Infrastructure transitions toward sustainability: a complex adaptive systems perspective

To ensure infrastructure assets are procured and maintained by government on behalf of citizens, appropriate policy and institutional architecture is needed, particularly if a fundamental shift to more sustainable infrastructure is the goal. The shift in recent years from competitive and resource-intensive procurement to more collaborative and sustainable approaches to infrastructure governance is considered a major transition in infrastructure procurement systems. In order to better understand this transition in infrastructure procurement arrangements, the concept of emergence from Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory is offered as a key construct. Emergence holds that micro interactions can result in emergent macro order. Applying the concept of emergence to infrastructure procurement, this research examines how interaction of agents in individual projects can result in different industry structural characteristics. The paper concludes that CAS theory, and particularly the concept of ‘emergence’, provides a useful construct to understand infrastructure procurement dynamics and progress towards sustainability

Contracts as threats: On a rationale for rewarding A while hoping for B

In this paper we explore theoretically the relationship between explicit and implicit/relational contracting distinguishing between the ex-ante decision to sign an explicit contract and the ex-post decision wheter to actually apply it. We show, among other things, that the relational efficient explicit contract tends to display overcontracting on tasks or qualitative requirements (A) that are verifiable but apparently of little use for the principal. The ex-post (non)implementation of such explicit contract can then be discretionally exchanged against the provision of non contractible tasks (B) that are highly valuable for the principal. An empirical implication of the result, consistent with casual observation in procurement, is that penalties for infringements established by explicit contracts are seldom exercised, even though violations take place and are easy to monitor and verify

Multi-agent Contracting and Reconfiguration in Competitive Environments using Acquaintance Models

Cooperation of agents in competitive environments is more complicated than in collaborative environments. Both replanning and reconfiguration play a crucial role in cooperation, and introduce a means for implementating a system flexibility. The concepts of commitments, decommitments with penalties and subcontracting may facilitate effective reconfiguration and replanning. Agents in competitive environments are fully autonomous and selfinterested. Therefore the setting of penalties and profit computation cannot be provided centrally. Both the costs and the gain differ from agent to agent with respect to contracts already agreed and resources load. This paper proposes an acquaintance model for contracting in competitive environments and introduces possibilities of reconfigurating in competitive environments as a means of decommitment optimization with respect to resources load and profit maximization. The presented algorithm for contract price setting does not use any centralized knowledge and provides results corresponding to a realistic environment. A simple customerprovider scenario proves this algorithm in competitive contracting.

Coordination approaches and systems - part I : a strategic perspective

This is the first part of a two-part paper presenting a fundamental review and summary of research of design coordination and cooperation technologies. The theme of this review is aimed at the research conducted within the decision management aspect of design coordination. The focus is therefore on the strategies involved in making decisions and how these strategies are used to satisfy design requirements. The paper reviews research within collaborative and coordinated design, project and workflow management, and, task and organization models. The research reviewed has attempted to identify fundamental coordination mechanisms from different domains, however it is concluded that domain independent mechanisms need to be augmented with domain specific mechanisms to facilitate coordination. Part II is a review of design coordination from an operational perspective

An environment to support negotiation and contracting in collaborative networks

During the last years, manufacturing and service industries faced a global change in the production paradigm. They have to continuously adapt their operating principles in reaction to new business or collaboration opportunities, where a natural reaction is a shift to a new business paradigm with the creation of strategic alliances for product or services development, but also for innovative and emergent business services design. On one hand, the process of creating such alliances can be rather simple if organizations share the same geographical and cultural context. But on the other hand, considering different conditions, there might be a low success rate in the creation of successful consortia. One known reason for such low rate are the delays resulting from negotiations in the establishment of collaboration commitments, represented by contracts or agreements, which are crucial in the creation of such alliances. The collaborative networks discipline covers the study of networks of organizations specially when supported by computer networks. This thesis contributes with research in this field describing the creation process of virtual organizations, and proposing a negotiation support environment to help participants in the negotiation of the consortia creation process and in the co-design of new business services. A negotiation support environment is therefore proposed and described with its main requirements, adopted negotiation protocol, conceptual architecture, models, and software environment. To demonstrate the feasibility of the implementation of the proposed systems, a proof-ofconcept software prototype was implemented and tested using some specific scenarios. This thesis work has been validated adopting a methodology that includes: (i) validation in the research community; (ii) validation in a solar industry network; and (iii) validation by comparison analysis

