International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp.

13-22 (2013)

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A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE IN SPORTS: A PERFORMANCE-SALARY MODEL OF PLAYER VIA ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK
Keng-Hui Chao, Chung-Yang Chen* and Chun-Shien Li Department of Information Management National Central University Taoyuan (320), Taiwan

ABSTRACT
Relevant studies in economics point out that an appropriate salary structure is good for an organization to improve the productivity of the staff in the organization. In sports businesses, Major League Baseball (MLB) gathers top baseball players of the world in the competition, players performance may not only affect the personal performance and performance of the team, more importantly, but also have profound impact on the business operation of the tem and the league. Therefore, its very important both to the players and the team whether the team can provide proper salary to the players to ensure their best performance. In this regard, this study develops an approach to estimate proper salary level for players. The approach analyzes the performance and contractual salaries of free agencies on the year before signing the contract during 2006-2010 in MLB, and combines with neural networks technology to evaluate players actual performance and their salaries. According to the preliminary experimental results of this study, the initial accuracy rate of this prototype model is 77.778%. Several issues relevant to the results are also discussed for the continual improvement and development of the model and the research. Keywords: Artificial Neural Network, Sports Business, Professional Baseball, Organization Management

1. INTRODUCTION

Sport has been a popular business all over the world. In the United States, there are 30 teams in Major League Baseball (hereinafter referred to as MLB) in 2010, the average value of each team is 523 million US Dollars, and the average number of audiences of each game were 30135, making the total income in 2010 is 494 billion US Dollars [20]. Given that, apart from gathering top baseball players worldwide for the competition, MLB also involved in enormous economic activities, of which the largest amount should be the salaries of players, for example, in 2011, the total salary of New York Yankees team was as high as 190 million US Dollars, highest of the league and Philadelphia Phillies ranked the second, recording 170 million US Dollars as teams salary [9]. The team pays high salary to players, players performance live up to their salaries, bringing the good winning records for the team so as to increase the economic benefits of derivative products and

* Corresponding author: cychen@mgt.ncu.edu.tw

advertisements, which in turn will be an effective investment to a club. For example, the annual salary of Alex Rodriguez from the New York Yankees team was 32 million US Dollars, but the tangible (teams winning records) and intangible (incomes for teams business operation) benefits he brought to the club are far more than his salary; on the contrary, if a club overpay the player, it will be deemed as an unsuccessful investment. For instance, in 2002, Chan-Ho Park signed a contract with Rangers at the salary of 65 million US Dollars for 5 years, but he only brought 22 wins to the team, which means the transaction caused great damages to the team. Therefore, how to evaluate a players value precisely and offer him competent salary is an important topic for each team manager. Besides the team manager, many experts were also interested in finding out the best answers for the aforementioned questions; they attempted to combine the methods or tools proposed by various sciences to work out reference basis for team manager to evaluate players value. For example, scholars Jewell and Moina [17] found that salary inequality will have impact on teams overall performance; Holmes [15] used quantitle regression to study on whether the

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International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2013) starting pitchers who are about to enter into Free Agency (FA), combining the pitchers performance and their salaries during the year before signing the contract with artificial neural networks to develop a model measuring the relationship between pitchers performance and salary. We hope this model can evaluate players salary level objectively according to players performance, and help to provide a reference basis for the team and the player when negotiating contracts. For the rest of this study, it is organized as follows. Chapter 2: Literature Review, in this chapter, we will review relevant regulations on MLB players salary and literatures about artificial neural networks technology. Chapter 3: Research Methods, this chapter will include detail illustrations and explanations on the model analyzing the relationship between pitchers performance and salary. Chapter 4: Experiment, as to the model proposed in this study, further experiments will be conducted through the collection of data. Chapter 5 discusses the model and outlines several future research directions. Conclusion of this study is in Chapter 6; and references will be stated in the later part of this paper.

