one of the typical provincial cities in Japan. The city has suffered from rapid reduction of population same as other Japanese small and medium-sized cities, towns and villages due to lack of local industries and tourism resources. It’s a very serious problem for them to stop the population outflow. However, they usually don’t have enough capacity to promote their region themselves.

Under such situation, regional revitalization policies are required. Japanese government has conducted various approaches in order to support regional activities and solve local issues. Although some cases seem successful, but most cases are not; many problems still occur. Moreover, subsidy dependence problem, which claimed by recent literature has been newly reported. It means that some municipalities can't do anything without subsidy. Even if they aren't dependent too much, there is no clear solution from both regions and governments.

On the other hand, municipality PR videos have been focused as a relatively new approach to regional revitalization. An advantage of the video which is posted on video-sharing site is low cost and strong spread. Once a video gets the attention of the public on social media, the total number of views will increase exponentially. In reality, prefectures such as Kagawa, Hiroshima, Kochi and so on, have made their own PR videos and succeeded in getting attention from tourists, not only Japanese but also foreigners.

Kobayashi City also published their PR video named "N'da-mo-shita'n KOBAYASHI" on August in 2015 to promote immigrants to live in their areas. Since the story was very original and unique, the video immediately gained popularity. As a result, the name of "Kobayashi City" became greatly famous.

Although this is just a typical success story, there are two interesting points. One is that professional creators were actively involved in making the video. Also, despite of less financial benefits, still, they were willing to participate in the project. This kind of utilization of human resource is meaningful in the context of regional revitalization.

The other is that sequel video was generated by high school students in the city. The meaning of involvement of them is worth to consider because they are potential human resource in the future. In addition, the collaboration of professional creators and high school students may find new resources in the region.

This research aims to examine these two points above and clarify the story and important factors of the project by using semi-structured interview with key members. After getting the results, implications will be considered and interpreted from regional information management approach.

ABSTRACT. Article introduced general about Lean Management model "Made in Vietnam" is the manage model creates value added for the organization by using human intelligence to reduce the maximum cost of waste. At the same time showed the need to adopt Lean Management in the field of higher education when universities in Vietnam exist many shortcomings such as wastage of thinking, about facilities, equipment, wastage of human resources, methods, processes training.... Next article in turn introduced the successfully Administration model of the University in the world as a model four-step implementation Lean management at the University of Central Oklahoma, improved models of university processes using Lean Six Sigma tools at the University of New Orleans and Lean Management model at the UK business Universities. Through this model the author has given some direction on the application of Lean Management for the Vietnam Universities. Finally the author has pointed out the importance of the need to quickly change the traditional thinking to lean thinking to be able to recognize and cut up the existing waste a lot of the tangible and intangible form in Vietnam Universities.

ABSTRACT. This study applied regression analysis to the financial data from some 1400 companies on the “Nikkei NEEDS Financial Quest” database. Missing values from the original data were imputed artificially from random numbers. These constitute 5% of the original data. Imputation algorithms used include MCMC, EMB (Expectation Maximization with Bootstrapping) and FCS (Fully Conditional Specification). Software employed were IBM, SPSS, SAS and R packages.

ABSTRACT. Following the 2008 financial crisis, many Japanese companies recognized the pressing need to develop supply chains capable of flexibly addressing the issues posed by natural disasters and unforeseen situations, such as the unprecedented appreciation of the yen, the Great Tohoku Earthquake and the resulting electricity shortage, the European debt crisis, and soaring labor costs in developing countries. An issue of increasing importance is how to move away from the heretofore prevalent supply chains with a rigid focus on increasing efficiency, and switch to developing supply chains that allow flexible rearrangements in the face of unforeseen situations, or adaptive supply chains that make strategically appropriate use of global resources (Prahalad & Krishnan, 2008 Abe & Yamane, 2011). In the traditional approach, each time a business transaction begins with a new participant (production site, supplier, distribution base, client, etc.), the participants specify the details of the transaction (scope, procedures, rules, etc.). It is evident that the approach using some de facto standards for B-to-B transactions in units of industry group (car, food, logistics, etc.) is more efficient and adaptable than the traditional approach. Moreover, establishing a standard E-commerce transaction framework that can be used at any time, from anywhere, and by anyone would help achieve even more efficient and adaptive transactions. With this understanding, companies feel the need to renew their focus on ISO/IEC15944-4 (an international standard that lays down rules for B-to-B transactions and that can be used regardless of company size, location, or industry type) and the “Business Transaction State Machine”. The paper analyzes the characteristics of and issues with an earlier business transaction state machine proposed by Horiuchi and McCarthy (2011a), which was based on ISO business transaction concepts. Specifically, in the prototype system of a catalog orders case from prior research, it clarifies that the specification of business transaction in ISO has not reached a level of explicit definition where participants using the specification can use it confidently. The business events and business transaction entities in order to complete a business transaction in the catalog order case are considered as to be 12 business events and 8 entities. However, the business events and entities necessary to properly complete a transaction are not intrinsically limited to the 12 events and 8 entities shown in the model. The paper addresses these issues using a process model called a colored Petri nets (Aalst & Stahl, 2011) from the research approach of design science (March & Smith, 1995). The process model facilitates more explicit definitions of the State Machine. And it explores whether the process model can solve problems how the strictness of the defined State Machine can be confirmed. It also attempts to examine guidelines for the State Machine based using the model into general use. It concludes by discussing the limits the State Machine, poses additional research questions arising from experiences during modeling, and recommends possible courses of action to advance the planning of adaptive supply chains.

