Using Real Options in ERP-Systems for Improving Delivery Reliability

Today’s machinery and equipment industry is a highly volatile market, giving rise to frequently instable and inapprehensiblebuyer-supplier-relationships and to turbulences with respect to reliability of deliveries. With this paper we propose a minimalinvasive approach how to overcome existing capability limitations in production planning, scheduling and procurement ofERP-systems by using real options as means for coordinating the divergent interest of buyers and suppliers. Following thedesign research paradigm, we first describe how real options can be integrated in a contemporary ERP-system. In asupplemental evaluation, the attitude toward using this approach is discussed. This final discussion provides insights whethercompanies in the machinery and equipment industry are willing to adopt our real options approach, or if they prefer the use ofother, not necessarily IT-enabled, means for handling the poor delivery reliability

P&I Club Membership As Potential Incentivization For Adherence To Best Space Traffic Management Practices: A Maritime Analogue

It has been said that the space environment is becoming so accessible, we are at risk of depleting it as a resource, thereby risking society’s space-dependent functions. Law, regulations, policies, and guidelines exist to guide entities to act to preserve the space environment. However, best space traffic management (STM) practice implementation and regulatory compliance could be costly and resource-intensive, especially for a small business. Some entities may not undertake innovative space endeavors at all, or worse, ignore laws, regulations, policies, and guidelines. A question arises of how space actors could be persuaded to work toward meeting STM laws, regulations, policies, and guidelines and perhaps take on potentially costly practices to follow them. This thesis attempts to answer whether liability apportionment and risk-pooling through a space protection and indemnity (P&I) club membership could benefit a space actor enough to drive implementation of best space traffic management practices where actors could be more likely to adhere to laws, regulations, policies, and guidelines. The study is limited to one example model space P&I club in the U.S. as a foundation for a potential larger international group in the future. The study assumes both insurance and P&I calls can be based on publicly available financial information, though need for more detailed information on insurance premiums and P&I calls is needed to create a fine-tuned model. The study also assumes a potential space P&I club member would be subject to U.S. law, regulations, and policy. Methods include document and policy analysis, interviews with space insurance and risk management subject matter experts, and cost analyses. Arguably, a case does indeed exist wherein a potential space P&I club membership could benefit a space actor enough to encourage implementation of best space traffic management practices. However, it would be best used as part of the bigger STM picture alongside existing regulations and policies. Still, a P&I club membership could provide a significant enough benefit where actors could be more likely to adhere to regulations and policies, which would, in turn, have a positive impact on keeping the space environment sustainable for current and future activities

Distributed Ledger Technology: State-of-the-Art and Current Challenges

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is making the first steps toward becoming a solution for the growing number of various decentralized systems world wide. Unlike pure Blockchain, DLT finds many uses across different industries, including eHealth, finance, supply chain monitoring, and the Internet of Things (IoT). One of the vital DLT features is the ability to provide an immutable and commonly verifiable ledger for larger-scale and highly complex systems. Today’s centralized systems can no longer guarantee the required level of availability and reliability due to the growing number of the involved nodes, complicated heterogeneous architectures, and task load, while the publicly available distributed systems are still in their infancy. This paper aims to provide an exhaustive topical review of the state-of-the art of Distributed Ledger Technology applicability in various sectors. It outlines the importance of the practical integration of technology-related challenges, as well as potential solutions

Open Innovation in Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

Contemporary global order for the promotion of innovation exaggerates the role of intellectual property (IP) as a closed proprietary model of knowledge production and protection. Partly as a boomerang effect of that order or partly as a coincidence of the phenomenal rise in the information and communication technologies or both, there has been increased gravitation toward open, collaborative, shared, communal and interdependent models of innovation. This trend is typified by the rise of open software movement and cognate endeavours. The article attempts to transpose the open innovation dynamic to the context of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGFA); and draws attention to the customary seed sharing and exchange as the centre-piece of the inherent open nature of innovation in agriculture, especially in indigenous and local communities. Focusing on the emergent institutional and legal frameworks for the governance of PGRFA, the article finds that they reflect pragmatic attempts at melding both the IP-driven closed model and the accommodation of open or public goods approach toward the promotion of access and overall management of innovation in PGRFA. It concludes that IP is not necessarily antithetical to open innovation, but could be calibrated to advance it