salary of a player is different because of players characteristic within a specific salary range; Harder [12] used statistical methods research on the relationship between MLB players salary and performance; Hakes [10] further studied on the relationship among MLB players salary, performance, and age; Ahlstrom, Si and Kennelly [1] used equity theory and expectancy theory to study on the relationship between a players performance and salary before and after he became a free agent. Even a recent sports-related entertainment movie (Money Ball) also called a story that reflects the aforementioned analytical need. In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology aroused extensive discussions. The objective of artificial intelligence is to make the machine as intelligent as human [4]. In order to achieve this objective, experts and scholars carried out research in various aspects and further derived research fields and areas related to artificial intelligence, such as problem solving, knowledge and reasoning, planning, uncertain knowledge and reasoning, learning and communication, perception and action, etc. [21]; of all those research fields and areas, artificial neural network attracted attentions from all walks of life and was applied to many practical problems. For example, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) used artificial neural network to technology to distinguish handwritten figures, and the error rate was 0.63%, which was lower than humans 2.5% [21]. Apart from the researches mentioned above, there are scholars applying artificial intelligence technology in analyzing professional sports, but the scope of analysis only limited to the team or players performance [5, 6, 11, 23] and no further research conducted. Therefore, this study will further propose a model to measure players performance and salary through the combination of artificial neural network technology. With the establishment of this model, we hope it can help to reduce the damages arisen from the overestimation or underestimation of salary under salary negotiation between the team and the player. Specifically, there are several divisions of works in the matches of MLB; for example, pitchers include Starting Pitcher (SP), Relief Pitcher (RP), and Closer Pitcher (CP), different types of pitchers will be given different tasks, starting pitchers need to bear more innings pitched and appear on the match once every week under normal circumstance; on the contrary, relief pitcher and closer pitcher need to bear less innings pitched, but they need to standby for each match and ready for the play whenever necessary, hence different types of pitchers might have different performance. This study can avoid the comparison between different types of pitchers, which might cause biased errors in the experimental results. Besides, the research objectives of this study are

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Relevant Regulations on MLB Players Salary With hundred years of history, MLB has integrated regulation systems on the team, players, matches and other relevant affairs, players record of service and salary in MLB are also stipulated explicitly. For instance, in the 2011 season, lowest guarantee salary for MLB players was 414,000 US Dollars [18]; players without free agency and salary arbitration qualification cannot negotiate salary with the team [18]. MLB has specific regulations on each section, ensuring the benefits for both the player and the team. This study will assure the model established can comply with relevant laws and regulations stipulated by MLB. In this chapter, we will study on the regulations relating to Free Agency (FA) and Arbitration in details. Free Agency (FA): Player with both at least six years records of experience in MLB and the contract to be expired in the end of the current season may acquire the identity of free agency [18]. After becoming a free agency, player will come into the free market for each teams competitive bidding. Each team will evaluate the values that the player may bring to the team and offer appropriate salary, and the player will make the final decision on which team to join in. However, in the competitive MLB, its not easy to have six years of records of experience, players need to keep in a health situation and stay away from severe injuries, when a good player become a free agency, offering salaries will be

K. H. Chao et al.: A Preliminary Study of Business Intelligence in Sports much higher than before when several teams are bidding at the same time. If Players with less than six years of records of experience in MLB are not satisfied with the salary the team offered, they may apply for salary arbitration. Players applying for salary arbitration must satisfy one of the following three conditions [18]: Player who becomes a free agency, his original team proposes the salary arbitration and the player himself accepts the arbitration. Player who has served the team in MLB for more than 3 years but less than 6 years and hasnt acquired the contract for the new season. Player who has served the team in MLB for more than 2 years but less than 3 years, and has served at least 86 days in the next season (the third season); or his time of service ranks top 17% (at least 86 days) among players with 2-3 years of experience in MLB, in the two conditions aforementioned, player may propose salary arbitration if he hasnt acquired the contract for the next season. The arbitration panel will comprise of 3 arbitrators, both the team and player shall explain the reasons for the proposed amount orally or in written form in front of the arbitrators. Arbitrators will select one of the proposed amounts provided by the team and player to be players salary for the next season. Both the team and player shall not object the decision arbitrators made on the salary [2]. To sum up, if a player can serve at least six years in MLB and enter into the free market as a free agency, competitions in the bidding among each team in the free market are the best way to reflect a players real value objectively; however, players who can enter into the free market each year are still the minority in MLB, for example: In 2010, there were 30 teams (each team may register 40 players at most) in the MLB, only 61 players became free agency, and only 14 of them were starting pitchers [7]. 2.2 Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Artificial neural network is a teaching tool with the principle of processing information through simulating humans brain [14]. The smallest processing unit of artificial neural network is artificial neuron, which receives input information through various nodes, and response output value through nodes after the operation in the neuron. As shown in Figure 1, three nodes (X1, X2, X3) receiving input information transfer the value through different weighting setups (W1, W2, W3) to artificial neuron for operation to obtain the output value y.
X1 X2 X3 W2