ABSTRACT. Work attitudes are important to the organization as they determine the behavior of the staffs/workers in the organization. Two types of work attitudes that have especially important implication for organizational behavior are job satisfaction and organizational commitment on job performance in case of staffs at VNK consultancy training and labor supports joint stock company. Five factors ob job satisfaction (namely: salary policy, opportunities and advancement opportunities, coworkers, supervision and work itself) and three factors of organizational commitment and normative commitment) which are researched in this paper in order to find the impact of these factors on job performance. The research methodology used in the current research is quantitative methodology by using survey questionnaire and interview staffs at VNK consultancy training and labor supports joint-stock company.The results indicated that there is positive relationship between payment; promotions and training opportunities; coworkers; supervision and work itself; continuance commitment and job performance. The factor analysis for impacts on job performance aimed at realistically contributing to the human resource planning at the research sites and creating further performance at work for the VNK consultancy training and labor supports joint-stock company.

ABSTRACT. The authors propose a new "gaming" approach to IT professional development. The proposed approach is to activate a dialogue within learners (IT professionals) as stakeholder in organization, and to develop better understanding of the problem and its alternative solutions through the learners' play of the linguistic-qualitative game in which the player models a substantial business game that works over the linguistic-qualitative game. Players should be divided into decision-making team and structure-changing team. A given initial simple model implemented in the linguistic-qualitative game evolves as decision-making team selects decision items provided in the game being developed and structure-changing team adds or updates decision items, internal states, and state transition rules of the game. The players recognize the important factors of the problem as the experiences and/or phenomenon in the real world are realized in the game world. In the debriefing (or reflection) session of the game, players will refine their understanding of the problem with a post-generated story of "decision-making" and "structure-change" they made. From a gaming point of view, this activity is categorized in meta-gaming in the sense that players build their decision making model in the process of play-and-change of the game. The proposed modeling game assumes the players' active inter-team as well as intra-team communication. The authors introduce the concept of game-modeling game and linguistic-qualitative game, and explain how business game modeling game can be implemented by using some experimental cases, and discuss the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

ABSTRACT. The Open Group standardize ArchiMate to visualize Enterprise Architecture. Although ArchiMate provides motivation extension to describe EA goals, business value modeling in ArchiMate is still unclear. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel approach to extract business values by using the actor collaboration matrix in ArchiMate. A specific case study is shown to explain the approach. The described approach successfully provides a seamless method to derive business values from the actor collaboration relationship.

ABSTRACT. 1.Background: Enterprises  are  facing  a  great  challenge  to  cope  with  the  ever-changing  environments.  In  Highly  dynamic  business  sectors,  markets,  technology,  culture  and  regulations  are  continuously  evolving  and  industries  are  being  defined  by  competition.  While  attempting  to  create  a  framework  for  adaptive  enterprise  architecture  based  on  System  Thinking,  we  realized  the  importance  of  the  managing  the  requirements  change  process;  therefore,  we  started  out  research  by  investigating  the  available  options  to  improve  the  requirements  change  process  first.  We  refer  to  the  use  of  TOGAF  framework  for  our  Adaptive  Enterprise  Architecture  framework  (AEA).  TOGAF  is  considered  as  the  basis  for  any  customized  Enterprise  Architecture  (EA).  TOGAF`s  most  important  element  is  the  Architecture  Development  Methodology  (ADM).  ADM  defines  the  full  life  cycle  processes  to  create  EA,  the  ADM  phases  from  TOGAF  by  the  Open  Group  is  shown  in  Figure  1.  Requirements  management  is  at  the  heart  of  the  ADM  process  and  it  is  connected  to  all  the  phases,  this  shows  that  the  nature  of  the  architecture  processes  is  based  on  the  change  in  the  enterprise.  To  support  a  structured  and  controlled  change,  we  need  to  guide  the  requirements  change  management  processes. We  suggest  the  use  of  Concept  of  Operations  (CONOPS)  as  an  artifact  to  guide  the  change.  The  Initial  CONOPS  is  supposed  to  be  the  basis  of  the  system  requirements,  and  as  the  CONOPS  mature  and  evolve  it  can  be  of  great  use  to  Guide  the  changing  requirements  in  the  ADM  process.

