springer berlin heidelberg springer berlin heidelberg sep 2016 (822 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -What actually is marketing Many people think of marketing as only sales and advertising because every day we are bombarded with TV commercials, flyers, catalogues, sales calls, and commercial e-mail. However, selling and advertising are only one element of marketing. Today, marketing must be understood not in the old sense of making a sale but in a contemporary and holistic sense of satisfying customer needs.In this book the authors develop the Quintessential Marketing Arena by following the logic of the three major steps of the marketing process. Along this process they present the fourteen most important marketing instruments that occur during this process.Having read this book:You will have a basic understanding of marketing and the process of marketing managementYou will know the most important marketing instruments and how they interactYou can develop your own marketing plan based on the Quintessential Marketing ArenaSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 152 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The world has changed dramatically in recent years and so has the field of economics, but many introductory economics textbooks have remained stuck in the past. This book provides a new beginning for the study of macroeconomics, fundamentally international in its approach and emphasizing current debates and research trends. The first, mostly descriptive half of the book presents the main macroeconomic and financial patterns observed across the world, the institutions that govern national economies and the policy options available to decision-makers. In the second half, different schools of thought in macroeconomics are introduced with an emphasis on their underlying assumptions, so that students can judge for themselves how well they apply in real-world situations.Throughout the book, the post-2007 financial crisis is a continuing focus and financial markets are fully integrated in the analysis. Policy debates are viewed in light of political economy considerations, both domestic and international. The book¿s style focuses on in-depth explanations and supports teaching methodologies based on critical thinking and active learning, encouraging students to relate to current discussions, especially those taking place online.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 456 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In times of growing talent shortage, companies have to find new ways to fill their strategic positions from the outside. This book presents useful and competitive solutions for hiring talented and motivated employees. The author presents four concrete fields of action to achieve this and provides the reader with definitions of strategically relevant key and bottleneck functions. The book emphasizes the fact that employers must sell relevant functions just like they would as part of an employer branding strategy. Employers are moving towards active sourcing strategies beyond job ads and headhunting. They must maintain and manage relations with promising talent once they have been identified. Finally, employers must ensure a positive candidate experience. This book serves as a handy reference for HR managers and talent recruiters.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In recent years, the usual optimization techniques, which have proved so useful in microeconomic theory, have been extended to incorporate more powerful topological and differential methods, and these methods have led to new results on the qualitative behavior of general economic and political systems. These developments have necessarily resulted in an increase in the degree of formalism in the publications in the academic journals. This formalism can often deter graduate students. The progression of ideas presented in this book will familiarize the student with the geometric concepts underlying these topological methods, and, as a result, make mathematical economics, general equilibrium theory, and social choice theory more accessible.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 280 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book deals with the economic aspects of changing attitudes in arts and sciences. The effects of the public good character of culture, along with the very long production period and lifetime for its products, are emphasized, since both contribute to the failure of normal market solutions. Embodiment of ideas and the consequences of modern reproduction technology for protection of property rights are closely examined.The evolution within arts and sciences, which often seems to return to previously scrapped ideals, is illustrated by detailed case studies, in which the importance of changing tastes, rather than progress proper, is emphasized.The author attempts an understanding for this using Darwinian evolution in combination with modern mathematical complexity theory, expressed in terms accessible to the general reader.The second edition is extended and updated especially as regards the illustration material.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 216 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book is intended to present the milestones in the progression of uncertain Data envelopment analysis (DEA). Chapter 1 gives some basic introduction to uncertain theories, including probability theory, credibility theory, uncertainty theory and chance theory. Chapter 2 presents a comprehensive review and discussion of basic DEA models. The stochastic DEA is introduced in Chapter 3, in which the inputs and outputs are assumed to be random variables. To obtain the probability distribution of a random variable, a lot of samples are needed to apply the statistics inference approach. Chapter 4 and 5 provide two uncertain DEA methods to evaluate the DMUs with limited or insufficient statistical data, named fuzzy DEA and uncertain DEA. In order to evaluate the DMUs in which uncertainty and randomness appear simultaneously, the hybrid DEA based on chance theory is presented in Chapter 6.