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W1

W3

Figure 1: Neuron operation mode In the central nervous system of human brain, there are about 1011 neurons combined as the complicated biological neural network [19] to combine artificial neurons into artificial neural network. In order to make the artificial neural network more capable of processing information, experts have combined artificial neurons into Artificial Neural Network, and divided it into 4 networks namely: Single-layer feed forward networks, Multi-layer feed forward networks, recurrent networks, and Lattice networks [13]. Among them, the mainstream network is multi-layer feed forward networks with hidden layers and output layers, artificial neurons in such layers are also capable of processing information. The transfer of information starts from input layer, and ends in output layer through hidden layers, such network structure is capable of processing more complicated problems. The artificial neural network technology was developed and recorded extensive application in the middle of 1980s [14], and successful cases of using artificial neural network technology to resolve practical problems were also recorded [8], most of the problems are pattern recognition, classification, and nonlinear control problems [16]. Such problems were also existed in industries and activities relating to sports, for example, when studying on factors of affecting swimmers performance, best shooting motions for football player and other problems, experts were trying to resolve those problems through artificial neural network [3, 22]. Besides, there are other experts using artificial neural network to analyze hits and defense performance of professional baseball players to study on the relationship between players personal performance and teams overall performance [11]; apart from hits and defense, pitchers performance are also the key to the win and quality of baseball matches, and pitchers pitching performance can be influenced by various factors, such as physical condition of the pitcher, other teammates defense and hits situation, and recent conditions of the opponents etc., and the degree of influence by such factors might be different to different players. On the other hand, from the perspective of managing a team, classifying a players capability to decide a players salary might not only influence players performance and teams winning records, but also the overall

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International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2013) data, the evaluation of a players performance will be more objective when using these two Pis to calculate players winning rate. Given that, this research further summarize the above information as the list below to calculate a players Wins / Games Started (W/GS), Innings Pitched / Games Started (IP/GS), Hits / Innings Pitched (H/IP), Home Runs / Innings Pitched (HR/IP), Bases on Balls / Innings Pitched (BB/IP), and Strikeouts / Innings Pitched (SO/IP). Since this research is target at starting pitchers, information such as saves (SV), saves opportunities (SVO) and games started (GS) (for most starting pitchers, numbers of appearance equal to games started) are excluded. Besides, the different skills of player might cause different results of performance, in order to reduce the errors caused by such differences; this research excludes hit batsmen (HB), bases on balls (BB), intentional bases on balls, walks and hits / innings pitched (WHIP), and ground outs / air outs (GO/AO) etc.. At last, since the attributes of losses (L), complete games (CG), hits (H) and home runs (HR) are similar to wins / games started (W/GS), innings pitched (IP), hits / innings pitched (H/IP), and home runs / innings pitched (HR/IP), this research also excluded such information. To sum up, this research refers totally 12 performance information stated in Table 1 and Table 2 as basis to measure players performance. Table 1: Players performance information from MLB official website
W Wins GS Games Started SVO Save Opportunities ER Earned Runs IBB Intentional Bases on Balls GO/AO Ground Outs / Fly Outs L Losses CG Complete Games IP Innings Pitched HR Home Runs SO ERA Earned Run Average SHO Shutouts H Hits HB G Games Played SV Saves R Runs BB

operation of the team, therefore, how to precisely evaluate and classify a players capability to offer an appropriate salary is a significant topic for discussion. To sum up, this study holds that the establishment of a model to measure the relationship between players performance and salary through artificial neural networks deserves further researches.