2. Current research  Realizing the importance of CONOPS to the ADM cycle, we had to identify the relationship between them then propose a system thinking approach to create the CONOPS.

a. CONOPS and the ADM cycle process: By observation, we realized that the CONOPS elements are related to the following processes in the ADM phase’s cycle: • Preliminary phase • Architectural vision (Phase A) • Requirements management • Architecture change management (Phase H)

This allowed us to define descriptive Adaptive Enterprise level CONOPS elements that could reflect the adaptive attributes to the ADM cycle phases. In the figure below, we show our research approach that should result in producing CONOPS that would improve the enterprise architecture and guide it to better adaptability.

b.  System  Thinking  based  approach  for  writing  the  CONOPs

 After  establishing  the  relationship  between  the  CONOPS  as  evolving  and  the  EA  as  Adaptable,  we  are  going  to  complete  the  description  of  an  approach  to  create  CONOPS  based  on  the  Checkland  soft  systems  methodology.    Previous  research  by  Frittman  J.  and  Edson,  R.,  described  an  overview  of  a  system  thinking  based  approach  to  write  an  effective  concept  of  operation.  However  a  relationships  between  CONOPS  and  Systemigram  ,  CATWOE  and  EA  is  still  not  clear  .We  aim  to  clarify  the  relationship  between  the  CONOPS  ,EA  and  system  thinking  tools  to  improve  the  EA  adaptability  .

ABSTRACT. In recent years, East Asian economies have been rapidly developing. The reason is that firms have been successfully achieving product and process innovation by introducing advanced technologies and know-how from MNCs (Multi-national corporations). In order to achieve innovation, firms have to own technology, capability and ICT use. In particular, collaborations with outside organizations such as MNCs, local firms are indispensable for firms in developing economies. Authors’ previous research clarified external linkages enhance innovation capability and ICT use, and innovation capability and ICT use promote product innovation in ASEAN firms. However, who plays a role in promoting organizational learning and ICT use by absorbing external information and resources are not explained there. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the role of human factor in the innovation process of firms in four ASEAN economies, namely Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Since new information necessary for innovation mainly comes from outside the firm, it is first required to obtain such information and then integrate it with indigenous resources that the firm owns for innovation. The innovation process thus consists of two sub-processes, namely the absorptive process from which outside information is converted to the firm’s innovation capability and the transforming process in which innovation capability creates innovation. The firm has to enhance absorptive and transforming capabilities. In particular, in the absorptive process, two types of employees are examined, such as those who have working experience with MNCs and those indigenous to the firm. As for the transforming capability, organizational learning process, including QC (quality control) and cross-functional team are examined. In addition, ICTs are used to gather in-house and outside information and promote innovation capability. The mail surveys and phone interviews were conducted from 2013 to 2014, and the total numbers of samples are 665. Based on the data, SEM (structural equation modeling) is employed. The analysis indicates that MNCs have the largest impact as external linkages and for the connectivity with external linkages such MNCs, the best mediators are top management and factory managers who have working experience with MNCs, whereas for connectivity with local firms, indigenous employees such as local engineers, managers, and line leaders are the best mediators. The direct and indirect effects of eternal linkages on innovation are also estimated.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to clarify how the members in the cyber incident handling team/organization are able to acquire the ability of cyber incident handling through the game playing. In recent years according to the progress of an information-oriented society, it has get more important for any organizations which have utilized the information infrastructure to enhance their information security. Under such a background, the number of organizations which have constructed a Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) is gradually increasing. While the number of CSIRTs is increasing, there are insufficient members who are able to deal with the cyber incident enough. The issue is, therefore, how the organization or team whose role is to respond the computer security incident develops the members who are able to handle the cyber incident. Under such a situation the game playing is focused on as a method for the person who would like to improve the cyber incident handling ability to acquire that. Up to now, the gamification have been the popular way to develop the human resource. The gamification is the way for person who attempt to learn something to get the knowledge thorough the game to be made preparations in advance. In that sense, the game playing that is focused on in the cyber incident response team is little different from the current gamification. While the content of the game is considered as the important issue in the current gamification, the interaction between game master and game player is regarded as the significant issue in the game playing that aims to improve the ability to handle the computer incident. The game playing that is adapted as a case in this study is card game style, and the rule of this game is decided only to a minimum. The game master gives problems to the game players following the rule and the card. There is not a correct answer usually. There are the case not only that there are the multiple answer but also there are no specific answer. The success of this game is depend on the interaction between the game master and the game players, and the game players and the game players. The aim of this study is to understand how the game players acquire the knowledge of cyber incident though this game. To achieve this purpose, I have conducted the interviews for one of the game master. The case is made based on this interview and analyzed. In the analysis, it is clarified that the relation between the game master and the game player is similar with the apprenticeship. This game play a role of the virtual world of the cyber incident, the game player learns the knowledge, language and so on from the game master in this virtual world As the conclusion, the game players can acquire the knowledge of handling cyber incident through the apprenticeship with the game master in the game playing that play the role of virtual world of the cyber incident.