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Despite the fact that the globalization process tends to reinforce existing inequality structures and generate new areas of inequality on multiple levels, systematic analyses on this very important field remain scarce. Hence, this book approaches the complex question of inequality not only from different regional perspectives, covering Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin and Northern America, but also from different disciplinary perspectives, namely cultural anthropology, economics, ethnology, geography, international relations, sociology, and political sciences.The contributions are subdivided into three essential fields of research: Part I analyzes the socio-economic dimension of global exclusion, highlighting in particular the impacts of internationalization and globalization processes on national social structures against the background of theoretical concepts of social inequality. Part II addresses the political dimension of global inequalities. Since the decline of the Soviet Union new regional powers like Brazil, China, India and South Africa have emerged, creating power shifts in international relations that are the primary focus of the second part. Lastly, Part III examines the structural and transnational dimension of inequality patterns, which can be concretized in the rise of globalized national elites and the emergence of multinational networks that transcend the geographical and imaginative borders of nation states.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 300 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -n the future, shopping will be greatly influenced by a combination of localization issues, mobile internet at the point of sale, and use of social networks. This book focuses on the ¿SoLoMo synergies¿ that arise from this paradigm shift in future shopping, which also promises new and effective marketing options for traditional retailers. It also reflects the current status of research and business practice, analyzing the basic factors of SoLoMo in detail. The importance of Location-based Services (LBS) is elaborated and analyzed in an empirical study using a market based case of kaufDA ¿ a leading German online shopping network. The evidence shows that customers see LBS as an attractive tool and are prepared to change their buying behavior. Though LBS is still in its early stages and its professional longevity remains to be seen, it also promises tremendous potential for the future.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 220 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -IT is currently going through one of its most critical phases oftransformation. IT vendors and IT service organizations are revolutionizing their production and service processes, adopting industrial practices. It is only through the consistent transformation into factory-like structures that quality, effectiveness and efficiency can be increased. By integrating professional concepts and methods taken from the context of industrial production, it is possible to meet functional and qualitative requirements from the departments and therefore from the end user. On top of thatthis new paradigmenables the implementation of optimal processes in the organization. An interdisciplinary team of authors addresses the current challenges for global IT services organizations and describes the process of IT industrialization. The transformation of the IT industrytowards the model of an IT factory is the core theme of this book, which takes the latest findings from applied research, consulting and IT business practices and combines them into a consistent and innovative approach to IT services.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 232 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference on the History of Computing, HC 2013, held in London, UK, in June 2013. The 29 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics related to the history of computing and offer a number of different approaches to making this history relevant. These range from discussion of approaches to describing and analyzing the history through storytelling and education to description of various collections, working installations and reconstruction projects. The papers have been organized in the following topical sections: the importance of storytelling in museums; spotlight on some key collections and their future plans; thoughts on expanding the audience for computing history; spotlight on some research projects; integrating history with computer science education; putting the history of computing into different contexts;celebrating nostalgia for games - and its potential as Trojan horse; the importance and challenges of working installations; and reconstruction stories.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 336 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The information infrastructure - comprising computers, embedded devices, networks and software systems - is vital to day-to-day operations in every sector: information and telecommunications, banking and finance, energy, chemicals and hazardous materials, agriculture, food, water, public health, emergency services, transportation, postal and shipping, government and defense. Global business and industry, governments, indeed society itself, cannot function effectively if major components of the critical information infrastructure are degraded, disabled or destroyed. Critical Infrastructure Protection VIII describes original research results and innovative applications in the interdisciplinary field of critical infrastructure protection. Also, it highlights the importance of weaving science, technology and policy in crafting sophisticated, yet practical, solutions that will help secure information, computer and network assets in the various critical infrastructure sectors. Areas of coverage include: control systems security, infrastructure security, infrastructure modeling and simulation, risk and impact assessment, and advanced techniques. This book is the eighth volume in the annual series produced by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 11.10 on Critical Infrastructure Protection, an international community of scientists, engineers, practitioners and policy makers dedicated to advancing research, development and implementation efforts focused on infrastructure protection. The book contains a selection of seventeen edited papers from the 8th Annual IFIP WG 11.10 International Conference on Critical Infrastructure Protection, held at SRI International, Arlington, Virginia, DC, USA in the spring of 2014. Critical Infrastructure Protection VIII is an important resource for researchers, faculty members and graduate students, as well as for policy makers, practitioners and other individuals with interests in homeland security.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 296 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book introduces the latest progress in six degrees of freedom (6-DoF) haptic rendering with the focus on a new approach for simulating force/torque feedback in performing tasks that require dexterous manipulation skills. One of the major challenges in 6-DoF haptic rendering is to resolve the conflict between high speed and high fidelity requirements, especially in simulating a tool interacting with both rigid and deformable objects in a narrow space and with fine features. The book presents a configuration-based optimization approach to tackle this challenge. Addressing a key issue in many VR-based simulation systems, the book will be of particular interest to researchers and professionals in the areas of surgical simulation,rehabilitation, virtual assembly,andinspection and maintenance.