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Abstract. This paper proposes a hybrid approach that predicts the failure of firms based on the past business data, combining rough set approach and worst practice data envelopment analysis (DEA). The worst practice DEA can identify worst performers (in quantitative financial data) by placing them on the frontier while the rules developed by rough set uses non-financial information to predict the characteristics of failed firms. Both DEA and rough set are commonly used in practice. Both have limitations. The hybrid model Rough DEA takes the best of both models, by avoiding the pitfalls of each. For the experiment, the financial data of 396 Taiwan firms during the period 2002-2003 were selected. The results show that the hybrid approach is a promising alternative to the conventional methods for failure prediction.

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Abstract:The purpose of this research aims to improve the understanding of what motivates individual users to use online religious services, and which factors affect those motivations, based on the theory of the technology acceptance model (TAM). The research examines the reasons for the success of these websites, as well as the reasons why the users accept the new religious media, in light of the cultural and social advantages that affect Internet religious use in Taiwan. The research model was tested by using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique. The results show that perceived usefulness is important in developing adoption intention. Religious experience and, computer experience have influences on the adoption intention through the mediating effect of perceived ease of use. The outcome of the research will be useful for online religious service providers and researchers interested in the topic of online religions.

This paper presents a multiple criteria evaluation model for international multiple foundry partnership selection. In a multiple source foundry environment, the integrated circuit (IC) design house maintains partnership with several different foundries to diversify the risk of capacity shortage and natural disaster. To select a group of foundry partners, management culture, technology level and future growth are heavily interrelated. Therefore the fuzzy integral is used to evaluate the synthetic performance of the best partners. To show the practicability and usefulness of this method, a Taiwan consumer IC design house case was presented for evaluation. Results in this study not only confirm the practical nature of the proposed model, but also demonstrate the high flexibility in evaluation of a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem.