Sten Carlsson

The Concept of Object and its Relation to Human Thinking: Some Misunderstandings Concerning the Connection between Object-Orientation and Human Thinking

All throughout the computer science community object-orientation is accepted as being built upon the same basic concepts that human beings use to apprehend reality. This misconcep- tion, as we think, is what we focus on in this paper. To show this we analyse two well-recognised object-oriented systems development methods. We try to pinpoint in what way these methods do not correspond to the way human beings apprehend reality in terms of objects. We show that the methods do not use the concepts of object or class in a manner that corresponds to the way hu- man beings use them to apprehend reality. Furthermore the method-creators do not separate the notion of an object and its representation in a model. We also suggest a better adaptation of the searching-for-objects model based on how human beings apprehend reality. When analysing, one should focus on the purpose of the actions and the two different modes with which an object can be treated: present-at-hand and readiness-to-hand. This will increase the conformity between object- orientation and the way human beings apprehend reality.

How Standard Are the Standard Barriers to E-commerce Adoption? Empirical Evidence from Australia, Sweden and the USA

Despite their size, small to medium enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly turning to global markets. This development has been enabled by the advent of electronic commerce technology. There are numerous definitions of e-comrnerce in the literature, however, fundamentally e-commerce can best be described as “the buying and selling of information, products, and services via computer networks” (Kalakota & Whinston, 997, p.3). Ecommerce has the potential to become a source of competitive advantage to the SME sector because it is a cost effective way of accessing customers and being ‘wired to the global marketplace’.

Learning and Analysis in an E-commerce Project

An electronic commerce project might have many different aims. The main aim of this particular project-called market place Varmland - was to strengthen small and medium enterprises (SME) power of competition and create a positive growth for the enterprises in the whole province Varmland. The target group was enterprises which have up to 50 employees. The idea was to develop the persons’ competence in using e-commerce in their business. Therefore companies were invited to take part in a course about e-commerce. The members of the project group had assumed that persons from about 500 companies would follow the courses during the three years when the project was going on. The focus of the course was directed towards doing analysis of the usability of electronic commerce. By doing the analysis it was assumed that the participants would be able to apply this competence in the companies of their own. Further more the plan was to create a network between the companies and an IT-platform for information and exchange of knowledge. The project was also designed to support other projects which have been started to market the enterprises products and to support these enterprises possibilities to buy and sell to each other. The municipal councils in the province make great purchases. The trend also is, that these councils want to use electronic commerce when buying something. Until now many small companies have not been able to sign contracts in order to deal with the councils. Many of them do not know what to do or they do not have any equipment for it. Many of them also feel that there are many difficult hinder to climb over.