ABSTRACT. IT innovation enables firms to be more flexible so that they can move faster in developing their own innovations based on their own firm’s core competencies in their dynamic environments. Firms can, hence, focus more of their organizational and economic resources on their own innovations. While prior innovation research on organizations focusses on the impact of innovating on firm performance. This study goes beyond that and measures the impact of the speed of innovation. We also investigate small and medium size firms that are innovators in the medical device industry. Furthermore, we identity how firm performance is impacted by the speed of innovating by rival firms.

Through the theory of dynamic constructs, competitive advantage can be sustained by developing IT resources that are not easily duplicated (Barney 1991). Flexible organizational capabilities can create competitive advantage by leveraging IT resources. Firms that are able to differentiate themselves through their abilities to access resources that are not easily duplicated are able to exploit IT innovations (Anderson et al. 2006). Researchers have recognized that firm strategy and structure need to be linked (Chandler, 1962), and that firm strategy influences IT structure (Banker et al. 2010; Wooldridge and Floyd 1990). Hence, the small businesses used in this study should be structured more favorably for reacting to changes in the competitive environment manifest through the speed of innovating. This paper includes new managerial and theoretical contributions with respect the speed of innovation and concludes with opportunities for further research.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we will consider the media selection problem of Omni-channel or Multi-channel strategy in buzz marketing on small and medium size manufacture.

Recent year, the concept of Multi-channel retailer or Omni-channel retailer is paid the most attention to now. It is a business model that implies using of a variety of channels in a customer’s shopping experience including research before a purchase (Verhoefa, Kannanb and Inmanc, 2015). Rather, it is more important for the manufacturing industry, because of the sense of building a direct contact with customers. However, these studies have been discussed from the context of the supply chain management and distribution (cf. Yan, 2011). Furthermore, those discussions are directed to a large-scale manufacturing. Therefore, in this study, we focus on marketing communications in small and medium-sized manufacturing industry. So to speak, we aim a niche on the research.

For financial constraints, it is difficult to carry out large-scale promotional activities in the small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, public relations by owned media becomes important. Further, under the search economy, word-of-mouth in social media is important. Therefore, in the public relations, it is necessary to promote a customer review (or words-of-mouth).　That is, in order to effectively expand the publicity, information about the experience of using the product is important. In order to penetrate such information widely, it is essential form of background information or context. In this paper, we will define the term context as variety of organizational effort. That is, it is a key to the efforts of non-ICT is to take advantage of ICT (WEB).

In addition, in order to succeed the public relations (and to increase the recognition of the product), three keys (simplification of the message, subject of the content or event, and user participation) might be important.

By focusing on these three factors, it is possible to obtain a useful suggestion for the selection criteria of own media and social media.

To clarify the discussion, the case-study method is adopted in this study. In particular, the case of LIBERTA Co., Ltd., which sell hot product “baby foot”, is examined to demonstrate their effective management of consumer generated media (CGM), while mentioning the significance of the experience economy and word-of-mouth marketing or marketing buzz. Media strategies such as multi-channel relating to unify all sales and distribution channels at stores in both real space and cyberspace and O2O (Online to Off-line) which aims at coordinating online activities with off-line purchasing behavior are also taken into consideration.