3. RESEARCH METHODS
This research holds that the values of players not enter into the free market can be easily overestimated or underestimated. Rookies in MLB are unable to negotiate salary with the team because they serve the team less than 6 years, they can only acquire their salary treatment through the teams initiative offer or salary arbitration (as mentioned above), in this situation, players salary might be underestimated. On the other hand, the team might offer a long term contract with favorable salary to excellent players serving the team for almost 6 years to avoid the player becoming a free agency and causing damages to the team, in such situation, players salary might be overestimated. In order to evaluate a players value fairly and objectively, the research objective of this research is targeted at free agency in the free market, hoping to minimum exterior factors that may influence players capability and value. Besides, this research will also consider the specialization of work in MLB, in which different roles will be given different jobs, and its unfair to judge players with different roles with a same standard. Therefore, this research will target at starting pitchers of free agency. We have obtained the list of free agencies from 2006-2010 in MLB from ESPN website, and free agencys contract information from a professional baseball website (mlbcontracts.blogspot.com) which specializing in collecting salary and contract information of players in MLB. From the contract information, we know about the contractual amount and year of the contract, and from the MLB official website (MLB.com), we learn about free agencys performance during the year before signing the contract. The contractual amount divided by years of contract equal to average annual salary, and the average salary will be classified into three categories (A, B, C). Regarding the performance, players performance information from the MLB official website are as shown in the below table 1. Despite the completeness of players performance information from the MLB official website, the team cannot evaluate a players performance from each single data. For example, the team cannot judge a players performance only from the winning records of the team, players numbers of appearance may be further considered as auxiliary

Hit Batsmen Bases on Balls AVG Opponents Batting Average WHIP Walks And Hits Innings Pitched

Strikeouts

K. H. Chao et al.: A Preliminary Study of Business Intelligence in Sports Table 2: Information attributes
W/GS Wins / Game started HR/IP Home Runs / Innings Pitched IP/GS Innings pitched / Games Started BB/IP Bases on Balls / Innings Pitched H/IP Hits / Innings Pitched SO/IP Strikeouts / Innings Pitched

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Table 3: 12 performance information referred in this research

W Wins SHO Shutouts W/GS Wins / Game Started HR/IP Home Runs / Innings Pitched ERA Earned Run Average SO Strikeouts IP/GS Innings Pitched / Games Started BB/IP Bases on Balls / Innings Pitched G Games Played AVG Opponents Batting Average H/IP Hits / Innings Pitched SO/IP Strikeouts / Innings Pitched

In addition, this research also holds that there are differences between the information itself, such as 17 and 18 wins, 3.21 and 2.29 earned run average, etc., since the differences between the figures of the information might affect the experimental results, we standardize the attributes of each performance, and convert them in to numbers ranging from 0~1, which means we will convert the relative meaning (relative comparison) of performance information into definite meaning (the value of numbers will directly reflect the relationship). Since the skills of each pitcher are different, the attributes of 12 performance information shown are also different. That is to say, each good pitcher might has his specialties (some pitchers might with more wins and less games started; some might with high average strikeouts but less wins), and not all information attributes of good pitchers have a fixed model or features. Given the complexity of this problem, this research adopts classification technology of artificial neural network to study on this problem, hoping to establish the model of measuring the relationship between the player and his salary by the calculation of the aforesaid 12 information attributes and players salary through artificial neural network.

4. EXPERIMENT
At present, there are different kinds of software that can assist in analyzing artificial neural networks.

After evaluation, this research holds that SPSS Clementine software (hereinafter referred to as Clementine) is the software with integrated functions that can help in information exploiting and being used extensively, besides, Clementine is also equipped with artificial neural network analysis function. Therefore, this research will use Clementine as the analyzing tool for the experiment. As mentioned in the research methods, this research is targeted at starting pitchers in free agency market in MLB from 2006 to 2010, the relationship between players performance during the year before signing the contract and players contractual salary is analyzed through artificial neural network. Performance information of players over the years from MLB.com, players contractual information from mlbcontracts.blogspot.com, and the list of free agency in 2006-2010 from ESPN website are the original information necessary for this research, 100 sets of information in total. Given that the exceptional cases might influence the accuracy of the experiment; this research excluded players with less than 20 games started (totally 162 games a year, 5 starting pitchers a team, approximately with 30 games started a year) in the previous year and players with omissive information, for example, foreign players are without records of performance for the previous year, but also be deemed as free agency according to MLB regulations. In order to prevent the experimental result from affecting by such information, this research has sorted and collected 63 sets of information in total as the analysis sample. The analysis sample is saved as Microsoft Excel format and connected to Clementine (Figure 2 is from MLB2011_DM_1.xls), Clementine will firstly check on the information format (Type as shown in Figure 2), then confirm information status to calculate according to artificial neural formula (Neural Net as shown in Figure 2), after the performance of calculation, the result (as performed shown in Figure 2) will come out and be shown in the pattern of array and point diagram. In this research, players salary will be classified into A, B and C category from high to low. The classification standard will be adjusted accordingly to achieve higher accuracy rate. Four experiments were conducted in order to ensure the reliability, as well as to provide a variety, of the results of the experiments. According to the experimental result (see Table 4), 8,000,000 and 3,000,000 are separation points in classifying salary into three categories, the accuracy rate of model analyzing the relationship between players performance and salary is initially 77.778. The important attributes of the experiments are: Wins (Std_W: 0.3556665), Innings Pitched/Games Started, (Std_IP/GS: 0.307114), Opponents Batting

