Programming with models: modularity and abstraction provide powerful capabilities for systems biology

Mathematical models are increasingly used to understand how phenotypes emerge from systems of molecular interactions. However, their current construction as monolithic sets of equations presents a fundamental barrier to progress. Overcoming this requires modularity, enabling sub-systems to be specified independently and combined incrementally, and abstraction, enabling generic properties of biological processes to be specified independently of specific instances. These, in turn, require models to be represented as programs rather than as datatypes. Programmable modularity and abstraction enables libraries of modules to be created, which can be instantiated and reused repeatedly in different contexts with different components. We have developed a computational infrastructure that accomplishes this. We show here why such capabilities are needed, what is required to implement them and what can be accomplished with them that could not be done previously

Shifting sand: Organizational identity, partnership and IT outsourcing

This study pertains to the influence of organizational identity and organizational image on the quality of an information technology outsourcing relationship. Organizational identity is conceptualized as the mental representation that organizational members have of themselves as social group in terms of practices, norms, and values and how they understand themselves to be different from members of other organizations. We focus on two key organizational images that are defined from two perspectives: within and from the outside of the organization. From within, it refers to what members believe outsiders perceive the organization’s identity (construed external image); from the outside, it represents how outsiders (clients, partners, etc.) actually appraise the organizational attributes (mirroring image or reputation). In an outsourcing context, we conjecture that the degree of proximity between each partner’s respective interpretation of organizational identity and the image the other party has of them influences the quality of the relationship, mainly in terms of trust, understanding, and conflict – or lack thereof. In this research in progress paper, we use secondary data to explore the nature of these relationships