Changes in the world market of the operations in all companies are constant. The survival on the market of each company depends on the level of flexibility to adapt to all the changes that occur. In addition to the changes, what is important to the environment in which businesses operate and gain their competitive advantage is globalization. The world becomes a "global village" where there are no obstacles in communicating between people who are from two different world sides. There are no barriers to competition, even if they are not physically located on the same market. There are countless opportunities to increase competitiveness and profitability. In the last two decades, globalization has been attracted special attention by scientists, based on its great influence on the development of global finance and financial markets, the expansion of knowledge through improved communication conditions, the expansion of multinational firms and the decentralization of economic activities within and between firms, the development of global oligopolies and the reduction barriers to trade and investment. Globalization requires the transformation of human identity in terms of the knowledge and skills it possesses. Apart from the necessity of applying and changing the knowledge and skills of people working within a particular organization, changes in the domain of the organization and management itself should be made. Globalization and modern organizational structures are assumed to have the use of information communication technologies, the independence between individual units that can be spatially dislocated, the structure is often non-hierarchical and the only thing that is certain is that all units act in accordance with the same goal. Such organizations have the structure of networks or neurons - they are all interconnected with everyone. Physical distance here practically does not exist because of the development of Internet and multimedia conferences that facilitate business and reduce the time needed for work and labor costs. In order for a company to be successful, besides selecting the best form of organizing business processes, it has to be known how to use business information, both internally and externally. Company has to be aware that the implementation of new technological developments directly affects the ability to use large amounts of information. For this reason, modern companies are continually reorganizing their business in line with technology development. Information and communication technologies enable the creation of the infrastructure needed to manage business knowledge and which is a precondition for the creation of the learning organization. It enables employee’s knowledge to circulate more easily through the organization, to upgrade his knowledge and to deliver positive business results.Keeping that in mind, the changes in the world economy and its impact on business and management in the whole world, any scientific dealing with these topics and the essential consideration of the causes and consequences of the same and their trends and trends that are still expected in our everyday life and business is of great importance for all managers and future managers who, through good information and understanding of modern processes, will be able to make regular, efficient and effective decisions on daily basis, successfully manage people and achieve their goals.
Mawuko Dza, Evan Kyeremeh ., Simon S. K. Dzandu ., Samuel Afran .
The paper probes corruption in public procurement in Ghana. The research, which focused on Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) across the country, revealed widespread corruption in the public service of Ghana. Notable procurement related corrupt practices unraveled included influence peddling, inflating contract sums, payment for non-existing contracts, deliberate contract splitting, multiple payments for contracts, use of phantom vendors and misapplication of public funds. The study further noted that some principal officers such as Coordinating Directors, Finance Officers, Budget and Planning officers, Engineers, Internal Auditors, Stores and Procurement officers, as well as government representatives misappropriate funds meant for development projects in their catchment areas, while staff looked on unconcerned. The research also discovered how Internal and external auditors ostensibly “train” principal officers on how to conceal corrupt practices in return for money and other rewards. The study is significant because the concept of decentralization was introduced to enable MMDAs to effectively and efficiently manage resources for the development of their communities. The concept has been defeated as some public servants connive with external auditors and other stakeholders to amass wealth at the expense of the generality of the people. A worrying phenomenon is the culture of silence by employees who are witnesses to most of these corrupt practices. Indeed, our findings show that most public servants are nonchalant about the act of corruption perpetuated by colleague workers. Essentially, some employees see nothing wrong with their principal officers and other colleagues indulging in acts of corruption, their reason being that they might do same when they assume similar positions in future. With this revelation, the onus is on government not to only adopt a combative strategy in dealing with the incidence of corruption. Rather, it is recommended that a blend of combative and the moral suasion strategies be adopted if the fight against corruption is to achieve desired results.