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 176 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the IFIP WG 8.6 International Working Conference 'Creating Value for All Through IT'on Transfer and Diffusion of IT, TDIT 2014,held in Aalborg, Denmark, in June 2014. The 18 revised full papers presented together with 5 research-in-progress papers, 2 experience reports and a panel were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. The full papers are organized in the following topical sections: creating value; creating value through software development; and creating value through applications.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 376 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -¿The complexity of today¿s statistical data calls for modern mathematical tools. Many fields of science make use of mathematical statistics and require continuous updating on statistical technologies. Practice makes perfect, since mastering the tools makes them applicable. Our book of exercises and solutions offers a wide range of applications and numerical solutions based on R.In modern mathematical statistics, the purpose is to provide statistics students with a number of basic exercises and also an understanding of how the theory can be applied to real-world problems.The application aspect is also quite important, as most previous exercise books are mostly on theoretical derivations. Also we add some problems from topics often encountered in recent research papers.The book was written for statistics students with one or two years of coursework in mathematical statistics and probability, professors who hold courses in mathematical statistics, and researchers in other fields who would like to do some exercises on math statistics.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 212 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Experimental Econophysics describes the method of controlled human experiments, which is developed by physicists to study some problems in economics or finance, namely, stylized facts, fluctuation phenomena, herd behavior, contrarian behaviorhedge behavior, cooperation, business cycles, partial information, risk management, and stock prediction. Experimental econophysics together with empirical econophysics are two branches of the field of econophysics. The latter one has beenextensively discussed in the existing books, while the former one has been seldom touched. In this book, the author will focus on the branch of experimental econophysics.Empirical econophysics is based on the analysis of data in real markets by using some statistical tools borrowed from traditional statistical physics. Differently, inspired by the role of controlled experiments and system modelling (for computer simulations and/or analytical theory) in developing modern physics, experimental econophysics specially relies on controlled human experiments in the laboratory (producing data for analysis) together with agent-based modelling (for computer simulations and/or analytical theory), with an aim at revealing the generalcause-effect relationship between specific parameters and emergent properties of real economic/financial markets. This book covers the basic concepts, experimental methods, modelling approaches, and latest progress in the field of experimentaleconophysics.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 208 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book provides fundamental understanding and practical application of characteristics of flexural motion in the assessment of the weld size and coating thickness. Some formulations of heat transfer and flexural motion are introduced while displacement and load correlation are used to estimate elastic modules and the size of the heat affected zone as well as the coating thickness. The case studies presented give a practical understanding of weld size and coating thickness characterizations.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International IFIP WG 2.13 Conference on Open Source Systems, OSS 2014, held in San José, Costa Rica, in May 2014. The 16 revised full papers and 16 short papers presented together with 5 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 submissions. They have been organized in the following topical sections: open source visualization and reporting; open source in business modeling; open source in mobile and web technologies; open source in education and research; development processes of open source products; testing and assurance of open source projects; and global impact on open source communities and development. The last section consists of five case studies and demonstrations of open source projects.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book describes for the first time a simulation method for the fast calculation of contact properties and friction between rough surfaces in a complete form. In contrast to existing simulation methods, the method of dimensionality reduction (MDR) is based on the exact mapping of various types of three-dimensional contact problems onto contacts of one-dimensional foundations. Within the confines of MDR, not only are three dimensional systems reduced to one-dimensional, but also the resulting degrees of freedom are independent from another. Therefore, MDR results in an enormous reduction of the development time for the numerical implementation of contact problems as well as the direct computation time and can ultimately assume a similar role in tribology as FEM has in structure mechanics or CFD methods, in hydrodynamics. Furthermore, it substantially simplifies analytical calculation and presents a sort of ¿pocket book edition¿ of the entirety contact mechanics. Measurements of the rheology of bodies in contact as well as their surface topography and adhesive properties are the inputs of the calculations. In particular, it is possible to capture the entire dynamics of a system ¿ beginning with the macroscopic, dynamic contact calculation all the way down to the influence of roughness ¿ in a single numerical simulation model. Accordingly, MDR allows for the unification of the methods of solving contact problems on different scales. The goals of this book are on the one hand, to prove the applicability and reliability of the method and on the other hand, to explain its extremely simple application to those interested.