ABSTRACT. In Japan, since the election of the 23rd House of Councillors in 2013, it has become legal to conduct political campaigns using blogs, social media, and video streaming sites on the Internet. Among many online methods, Twitter has been the most popular one used for elections in Japan. It is reported that the Japanese language is the second most “tweeted” language in the world. The top five records of TPS (Tweets per Second) in the world have been set in Japan. For example, on August 3rd, 2013 at 11:21:50 AM JST (Japan Standard Time), 143,199 TPS was a world record. Even though there were studies on the use of Twitter in elections, the number of tweets collected tended to be rather small. In the study by Andranik et al (2010), they analyzed only about 100 thousand tweets from German Federal Congress according to Doerner (2014). Since the number of Twitter users in Germany was not as high as in Japan, this low number was not unexpected. In case of Daniel et al. (2011), they collected about 240 thousand tweets for their analysis. These studies were not able to predict the outcomes correctly. We believe that it was due to the insufficient amount of data. For our study, we gathered 960 thousand and 1.16 million tweets containing the names of the political parties from the elections for the 23rd House of Councillors and the 47th House of Representatives, respectively. As the 47th House of Representative election adopted the small constituency system, the amount of data was not sufficiently large to predict the outcomes of the election by social media listening. Also, when some organizations support certain candidates, the members of those organizations tend to vote for those candidates. In these cases, we found that social media listening was not an effective way of predicting their votes. However, we were able to prove that there was a close relationship between the proportional representation system and the number of tweets containing the names of political parties. Also, we demonstrated that the real time predictions of results and the trends of undecided voters were feasible to some extent using this relationship.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates how human communication helps promote the use of information systems that intermediate business; it does so by studying a load-matching system used in the transportation industry. Web-mediated intermediary services intermediate information via the Internet. Examples of web-mediated intermediary services include load-matching systems that intermediate information about loads and available carriers in the transportation sector. A load-matching system is designed to increase the transportation efficiency of truck company logistics. The use of such a system is expected to greatly improve the transportation efficiency of small to medium-sized carriers, neither of which have a nationwide transportation network or physical distribution bases. Unlike large forwarding agents—many which have built a nationwide base network to increase loads—small carriers with only one office find it difficult to increase their loads. They have thus tried to increase their transportation efficiency and load factor and the working rate of their rolling stock by forming links with other carriers, so that each acts as a branch of the others. However, not all such services have been successful; success among them will be contingent upon pinpointing effective means of promoting system use, information distribution, and intermediation among business entities. Most load-matching systems in Japan are inactive; the Japan Local Network System (JL) is one of Japan’s few successful load-matching services. JL holds meetings frequently. The role of JL meetings can be investigated in terms of a relationship between the Web and the meeting. Meetings play an important role in the JL, and this human communication is likely to promote transactions. To investigate the effects of human communication on the promotion of transactions, we surveyed the actual use of the JL and verified the effects of personal exchange meetings on the use of the load-matching system. Thus, we show that JL encourages its members to communicate and share information in offline settings. We explain its success by investigating the interaction between the information system and human communication. The models showed that the metadata shared by JL members via human communication promoted the use of the information system. This study examined the effect of human communication on the use of an information system. We investigated the key factors that promote transactions in a Web-mediated load-matching service by undertaking a positive analysis of a questionnaire survey conducted among members of the JL, a successful Web-mediated load-matching service that encourages members to exchange and distribute information via face-to-face communication. The results of covariance structure analysis revealed that increasing information distribution promotes the intermediary service, and that metadata sharing helps increase the number of transactions.

ABSTRACT. Although nowadays, the exchange rate is in a level, which $1 is more expensive than 110 yen, it had been changing between the latter half of 70 yen and the first half of 80 yen for more than a year since 2011. Under the influence of recent tendency to strong yen and appreciation of the risk decentralization intention of company, specific gravity to overseas business seems to become big. However, when I reconfirmed the current domestic situation particularly a way of car-related industrial accumulation stands out mainly on production factories of Toyota and Daihatsu in northern Kyushu. I suggest the concept is called the quasi-mother factory in this report. This is the concept that I suggest originally. Shortly, quasi-mother factory is not a simple production factory. Also it performs original technology development and supports the overseas factory. In addition, it is existence to take on the support of the mother factory.

ABSTRACT. Recently, sourcing strategies for Japanese manufacturers have become more complex because of the quick economic recovery and the weakening of the Japanese yen since the initiation of Abenomics in 2012. Some firms have shifted their policy from overseas production to domestic production, while some have continued expanding overseas manufacturing. However, little is yet known about suitable strategies for responding to this rapid economic change, especially for small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs). This study examines the business environment and performance of sourcing strategies implemented by SMMs in the recent economic turbulence. We conducted a questionnaire survey targeting 1,333 SMMs in 2014 and (1) analyzed the relationships between business environment, sourcing strategy, absorptive capacity, gemba competitiveness, and business/organizational performance, and then (2) performed path analysis from business/organizational performance to financial performance, after adding financial data for each sample. The first analysis clarified the co-existence of two types of SMMs in Japan: One employs a global strategy to reconfigure overall competitiveness (we call these global SMMs), and the other focuses on the domestic market to strengthen existing manufacturing capabilities (we call these domestic SMMs). The second analysis indicated that global SMMs successfully developed a clear path from business/organizational performance to financial performance, but domestic SMMs did not. As the third analysis, this study targets global SMMs and provides a structural equation model to investigate their specific sourcing strategies, namely, strategic alliances, outsourcing, and mergers and acquisitions. We assume that each firm explores these three strategies in accordance with the firm’s strong recognition of environmental turbulence. This turbulence includes a) technological and IT innovation (big data trends), b) the Japanese and global economies, c) “hollowing out” (de-industrialization) phenomena, d) the social impact of a graying society, and e) political and legal changes that affect SMMs and their industries. This study aims to identify how each environmental factor influences the firms’ choices of sourcing strategies and their performance.

