Blockchain Papers

Felix Härer

For supporting the conceptualization and the management of enterprise models in a decentralized manner, this paper introduces an approach based on model versioning and blockchain technologies. The main contribution is twofold, consisting of a., the creation of models for inter-organizational business processes in a decentralized environment, and b., means for tracking process instances using meta-data at run time. Models for business processes, workflows, and instance states are collaboratively created as part of a decentralized architecture. Based on this approach, a hierarchical versioning and modeling approach is employed in order to create and manage public and private models in a transactional fashion. For forming relationships among decentralized participants, semi-formal models linked to a blockchain are suggested. The approach is evaluated with a supply chain use case and demonstrated in an implemented modeling tool.

Pedro W. Abreu, Manuela Aparício, Carlos J. Costa

Blockchain technology is already being talked about as one of the megatrends for the next years. Researchers and organisations are starting to understand the potential benefits of this technology and are exploring how it can disrupt the world we live in with a diverse range of applications. But the truth is the ability to move blockchain from concept to adoption and production has been minimal yet. When it comes to auditing, blockchain solutions could have important benefits by reducing the workload of the auditors, helping in minimising fraud and optimising the existing processes but is also vital to have in mind other emerging technologies. Factom, Libra, and Verady are some examples of companies developing blockchain solutions that can be applied in the auditing environment, but much of the necessary development is still yet to be done.

Michael Goul, Vineet Mishra, Divyesh Dnyanmothe

Smart City infrastructures require contracts between public and private organizations collaborating in what is frequently referred to as fog computing platforms. We investigate contract provision variations from different stakeholder perspectives. Our methodology relies on complex adaptive systems theory, and we simulate different contract provision scenarios to identify patterns that emerge. The specific contract provisions we investigate in this paper are related to analytical model and data ownership paradigm variations. We find that some variations offer advantages to stakeholders that include those who participate in the smart city fog platform and those who may have ownership of smart city fog platform infrastructure.

Yunsen Wang

This dissertation consists of three essays that design and evaluate the continuous audit analytics and fraud prevention systems using three emerging technologies (i.e., the blockchain, in-memory cloud computing, and deep learning). The first essay designs a framework of Blockchain-based Transaction Processing System using the homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proof mechanisms. Furthermore, this study develops a prototype of the designed system to demonstrate its applications in real-time accounting, continuous monitoring, and fraud prevention. Although the simulation tests show the Blockchain-based Transaction Processing System consumes more computational overhead than the conventional database-based ERP system, the blockchain should be considered as a promising technology for future accounting and auditing practice. The second essay introduces the database architecture that manages data in main physical memory and columnar format. This essay proposes a conceptual framework for applying the in-memory columnar database system to support high-speed continuous audit analytics. Moreover, this study develops a prototype and conducts the simulation tests to evaluate the proposed framework. The test results show the high efficiency and effectiveness of the in-memory columnar database relative to the conventional ERP system regarding the computational time and the storage volume. Furthermore, the deployment of the in-memory columnar database to the cloud shows great promise of applying the in-memory columnar database for continuous audit analytics. The third essay designs a continuous fraud detection system based on modified deep learning technology. Specifically, this essay builds an accounting layer on top of the deep learning architecture to process financial data for predicting the fraudulent financial statements. A prototype is developed to evaluate the prediction accuracy of the proposed design. The test results show the deep learning-based continuous fraud detection system provides high prediction accuracy relative to the existing studies of financial statement fraud detection.

Paula Ingabire

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018.

Shehu M. Sarkintudu, Huda Ibrahim, Alawiyah Abd Wahab

Blockchain platform has given information system scholars research opportunities in understanding dynamics of convergence of technology and social context. The information system research issues are complex and require taxonomies to understand the similarities and uniqueness among objects. Developing taxonomies is a complex process that needs systematic approach. This paper is a research-in-progress. We proposed taxonomy for Blockchain platform using existing method of developing taxonomies in information systems. With the unprecedented growth led to several companies to develop the varieties of Blockchain platforms. The complexity in the implementation and understanding the technical protocols leading to difficulty face by researchers and practitioners to access their full potentials. To bridge the gap, we proposed a taxonomy of Blockchains distributed ledger platforms in order to provide a mechanism for researchers and practitioners to understand the phenomenon. Final of taxonomy contains five (5) dimensions with fifteen (15) characteristics. Our analysis discovered Blockchain platforms are designed with specific goals, which prescribe its features, i.e FinTech Blockchain platforms for financial domain.

