Signaling Mechanisms and Survival of Service Providers in an Electronic Market

This research studies the survival of software implementation service providers in an electronic market (or e-market), and the role that vendor characteristics such as reputation, education, experience, ‘preferred provider’ status, and references play in predicting which service providers will exit the e-market after it (the e-market) implements trust enhancing mechanisms. Using theories from asymmetric information, signaling, and trust literatures, we propose a model to examine the relation between firm characteristics and survival. Our empirical results support the key role played by these signals in inducing the separating equilibrium that leads to the shakeout among software service providers in an e-market

A personal networking solution

This paper presents an overview of research being conducted on Personal Networking Solutions within the Mobile VCE Personal Distributed Environment Work Area. In particular it attempts to highlight areas of commonality with the MAGNET initiative. These areas include trust of foreign devices and service providers, dynamic real-time service negotiation to permit context-aware service delivery, an automated controller algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks, and routing protocols for ad hoc networking environments. Where possible references are provided to Mobile VCE publications to enable further reading

Who Gets the Job? Synthesis of Literature Findings on Provider Success in Crowdsourcing Marketplaces

Background: Over the past decade, crowdsourcing marketplaces — online exchange platforms which facilitate commercial outsourcing of services — have witnessed a dramatic growth in the number of participants (service providers and customers) and the value of outsourced services. Deciding about the most appropriate provider is a key challenge for customers in crowdsourcing marketplaces because available information about providers may be incomplete and sometimes irrelevant for customer decisions. Ineffective information impedes many service providers to develop long-term relationships with customers, obtain projects on a regular basis and survive on crowdsourcing marketplaces. Previous studies have investigated the impact of a range of factors on customers’ choice decisions and providers’ success, given the important role of customer–provider relationship development for long-term success on crowdsourcing marketplaces. Method: This paper reviews the literature of crowdsourcing marketplaces with the aim of developing a comprehensive list of factors that influence customers’ choice decisions and providers’ success. Results: We found 31 conceptually distinct profile information components/factors that determine customers’ choices and providers’ business outcomes on crowdsourcing marketplaces. Conclusion: We classified these 31 factors into five major categories: 1) prior relationship between a customer and a provider or a customer’s invitation, 2) providers’ bidding behavior, 3) crowdsourcing marketplace or auction characteristics, 4) providers’ profile information, and 5) customer characteristics. The main factors in each category, associated considerations, related literature gaps and avenues for future research are discussed in detail

Health Care Costs and the Arc of Innovation

Health care costs continue their inexorable rise, threatening America’s long-term fiscal stability, competitiveness, and standard of living. Over the past half-century, efforts to rein in spending have uniformly failed. In this Article, we explain why, breaking with standard accounts of regulatory and market dysfunction. We point instead to the nexus of economics, mutual empathy, and social expectations that drives medical innovation and locks in low-value technologies. We show how law reflects and reinforces this nexus and how and why health-policy-makers avert their gaze. Next, we propose to circumvent these barriers instead of surmounting them. Rather than targeting today’s excessive spending, we seek to leverage available legal tools to bend the arc of innovation, away from marginally-beneficial technology and toward high-value advances. To this end, we set forth a novel, value-based approach to pricing and patent protection—one that departs sharply from current practice by rewarding innovators in proportion to the therapeutic benefits new tests and treatments yield. Using cancer therapy as an example, we explain how emerging information technology and large troves of electronic clinical data are opening the way to near-real-time assessment of efficacy. We then show how such assessment can power ongoing adjustment of pricing and patent terms. Finally, we offer a blueprint for how laws governing health care payment and intellectual property can be tailored to realize this value-focused vision. For the reasons we lay out, the transformation of incentives we urge will both slow clinical spending growth and greatly enhance the social value that this spending yields

An Empirical Investigation on Provider Pricing in Online Crowdsourcing Markets for IT Services

