Paula M.C. Swatman - Böcker

BE 2002 is the second in a series of conferences on eCommerce, eBusiness, and eGovemment organised by the three IFIP committees TC6, TC8, and TCll. As BE 2001 did last year in Zurich, BE 2002 continues to provide a forum for users, engineers, and researchers from academia, industry and government to present their latest findings in eCommerce, eBusiness, and eGovernment applications and the underlying technologies which support those applications. This year's conference comprises a main track with sessions on eGovernment, Trust, eMarkets, Fraud and Security, eBusiness (both B2B and B2C), the Design of systems, eLearning, Public and Health Systems, Web Design, and the Applications of and Procedures for eCommerce and eBusiness, as well as two associated Workshops (not included in these proceedings): eBusiness Models in the Digital Online Music and Online News Sectors; and eBusiness Standardisation - Challenges and Solutions for the Networked Economy. The 47 papers accepted for presentation in these sessions and published in this book of proceedings were selected from 80 submissions.They were rigorously reviewed (all papers were double-blind refereed) before being selected by the International Programme Committee. This rejection rate of almost 50% indicates just how seriously the Committee took its quality control activities.

This collection of research papers addresses the emerging field of e-commerce and e-business, and presents a number of key contributions as the research fields are maturing. Many of the texts represent cutting-edge research, illustrating the diverse nature of these fields, from conceptual frameworks to state-of-the-art implementations. The book includes contributions in areas such as: strategies for implementing e-business; business-2-consumer, business-2-business; internet marketing; evaluation tools for e-business; implications for SMEs; mobile commerce; trust; distributed knowledge management; and dot.com-driven business transformations. The volume comprises the edited proceedings of the Second Working Conference on E-Business: Multidisciplinary Research and Practice, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), Working Group 8.4, as well as by the Danish Center for E-Business Development and the Copenhagen Business School. The conference was held in June 2002 in Copenhagen.

In the foreword to this volume of conference proceedings for IFIP Working Group 8.4, it is appropriate to review the wider organization to which the Working Group belongs.