De forma acadêmica e construtiva, sem pretender esgotar o assunto, o presente artigo tem como objetivo realizar um estudo jurídico e econômico do bitcoin, que é a espécie de moeda virtual mais utilizada no mundo, mediante as ferramentas metodológicas da Análise Econômica do Direito, demonstrando como o uso de bitcoins nas transações realizadas pela sociedade empresária em recuperação pode reduzir os custos de transação e contribuir para uma recuperação judicial menos custosa, mais célere e mais eficiente, colaborando, ainda, para que a recuperação judicial cumpra os seus objetivos previstos no art. 47 da Lei n. 11.101/05, quais sejam, viabilizar a superação da situação de crise econômico-financeira do devedor, a manutenção da fonte produtora, bem como do emprego dos trabalhadores e dos interesses dos credores, promovendo, assim, a preservação da empresa e da sociedade empresária, sua função social e o estímulo à atividade econômica.Palavras-chave: Bitcoins. Análise Econômica do Direito. Custos de transação. Abstract In an academic and constructive way, without intending to exhaust the subject, this research aims to carry out a legal and economic study of bitcoin, which is the most used virtual currency in the world, through the methodological tools of Economic Analysis of Law , demonstrating how the use of bitcoins in transactions carried out by the recovering company can reduce transaction costs and contribute to a less costly, faster and more efficient judicial recovery, also helping to ensure judicial recovery meets its objectives Art. 47 of Law no. 11.101 / 05, which is to make it possible to overcome the economic and financial crisis of the debtor, the maintenance of the source, as well as the employment of workers and the interests of creditors, thus promoting the preservation of the company, its social function and stimulating economic activity. Keywords: Bitcoins. Economic Analysis of Law. Transaction costs.
Cryptocurrency mining in the browser has the potential to provide a new pay-as-you-go monetisation mechanism for consuming digital media over the Web. However, browser mining has recently received strong criticism due to illegitimate use of mining scripts in several popular websites (a practice called cryptojacking). Here we provide the first feasibility study of browser mining as a legitimate means of monetisation in terms of revenue, user consent and user experience within a specially built website. Our results compare browser mining to display advertisement and indicate browser mining provides a preferable user experience to advertising when the hash rate is user-adjustable. Furthermore, over 60% of participants would select browser mining over advertisement if they were invested in the ecosystem by obtaining half of the mined cryptocurrency. Our estimations show that browser mining currently generates revenue at a rate 46 times less than advertisement, however we would expect that gap to decrease as we observed a significant drop in mining difficulty after our tested cryptocurrency implemented ASIC-resistant mining measures. Overall, based on our results we find browser mining to be a legitimate alternative to display advertisement and conclude by discussing its current limitations and potential applications.
The mining and metals industry is a critical component of the global economy. However, many operational and commercial practices remain inefficient and antiquated, leading to critical data omissions, security vulnerabilities, and even corruption. Mining supply chain faces several challenges like traceability, transparency, interoperability between supplier platforms and so on. Traditional systems are inefficient and hence this paper explores the use of an emerging digital technology named blockchain. The blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that keeps a record of every transaction securely and reliably without the need of third parties that reduces the exposure of the data to hackers. Blockchain technology improves productivity by replacing the standard contract with smart contracts. This paper outlines several key applications of blockchain for the mining industry.
In this paper, we explore the design and construct a prototype implementation of an Ethereum application, BMCProtector, which is based on Blockchain and Smart Contract technology, to protect music copyright and ensure rights holders income rights. With the blockchain, musicians can easily authorize and manage their music copyright on a public ledger. Without intermediaries being involved during the propagation process, rights holders can receive a greater share of royalty payments from the music industry automatically and instantly. We deal with piracy issues using encryption and watermarking methods. We also introduce a versioning mechanism to update the data in the smart contract for correcting mistakes made by the publisher. BMCProtector provides a solution to protect music copyright more effectively.
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques

 El objetivo del presente artículo fue realizar un diagnóstico de los factores organizacionales presentes en el Gobierno Autónomo Descentralizado Municipal del cantón Manta, para la implementación del Plan de Fortalecimiento Institucional. La investigación es de alcance descriptivo y se aplicó un cuestionario de 15 preguntas cerradas-dicotómicas a una muestra estratificada de un total de 96 encuestados. El 95 % manifestó no conocer en detalle lo que es un Plan de Fortalecimiento Institucional, aun así, lo consideran relevante como herramienta de Gestión Estratégica. El 31% menciona que no existe una adecuada comunicación entre las autoridades, servidores y trabajadores públicos, asimismo el 43 % considera que no hay una gestión eficiente. Entre las recomendaciones se destacan elaborar un código de ética, automatizar los procesos, capacitación, definir los estándares de calidad, crear indicadores e instrumentos para el monitoreo y mejora continua. Asimismo, crear espacios para un mayor acercamiento servidores y ciudadanos.
