Using Strategic Information Systems to Improve Contracted Services and Assess Privatization Options

Government officials are looking to contracting out and privatization as means to create a public sector that works better and costs less. This new approach to public service delivery is evident in the welfare to work reforms of the 1990s, low- and moderate-income housing construction and management, homeless services, economic development and job training, and the charter school movement. Contracted services require a whole new set of skills for government workers, including contract design, negotiation, monitoring, and evaluation. Sophisticated information systems are crucial to performance management and evaluation systems that are essential to effective contract management. This chapter explores the theory and practice of performance measurement and information technology (IT) in the context of outsourcing public service delivery. It discusses the use of government strategic planning and information-based performance management to plan and manage private contractors performing public tasks. While information systems are critical to the management of in-house organizational units, we believe they are even more important in managing the work of contractors

Information technology, contract and knowledge in the networked economy: a biography of packaged software for contract management

In this research I investigate the intersection of information and communication technology (ICT), contract and knowledge in the networked economy as illuminated by the “life” of contract management software (CMS). The failure of CMS to fulfill market expectations provides the motivating question for this study. Based on interview, survey and archival data, I construct a “biography” of CMS from a market perspective informed by the theory of commoditization as well as studies of markets from economic sociology. From the latter, I draw upon the theory of performativity in markets to identify in the failure of CMS a series of breakdowns in performative assumptions and operations normally at work in the making of a packaged software market, ranging from a failure in classification performativity to a detachment of marketized criteria, in the form of analyst ratings, from the underlying software product and vendors. This catalog of breakdown indicates that packaged software production implicates multiple levels of commoditization, including financialized meta-commodities and marketized criteria, in a dynamic I theorize as substitution of performance. I explore the implications of my findings for packaged software and for process commodities more generally, suggesting, inter alia, that process commoditization may revolve around contract and information exchange rather than product definition. I go on to propose an open theorization of contract as a technology of connectedness, in a relationship of potential convergence, complementarity and substitution with ICT, interpenetrating and performative. My contributions are to information systems and organizations research on the topics of packaged software and the relationship of ICT, contract and organizational knowledge; and to economic sociology on the topics of performativity in markets and product qualification in process commoditization

Ex-Post management of public sector contracts

Public procurement policies requiring frequent tenders and defined contracts give rise to expectations of low cost quality services and present management challenges for the post tender contract. Frequent tendering undermines the principal agent relationship and contract incompleteness allows unforeseen contingencies to threaten the specified outcomes. This thesis examines seven cases of facilities management contracts in three third-level educational institutions. Using a qualitative and interpretative methodology, the study takes an inductive theory building approach to how and why managers address challenges, and develops a conceptual model of ex post management mechanisms through the lenses of agency theory, the psychological contract, and signals. It finds that the principal agent relationship is based on both written and psychological contracts, and mechanisms include incentives, information systems, and psychological contract signals. It also finds that, rather than pursuing the terms of the written contract which are frequently incomplete, the principal and agent work together towards the broader goals of the psychological contract to maintain the contract benefits. While it has the limitations of a theory building and social constructionist approach, it offers theoretic and management relevance. It extends agency theory in public contracts by highlighting the importance of information systems, and the psychological contract in the principal agent relationship by identifying the principal’s influences and the relevance of agent’s perceived obligations in deciding responses. Through understanding these ex post mechanisms, managers may address the inevitable challenges of incomplete contracts, and foster improved responses towards optimal cost and quality outcomes

Managing application software suppliers in information system development projects