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 284 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book discusses how to combine type-2 fuzzy sets and graphical models to solve a range of real-world pattern recognition problems such as speech recognition, handwritten Chinese character recognition, topic modeling as well as human action recognition. It covers these recent developments while also providing a comprehensive introduction to the fields of type-2 fuzzy sets and graphical models. Though primarily intended for graduate students, researchers and practitioners in fuzzy logic and pattern recognition, the book can also serve as a valuable reference work for researchers without any previous knowledge of these fields. Dr. Jia Zeng is a Professor at the School of Computer Science and Technology, Soochow University, China. Dr. Zhi-Qiang Liu is a Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, China.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 220 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book reveals the underlying mechanisms of complexity and stochastic evolutions of traffic flows. Using Eulerian and Lagrangian measurements, the authors propose lognormal headway/spacing/velocity distributions and subsequently develop a Markov car-following model to describe drivers¿ random choices concerning headways/spacings, putting forward a stochastic fundamental diagram model for wide scattering flow-density points. In the context of highway onramp bottlenecks, the authors present a traffic flow breakdown probability model and spatial-temporal queuing model to improve the stability and reliability of road traffic flows. This book is intended for researchers and graduate students in the fields of transportation engineering and civil engineering.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 216 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th IFIP TC 12 International Conference on Intelligent Information Processing, IIP 2014, held in Hangzhou, China, in October 2014. The 32 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 70 submissions. They are organized in topical sections on machine learning, data mining, web mining, multi-agent systems, automatic reasoning, decision algorithms, multimedia, pattern recognition, and information security.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 344 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -These transactions publish research in computer-based methods of computational collective intelligence (CCI) and their applications in a wide range of fields such as the semantic Web, social networks, and multi-agent systems. TCCI strives to cover new methodological, theoretical and practical aspects of CCI understood as the form of intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals (artificial and/or natural). The application of multiple computational intelligence technologies, such as fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation, neural systems, consensus theory, etc., aims to support human and other collective intelligence and to create new forms of CCI in natural and/or artificial systems. This twenty-fifth issue contains 8 carefully selected and revised contributions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 42nd International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science, WG 2016, held in Istanbul, Turkey, in June 2016.The 25 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 74 submissions.The WG conferences aim to connect theory and practice by demonstrating how graph-theoretic concepts can be applied to various areas of computer science and by extracting new graph problems from applications. Their goal is to present new research results and to identify and explore directions of future research.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 320 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -These transactions publish research in computer-based methods of computational collective intelligence (CCI) and their applications in a wide range of fields such as the semantic Web, social networks, and multi-agent systems. TCCI strives to cover new methodological, theoretical and practical aspects of CCI understood as the form of intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals (artificial and/or natural). The application of multiple computational intelligence technologies, such as fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation, neural systems, consensus theory, etc., aims to support human and other collective intelligence and to create new forms of CCI in natural and/or artificial systems. This twenty-forth issue contains 9 carefully selected and revised contributions.p>Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book contains a range of keynote papers and submitted papers presented at the 7th IFIP WG 9.2, 9.5, 9.6/11.7, 11.4, 11.6 International Summer School, held in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in June 2013. The 13 revised full papers and 6 keynote papers included in this volume were carefully selected from a total of 30 presentations and 11 keynote talks and were subject to a two-step review process. The keynote papers cover the dramatic global changes, including legislative developments that society is facing today. Privacy and identity management are explored in specific settings, such as the corporate context, civic society, and education and using particular technologies such as cloud computing. The regular papers examine the challenges to privacy, security and identity; ways of preserving privacy; identity and identity management and the particular challenges presented by social media.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 264 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the proceedings of the 30th International Symposium on Distributed Computing, DISC 2016, held in Paris, France, in September 2016.The 32 full papers, 10 brief annoucements and 3 invited lectures presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 145 submissions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 520 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This, the 28th issue of Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems, contains extended and revised versions of six papers presented at the 26th International Conference on Database- and Expert-Systems Applications, DEXA 2015, held in Valencia, Spain, in September 2015. Topics covered include efficient graph processing, machine learning on big data, multistore big data integration, ontology matching, and the optimization of histograms for the Semantic Web.