Gilbert Fridgen, Sven Radszuwill, Nils Urbach, Lena Utz

Bringing Blockchain technology and business process management together, we follow the Design Science Research approach and design, implement, and evaluate a Blockchain prototype for cross-organizational workflow management together with a German bank. For the use case of a documentary letter of credit we describe the status quo of the process, identify areas of improvement, implement a Blockchain solution, and compare both workflows. The prototype illustrates that the process, as of today paper-based and with high manual effort, can be significantly improved. Our research reveals that a tamper-proof process history for improved auditability, automation of manual process steps and the decentralized nature of the system can be major advantages of a Blockchain solution for cross-organizational workflow management. Further, our research provides insights how Blockchain technology can be used for business process management in general.

Andrea Rozario, Miklos A. Vasarhelyi

Blockchain-based smart contracts are emerging as a disruptive force that may change the way financial statement audits are performed and delivered. With their potential ability to autonomously execute audit procedures on behalf of the auditor and disclose the results of these audit procedures, blockchain-based smart contracts have the potential to improve audit quality and meet the information demands of various vested parties for more timely and transparent audit reporting. This paper proposes the application of smart contracts to auditing as an enabler for improved audit data analytics and close to real-time audit reporting.

Apoorva Ganapathy, Taposh Kumar Neogy

The cryptocurrency Artificial intelligence price emulator is a software programmed to collect cryptocurrency market data, analyze the data and predict the market price using the collected data. Computer emulators are programmed to mimic and copy behaviors or other software/hardware. The reason for emulation is to get to a particular result as quickly as possible. Machine learning is the ability of computers to read and process data while learning from the data with human interference or influence. This work focused majorly on how cryptocurrency market prices can be emulated using Artificial Intelligence with machine learning abilities. It also looked into the advantages of using the software for crypto investors. Some of which is the reduced time of research, reduction of risk, among others.

Mark A. Engelhardt

IntroductionHealth is the foundation of an engaged and happy life, and modern humans have been the fortunate beneficiaries of great advances in medical technology (Collins, 2015). With each new technology, more clues become available to decipher the problems that plague our well-being. The advent of individualized information from cheaper genome sequencing, the Internet of

Adam Watson, Regis Rukundakuvaga, Khachatur Matevosyan

Automated Case Management Systems are still at an early stage of adoption in many developing countries. These are frequently standalone systems implemented with donor financing, and they often fail due to capacity constraints or as a consequence of short-term, project-based funding. But there are examples of developing countries overcoming these pitfalls and producing innovative solutions that surpass government practices in more developed countries. The Integrated Electronic Case Management System (IECMS), developed and implemented by the Ministry of Justice of Rwanda from 2015-2016, is one such innovation. This system has progressed rapidly in its level of adoption and integration between law enforcement, the prosecutor’s office, courts, and corrections. This paper will discuss the key system functionalities and the implementation methodology, including both the benefits and shortcomings of this approach, with the goal of applying lessons learned in future installations. Foremost among the successes of this project were the integrated Sector Wide Approach, the thorough business process re-engineering, and strong ownership by the Rwandan Justice Sector staff. Particularly instructive will be the analysis of the integrated approach, covering five institutions with a single system in less than two years. However, the particular success in this case may not be replicable for governments with a more decentralized approach.

Tri A Sundara, Ideva Gaputra, Siska Aulia

Blockchain as a distributed ledger system which provide underlying technology behind Bitcoin. Blockchain paradigm can be extended to provide a generalized framework for implementing decentralized compute resources. Some attempts has been made to visualize Blockchain transaction flow. This research aims to assess those attempts through systematic review.