 
 Palabras clave: Planificación, Fortalecimiento, Gobierno, Política pública y regulación
 
 ABSTRACT
 The objective of this article was to make a diagnosis of the organizational factors present in the autonomous decentralized municipal government of the Manta canton, for the implementation of the Institutional Strengthening Plan. The research is descriptive in scope and a questionnaire of 15 closed-dichotomous questions was applied to a stratified sample of a total of 96 respondents. 95% said they did not know in detail what an Institutional Strengthening Plan is, even though they consider it relevant as a Strategic Management tool. 31% mentions that there is no adequate communication between authorities, servants and public workers, and 43% consider that there is no efficient management. Among the recommendations, it is important to elaborate a code of ethics, automate processes, training, define quality standards, create indicators and instruments for monitoring and continuous improvement. Also create spaces for a closer approach to servers and citizens.
 
 Key words: Planning, Strengthening, Government, Public policy and regulation
Thanks to its decentralized structure and immutability, blockchain technology has the potential to address relevant security and privacy challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT). In particular, by hosting and executing smart contracts, blockchain allows secure, flexible, and traceable message communication between IoT devices. The unique characteristics of IoT systems, such as heterogeneity and pervasiveness, however, pose challenges in designing smart contracts for such systems. In this paper, we study these challenges and propose a design approach for smart contracts used in IoT systems. The main goal of our design model is to enhance the development of IoT smart contracts based on the inherent pervasive attributes of IoT systems. In particular, the design model allows the smart contracts to encapsulate functionalities such as contractlevel communication between IoT devices, access to data-sources within contracts, and interoperability of heterogeneous IoT smart contracts. The essence of our approach is structuring the design of IoT smart contracts as self-contained software services, inspired by the microservice architecture model. The flexibility, scalability and modularity of this model make it an efficient approach for developing pervasive IoT smart contracts.
Blockchain has emerged into one of the most promising technologies for the future. Its most successful implementation in the form of cryptocurrency has shifted many existing paradigms where financial instruments were limited by locations or jurisdictions. While blockchain is touted to offer many significant and promising features on the other hand it also increases the difficulty level in the taxation area as well as digital forensics. We investigated the issues and explores the real-world situation and how taxation and digital forensics can cope with these technology challenges.
With the recent rise of cryptocurrencies' popularity, the security and management of crypto-tokens have become critical. We have witnessed many attacks on users and providers, which have resulted in significant financial losses. To remedy these issues, several wallet solutions have been proposed. However, these solutions often lack either essential security features, usability, or do not allow users to customize their spending rules. In this paper, we propose SmartOTPs, a smart-contract wallet framework that gives a flexible, usable, and secure way of managing crypto-tokens in a self-sovereign fashion. The proposed framework consists of four components (i.e., an authenticator, a client, a hardware wallet, and a smart contract), and it provides 2-factor authentication (2FA) performed in two stages of interaction with the blockchain. To the best of our knowledge, our framework is the first one that utilizes one-time passwords (OTPs) in the setting of the public blockchain. In SmartOTPs, the OTPs are aggregated by a Merkle tree and hash chains whereby for each authentication only a short OTP (e.g., 16B-long) is transferred from the authenticator to the client. Such a novel setting enables us to make a fully air-gapped authenticator by utilizing small QR codes or a few mnemonic words, while additionally offering resilience against quantum cryptanalysis. We have made a proof-of-concept based on the Ethereum platform. Our cost analysis shows that the average cost of a transfer operation is comparable to existing 2FA solutions using smart contracts with multi-signatures.
a rise in the standard of living of the population, subject to an increase in social spending and a significant share of the public sector; the field of education, especially primary and secondary education, through the delegation of educational functions to the local level and their financial support, as well as the active participation of the local community in the financing, management and control of these institutions; the health sector, which, given the inadequate management and low level of tax decentralization, will be characterized by a deterioration in the availability and quality of medical services for the rural population; improvement of local infrastructure due to the ability of communities to independently control costs, which will reduce the cost of work and maximize local needs. The prospects for the development of rural settlements in Ukraine due to the influence of financial decentralization implementation are substantiated.
Yongjune Kim, Ravi Kiran Raman, Young-Sik Kim, Lav R. Varshney · 5 authors
Blockchain systems store transaction data in the form of a distributed ledger where each peer is to maintain an identical copy. Blockchain systems resemble repetition codes, incurring high storage cost. Recently, distributed storage blockchain (DSB) systems have been proposed to improve storage efficiency by incorporating secret sharing, private key encryption, and information dispersal algorithms. However, the DSB results in significant communication cost when peer failures occur due to denial of service attacks. In this letter, we propose a new DSB approach based on a local secret sharing (LSS) scheme with a hierarchical secret structure of one global secret and several local secrets. The proposed DSB approach with LSS improves the storage and recovery communication costs.