Information system development (ISD) projects have been associated with the "software crisis" for over three decades. A set of common "root causes" has often been cited in literature with corresponding "solutions". Yet the overall project success rate has remained low, resulting in a paradox of many solutions and little progress over the years. This study examines the management of application software acquisition from external suppliers in ISD projects. Three case studies are documented based on participant observation with complete membership roles. After within-case analyses highlighting issues in individual cases, crosscase analyses are conducted, first to identify a pattern of ISD project challenges and then to search for their explanations. Concepts from agency theory, contract theory and product development literature are used in the process of diagnosing root causes behind the observations. The proposed explanation is that the Traditional Systems Development Framework (TSDF), characterized by competitive-bidding-monopolized-development, underlies the identified root causes. Accordingly, competitive development is suggested as an alternative approach. Following the "Inference to the Best Explanation" (IBE) analytical strategy, the suggested approach is subject to two contrastive analyses, first with the prepackaged software development and then with the construction industry, to demonstrate that the suggestion is a "warranted inference". Further analogical analyses illustrate the feasibility of development competition for software product development. A Performance-Based Systems Development Framework (PBSDF) is outlined as a tentative implementation of the suggested competitive development approach for ISD projects supported by risk-sharing supplier contract and a relative product evaluation approach. A number of future research implications are described as a result of this study after summarizing the research contributions

Blockchain-based distributive auction for relay-assisted secure communications

Physical layer security (PLS) is considered as a promising technique to prevent information eavesdropping in wireless systems. In this context, cooperative relaying has emerged as a robust solution for achieving PLS due to multipath diversity and relatively lower transmission power. However, relays or the relay operators in the practical environment are unwilling for service provisioning unless they are incentivized for their cost of services. Thus, it is required to jointly consider network economics and relay cooperation to improve system efficiency. In this paper, we consider the problem of joint network economics and PLS using cooperative relaying and jamming. Based on the double auction theory, we model the interaction between transmitters seeking for a particular level of secure transmission of information and relay operators for suitable relay and jammer assignment, in a multiple source-destination networks. In addition, theoretical analyses are presented to justify that the proposed auction mechanism satisfies the desirable economic properties of individual rationality, budget balance, and truthfulness. As the participants in the traditional centralized auction framework may take selfish actions or collude with each other, we propose a decentralized and trustless auction framework based on blockchain technology. In particular, we exploit the smart contract feature of blockchain to construct a completely autonomous framework, where all the participants are financially enforced by smart contract terms. The security properties of the proposed framework are also discussed

Banking services for everyone? Barriers to bank access and use around the world

Using information from 209 banks in 62 countries, we develop new indicators of barriers to banking services around the world, show their correlation with existing measures of outreach, and explore their association with other bank and country characteristics suggested by theory as potential determinants. Barriers such as minimum account and loan balances, account fees and documentation requirements are negatively correlated with outreach and these barriers exclude a large percentage of the population from using banking services in many countries. Factors associated with financial depth such as the effectiveness of credit information sharing, creditor rights and contract enforcement are highly correlated with barriers, but so are non-financial factors such as the development of the infrastructure and the extent of media freedom. More competitive banking systems and market-based supervisory policies are associated with lower barriers. Contrary to conventional wisdom, government banks are not associated with lower access barriers. Instead, bank customers face higher barriers to credit services in banking systems which are predominantly government-owned, while a larger share of foreign bank ownership is associated with lower barriers in deposit services

Identifying Relevant Socio-Theoretic Foundations for Supporting Multi-Issue IT Cloudsourcing Negotiations

Service level agreement (SLA) negotiations involving cloud-based information technology (IT) service providers and customers are now commonplace. Although historical research on negotiation has often relied on economic foundations, the important nature of IT service levels to organizations’ operational effectiveness suggests that negotiation complexities in the context of cloud-based outsourcing (or cloudsourcing) cannot be well understood by relying on economic perspectives alone. To that end, this paper reports on experiments designed to determine the relevance of competing sociotheoretic frameworks as they pertain to IT cloudsourcing negotiations. Contributions include a rigorous examination of hypotheses derived from social exchange theory, equity theory, learning theory, and the win–win theories of negotiation. Additional contributions include the development of methodological constructs (using the Euclidean geometry) that reflect the complex nature of IT cloudsourcing SLAs, i.e., that they are composed of numerous service category contract clauses where negotiation tradeoffs within a service category as well as across service categories are possible. We find strong support for the relevance of the social exchange theory to IT cloudsourcing negotiations, as well as moderate support for the win-win theories of negotiation. Our conclusions provide clear directions for extending our work into the realm of negotiation support systems, and we rely on our findings to conjecture that IT cloudsourcing negotiation is a unique context for sociotheoretic negotiation research due to the inherent importance of information technologies to organizations’ operational effectiveness