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The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Collecting customer data is increasingly becoming an automatic process at different customer touchpoints, carried out with the help of artificial intelligence. Modern telecommunication networks are necessary for collecting this data in a timely manner. This chapter describes 5G, the latest generation of mobile telecommunication networks. It outlines the current stage of development and use cases being introduced or planned by telecommunication companies worldwide. A key aspect of the chapter is to explain what 5G means for collecting customer data.

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are experiencing a number of major challenges in the international business arena. Can business diplomacy help them to deal with these challenges effectively? In this introductory chapter we conceptualize and identify the relationship between MNCs’ international business diplomatic activities and firm performance.

We conducted a literature review and interviews with five large MNCs that are operating in distinctive industries. Business diplomatic activities have been classified into three particular areas to support the analysis, namely: (1) MNC–Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) relations, (2) MNC–Host Government relations, and (3) MNC–Local Community relations.

The main findings suggest that international business diplomacy has a direct positive effect on firm performance with regard to so-called soft or nonfinancial indicators. These indicators include knowledge sharing, reputation, company image, and marketing possibilities. The effect can in turn lead to a better financial performance and market stance in the long run.

The results of this study are important for the future awareness and execution of business diplomacy in large MNCs.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society. Split into four distinct sections, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations and fundamental concepts of E-Business before moving on to look at internet+ innovation models and their applications in different industries such as agriculture, finance and commerce. The book then provides a comprehensive analysis of E-business platforms and their applications in China before finishing with four comprehensive case studies of major E-business projects, providing readers with successful examples of implementing E-Business entrepreneurship projects.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insights and analysis into how E-commerce has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society in China.

The chapter presents a mechanism of innovational development of cluster of the hospitality industry in the system of region's economic security, which formation takes place in the conditions of complex turbulent state of economy, which leads to crises of various scales and volumes. Cluster is treated as a platform that unifies efforts and partnership interactions between large, medium, and small business and synthesizes expectations of consumers on the basis of territorial concentration of readiness to care about a customer in the form of provision of the need: (1) selection and readiness of consumer to accept a specific complex service of the hospitality industry (with tourist service complexes); (2) movement (with transport complex); (3) accommodation (with hotel complex), (4) readiness for catering (with catering complex); (5) entertainment (with participation of complex of entertainment); (6) security (with security complex). The process of clustering leads to a new treatment of the notion of competition, development of capabilities to be a business partner, and finding advantages in generation of innovations together with intermediaries and neighbors.

Social inclusion is a critical success factor for achieving community integration. An ideal outcome of social inclusion is that people can fully participate in the economic, social, and political life of their villages. This research identifies key aspects of community collaboration in setting up a telecommunication network in rural Mexico.

Under the perspective of a social business modeling view the research carried out 39 semi-structured interviews with residents of the Mexican village of Nochixtlán who benefited from a not-for-profit rural telecom initiative. The interviews helped to identify the main drivers of community collaboration.

Two barriers to the telecom initiative were found: public policies and market competition. Policy barriers included ambiguous government goals, unreliable delivery timeframes, and weak governance. Market barriers included lack of private suppliers, insufficient incentives to attract commercial providers, and lack of funds to set up proprietary infrastructure.

The application of face-to-face interviews with a relatively small number of individuals may restrain the generalizability of empirical findings. Yet, the use of analytical techniques, such as focus groups, might increase reliability for future studies.

Rural telephony does not simply depend on technical expertise to connect disperse towns and villages because strong social capital is also needed. Therefore, stakeholders should engage in active participation through the planning and operation of the network.

The chapter discusses how social inclusion and social capital can help to overcome technical and market barriers that deter the deployment of rural telecom networks. Community involvement is devised as a tool for assisting policy-makers in pushing social initiatives.

The main goal of the paper is to explore the origins and developments of the first community cellular network in Mexico.

Data were gathered in 2015 and 2016 through in-depth interviews, participant observation, workshops, photos, official documents, and informal interviews in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Data was also drawn from the work of two activists, P. Bloom and E. Huerta, working with the community assemblies of a number of Indígena communities: Villa Talea de Castro, Santa María Yaviche, San Juan Yaee, San Ildefonso Villa Alta, San Bernardo Mixetepec, Santa Ana Tlahuitoltepec, San Jerónimo Progreso, Santiago Ayuquililla, San Miguel Huautla, Santa Inés de Zaragoza, Santo Domingo Xagacia, San Pablo Yaganiza, San Pedro Cajonos, San Francisco Cajonos, San Miguel Cajonos, San Mateo Cajonos, Santa María Alotepec, and San Juan Tabaá. To analyze the data, using codes created in Atlas.TI and relying on an inductive approach, we analyzed the history of this network within a theoretical framework informed by Actor-Network Theory.

Participants in the enactment of this cellular network followed two programs of actions, one technical and one legal. Together, the community assemblies and activists took advantage of available devices, free software and ordinary computers, on the one hand, and communal rules, national laws, constitutional reforms and tacit knowledge, on the other hand. They brought about a new, non-profit, communitarian, and self-organized network that allows for inexpensive communication between members of small, marginalized Indígena communities in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico.

The arrangement of actants that the case illustrates is replicable in other parts of the country and outside of Mexico. The new community cellular network reduces the economic costs of communication, facilitates some jobs and family bonds, expands the range of community-owned projects, encourages self-organization and ways of situated conflict resolution, and empowers communities in relation to external powerful telecommunication corporations.

This is a novel account of a highly unusual set of community-led institutional innovations based on firsthand information drawn from the main actants of the new network.