The theory of the lemon markets in IS research

The “lemon” problem was initially posed by Nobel Prize winner Akerlof in his seminal article of 1970 and showed how a market with unbalanced information, called information asymmetry, can lead to complete disappearance or to offerings with poor quality where bad products (lemons) wipe out the good ones. Empirical evidence for Akerlof’s theory came originally from the market of used cars, where the lemon is a well known problem. However the theoretical model of the “lemon” problem has proven also to be valid on other markets and in comparable situations like internal markets. The theory is also been used more and more in IS research especially since the emerging e-commerce initiatives and the continuous growth of e-markets and auctions. In this chapter we bring a description of the theory by presenting its nomological network and its linkages to other well known theories in IS research. The relevance for the theory is shown to explain phenomenon’s in the IS discipline. An overview is given of current and past IS articles using the Lemon Market theory (LMT) together with a bibliographical analysis of the references to the original Akerlof article

Fraud In The Provision of Health Services In Hospitals During The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Government Sector

Fraud is currently rife, not only in the private sector but also in the government sector. The government sector, which is the central point in this research, is the world of health, especially hospitals, related to procuring goods and services for covid 19. This study aimed to analyze the factors that affect the procurement of goods and services during the covid 19 pandemic. This casual-comparative research type is research with the characteristics of the problem in the form of a cause-and-effect relationship between two or more variables. The study was conducted at six government hospitals in Maluku Province. The study results indicate significant fraud related to procuring goods and services for covid 19. Thus, the quality of the committee, systems and procedures, environment, internal control, and organizational commitment affect the prevention of fraud in procuring goods in hospitals in Maluku province, Indonesia

Artificial Intelligence in the development of modern infrastructures

Artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs and perform tasks as human beings. Most of the examples of AI you hear about today - from computers playing chess to autonomous driving cars - rely heavily on deep learning and natural language processing

On the Combination of Game-Theoretic Learning and Multi Model Adaptive Filters

This paper casts coordination of a team of robots within the framework of game theoretic learning algorithms. In particular a novel variant of fictitious play is proposed, by considering multi-model adaptive filters as a method to estimate other players’ strategies. The proposed algorithm can be used as a coordination mechanism between players when they should take decisions under uncertainty. Each player chooses an action after taking into account the actions of the other players and also the uncertainty. Uncertainty can occur either in terms of noisy observations or various types of other players. In addition, in contrast to other game-theoretic and heuristic algorithms for distributed optimisation, it is not necessary to find the optimal parameters a priori. Various parameter values can be used initially as inputs to different models. Therefore, the resulting decisions will be aggregate results of all the parameter values. Simulations are used to test the performance of the proposed methodology against other game-theoretic learning algorithms.</p

A Generic Theory of Authentication to Support IS Practice and Research

This paper addresses a yawning gap in IS theory and practice. In the information systems (IS) discipline and profession, the concept of authentication is commonly limited in scope to the checking of assertions relating to identity. The effective conduct of organised activities depends on the authentication of not only assertions of those kinds, but also many other categories of assertion. The paper declares its metatheoretic assumptions, and outlines a pragmatic metatheoretic model whose purpose is to establish a workable framework for IS practitioners, and for researchers oriented to IS practice. Within this frame, a generic theory of authentication is proposed, encompassing not only commonly discussed kinds of assertions, but also other important categories relating to real-world properties, asset-value and content-integrity. This surfaces unaddressed opportunities for IS researchers in content-integrity authentication at the semantic level, relating to assertions of fact

After-Sales Service Contracting for Excellence in Life-Cycle Cost Management: Numerical Experiments and Systematic Review of Analytical Models

This research adds to the literature and provides insight to practice via three essays that increase understanding about the applications and consequences of the two new approaches to the after-sales service governance: warranty contract and performance-based contracts. First, we attempted to enhance our knowledge of the modeling of the after-sales service process. In the first essay, the research papers with analytical models of after-sales services to present current trends, issues, and future research directions in the literature are classified. In the second essay, the effect of the warranty contract on the supplier's product quality improvement efforts in the context of capital goods is examined. Three sets of optimization models reveal that the existence of a warranty improves product quality. In the third essay, the performance-based contract is examined in the context of the warranty contract. The numerical experimentations conducted demonstrate that the performance-based contract is superior to the warranty contract in terms of the supplier's product quality efforts and the customer's total cost of after-sales services. The alignment of incentives based on the product performance tackles the issues presented in the traditional after-sales service contracting. Collectively, the three studies presented in this research expand our understanding of after-sales service contracts. Thus, the research presents managerial implications and adds to the existing body of knowledge in after-sales service research

Computational Theory of Mind for Human-Agent Coordination

In everyday life, people often depend on their theory of mind, i.e., their ability to reason about unobservable mental content of others to understand, explain, and predict their behaviour. Many agent-based models have been designed to develop computational theory of mind and analyze its effectiveness in various tasks and settings. However, most existing models are not generic (e.g., only applied in a given setting), not feasible (e.g., require too much information to be processed), or not human-inspired (e.g., do not capture the behavioral heuristics of humans). This hinders their applicability in many settings. Accordingly, we propose a new computational theory of mind, which captures the human decision heuristics of reasoning by abstracting individual beliefs about others. We specifically study computational affinity and show how it can be used in tandem with theory of mind reasoning when designing agent models for human-agent negotiation. We perform two-agent simulations to analyze the role of affinity in getting to agreements when there is a bound on the time to be spent for negotiating. Our results suggest that modeling affinity can ease the negotiation process by decreasing the number of rounds needed for an agreement as well as yield a higher benefit for agents with theory of mind reasoning.</p