Friedrich Holotiuk, Francesco Pisani, Jürgen Moormann

Because of its potentially disruptive influence on business models (BMs), blockchain technology has sparked a lively debate among researchers. Our Delphi study sets out to explore the impact of blockchain in payments, which represents a major cornerstone of banking and the cradle of this technology. The results, grouped around four areas of thoughts, indicate that blockchain allows the offering of new services and renders some of the current ones obsolete. This consequently impacts the financial structure of firms in the payments industry and further generates great potential for new BMs while making some existing ones obsolete. Eventually, new players, which are better able to leverage the po-tential of blockchain, will give a strong impulse to this development. Our findings contribute to the literature by providing new insights about the impact of innova-tive technologies on BMs and have further practical implications by presenting a better understanding of future BMs in payments.

Jennifer Hongbo Jiang

Thesis: S.M. in Management of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2017.

Kari Korpela, Jukka Hallikas, Tomi Dahlberg

Digital supply chain integration is becoming \ increasingly dynamic. Access to customer demand \ needs to be shared effectively, and product and service \ deliveries must be tracked to provide visibility in the \ supply chain. Business process integration is based on \ standards and reference architectures, which should \ offer end-to-end integration of product data. \ Companies operating in supply chains establish \ process and data integration through the specialized \ intermediate companies, whose role is to establish \ interoperability by mapping and integrating companyspecific \ data for various organizations and systems. \ This has typically caused high integration costs, and \ diffusion is slow. This paper investigates the \ requirements and functionalities of supply chain \ integration. Cloud integration can be expected to offer \ a cost-effective business model for interoperable \ digital supply chains. We explain how supply chain \ integration through the blockchain technology can \ achieve disruptive transformation in digital supply \ chains and networks.

Sönke Bartling, Benedikt Fecher

<em>Blockchain</em> technology has the capacity to make digital goods immutable, transparent, externally provable, decentralized, and distributed. Besides the initial experiment or data acquisition, all remaining parts of the research cycle could take place within a <em>blockchain system</em>. Attribution, data, data postprocessing, publication, research evaluation, incentivisation, and research fund distribution would thereby become comprehensible, open (at will) and provable to the external world. Currently, scientists must be trusted to provide a true and useful representation of their research results in their final publication; <em>blockchain</em> would make much larger parts of the research cycle open to scientific self-correction. This bears the potential to be a technical solution to the current reproducibility crisis in science, and could ‘reduce waste and make more research results true’.

Wietse Kuipers

Enterprise systems play a central role in the business processes and management of data within an organization. However it is not uncommon for organizations to posses a multitude of autonomous systems. This thesis examines the way organizations can integrate financial data from different autonomous source systems and examines different factors that can have an impact on data integration processes. The empirical findings were gathered through a case study at Sandvik, a large Swedish industrial firm, making use of qualitative research techniques. The findings contribute to create an in-depth understanding of financial data integration processes. The empirical findings show how an organization can accomplish financial data integration without tight coupling of autonomous systems. Moreover the research contributes by describing various organization and technological factors that impact data integration. The findings indicate that a decentralized organizational structure and singular system architecture play an important role in financial data integration processes. Hereby the research helps to further explore the topic integration within enterprise system research and provides context behind the organizational and technological factors that influence financial data integration processes.

Erik Pärlstrand, Otto Rydén

In this thesis there will be an attempt to model the market price of cryptocurrencies. Since 2010 cryptocurrencies have gone from being fairly unknown to being familiar amongst the general public which increases the need for knowledge on what affects the market price of cryptocurrencies. These connections will be found by statistical analysis and be applied on cryptocurrency data from January 2012 to January 2015. The data will be modeled by linear regression and implemented in R after the data have been formating in Excel. The results suggest that the price of cryptocurrencies depends heavily on the search traffic on the specific cryptocurrency name on Google’s search engine.

Kinga Kądziołka

No abstract is available for this record.