ABSTRACT. This paper considers a production-inventory system controlled by Kanban and base stock policy. The system includes two customer classes: one requires just-in-time (JIT) delivery, and the other desires an early delivery. Both customers provide advance demand information. That is, customers place orders in advance, and the orders will be delivered later. Backorders are allowed if there is not enough inventory when the orders are fulfilled. We investigate the impacts of several parameters such as base stock level, JIT delivery ratio, early delivery level, demand rate, and demand lead time on performance measures such as the average inventory, the average backorders, and total average costs. The simulation approach is used for evaluating the performances because the complexity of the system. The research shows the several insights. First, the base stock level has the most significant impact on the performance measures. Second, the demand lead time has a great effect when the demand rate is high. Also, the demand lead time can be used for the postponement of order fulfillment as well as the production postponement. Third, there is a tradeoff between the JIT delivery ratio and early delivery level.

ABSTRACT. For the past few years, FinTech has become a buzz-word. However, one of the core technologies known as block-chain is certainly more than that. The potential of the block-chain technology and its application in business practices is so strong that it may change the consumer concept with regard to payment system. On the same token, this will bring a structural change in financing business.

It has not already been rare to observe a new player spawns an entirely new eco-system of financing services in a very short time. For example, PayPal not only transformed the method to transfer money across the countries but also transformed the faces of recipients of credit card payments by developing a card-reader that can plug in to an earphone jack of the smartphone.

Likewise, there are some FinTech related systems which are developed as smartphone applications and have become popular. One of the core technologies is the block-chain. Block-chain is used in the application of virtual currency system. The characteristic of decentralized organization of block-chain is the source of uniqueness when applied to financing application in general. Usually, a financial system requires rigid certification of the entity which provides guarantee for the entire system. Hence, a financial system usually requires very rigid and centralized organization. By the introduction of block-chain, the center can be eliminated. As a result, the entire structure of the business faces dramatic change.

Let us consider a case of a contract among multi-party organizations such as treaty or syndication, the assurance of the integrity of the contract is a very expensive task. Often it is attained by the process of producing a huge amount of documents after a long relays of amending process for agreement. After the introductions of electronic documentations, the productions of documents themselves improved dramatically. However, the assurance of the contents is another costing task. It can be done by using electric certifying services or organizations. This is, again, a centralized system therefore costs and risks are involved. Using block-chain provides such organization as multi-party body with more useful and inexpensive solutions.

In this research, some business models in relation to the application of block-chain are introduced. With the emphasis on the assurance of the contents of the contracts, the application of block-chain to the FinTech in general will also be considered.

ABSTRACT. Since the East Asian Miracle report was published from the World Bank in 1993, East Asian countries achieve the economic development with flying geese pattern respectively as well as advancement of informatization based on each political and cultural context. In particular, the revolution of information and communications technology (I&CT) drives forward commercial and social usage of the Internet throughout multiple devices such as personal computers, tablets, and smart-phones. East Asian cultural contexts, thereby, creates common senses over their territories, and maintains their distinctive characters as well. While telecommunications and media industries are under governmental control with regulations in most of Asian countries, platform business such as social network services (SNSs) has expansion of cross-border activities with principle of network externality or economy. In addition, financial services expand online payment and transaction as well as online commerce such as Amazon.com across borders.

This paper examines the potentiality of East and South East Asian and markets for online financial services, especially from MMT (Mobile Money Transfer) based on SMS (Short Message service) to electric money and “FinTech” including crypto currency such as the Bit Coin supported by the brock chain technology. It also describes the dynamism of networking among interested players over the next generation of information and communication technologies and their applications, such as SNSs, in the contexts of “Ecosystem” of I&CT business. There may be a dramatic change occurring in the structure of the industry affecting not only telecommunications network component, terminal equipment vendors and software developers but also network operators and service providers located in Asian territories. Therefore our analysis places emphasis on dynamic formulation of multi-tiered and multifaceted frameworks on “Geo-Ecosystem,” which has approaches of geo-politics, geo-economics and geo-informatics, within industrial clusters over Asian marketplace.

