A productive clash of cultures: Injecting economics into leadership research

Research on leadership in economics has developed in parallel to the literature in management and psychology and links between the fields have been sparse. Whereas modern leadership scholars mostly focus on transformational and related leadership styles, economists have mainly emphasized the role of contracts, control rights, and incentives. We argue that both fields could profit from enriching their approach with insights from the other field. We review and synthesize the economics literature on leadership in organizations and discuss how leadership scholars in management and psychology can benefit from the detailed understanding of transactional methods that economists have developed. We link the contributions in economics to a broad set of topics including the foundations of leadership, leader emergence, and leader effectiveness. At the same time, we also point out limitations of the economic approach and outline how the integration of leadership research and economics would broaden the scope of future studies

Explaining Sales Pay Strategy Using Agency, Transaction Cost and Resource Dependence Theories

The purpose of this study was to investigate, using data gathered from 325 French-Canadian organizations, the influence of key constructs related to agency, transaction cost and resource dependence theories on the proportion of salary in sales compensation. Level of task programmability, capacity to observe behavior, career opportunities and financial resources offered were associated with an increased use of salary pay. In contrast, difficulty of measuring result outcomes, availability of product/service-related resources and high marginal sales force productivity were associated with decreased use of the salary component. Results supported the argument that integration of multiple theoretical perspectives offered a better explanation of pay policy. However, the results have not supported the ability of market and selling uncertainty to predict the proportion of salary L'objectif de cette étude était d'examiner, auprès d'un échantillon de 325 organisations, l'influence des construits clés relatifs à la théorie de l'agence, la théorie des coûts de transaction et la théorie de la dépendence des ressource sur la proportion du salaire dans l'enveloppe de la rémunération directe du personnel de vente. Le niveau de programmation des tâches, la capacité à observer les comportements, les opportunités de carrière et les ressources financières offertes étaient associés à une augmentation du recours de la composante salariale. En revanche, le degré de difficulté à mesurer les résultats, la disponibilité de ressources reliés aux produits/services et un grand différentiel de performance étaient associés à une diminution de la composante salaire. Les résultats supportent l'argument de l'intégration d'une multitude de perspecttives théoriques pour expliquer le choix des stratégies salariales.Sales, compensation, agency theory, cost analysis theory, resource dependence theory, Représentants aux ventes, rémunération, théorie de l'agence, théorie des coûts de transaction, théorie de la dépendance des ressources

A Survey of Challenges for Runtime Verification from Advanced Application Domains (Beyond Software)

Runtime verification is an area of formal methods that studies the dynamic analysis of execution traces against formal specifications. Typically, the two main activities in runtime verification efforts are the process of creating monitors from specifications, and the algorithms for the evaluation of traces against the generated monitors. Other activities involve the instrumentation of the system to generate the trace and the communication between the system under analysis and the monitor. Most of the applications in runtime verification have been focused on the dynamic analysis of software, even though there are many more potential applications to other computational devices and target systems. In this paper we present a collection of challenges for runtime verification extracted from concrete application domains, focusing on the difficulties that must be overcome to tackle these specific challenges. The computational models that characterize these domains require to devise new techniques beyond the current state of the art in runtime verification

Investigating the impact of technology trust on the acceptance of mobile banking technonlgy within Nigeria

This empirical study investigates the factors influencing Nigerians’ trust and adoption of mobile banking technology; using an integrative model. Research was conducted using a questionnaire developed and distributed in Nigeria. Out of 2256 returned questionnaires, 1725 were deemed to have been completed and hence usable. The data was analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and the results showed that confidentiality, integrity, authentication, access control, best business practices and non-repudiation significantly influenced technology trust with availability showing unsatisfactory values for consideration. In addition, technology trust showed a direct significant influence on perceived ease of use and usefulness. Technology trust also showed an indirect influence on intention to use through its impact on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Also, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness showed significant influence on consumer’s intention to adopt the technology. As a result of increased understanding of customer trust and adoption trends in Nigeria, these findings have important theoretical implications for researchers with interests in technology acceptance trends and the role of external factors, such as trust, in user adoption of technology. Such implications include the provision of empirical data, which highlights the role technology trust, demographic segmentations, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness play in mobile banking adoption in Nigeria. In addition, the successful completion of this study provides justification for the use of this research’s model as a suitable framework for investigating user adoption of technology

Rise of the Planet of Serverless Computing: A Systematic Review

Serverless computing is an emerging cloud computing paradigm, being adopted to develop a wide range of software applications. It allows developers to focus on the application logic in the granularity of function, thereby freeing developers from tedious and error-prone infrastructure management. Meanwhile, its unique characteristic poses new challenges to the development and deployment of serverless-based applications. To tackle these challenges, enormous research efforts have been devoted. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review to characterize the current research state of serverless computing. Specifically, this paper covers 164 papers on 17 research directions of serverless computing, including performance optimization, programming framework, application migration, multi-cloud development, testing and debugging, etc. It also derives research trends, focus, and commonly-used platforms for serverless computing, as well as promising research opportunities

Mind Control: Firms and the Production of Ideas

The central questions for economic theories of the firm concern how the production of a good is organized (in the market or within a firm) and why that organization prevails. Derivative to these questions, legal scholars ask how the law affects and is affected by any particular organizational structure. Emerging literature looks at these questions in connection with the law of intellectual property. The prevailing theories in that literature focus primarily, though not exclusively, on patent law and generally adopt a property-rights theory of the firm. Those theories, focusing on residual control and hold-up problems, have shown that as patent rights become stronger, firms may become smaller because property rights facilitate market transactions that would otherwise be too costly. Small, innovative suppliers will not invent component inputs if they cannot protect their invention against post-disclosure appropriation. The producers of the final product will therefore have to develop the technology in-house or the invention supplier will have to perform the postinvention development itself. These insights have important implications for the design of law. This Essay thus highlights an area of intellectual production that cannot be explained by the existing literature on intellectual property and the theory of the firm, and it suggests that some underappreciated alternate theories—like team production—might be at play. I do not claim that the conclusions found in the existing literature are incorrect, but rather that they are limited in scope. Property-rights theories tell us about whether and how an existing intellectual input or the modular unit that produces it will be integrated within a larger development firm but less about how the input will be created in the first place—that is, how the modular unit will itself be organized