Supporting Inter-Agency Collaboration in Emergency Management: Recurring Challenges Relevant for CSCW

Emergency management requires effective collaboration between different agencies. This work implies several challenges due to a heterogeneous mix of actors with different procedures, practices, and support tools. Despite being focused in various research streams, emergency responders still report challenges with sharing information and establishing shared situational awareness in responding to complex events. The paper presents results from a large-scale digital tabletop exercise that illustrate recurring challenges related to support for collaborative procedures, a communication network structure combining several media, use of geocollaborative tools, and configuration of collaborative environments in co-located operations centers. CSCW researchers are well positioned to further address these challenges and thus make an impact in a domain of high societal importance.Supporting Inter-Agency Collaboration in Emergency Management: Recurring Challenges Relevant for CSCWpublishedVersio

When is an action caused from within? Quantifying the causal chain leading to actions in simulated agents

An agent's actions can be influenced by external factors through the inputs it receives from the environment, as well as internal factors, such as memories or intrinsic preferences. The extent to which an agent's actions are "caused from within", as opposed to being externally driven, should depend on its sensor capacity as well as environmental demands for memory and context-dependent behavior. Here, we test this hypothesis using simulated agents ("animats"), equipped with small adaptive Markov Brains (MB) that evolve to solve a perceptual-categorization task under conditions varied with regards to the agents' sensor capacity and task difficulty. Using a novel formalism developed to identify and quantify the actual causes of occurrences ("what caused what?") in complex networks, we evaluate the direct causes of the animats' actions. In addition, we extend this framework to trace the causal chain ("causes of causes") leading to an animat's actions back in time, and compare the obtained spatio-temporal causal history across task conditions. We found that measures quantifying the extent to which an animat's actions are caused by internal factors (as opposed to being driven by the environment through its sensors) varied consistently with defining aspects of the task conditions they evolved to thrive in.Comment: Submitted and accepted to Alife 2019 conference. Revised version: edits include adding more references to relevant work and clarifying minor points in response to reviewer

Good jobs, bad jobs and redistribution

We analyse the question of optimal taxation in a dual economy, when the government is concerned about the distribution of labour income. Income inequality is caused by the presence of sunk capital investments, which creates a .good jobs. sector due to the capture of quasi-rents by trade unions. We find that whether the government should subsidise or tax investments is crucially dependent on union bargaining strength. If unions are weak, the optimal tax policy implies a combination of investment taxes and progressive income taxation. On the other hand, if unions are strong, we find that the best option for the government is to use investment subsidies in combination with either progressive or proportional taxation, the latter being the optimal policy if the government is not too concerned about inequality and if the cost of income taxation is sufficiently high. -- In dem Beitrag wird die Frage der optimalen Besteuerung in einer Wirtschaft mit zwei Sektoren untersucht, in der die Regierung an der Verteilung des Arbeitseinkommens interessiert ist. Einkommensungleichheit wird dann durch versunkene Kapitalinvestitionen verursacht, die einen Sektor mit .guten. Arbeitsplätzen schaffen, der durch die Aneignung von Quasi-Renten durch Gewerkschaften entsteht. Ob die Regierung Investitionen subventionieren oder besteuern soll, hängt entscheidend von der Verhandlungsst ärke der Gewerkschaften ab. Wenn die Gewerkschaften schwach sind, dann sieht die optimale Steuerpolitik eine Kombination aus Investitionssteuern und progressiver Einkommensbesteuerung vor. Im Falle von starken Gewerkschaften zeigt sich, daß die beste Handlungsalternative für die Regierung aus dem Einsatz von Subventionen in Kombination mit entweder progressiver oder proportionaler Besteuerung besteht, wobei die letztere dann optimal ist, wenn die Regierung nicht zu sehr an Ungleichheit interessiert ist und wenn die Kosten der Einkommensbesteuerung hinreichend hoch sind.Rent sharing,segmented labour markets,optimal taxation,redistribution

Does the choice of performance measure shape the appraisal of private equity funds?