Pricing in online markets has been of much interest to IS researchers, particularly for IT services. In this paper, we theorize and empirically examine three primary factors that affect provider pricing of outsourced IT services: production cost, competitive dynamics and frictional cost. We test the respective role of each of these three complementary pricing strategies with archival data from a leading global online marketplace that specializes in the outsourcing of IT services. The results from our econometric analyses confirm that, besides production cost, service providers also account for the information signals about competing providers’ quality when pricing their services, reflecting the rule of market competition and dynamics. Furthermore, service providers adjust their prices for different service outsourcers with varying perceived frictional costs, which indicates, although online markets are vaunted to reduce transaction costs that outsourcers would otherwise incur offline, they creates new types of frictional costs between providers and outsourcers

Human Capital of IT Professionals: A Research Agenda

Information Systems researchers have studied various aspects of the role of human capital in the IT workforce such as the definition of IT professionals, human resource practices for managing IT professionals, returns to human capital, human capital and innovation in IT industries, and turnover among IT professionals. This panel argues that the field is at crosswinds of change due to factors such as rapidly changing technologies, organizational processes, technology delivery mechanisms such as cloud computing, new forms of organization such as virtual teams and social networks, outsourcing, offshoring, globalization, and a new generation of IT professionals entering the workforce. These changes in the environment for IT work will affect the roles, jobs, skills and careers of IT professionals and will prompt more inquiry from IS researchers in two main directions: one, some findings from prior research may not hold in this new environment and scholars will need to reexamine these. Two, these changes will raise additional issues, and call for new research on IT human capital. The objective of this panel is to present a framework to identify important trends and changes that will impact IT professionals and to define an agenda for future research on IT human capital

Regulating privatized rail transport

Traditionally, transport regulation has been viewed as an exercise in second-best optimization, acknowledging the existence of huge information problems. Then the rail industry was deeply restructured worldwide to halt erosion of the sector's share of transportation markets. Restructuring took different forms in different countries, ranging from simple reorganization measures to extreme restructuring -with the private sector increasingly participating in the sector and with the provision of infrastructure separated from the provision of services. The authors argue that regulation of the rail industry cannot remain unaffected by these changes. New regulatory scenarios and issues have emerged. For example, contracts have to be defined for private participation and quality surveillance instruments must be defined. Traditional price controls have to be adapted to, and mechanisms designed to manage and plan infrastructure investments in, the new environment. Restructuring has brought new problems, too. Where licenses have been used, for example, several concessionaires have been unable to meet the objectives spelled out in the concession contract. Contracts should be flexible enough to take account of novel situations that may affect company performance. And yet, for the system to be credible, there cannot be systematic, unjustified deviations from the franchise objectives. Regulation of the sector should be simple and flexible, with license contracts designed to include the private sector and with industry organization adapted to local circumstances. Regulation should be governed by principles that foster competition and market mechanisms, wherever possible. At the same time, it should provide a stable legal and institutional framework for economic activity. Otherwise, regulators should refrain from intervening in the market-unless the goal of economic efficiency (subject to the socially demanded levelof equity) is in jeopardy.Municipal Financial Management,Banks&Banking Reform,Decentralization,Enterprise Development&Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Railways Transport,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Water and Industry,Public Sector Economics&Finance

Marketization of Public Services in Germany

This article explores the very limited introduction of competitive mechanisms and of market or quasi-market instruments in the German public sector. Furthermore, it analyzes the role, trends and effects of introducing market-oriented incentives into the discourse on reforming state and administration in Germany. The article describes the general function of marketization and the different variants of competition in actual reform programs in several policy sectors. Two case studies that demonstrate "good practice” are assessed. Finally, the article analyzes some possible effects of increasing marketization in Germany

The Most Important Cog in the System: A Case for Legislative Change to Drive Professionalisation

System theory (ST) explains how signal jamming (SJ) may impede or even reverse processes of professionalization, thereby having a detrimental impact on the quality of services clients receive. In the U.K., there are various metaphorical “cogs” in the Sign Language Interpreting (SLI) system. By applying ST to the profession, we can achieve a better understanding of the current landscape and identify ineffective cogs which potentially disrupt the smooth functioning of other cogs within the system. Improving system operations will result in improved services. We argue that an instigating and mandatory force—legislation—is the central cog that will drive more consistent signaling and streamline professionalization