CALL FOR PAPERS USING BIG DATA TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY

Special Issue: International Journal of Production Research

Special issue guest Editors Dr. Kim Hua Tan Nottingham University Business School University of Nottingham England Dr. Guojin Ji School of management Xiamen University China Dr. Chee Peng Lim Centre for Intelligent Systems Research Deakin University Australia Dr. Ming-Lang Tseng Department of Business Administration Lunghwa University of Science and Technology Taiwan
Introduction

Big Data has become increasingly fashionable in recent years, four global trends led to the Big Data era: cheaper technology, increased use of smart phones and social media, and more popular use of the cloud computing. These global trends generate more volume, variety and velocity (3Vs) of data than ever before, which makes Big Data more difficult to manage and analyse. According to McKinsey (2011) big data analytics can be helpful to support global manufacturing and supply chain innovation by creating data transparency, improving human decisionmaking and promoting innovative business models. However, there is a lack of data analytics techniques available to help decision makers and managers to capture and harvest the potential value of data (Wong, 2012). Thus, a data analytic infrastructure that helps decision makers to make use of the high volume of data to serve as inputs for decision making is necessary. Although there is a variety of analytics techniques i.e. predictive analytics, data mining, case-based reasoning, exploratory data analysis, business intelligence, machine learning techniques, and so

on, methods that capable to handle vast volume of unstructured data is still not well established (Wong, 2012). The question this special issue would like to address is How to harvest big data to help decision-makers to deliver better fact-based decisions aimed at improving performance or to create better strategy? In this special issue, we focus on the big data applications in supporting operations decisions, including advanced research on decision models and tools for the digital economy. A list of suggested topics is provided below.

Data-driven decision support systems Studies that develop or test analytic approaches to help understand management challenges of the digital environment. Business models in the digital economy Data processing models and methods Theoretical challenges for data analytics in the digital/information economy Data mining and knowledge discovery Case studies on Big Data applications

We welcome contributions based on rigorous case studies, as well as empirical and simulation studies that contribute to the understanding of data analytics in the digital economy. Especially, we are interested in studies that apply tools from operations research, statistics, and computer science to offer novel insights for managers and policymakers in the manufacturing operations supply chain context. Publication Schedule Manuscript submission: September 31, 2014 Notification of review reports: December 31, 2014 Revised final manuscript due date: March 31, 2015 Final manuscript submission to publisher: June 30, 2015 Online publication of the Special Issue: July/August 2015 References

McKinsey (2011). Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity. McKinsey Global Institute. Wong, D. (2012), Data is the Next Frontier, Analytics the New Tool: Five trends in big data and analytics, and their implications for innovation and organisations, Big Innovation Centre.