Conducting an empirical study on cash flows of 71 private equity funds, spanning the vintages 1990 to 2008, we compare the two most common performance measures, IRR and TVPI, to four proposed alternatives. We also document cash flow characteristics that complicate performance measurement. Our findings determine that funds rank differently depending on the measure we employ. However, rank correlations among all measures suggest that the differences are fairly small, and that deviations further decrease when excluding young funds. Funds identified as top quartile by one measure are likely to receive similar appraisals by other measures, but performance is neither robustly, nor fully described by only one measure. The alternative measures better align the interests between the general and limited partners, and contribute to separate skill from fortunate timing. Limited partners should therefore use several measures in the appraisal of fund performance

Decision-making under uncertainty: A Brehmerian approach

This article discusses the contributions of the late Professor Berndt Brehmer with an emphasis on dynamic decision making under uncertainty. This concept has a long history as ambiguity implied in selective attention, later emphasised by prospect theory, which incorporates a time dimension. Time may be a solution to problems of uncertainty, not least the timing of decisions with each other and with environmental developments. This approach sees  decision making, from a process perspective, ultimately asking whether it makes sense to frame decisions as specific events or as an expression of an ongoing design process where the possibility spaces are expanded rather than limited to decision making among pre-existing alternatives. A dynamic view of the time dimension also encourages decision making as learning through probing actions and negotiation and collaboration, as well as with the environment. As much as this may sound like a recipe for managing second-track processes, it is also a recipe for managing through direct interaction, albeit a less-than-objective one understood through the biased perception of boundedly rational actors

A Research Review on Building Information Modeling in Construction―An Area Ripe for IS Research

This article presents a review of the research on Building Information Modeling (BIM) in construction, with the aim of identifying areas in this domain where IS research can contribute. The concept of BIM comprises an infrastructure of IT tools supporting collaborative and integrated design, assembly, and operation of buildings. This integrated construction approach, with all stakeholders editing or retrieving information from commonly shared models, requires major changes to well-established processes, organizational roles, contractual practices, and collaborative arrangements in the construction industry. Through a review of 264 research articles on BIM, we found that this research spans a wide area of technological and organizational topics, of which many have a clear resonance to focal areas in IS research. Our analysis shows that IS, to some extent, serves as a reference discipline and that theories used in IS research are also informing contemporary BIM research. The following areas in need of further IS research were identified: studies on the relationship between BIM’s functional affordance and human agency, adoption and use of BIM for inter-organizational collaboration, the influence of organizational culture on BIM practices, the capabilities of BIM for transforming industry practice, and identifying the business value of BIM. Considering that a well-established knowledge base in IS research can be drawn upon for studying these issues, combined with the exciting potential of BIM for transforming a major industry such as building construction, we conclude that BIM is an area ripe for IS research

Is Information Systems a science? An inquiry into the nature of the information systems discipline

The Information Systems (IS) discipline is apparently undergoing an identity crisis. Academicians question the need for IS departments in colleges stating the absence of a core for the field and its integration within other business functions as a basis for its elimination. At the same time, many practitioners, as reflected in the US government\u27s recent IT labor shortage report, continue to ignore IS as a distinct field of study. This article briefly outlines these and other challenges and argues that notwithstanding underlying philosophical differences, it can be concluded that IS is an emerging scientific discipline. This conclusion is reached through an assessment of the debate surrounding the issue of whether IS should be a discipline and an analysis of the IS discipline using some key characteristics of science. The arguments put forth in this paper have four key implications for the IS community: a continuing emphasis on adopting scientific principles and practices for conducting inquiry into IS phenomena; an enhancement of the self-concept of IS academics and professionals through a common identity; enhances the ability of supporters of the IS field to defend against criticisms, integration with other disciplines, and resource rivalry; and creates the potential of being well-situated to building a cumulative tradition in the field

Expanding the Notion of Relevance in IS Research: A Proposal and Some Recommendations

Based on an analysis of a priori discussion on the notion of relevance, this paper proposes a holistic view of relevance in IS research. This expanded notion of relevance incorporates a broader definition of audience/stakeholder, and includes additional dimensions such as scope/value of relevant research, time frame, and situatedness of relevance. In view of this definition, it is argued that practical relevance is not the sole goal of academic research. Hence, the authors recommend, for example, that knowledge claims in IS need to be better communicated and targeted for the future development and recognition of the IS discipline