ABSTRACT. Numerous prescriptions have been given for general management to prepare for, cope with, and recover from crisis situations, such as those caused by natural disasters. A number of such prescriptions focus on leadership during the crisis situation itself, when companies are struggling with comprehending what is going on and what should be done. It is precisely during these times that employees and stakeholders need to be reassured with professional and resolute leadership. Separately, information technology (IT) managers are given long check-lists for business disruptions which should dictate rather mechanical actions taken if a crisis should occur. However, the implicit assumption here – that IT managers do not need significant leadership competencies during crisis situations – needs to be questioned. Today, IT functions are a crucial enabler for most organizational activities; during crises, their importance is further pronounced, because most information and communication is relayed and processed over infrastructure managed by the IT function. Just because most research on crisis management has been conducted on political and public leaders and the CEOs of major companies, this does not mean that IT managers do not need crisis leadership skills.

This research investigates IT manager crisis leadership. It attempts to answer the question “how do IT managers lead during crisis situations?” and makes the assumption that IT managers can learn from prescriptions given to general managers in crisis response. Field interviews conducted at Japanese and Taiwanese companies’ IT functions regarding earthquake events are contrasted with prescriptions from the literature on crisis response for general management. The data consists of interviews with not only IT managers, but also their direct subordinates in these companies. Although the companies span different industries and two distinct cultures, the common denominator is our focus on the IT function of the company, which is a unified professional domain. Moreover, the crisis situations investigated are all precipitated by earthquakes, facilitating comparisons between cases.

First, our analysis shows that most prescriptions given for general management on leadership during the crisis response phase are relevant also for IT managers. We identified five relevant categories of prescriptions in crisis response: sense-making, power and resource negotiation, decision-making, coordination, communication, and stress reduction, in IT manager crisis behaviors. From a practical standpoint, this implies that people leadership capabilities are necessary for IT managers in crisis response; rigid check-lists for task-oriented operational actions are not enough. Second, the status of the IT manager – whether top executive or more operational – plays a significant role in how these prescriptions are evident in IT manager activities. For example, the lower the IT manager is in the managerial pecking order, the less he/she tends to deal with external stakeholders. This is a contrast to general managers, who are required and expected to address external stakeholders. These two contributions add to the fields of IT manager leadership and crisis management in the IT function, and suggest interesting future research opportunities.

ABSTRACT. Researchers have found that approximately 70% of the Information Systems development projects in Japan have failed, thus increasing the demand for solutions that will raise expected project success rates. It is said that to improve success rates, support should be provided by the organization to which the projects belong. This study aims to identify projects that an organization should preferentially support by predicting a project outcome. In the previous research, the ability to predict project outcomes was demonstrated using the results of risk assessment at the establishment of requirements stage for the projects of a specific IT vendor. However, the predictive accuracy can be further reinforced. In this study, the authors attempt to predict project outcomes with higher accuracy by utilizing classified project data sets according to attributes. In the previous research, the project outcome prediction was performed for “Company A,” a Japan-based IT vendor. A Project Outcome Prediction System including “Risk Assessment Sheet” and “Project Outcome Prediction Model” was developed to predict project outcome at the establishment of requirements stage. The Risk Assessment Sheet enumerates 17 risk assessment items of a project. The data to create the prediction model were collected by assessing the completed projects using the sheet. Consequently, data from 88 projects were collected. The Project Outcome Prediction Model was created by applying logistic regression analysis using the data from the 88 projects. As a result, a model with a predictive accuracy of 73.9% was obtained. In this study, an additional 91 project data were obtained to avoid shortfall in terms of the number of classified data to create Project Outcome Prediction Models (the total number of the project data were 179). Then, the data were classified according to the two attributes, “Project type” and “Package software.” The attribute “Project type” consists of three classifications, New development (75 data), Enhancement (90 data), and Re-development (14 data). The “Package software” attribute consists of two classifications, Use (103 data) and Non-use (76 data). As a result of applying Bayes classifier technique using the five classified data sets, the predictive accuracy of the model using the data set of Non-use of Package software was 85.4%, while that of the model using data set of Use of Package software was 70.1%. Therefore, the result indicates the project outcome of the Non-use of Package software can be predicted with higher accuracy. On the other hand, it also indicates that there is room for improvement of the prediction system for the Use of Package software projects because of their relatively lower prediction rate. In this study, the authors attempted to reinforce predictive accuracy by utilizing classified data according to attributes. As a result, this study achieved 85.4% of predictive accuracy by using the data set of Non-use of Package software, while the predictive accuracy of the previous model was only 73.9%. These results are expected to contribute towards improving the prediction system and identifying the projects that an organization should support preferentially.