Setting Incentives for Scientists Who Engage in Research and Other Activities: An Application of Principal-Agent Theory

 The objective of this paper is to develop an optimal incentive system for multitaskingscientists in universities or professors under repeat contracting. With the aid of a principalagentmodel under repeat contracting, we show that (i) when a second task is assigned to aprofessor and the two tasks are related, the size of the optimal incentive rate for the first task isreduced in some situations but not others relative to that of a single task, (ii) with an increasein the noise in the technical relationship of the second task or imprecision in outputmeasurement, the optimal incentive rate for that task is reduced and for the first task may bereduced or increased , (iii) with greater efficiency of the professor in producing the secondoutput, as reflected in ability relative to cost of effort, the optimal incentive rate for the firsttask generally decreases, (iv) if the output of the professor’s two tasks are negativelycorrelated then the optimal incentive rate on the first task declines as the size of thiscorrelation increases. The size of the guarantee is always reduced as the professor’s ability fora task increases, but is increased as his cost of effort, noisiness of the technology ormeasurement of output, or correlation between the two outputs increases. It is also possiblethat, as a professor undertakes several difficult-to-measure tasks, the incentive rate will bereduced to the point that an optimal compensation system will involve only a guaranteedsalary, which is a very weak incentive for effort. Selective audits may be useful in thesesituations.incentives; Principal-agent model; Multitask; scientists; professors; respeat contracting; linear contracts

Multi Agent Systems in Logistics: A Literature and State-of-the-art Review

Based on a literature survey, we aim to answer our main question: “How should we plan and execute logistics in supply chains that aim to meet today’s requirements, and how can we support such planning and execution using IT?†Today’s requirements in supply chains include inter-organizational collaboration and more responsive and tailored supply to meet specific demand. Enterprise systems fall short in meeting these requirements The focus of planning and execution systems should move towards an inter-enterprise and event-driven mode. Inter-organizational systems may support planning going from supporting information exchange and henceforth enable synchronized planning within the organizations towards the capability to do network planning based on available information throughout the network. We provide a framework for planning systems, constituting a rich landscape of possible configurations, where the centralized and fully decentralized approaches are two extremes. We define and discuss agent based systems and in particular multi agent systems (MAS). We emphasize the issue of the role of MAS coordination architectures, and then explain that transportation is, next to production, an important domain in which MAS can and actually are applied. However, implementation is not widespread and some implementation issues are explored. In this manner, we conclude that planning problems in transportation have characteristics that comply with the specific capabilities of agent systems. In particular, these systems are capable to deal with inter-organizational and event-driven planning settings, hence meeting today’s requirements in supply chain planning and execution.supply chain;MAS;multi agent systems

The Mirroring Hypothesis: Theory, Evidence and Exceptions

The mirroring hypothesis predicts that the organizational patterns of a development project (e.g. communication links, geographic collocation, team and firm co-membership) will correspond to the technical patterns of dependency in the system under development. Scholars in a range of disciplines have argued that mirroring is either necessary or a highly desirable feature of development projects, but evidence pertaining to the hypothesis is widely scattered across fields, research sites, and methodologies. In this paper, we formally define the mirroring hypothesis and review 102 empirical studies spanning three levels of organization: within a single firm, across firms, and in open community-based development projects. The hypothesis was supported in 69% of the cases. Support for the hypothesis was strongest in the within-firm sample, less strong in the across-firm sample, and relatively weak in the open collaborative sample. Based on a detailed analysis of the cases in which the mirroring hypothesis was not supported, we introduce the concept of actionable transparency as a means of achieving coordination without mirroring. We present examples from practice and describe the more complex organizational patterns that emerge when actionable transparency allows designers to 'break the mirror.'Modularity, innovation, product and process development, organization design, design structure, organizational structure, organizational ties