Hari Krishnan, Sai Saketh, Venkata Tej

Cryptocurrency, a form of digital currency that has an open and decentralized system and uses cryptography to enhance security and control the creation of new units, is touted to be the next step from conventional monetary transactions. Many cryptocurrencies exist today, with Bitcoin being the most prominent of them. Cryptocurrencies are generated by mining, as a fee for validating any transaction. The rate of generating hashes, which validate any transaction, has been increased by the use of specialized machines such as FPGAs and ASICs, running complex hashing algorithms like SHA-256 and Scrypt, thereby leading to faster generation of cryptocurrencies. This arms race for cheaper-yet-efficient machines has been on since the day the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was introduced in 2009. However, with more people venturing into the world of virtual currency, generating hashes for this validation has become far more complex over the years, with miners having to invest huge sums of money on employing multiple high performance ASICs. Thus the value of the currency obtained for finding a hash did not justify the amount of money spent on setting up the machines, the cooling facilities to overcome the enormous amount of heat they produce and electricity required to run them. The next logical step in this is to utilize the power of cloud computing. Miners leasing super computers that generate hashes at astonishing rates that have a high probability of profits, with the same machine being leased to more than one person on a time bound basis is a win-win situation to both the miners, as well as the cloud service providers. This paper throws light on the nuances of cryptocurrency mining process, the traditional machines used for mining, their limitations, about how cloud based mining is the logical next step and the advantage that cloud platform offers over the traditional machines.

Erol Kazan, Chee‐Wee Tan, Eric T.K. Lim

Cryptocurrency networks have given birth to a diversity of start-ups and attracted a huge influx of venture capital to invest in these start-ups for creating and capturing value within and between such networks. Synthesizing strategic management and information systems (IS) literature, this study advances a unified theoretical framework for identifying and investigating how cryptocurrency companies configure value through digital business models. This framework is then employed, via multiple case studies, to examine digital business models of companies within the bitcoin network. Findings suggest that companies within the bitcoin network exhibits six generic digital business models. These six digital business models are in turn driven by three modes of value configurations with their own distinct logic for value creation and mechanisms for value capturing. A key finding of this study is that value-chain and value-network driven business models commercialize their products and services for each value unit transfer, whereas commercialization for value-shop driven business models is realized through the subsidization of direct users by revenue generating entities. This study contributes to extant literature on value configurations and digital businesses models within the emerging and increasingly pervasive domain of cryptocurrency networks.

Kay Noyen, Dirk Volland, Dominic Wörner, Elgar Fleisch

Sensing-as-a-Service (S2aaS) is an emerging Internet of Things (IOT) business\nmodel pattern. To be technically feasible and to effectively allow for broad\nadoption, S2aaS implementations have to overcome manifold systemic hurdles,\nspecifically regarding payment and sensor identification. In an effort to\novercome these hurdles, we propose Bitcoin as protocol for S2aaS networks. To\nlay the groundwork and start the conversation about disruptive changes that\nBitcoin technology could bring to S2aaS concepts and IOT in general, we\nidentify and discuss the core characteristics that could drive those changes.\nWe present a conceptual example and describe the basic process of exchanging\ndata for cash using Bitcoin.\n