Blockchains have received much attention recently since they provide decentralized approaches to the creation and management of value. Many banks, Internet companies, car manufacturers, and even governments worldwide have incorporated or started considering blockchains to improve the security, scalability, and efficiency of their services. In this paper, we survey blockchain applications in different areas. These areas include cryptocurrency, healthcare, advertising, insurance, copyright protection, energy, and societal applications. Our work provides a timely summary for individuals and organizations interested in blockchains. We envision our study to motivate more blockchain applications.
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Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
We develop a uniform test for detecting and dating explosive behavior of a strictly stationary GARCH$(r,s)$ (generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity) process. Namely, we test the null hypothesis of a globally stable GARCH process with constant parameters against an alternative where there is an 'abnormal' period with changed parameter values. During this period, the change may lead to an explosive behavior of the volatility process. It is assumed that both the magnitude and the timing of the breaks are unknown. We develop a double supreme test for the existence of a break, and then provide an algorithm to identify the period of change. Our theoretical results hold under mild moment assumptions on the innovations of the GARCH process. Technically, the existing properties for the QMLE in the GARCH model need to be reinvestigated to hold uniformly over all possible periods of change. The key results involve a uniform weak Bahadur representation for the estimated parameters, which leads to weak convergence of the test statistic to the supreme of a Gaussian Process. In simulations we show that the test has good size and power for reasonably large time series lengths. We apply the test to Apple asset returns and Bitcoin returns.
With the gradual promotion, crowdsourcing has become an efficient way to solve problems that are very complicated for computers and simple for human crowd intelligence in recent years. Traditional crowdsourcing is based on a central system where requesters post tasks on a crowdsourcing central server or platform, however, this centralized model currently faces various challenges such as prohibitive cost, single point of failure, and vulnerability to malicious attacks. To this end, this paper proposes a smart contract-based decentralized online crowdsourcing mechanism, which includes task assignment rules and reward payment rules, etc. The mechanism has the characteristics like decentralization, unalterable, truthfulness and so on. In addition, the corresponding smart contract is designed, so that the mechanism can really run and process the actual data, and the effectiveness is shown by experiments. In this way, the entire crowdsourcing process no longer requires the participation of trusted third-party agencies, information and privacy security is guaranteed, and the cost is lower.
Leonardo da Costa, André Neto, Billy Pinheiro, Weverton Cordeiro · 6 authors
Summary In blockchain, full nodes (FNs) are peers that store and verify entire chains of transactions. In contrast, light clients (LCs) are those with limited resources, and for this reason, they request only block headers from FNs for transaction verification—using protocols like Simple Payment Verification (SPV). In an approach to prevent FN tampering on transaction verification (byzantine fault), LCs request block headers from multiple FNs and compare received responses. One problem with this approach is that an LC must connect to each FN and perform the same cryptographic operations with each one repeatedly, which leads to client‐side complexity and slower response. We propose an alternate approach to tackle this issue, in which LCs can encrypt a request for block headers only once, and send that request to a predetermined set of FNs to access, process, and reply back in a single response. Our approach, called Distributed Lightweight Client Protocol (DLCP), enables LCs to verify with little effort if FNs have agreed on a response. From an experimental evaluation, we observed that DLCP provided lower latency and reduced computing and communication overhead in comparison with the existing conventional approach.
Changing the formal structure of Indian federalism may have been difficult, given that altering the Indian constitution requires super-legislative majorities which are harder to mobilize in a fragmented party system than in a one party dominant one. The dynamics of Indian federalism underwent significant change due to the transformation of the Indian party system and economic liberalization. Decentralized spending with centralized financing through grants, from a public finance perspective, serves to help central governments implement redistributive programs. The effect of party politics on federalism is felt most intensely in those sectors of government which are open to direct party political influence. Economic liberalization built on central deregulation and party system fragmentation is likely to generate centrifugal tendencies. With it comes the expectation of more policy divergence across the states.
Learning analytics and data mining require gathering and exchanging learner data for further processing and designing of activities tailored to learner’s characteristics, context, and needs. Currently, systems that store learners’ attributes should, ideally, be operated and controlled by responsible and trustworthy authorities that guarantee the protection and sovereignty of data and use objective criteria to protect and represent all parties’ interests. This chapter introduces a peer-to-peer method for storing and exchanging learner data with minimal trust. The proposed approach, underpinned by the Experience API standard, eliminates the need of a mediator authority by using distributed ledger technology.