ABSTRACT. The goal of aliment of business and IT is conceded as fulfilling going-concern and achieving the business objective. There are up-to-date issues to realize the harmony. This paper studies the structure that obstructing recognition differences of constituent with Game theory and analogically assuming by the two-factor theory, aliment structures are discussed to explain the inhibition issue between the constituent. "C-E-V viewpoint model" is suggested to articulate the recondition structures and harmonize between management and IT. For this model’s applicability, a study is done through reevaluation of an implementation case of IT-BCP published.

ABSTRACT. Today, the revolutionary time of the social economy has come in terms of scientific and technological innovations. Special attention is given to the recent key technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (IT), industrial robot, and big data. IoT is the network of physical objects in the actual space, and enables to collect the kinds of the vast array of data and store them in the cyber-physical space. Then, it creates new products and service with additional value, by utilizing the resultant results in the society. Japanese industry focuses on heading towards of implementation of the super smart society in the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0), and creates specifically a common platform of the eleven systems including optimization of the energy value chain, the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), and new manufacturing systems. Then, the super smart society will become a reality where necessary products and service are distributed to a person needing those at the time when they are needed, and everybody can live energetically and comfortably irrespective of age, sex, region, or language, by receiving high-quality services.

ABSTRACT. The fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0 is a collective term representing a number of technologies of automation, data exchange and supply chain including manufacturing systems via the internet of services. In an Industry 4.0 environment, cyber-physical systems communicate with each other and with humans in real time over the Internet of Things (IoT). Both internal and cross-organizational services are offered and utilized by participants of the supply chain. This means that direct communication between the shop floor of a manufacturer and a customer will be able to be performed, and mass customization will be adopted as a production system. The concept of mass customization is defined as "producing goods and services to meet individual customer's needs with near mass production efficiency" in both manufacturing and service industries. A corporation uses to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business activities using Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) that is business-management software. ERP is important because the system connect to real–time data and transaction data in a variety of ways, and connect to shop floor data and information in the Industry 4.0 environment. The ERP system typically fall short with production scheduling, and ERP solutions have some widely recognized shortcomings. For the most part the ERP system and day-to-day production remain disconnected. Therefore, real-time decisions are essential, real-time simulation is especially needed to do real-time decisions properly. Real-time simulation refers to a simulation model of a physical system that can execute at the same rate as actual physical system. In addition, some examples of operations management tools of shop floor including real-time simulation and scheduling techniques.

ABSTRACT. In recently years, a number of Vietnamese enterprises doing business inefficiency have constantly increased due to the limited and bottleneck in minset and approach of business management. Hence, how to help SMEs deal with weaknesses and limitations to be competitive and pioneer in its products and services is essential. Among many effective business enterprise, lean management has been successfully in many enterprises worldwide. In Viet Nam, lean management have been implemented by enterprises for more than ten years. However, the success rate as well as the sustainable effectiveness achived by these firms remains limited. Therefore, this paper is focus on analyzing overall practical implementation lean management in Vietnamese enterprise, then developing “Made in Vietnam” lean implementation model with the focus con core concept “TAM THE” which being suitable for current conditions of Vietnamese enterprises.

ABSTRACT. In the modern economy, effective knowledge sharing is being considered as a break-through solution to enhance competitive advantage and strengthen the position of enterprises and the economy as well. In a developing country like Vietnam, through training research activities and transferring scientific research results, universities are contributing significantly to knowledge sharing and development. However, activities to share and transfer knowledge within university and from universities to enterprises are evaluated to have some shortcomings. Many research topics and research results are not related to the real situation of the economy and responsive to the needs of the applicable research results. On the contrary, some good practical research results are not implemented and commercialized to bring benefits to enterprises and scientists as a means of socio-economic development. One of the reasons for this situation is that the structure and management of universities in Vietnam is still affected heavily by the bureaucratic and inactive way of thinking. This is a typical management process of a bureau in the subsidy system and the “ask - give” mechanism. Furthermore, there is a lack of entrepreneurship in universities to promote the knowledge transfer and sharing process. Therefore, this paper focuses on analyzing the current situation of knowledge sharing in the university and from the university to the society with the case study of Vietnam National University Hanoi, and the role of entrepreneurship development in the promotion and enhancement of knowledge sharing. In terms of scientific contribution, through literature review of previous studies, this paper clarifies the concept and contents of “entrepreneurship development” and “academic entrepreneurship” and their role in knowledge sharing from universities to the industry and society. Results of the case study at Vietnam National University reveal that the actual impact of entrepreneurship development in universities on knowledge sharing is still limited due to several external reasons. Therefore, it is necessary to have policies and favorable mechanism that promote knowledge sharing through entrepreneurship development. In terms of practical contribution, some proposed suggestions are applicable in Vietnam universities to perfect the university governance model and promote knowledge sharing in the new development period.