James Devaney

Quality Control in Fact-Finding is, above all else, a very welcome addition to the literature on international fact-finding. Whilst there has been a marked increase in the number of fact-finding inquiries established in the last couple of decades,1 this has not been matched by a similar increase in the number of scholarly studies of such inquiries.2 In light of both the number and high-profile nature of such inquiries, the absence of scholarship focusing squarely on the contemporary role of inquiries up to the present day seems like an oversight. This collection, published in open access format by Florence-based, not-for-profit ‘academic EPublisher’ Torkel Opsahl (named after the late Professor Opsahl who himself briefly chaired the Commission of Experts for the Former Yugoslavia until his untimely death in 1993), attempts to address this lack of academic attention. The collection ostensibly sets out to ‘make a contribution to the emerging discourse on fact-finding mechanisms’ by ‘focusing specifically on quality awareness and quality improvement in non-criminal justice fact-work’ (at viii). Its accessible style, open access format, and the breadth of topics covered will attract the attention not only of international legal scholars, but practitioners and policy-makers too. In the opening chapter Marina Aksenova and Morten Bergsmo provide a helpful overview of the concept of international fact-finding itself and of the fact-finding missions established in recent decades. The authors define the concept of fact-finding broadly as a method of ascertaining facts used in international relations for differing purposes (at 2), before noting that traditionally there are three main purposes for establishing facts in international law. The first is the narrow purpose of fact-finding ‘in cases where differences of opinion on factual matters underlie a dispute between parties’, for which a procedure of inquiry was set out in the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, and which has fallen into desuetude.3 The second purpose is that of supervising the execution of international agreements typically carried out by the UN Specialized Agencies, and the third purpose is fact-finding for the purposes of Article 34 of the UN Charter, namely the power of the Security Council to investigate any situation or dispute that may endanger international peace and security. The overview of fact-finding missions established by principal UN organs, subsidiary organs, national governments, and various Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), helpfully set out in the form of a table in the opening chapter, provides a valuable introduction to the subject. Commentators in the past have lamented the lack of a standard operating procedure for fact-finding missions.4 However, a recurring theme of this collection is caution against standardization in light of the inherently context-specific nature of international fact-finding inquiries. Richard Goldstone states that ‘[i]t is folly to generalise about fact-finding missions. Each situation will have its unique features. What works with regard to one may well fail if applied to another’ (at 52). Similarly, Martin Scheinin argues in favour of the maintenance of clear functional distinctions between inquiries, in particular asserting that the ‘various mechanisms of mainstream human rights bodies that seek to establish state responsibility for human rights violations should not be subjected to the evidence requirements typical for determining individual criminal accountability’ (at 54). Particularly insightful contributions to the collection are those in which the authors are able to draw on their own practical experience, such as the chapters by Goldstone, Scheinin, Chris Mahony, and David Re. Goldstone’s contribution provides a potentially crucial insight into the mind of a man who has been heavily involved in a number of landmark fact-finding missions, both domestic and international. Much of Goldstone’s account focuses on two domestic inquiries that he led in South Africa, namely the Sithole Inquiry into the death of a member of the ANC in detention shortly before the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in February 1990, and the Sebokeng Inquiry into the action of police during a mass protest-match in March 1990. The relevance of the discussion of these domestic inquiries to a collection on international fact-finding is perhaps not immediately apparent; however Goldstone’s vast experience allows him to make a number of broad proposals for improving the quality of future international fact-finding missions. Amongst them the lessons learned from the Sithole Inquiry in which the transparent nature of the inquiry (which was held in a Johannesburg City Hall instead of a courtroom with no visible security and large public galleries) created a more ‘public-friendly’ atmosphere and insulated it from political interference, and the proposals for opening the appointment process for members of commissions to public scrutiny, are amongst the most helpful and practical proposals. Goldstone’s contribution is also instructive regarding his involvement in the UN Human Rights Council’s Gaza inquiry in 2009, as it illuminates the political machinations ‘behind the scenes’ that led to the formation of the inquiry and possibly is indicative of the political process that has led to the establishment of other commissions of inquiry. Similarly interesting is the issue of consent and cooperation – the refusal of Israel to cooperate with the inquiry clearly impeded the Commission’s operation and was apparently the cause of many of the ‘sleepless nights’ that Goldstone subsequently suffered (at 50). The lack of cooperation, coupled with new facts subsequently coming to light, put Goldstone in the position where he felt he had to row back on some of the inquiry’s factual findings in a Washington Post opinion-editorial. This episode cautions against reliance on any findings-of-fact derived from an inquiry with restricted access to the area investigated, and a resultant need to rely to a much greater extent on secondary sources and press reports. The critical remarks of Wu Xiaodan that Goldstone’s change of heart and the furore surrounding Professor Christine Chinkin’s alleged bias had cast some doubt on the credibility and impartiality of the Goldstone Report provide a useful counterpoint to Goldstone’s chapter (at 201) although an even more robust critique was perhaps warranted. Similarly, Scheinin draws on decades of practical experience in his contribution dealing with fact-finding in the context of treaty-based human rights mechanisms and the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council. Scheinin’s contribution provides a helpful typology of the fact-finding apparatus and organizational structure of treaty-based fact-finding mechanisms, including the reporting procedure, individual complaints, and inquiries. Perhaps the most useful part of this contribution is the section dealing with Special Procedures in which the thoughts of an experienced practitioner are key, given the nature of the topic that would otherwise be largely impenetrable to most. For instance, the contribution explores the two fact-finding functions of Special Rapporteurs, namely communications (letters) to governments and country visits. Scheinin is critical of the communications function, noting that the response rate to letters is low and the information gained from communications is such that they cannot be considered a fact-finding mechanism at all. However, Scheinin is able to draw on his own experience as Special Rapporteur, having paid visits to states such as Turkey and Tunisia, and is positive about governmental compliance with requests made by Special Rapporteurs, access to areas under investigation, and ultimately even the uncovering of facts that could later be used for a number of purposes including criminal prosecution. Among the most important contributions to the collection is that of Mahony dealing with the security