Open Innovation in Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

Contemporary global order for the promotion of innovation exaggerates the role of intellectual property (IP) as a closed proprietary model of knowledge production and protection. Partly as a boomerang effect of that order or partly as a coincidence of the phenomenal rise in the information and communication technologies or both, there has been increased gravitation toward open, collaborative, shared, communal and interdependent models of innovation. This trend is typified by the rise of open software movement and cognate endeavours. The article attempts to transpose the open innovation dynamic to the context of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGFA); and draws attention to the customary seed sharing and exchange as the centre-piece of the inherent open nature of innovation in agriculture, especially in indigenous and local communities. Focusing on the emergent institutional and legal frameworks for the governance of PGRFA, the article finds that they reflect pragmatic attempts at melding both the IP-driven closed model and the accommodation of open or public goods approach toward the promotion of access and overall management of innovation in PGRFA. It concludes that IP is not necessarily antithetical to open innovation, but could be calibrated to advance it

Designing Data Spaces

This open access book provides a comprehensive view on data ecosystems and platform economics from methodical and technological foundations up to reports from practical implementations and applications in various industries. To this end, the book is structured in four parts: Part I “Foundations and Contexts” provides a general overview about building, running, and governing data spaces and an introduction to the IDS and GAIA-X projects. Part II “Data Space Technologies” subsequently details various implementation aspects of IDS and GAIA-X, including eg data usage control, the usage of blockchain technologies, or semantic data integration and interoperability. Next, Part III describes various “Use Cases and Data Ecosystems” from various application areas such as agriculture, healthcare, industry, energy, and mobility. Part IV eventually offers an overview of several “Solutions and Applications”, eg including products and experiences from companies like Google, SAP, Huawei, T-Systems, Innopay and many more. Overall, the book provides professionals in industry with an encompassing overview of the technological and economic aspects of data spaces, based on the International Data Spaces and Gaia-X initiatives. It presents implementations and business cases and gives an outlook to future developments. In doing so, it aims at proliferating the vision of a social data market economy based on data spaces which embrace trust and data sovereignty

Determinants of the Generalized Trust Radius in Scripted Fragile Sub-Saharan African States

Trust between strangers does not come easily in collectivist societies governed by coercive institutions and subject to unstable market forces. More than one-third of all states are fragile, yet the trust literature has shown little interest in explaining the variability of generalized trust among them; instead fixating on social capital, the consequence of the expansion of generalized trust, putting the cart before the horse and leaving unexamined many of its causes. The enhanced accuracy of the reconfigured World Values Survey trust question has generated new research opportunities to address this concern. This dissertation advances the trust literature through identifying, measuring, and explaining the full social effect on generalized trust in fragile states through group proximity and civil society power differential. Sociological institutionalism and social capital theory provide the theoretical framework for modeling and explaining structural social effects leading to the improbable expansion of generalized trust in the highly scripted fragile sub-Saharan African states of Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. These purposefully deviant and least likely test cases are examined using within- and cross-case analysis of necessary and sufficient conditions through most similar multiple comparative case analysis, affirming or confirming most hypotheses. The expansion of generalized trust requires sustained and usually incentivized positive inter-group interaction. In fragile states, most inter-group interaction is conflictual and occurs through civil society because individuals have little capital with which to engage in the market and the state is dysfunctional. The generalized trust radius is likely to widen the more proximate and consociational its civil society is, regardless of how fragile the state is. This dissertation enlarges and strengthens the social explanation for generalized trust variability in fragile states, filling a significant gap in the literature and establishing a research design and model for future research to replicate in other fragile regions

There is more to contracts than incompleteness: a review and assessment of empirical research on inter-firm contract design

This paper aims at achieving a greater understanding of how contracts operate in practice through a review of recent empirical literature on inter-firm contract design. Our focus on the structure of contractual agreements differentiates this review from others that dedicated ample coverage also to the antecedents of the decision to contract and of the choice of contracting versus integration. Our framework develops Stinchcombe’s (1985) hypothesis that contracts are an organizational phenomenon. This allows us to uncover considerable but unevenly distributed evidence on a number of organizational processes formalized in relational contracts, which partially overlap with the processes that are observed in integrated organizations. It also enables us to describe contracts in terms of a larger number of dimensions than is commonly appreciated. The paper summarizes the evidence by proposing a general and tentative framework to guide the design of relational contracts, discusses a number of lingering issues, and outlines directions for further research on contracts as an organizational phenomenon