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 172 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Mashups have emerged as an innovative software trend that re-interprets existing Web building blocks and leverages the composition of individual components in novel, value-adding ways. Additional appeal also derives from their potential to turn non-programmers into developers.Daniel and Matera have written the first comprehensive reference work for mashups. They systematically cover the main concepts and techniques underlying mashup design and development, the synergies among the models involved at different levels of abstraction and the way models materialize into composition paradigms and architectures of corresponding development tools. The book deliberately takes a balanced approach, combining a scientific perspective on the topic with an in-depth view on relevant technologies.To this end, the first part of the book introduces the theoretical and technological foundations for designing and developing mashups, as well as for designing tools that can aid mashup development. The second part then focuses more specifically on various aspects of mashups. It discusses a set of core component technologies, core approaches and architectural patterns, with a particular emphasis on tool-aided mashup development exploiting model-driven architectures. Development processes for mashups are also discussed and special attention is paid to composition paradigms for the end-user development of mashups and quality issues.Overall, the book is of interest to a wide range of readers. Students, lecturers, and researchers will find a comprehensive overview of core concepts and technological foundations for mashup implementation and composition. Even without low-level coding details, practitioners like software architects will find guidance on key implementation concepts, architectural patterns and development tools and approaches. A related website provides additional teaching material which can be used either as part of a course or for self study.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 340 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book introduces readers to the basic concepts of and latest findings in the area of differential equations with uncertain factors. It covers the analytic method and numerical method for solving uncertain differential equations, as well as their applications in the field of finance. Furthermore, the book provides a number of new potential research directions for uncertain differential equation. It will be of interest to researchers, engineers and students in the fields of mathematics, information science, operations research, industrial engineering, computer science, artificial intelligence, automation, economics, and management science.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 172 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Seeing the restrictions of former studies in Comparative Literature and aiming to amend these deficiencies, the author of this book mainly discusses the major theoretical significance and academic value of the Variation Theory in the whole process of the development of Comparative Literature in the world. In China the seminal comparative study of literature among different cultures can be dated back to ancient China, while the founding of comparative literature as a distinct academic discipline has to be largely owing to the influence of the West. The modern Chinese study of comparative literature formed its uniqueness under Western influence. The direct influence of the translation of western theories into China is remarkable. However, in the course of translation and reception of Western theories, Chinese comparatists and intellectuals have been encountering various problems, and solving them with an alternative method accordingly different from the traditional methods proposed by the French School and the American School. Therefore, in this book, modern Chinese study of comparative literature is put in a historical context with regard to the theoretical issue of the discipline in China through the entire 20th century. At present, many scholars in China and in other countries agree that, with the influence study proposed by the French School and the study of analogy advocated by the American School, the entire theoretical system of Comparative Literature is well built. However, when the comparative study of literature between East and West is concerned, the theory of Comparative Literature is far from perfect. It is not only because many problems still exist, but there are significant defects in their theoretical bases respectively. Many researches have proven that even with the influence study and the study of analogy, we still can not solve many problems in the practice of studies in comparative literature. This does not mean that we have no respect for the contributions of the French School and the American School; we just want to attach importance to literary variations, which is a phenomenon that has long been neglected. The purpose of putting forward the Variation Theory in Comparative Literature is to provide new perspectives, new methods and new theory to the study of comparative literature, which may be a major breakthrough in the international arena of Comparative Literature. The neglect of literary variation is mainly because all the previous theories about comparative literature start off in search of similarities but not differences. Accordingly, in 1990s heterogeneity as a premise of comparability was put forward. And later, the variation theory was further advanced. It is not only the important phenomenon in literary communication, but also the most valuable research object in Comparative Literature. Still, it will be an important path to cultural innovation. The Variation Theory may make up the major flaws of theories by both French school and the American School since it focus on heterogeneity and variability in cross-cultural literary events, especially the ones of inter-civilization which will be a new course for comparative literature. Throughout the history of literature and the history of literary communication, collisions between different civilizations have always been producing new literary events which make the heterogeneity of different civilizations and variability traceable. The higher stage of literary communication may mean dialogue and blend between different cultures. The overarching concerns of this book include different levels of variation in literary communication and the studies of different objects. The introduction begins with a literature review of major achievements made by the French School and the American School with pointing out what they have neglected. The body of the book is divided into three parts. In the first part, Chapter 1 deals with the major contributions of inflSpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 292 pp. Englisch.