implications for witnesses appearing before fact-finding commissions. This extended, detailed, contribution draws on the author’s own experience in Nepal, and both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Special Court in Sierra Leone. Whilst having a relatively narrow focus on a small number of situations, the author’s own first-hand experience and the level of detail and practical examples provided allow important conclusions to be drawn regarding means of ensuring the safety of witnesses, including details of the legal regime needed for witness protection, consideration of the crucial issue of funding, and more practical issues such as personnel and the institutional location of the programme that could potentially be of use in the context of other commissions. David Re’s contribution is based on his involvement in the criminal courts in the Former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone and poses a fundamentally important question: what did the ICTY trial and appeals chamber actually do with UN and NGO fact-finding reports? Interestingly, Re shows that relatively minimal (at least explicit) use was made of such factual findings by the ICTY chambers between 1994 and 2013. Most often such findings were utilized as investigative leads for the prosecutor (at 296). Further, Re argues that the findings-of-fact made by such inquiries are likely to be more politically and historically important than judicially influential (at 280). The conclusions to be drawn from this argument are not fully fleshed out, but it is submitted that it is fundamentally important for the future of international fact-finding that they are considered. Tackling more theoretical issues, Simon De Smet’s contribution addresses the theoretical foundations of fact-finding. He takes as his starting point that most fact-finders approach the subject intuitively; ‘[e]ven though they may display great care and circumspection in making their findings, they do not necessarily have a strongly developed understanding of what the underlying principles and concepts of fact-finding are’ (at 74). De Smet provides a helpful introduction to the epistemology of fact-finding and evidence (at 80) and takes us through important theoretical issues such as the epistemology of how beliefs can be justified, including both probabilistic or Bayesian epistemology and so-called ‘inference to best explanation’ or relative plausibility theory. In doing so De Smet seeks to provide the basis for improving the overall epistemic quality of fact-finding, without making any claims that doing so would in actual fact improve the accuracy of fact-finding in practice. De Smet tackles a wide array of the goals he has set for himself with relish, although one gets the impression that there is simply not enough space to do justice to the substantial number of important issues ranging from philosophical conceptions of probability to the epistemology of testimony, trustworthiness, competence, and cognitive consensus, to name just a few. While the author’s forthcoming monograph will provide a more in-depth analysis,5 in the context of this collection, it might have been better to choose a smaller number of discrete issues and explore them in greater detail, but this is a minor quibble. Despite claiming to deal with non-criminal justice fact-finding (at viii) international criminal law inevitably finds its way into the collection through the contribution by Dov Jacobs and Catherine Harwood which considers the use of international criminal law (ICL) by fact-finding commissions. More specifically, the contribution assesses the creep of international criminal law concepts into the work of fact-finding missions and considers the utility of ICL in general ‘outside the courtroom’. The contribution highlights a number of concerns regarding the use of such concepts in fact-finding inquiries, including the problematic use of the criminal law burden and standard of proof in non-judicial situations which raise issues of due process. For instance, cursory legal determinations of complex situations and divergent legal determinations between different commissions of inquiry have caused controversy in recent times.6 The contribution ultimately concludes that not only does the use of ICL concepts not help to solve some of the operational problems that fact-finding inquiries face, it in effect creates a number of new problems (at 353). Whilst this contribution complements excellent existing work in this field,7 the topic of fact-finding in international criminal law remains one of the most under-researched areas of fact-finding and further research in this area, where the personal liberty of individuals is at stake, is undoubtedly needed. Other contributions address selected issues including quality control in the context of truth and reconciliation (Liu Daqun at Chapter 5), how commissions of inquiry can provide international prosecutors with the background information they need on specific international criminal law situations (Lyal S. Sunga at Chapter 13), fact-finding difficulties encountered by NGOs (Wolfgang Kaleck and CarolijnTerwindt at Chapter 14), and the role of information technology in the work of fact-finding commissions (Ilia Utmelidze at Chapter 16). In the penultimate chapter Charles Garraway provides a contribution on the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission established under Article 90 of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which has never been used to date, but which could be of potential use in the future according to the author, although its competences are in some crucial respects limited in scope. Mention is made of these contributions in order to highlight the sheer breadth of the collection, which endeavours to cover so many discrete and diverse issues in relation to international fact-finding. Ultimately, Quality Control in Fact-Finding is a commendable attempt to address the paucity of literature in an area of international law that is seen as increasingly significant. Whilst a final concluding chapter drawing together some of the main themes and findings of the collection would have been welcome, it contains some genuinely useful contributions, in particular those in which the authors are able to draw on their own experience and those which attempt to systematize and make sense of the operation of international fact-finding. Marina Aksenova and Morten Bergsmo, Non-Criminal Justice Fact-Work in the Age of Accountability; Richard J. Goldstone, Quality Control in International Fact-Finding Outside Criminal Justice for Core International Crimes; Martin Scheinin, Improving Fact-Finding in Treaty-Based Human Rights Mechanisms and the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council; Simon De Smet, Justified Belief in the Unbelievable; Liu Daqun, Quality Control in Truth and Reconciliation Processes; Fan Yuwen, Quality Control and the Mandate of International Fact-Finding; Isabelle Lassée, Coherence in the Design and Implementation of the Mandates of International Fact-Finding Commissions: Internal and External Dimensions; Wu Xiaodan, Quality Control and the Selection of Members of International Fact-Finding Mandates; Dan Saxon, Purpose and Legitimacy in International Fact-Finding Bodies; Chris Mahony, Witness Sensitive Practices in International Fact-Finding Outside Criminal Justice: Lessons for Nepal; David Re, Fact-Finding in the Former Yugoslavia: What the Courts Did; Dov Jacobs and Catherine Harwood, International Criminal Law Outside the Courtroom: The Impact of Focusing on International Crimes for the Quality of Fact-Finding; Lyal S. Sunga, Can International Criminal Investigators and Prosecutors Afford to Ignore Information from United Nations Human Rights Sources?; Wolfgang Kaleck and Carolijn Terwindt, Non-Governmental Organisation Fact-Work: Not Only a Technical Problem; Charles Garraway, Fact-Finding and the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission; Ilia Utmelidze, Information Technology and Quality Control in Non-Criminal Justice Fact-Work.