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International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2013) because they were often used in MLB performance reports, thus the data are validated and collectable from the MLB database.

Average (Std_AVG: 0.296459), Hits / Innings Pitched (Std_H/IP: 0.267247), Earned Run Average (Std_ERA: 0.25701), Strikeouts (Std_SO: 0.205568) etc.. These attributes are identified

Figure 2: Clementine software execution interface Table 4: Experimental result

Experiment 1 2 3 4

>10,000,000

>15,000,000

>8,000,000

>8,000,000

>5,000,000 And <10,000,000

>7,000,000 And <15,000,000

>3,000,000 And <8,000,000

>5,000,000 And <8,000,000

C Accuracy Rate

<5,000,000 68.966 Std_SO:0.41549 Std_W:0.411298 Std_ERA:0.284032 Std_SHO:0.266569 Std_BB/IP:0.225745 Std_IP/GS:0.211655 Std_G:0.204712 Std_H/IP:0.199153 Std_AVG:0.167183 Std_SO/IP:0.154707 Std_W/GS:0.1524 Std_HR/IP:0.0183246

<7,000,000 63.636 Std_AVG:0.36834 Std_IP/GS:0.351471 Std_ERA:0.288751 Std_BB/IP:0.285463 Std_W:0.2723 Std_SO/IP:0.233484 Std_H/IP:0.222571 Std_SO:0.176661 Std_G:0.13726 Std_SHO:0.115049 Std_HR/IP:0.104099 Std_W/GS:0.0618199

<3,000,000 77.778 Std_W:0.3556665 Std_IP/GS:0.307114 Std_AVG:0.296459 Std_H/IP:0.267247 Std_ERA:0.25701 Std_SO:0.205568 Std_G:0.151788 Std_SO/IP:0.13582 Std_HR/IP:0.0981164 Std_SHO:0.0744574 Std_BB/IP:0.0552922 Std_W/GS:0.0045988

<5,000,000 75.0 Std_IP/GS:0.452937 Std_ERA:0.412876 Std_SO:0.307974 Std_W:0.296548 Std_AVG:0.231574 Std_H/IP:0.203747 Std_HR/IP:0.181919 Std_SHO:0.157168 Std_G:0.124684 Std_W/GS:0.105977 Std_BB/IP:0.0353316 Std_SO/IP:0.307411

Importance of Attribute

K. H. Chao et al.: A Preliminary Study of Business Intelligence in Sports Table 5 illustrates the relationship between the actual classification of information and the model estimation, the vertical axis is the actual classification of information, and the horizontal axis is the model estimation through artificial neural network. Take experiment No. 3 as an example, the accuracy rate of category A is 28/32, 19/24 for category B and 2/7 for category C. Table 5: Actual classification of information and model estimation
Model Estimation Experiment Actual Classification of Information A 1 B C A 2 B C A 3 B C A 4 B C 28 5 1 28 6 1 22 10 1 3 14 1 9 27 7 4 19 4 4 7 0 0 2 10 0 4 16 0 0 2 0 5 12 A B C

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5. DISCUSSION
This research collects regulations on qualification of free agency in MLB and summarizes players performance information, and find out the appropriate experimental tools for experiment. Despite the fact that the current research has accomplished preliminary achievements, there are still issues for extended research in the future. 1. Accuracy rate of model: The current accuracy rate of the model is 77.778, however, as mentioned before, baseball team need to spend hundreds of millions of US Dollars to pay players salary, any minor mistakes in the operation of the team may cause losses both in teams performance and profits, therefore, its more important that whether the model can evaluate a players value precisely, and the improvement of accuracy rate of the model will be the top priority in the future research. So far, as a research prototype, this study only

