Developing Blockchain-enabled Marketplace Interfaces: A Design Science Research Study

Digital transformation\u27s scope evolves from being limited to the organizational level to inter-organizational collaboration in supply chain networks and business ecosystems. Blockchain-enabled marketplaces have the potential to transform business networks by eliminating intermediaries. To investigate the interface design and visualization of blockchain-enabled marketplaces, we employed a design science methodology and synthesized knowledge from literature, practice, and qualitative expert interviews. Our research provides (1) theoretically grounded and prescriptive knowledge expressed in meta-requirements and design principles inspired by effective use theory, and (2) presents concrete design features and an expository prototype instantiation. The prototype is evaluated through focus group workshops and interviews with experts and potential users. Our work contributes to recent calls to investigate the design and visualization of blockchain-enabled marketplaces, advances research on blockchain applications in B2B contexts, and expands the literature on information system design for marketplace-oriented transformations

Three essays on problem-solving in collaborative open productions

The term “open production” is frequently used to describe production systems that rely on volunteer participants who are willing to participate, produce, and bear private costs in order to provide a public good. Examples of open production are becoming increasingly common in many industries. What make these productions possible? How may they be sustained in a world of organizations in which the evolutionary products of economic selection are elaborate hierarchical forms of organization? One way to address these questions is to look at how open productions solve problems that are common to all production organizations such as, for example, problems in the division of labor, allocation of tasks, collaboration, coordination, and maintaining balance between inducement and contributions. Under the conditions of extreme decentralization that are the defining feature of open productions, this approach implies a detailed observation of individual problem solving practices. This is the approach I develop in my dissertation. Unlike much of the prior literature on open productions, I deemphasize motivational elements, status-seeking motives, and allocation of property rights issues. I focus instead on actual work practices as revealed by the day-by-day problem solving activities that qualify open productions projects as production organizations despite the absence of formal contractual arrangements to regulate principal-agent relations. What my work adds to the extensive, informative, and well-developed discipline-based explanations that are currently available, is a focus on the emergence of micro-organizational mechanisms through which problem assignment (Chapter 2), problem resolution (Chapter 3), and sustained participation (Chapter 4) are obtained in open productions. In my essays, I draw from organizational sociology and the behavioral theory of the firm to specify models that relate individual problem-solving activities to structured patterns of action through emergent work practices. In the models that I specify and test, I emphasize processes of attention allocation (Chapter 2), repeated collaboration and group diversity (Chapter 3) and identity construction (Chapter 4) as central to our understanding of the dynamics of problem-solving in organizations. One element of novelty in my study is that my research design makes these work practices directly observable at a level of detail, completeness, and precision that was inaccessible in the past. To illustrate the empirical value of the view that I develop I examine problem-solving activities – i.e., bug fixing and code production – within two Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) projects during their entire life span. Readers of my work will know more about how organizational micro-mechanisms emerge in open productions

MuON: Epidemic based mutual anonymity in unstructured P2P networks

A mutual anonymity system enables communication between a client and a service provider without revealing their identities. In general, the anonymity guarantees made by the protocol are enhanced when a large number of participants are recruited into the anonymity system. Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are able to attract a large number of nodes and hence are highly suitable for anonymity systems. However, the churn (changes in system membership) within P2P networks, poses a significant challenge for low-bandwidth reliable anonymous communication in these networks. This paper presents MuON, a protocol to achieve mutual anonymity in unstructured P2P networks. MuON leverages epidemic-style data dissemination to deal with churn. Simulation results and security analysis indicate that MuON provides mutual anonymity in networks with high churn, while maintaining predictable latencies, high reliability, and low communication overhead

Polycentric Information Commons: A Theory Development and Empirical Investigation

Decentralized systems online—such as open source software (OSS) development, online communities, wikis, and social media—often experience decline in participation which threatens their long-terms sustainability. Building on a rich body of research on the sustainability of physical resource systems, this dissertation presents a novel theoretical framing that addresses the sustainability issues arising in decentralized systems online and which are amplified because of their open nature. The first essay develops the theory of polycentric information commons (PIC) which conceptualizes decentralized systems online as “information commons”. The theory defines information commons, the stakeholders that participate in them, the sustainability indicators of information commons and the collective-action threats putting pressure on their long-term sustainability. Drawing on Ostrom’s factors associated with stable common pool resource systems, PIC theory specifies four polycentric governance practices that can help information commons reduce the magnitude and impact of collective-action threats while improving the information commons’ sustainability. The second essay further develops PIC theory by applying it in an empirical context of “digital activism”. Specifically, it examines the role of polycentric governance in reducing the threats to the legitimacy of digital activism—a type of information commons with an overarching objective of instigating societal change. As such, it illustrates the applicability of PIC theory in the study of digital activism. The third essay focuses on the threat of “information pollution” and its impact on open collaboration, a type of information commons dedicated to the creation of value through open participation online. It uncovers the way polycentric governance mechanism help reduce the duration of pollution events. This essay contributes to PIC theory by expanding it to the realm of operational governance in open collaboration

KNOWLEDGE AND COMPETENCE MANAGEMENT IN PROJECT BASED ORGANIZATIONS- AN INTERNAL MARKET-BASED MODEL

Recently, project-based organizations (PBOs) received increasing attention as emerging organizational forms, in which projects tend to become the primary business mechanism for coordinating all the main business functions of the firm. The literature widely recognizes that these organizational structures face peculiar knowledge and competence management and organizational learning issues as well as the risk of internal strategic misalignment. This thesis addresses these issues by adopting a market-based approach to exchange knowledge and competencies within the boundary of the firm. This kind of approach looks promising as it addresses specific ineffectiveness of the PBOs mainly connected to the presence of the project dimension within the organization, where knowledge and competencies risk to be stuck, against the interest of the organization as a whole. A market-based approach promises to address, among the others, the motivational issue, which is one of the main brakes on the development of effective knowledge and competence management systems, by providing the users with a transparent mechanism based on the law of supply and demand. This approach has received certain attention from the literature over time, but it is generally under-researched in the project management and knowledge management literature, as well. This thesis aims to investigate this kind of approach in the context of large PBOs. First, a systematic literature review on knowledge and competence management in project-based organizations was developed. Second, based on the background of this study, I conducted some case studies in large PBOs in order to highlight the main knowledge and competence management issues currently faced by project-based organizations. Third, on the basis of the needs and requirements in terms of internal knowledge and competence management emerged from the interviews, I developed the conceptual framework of a market-based internal knowledge and competence management system and, fourth, I submitted it to the respondents of the first round of interviews in order to collect feedback. The feedback was negative. Confronting managers and employees with a market-based approach to exchange knowledge and competencies internally has brought to light aspects of the organizational culture that are deeply averse to this idea. The cases shedding light on several critical aspects of model applicability mainly due to technical, organizational, managerial and cultural issues. Fifth, an agent-based model of a knowledge market was designed and developed and the preliminary results of working simulations with different initial settings of selected parameters are presented in the thesis. The model is very general in nature and could be applied to describe both an internal corporate market and knowledge trading dynamics among firms in a knowledge ecosystem. This approach represents an innovative way to address the management of knowledge and opens the way for many future developments. The thesis is organized in five main parts: a systematic literature review on knowledge and competence management in PBOs, case studies and development of the knowledge market model, design and implementation of an agent-based model of a knowledge market and finally the analysis of data returned by the simulator