Business Organizations and Collaborative Web: Practices, Strategies and Patterns

In this work for students, practitioners, and researchers, international contributors from academia and the private sector explore business applications of the new generation of collaborative web technologies. The book's 16 chapters are grouped into four sections. The first section describes characteristics of the web and demonstrates the need for embedding the collaborative web into the business model, offering real life examples. Section 2 gives examples of applications of the collaborative web in information-intensive industries such as journalism and web services, as well as resource-intensive industries such as oil and the agricultural sector. Specific examples include e-commerce websites for rural production in Greece and applications of web tools in bioinformatics. The next section examines the effects of the collaborative web on the structure and culture of business organizations, such as the increased speed of business relations, and employee loyalty shifts from the organization to virtual communities. The final section illustrates options for conducting virtual meetings and events. Malik teaches information systems at U21 Global Graduate School, Singapore. Choudhary is a QA consultant. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)