Eric Paulsen, Simon Perchun

Sammanfattning Examensarbete i företagsekonomi III, Ekonomihögskolan vid Linnéuniversitetet i Kalmar, Ekonomistyrning, 2FE71E, VT 2014. Författare: Eric Paulsen, Simon Perchun Handledare och examinator: Thomas Karlsson &amp;amp; Petter Boye Titel: Bitcoin - Risk eller möjlighet? Bakgrund: Den digitala kryptovalutan har idag blommat upp där Bitcoin står i fokus. Något som blivit uppmärksammat i bland annat media och genom politiska uttalanden. Detta har fått företag till att applicera Bitcoin som möjligt betalsätt utöver de vanliga betalmöjligheterna som exempelvis kortbetalningar. Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att efter insamling av empiri kunna beskriva genom vår utvalda teoretiska referensram varför företag väljer att acceptera Bitcoin som möjligt betalmedel, samt vilka möjligheter och risker som finns förenade inom företagsbranschen, och sedan förklara vidare hur företagen hanterar dessa möjligheter och risker. Metod: För att kunna uppfylla syftet med studien så har vi utgått från en abduktiv metodsyn. Vi har samlat in empiri i form av semistrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer från sex olika företag som mottar Bitcoin som möjligt betalsätt. Det material som samlats in förklaras sedan utifrån vår teoretiska referensram för att kunna uppfylla syftet med studien. Slutsats: Vi kom till slut fram till att Bitcoin ger företag stora möjligheter i förhållande till den lilla risk de utsätter sig för. En ny betalmöjlighet som kan leda till konkurrensfördelar. Nyckelord: Bitcoin, ekonomi, kryptovalutor, risk, möjligheter.