focuses on players performance on the court, as well as a current limitation of the entire research. However, apart from the performance on the court, there is other relevant business activities in which player might also bring profits to the team. For example, Chien-Ming Wang, a famous baseball player from Taiwan was injured in 2010 and unable to appear in the game, even so, there was a team signing a 5,000,000 US Dollars contract with him for a year. Despite Chien-Ming Wang was unable to play for the team immediately, he also brought benefits to the team because the team received extensive popularity as well as a good fortune from Asia, especially in Taiwan, after signing the contract with him. In July 2010, when Chien-Ming Wang recovered from the injury and got ready to play, the team received more economic benefits (such as telecast revenues, advertisement income etc.). Given the example aforementioned, other benefits (such as telecast revenues, advertisement income etc.) that player might bring to the team shall also be deemed as an attribute to improve the integrity of attributes in measuring players performance, and to enhance the accuracy rate of the model. 2. Model that extending relationship between performance and salary: Each teams income in MLB is closely related to players performance, teams winning records, and relevant business activities, therefore, each team will be dedicated to study on relationship between the benefits that players brought to the team and salaries that the team paid to the players. In addition, due to the special industry patterns, its hard to precisely measure the relationship between players performance and salary, resulting in the disputes and objections in the salary between the player and the team. For example, in a knowledge oriented job, its not appropriate to calculate the equivalent payment for the employees in the traditional payment by the pieces or hours. Therefore, in recent years, companies with knowledge oriented as major operational business are devoting to relevant issues on how to evaluate employees performance precisely. If the concepts proposed in this research can be used in measuring employees performance and salary, the company can establish a model to objectively and scientifically evaluate employees performance. For instance, firstly analyze the work content; collect relevant attributive information (eg. Difficulty, satisfaction, integrity, and time etc.), and then conduct experimental analysis through artificial neural network.

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6. CONCLUSION
This study has reported the substantial importance of business intelligence in sports business, and has proposed an artificial NN model that is associated with the interesting MLB case in the United States. The model as well as this study has learned about the regulations and systems in players salary in MLB, and applied the artificial neural network technology to work out the factors affecting players salary and their weighting percentage. This study has demonstrated the applicability of AI in sports business. As a prototype and an initiative of our entire research, current version of the model has several limitations that requires for a further study. In the next research, we would like to continually develop the model by including more variables and refining the analytical process to enhance the accuracy rate. It is hoped that the study be able to attract and encourage more attention and discussions about business intelligence sports industries and businesses, where teams, players and agencies negotiate salary and make the salary negotiation more objectively. 11.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Keng-Hui Chao is currently a PhD student in the Department of Information Management at National Central University, Tao-Yuan, Taiwan. His research interests include business intelligence, information and software quality, and business process management. Chung-Yang Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Management and the Director of Computing Center in the management school at National Central University, Taiwan. He is also an adjunct professor in the department of Information Management at National Taiwan University. Prof. Chen received his B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan and completed his M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University, USA. His research interests include the enhancement of information systems such as business process management, applications of artificial and business intelligence, project management and quality management systems such as data/information quality, software quality and educational quality. His research publications have been in IIE Transactions, Computers and Education, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Engineering and Technology, Journal of System and Software, International Journal of Project Management, Total Quality Management and Business Excellence, etc.

Chun-Shien Li received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1996 from the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. He is currently an associate professor at the Department of Information Management, National Central University, Taiwan. He was with the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National University of Tainan, and the Department of Electrical Engineering, Chang Gung University, respectively. Prof. Li was also the Chief of Information System Group of Computer Center, and the Director of Teacher Development Center, National University of Tainan, Taiwan. Prof. Li received the Research Award from the National Science Council, Taiwan, in 1999 and the Research Award of Excellent Teacher from Chang Gung University, Taiwan, in 2000. He has been first author of more than 100 academic and technical publications. He has been biographized in Marquis Who's Who in Science and Engineering, in Medicine and Healthcare, in Asia, and in the World. He has served as a referee of paper review for several IEEE journals and international journals and a PC member for several international academic conferences. His current research interests include computational intelligence, machine learning and optimization, neural fuzzy systems, prediction, pattern recognition, intelligent modeling and forecasting, intelligent control, and intelligent signal processing. (Received February 2012, revised August 2012, accepted August 2012)

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(Productivity)(Cohesion) 2006-2010 77.778 *cychen@mgt.ncu.edu.tw