How IT Governance should be established in order to have a good alignment between IT, Business and external Service Providers

IT governance deals with connections between business focus and IT management. The goal of clear governance is to assure that investment in IT generates true value to business. IT governance is defined as the processes, structures and relational mechanisms that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organization to achieve its goals. IT and business alignment begins and ends with good IT governance. Business-IT alignment is the fit and integration among business strategy, IT strategy, business and IT structures. Research has shown that organizations where IT strategies and operations are aligned with business strategies and operations seem to be more innovative in use of new information technolo-gies. The objectives for this research are to find out the elements for a good IT governance and understand what are the components and requirements for an effective Business- IT alignment. The study will seek answers to the following three research questions: (RQ1) what are the elements for a good IT Governance” , (RQ2) “How to achieve a real alignment between IT, business and external service providers”, and (RQ3) “what are the drawbacks in the current IT Governance in the case company”. The research includes theoretical part and the empirical part. Theoretical part through literature review introduces the main concepts and frameworks. Empirical part describes the research methods. This study was conducted by using a qualitative and quantitative methods. The data was gathered via web survey in a case company where the author is currently working. The questions in the survey are based on theoretical framework called the Strategic Alignment Model. The survey was conducted in February 2020, the survey was sent to preselected persons in IT and Business. With the web survey, the target was to get the understanding what are the drawbacks with the current IT Governance and Business-IT alignment. As a result of the study, all research questions were answered. Based on the survey results in the case company, clear improvement areas were found in the areas of IT and business pro-cess understanding, roles and responsibilities, processes and collaboration. Recommenda-tions for the case company are made to improve the Business-IT alignment especially on tac-tical and operational levels

Belief Inducibility and Informativeness

We consider a group of receivers who share a common prior on a finite state space and who observe private correlated signals that are contingent on the true state of the world. We show that, while necessary, Bayes plausibility is not sufficient for a distribution over posterior belief vectors to be inducible, and we provide a characterization of inducible distributions. We classify communication strategies as minimal, direct, and language independent, and show that any inducible distribution can be induced by a language independent communication strategy (LICS). We investigate 12 the role of the different classes of communication strategies for the amount of higher order information that is revealed to receivers. We show that the least informative communication strategy which induces a fixed distribution over posterior belief vec tors lies in the relative interior of the set of all language independent communication strategies which induce that distribution

The Midpoint-Constrained Egalitarian Bargaining Solution

A payoff allocation in a bargaining problem is midpoint dominant if each player obtains at least one n-th of her ideal payoff. The egalitarian solution of a bargaining problem may select a payoff configuration which is not midpoint dominant. We propose and characterize the solution which selects for each bargaining problem the feasible allocation that is closest to the egalitarian allocation, subject to being midpoint dominant. Our main axiom, midpoint monotonicity, is new to the literature; it imposes the standard monotonicity requirement whenever doing so does not result in selecting an allocation which is not midpoint dominant. In order to prove our main result we develop a general extension theorem for bargaining solutions that are order-preserving with respect to any order on the set of bargaining problems

An attachment framework for the study of shame : associations between security, parenting, temperament and shame-proneness in early childhood

The current study investigated associations between parenting and children's shame-proneness, as well as the additive and moderating influences of temperament and attachment. A sample of 66 children 6- to 8-years-of age (36 females, 30 males) and their mothers participated. While mothers completed questionnaire measures related to parenting, children's self-conscious emotions and temperamental characteristics, the principal investigator worked with child participants to complete several measures, including self-report of self-conscious emotions using hypothetical scenarios and a semi-projective narrative task tapping internal working models of attachment. Findings revealed that all three domains of parenting, temperament, and attachment played important and unique roles in the explanation of shame-proneness. An additive model across domains explained maternal report of children's shame-proneness, whereas findings for children's self-reported shame-proneness were more complex and included counter-intuitive moderating effects of attachment and, to a lesser degree, negative affectivity. Convergent results across the two informants indicated that, as predicted, coercive parenting practices (i.e., love withdrawal, power assertiveness, conditional approval) and unsupportive emotion coaching were related to greater shameproneness. Divergent findings across mother and child informants included additional main effects for mother-reported shame-proneness and parenting (i.e., authoritarian parenting, focusing on negative child characteristics, disgust) versus several interactive effects for child-reported shame-proneness. Specifically, higher levels of attachment intensified the shame-inducing impact of love withdrawal, maternal focus on negative child attributes, and power assertiveness; conversely higher levels of attachment appeared to intensify the negative association between permissive parenting and shame-proneness. Further, lower levels of negative affectivity were found to strengthen the relation between conditional approval and shame-proneness but for girls only. Some additional gender effects were also revealed in the prediction of child-reported shame-proneness and are discussed in light of growing recognition of differential socialization practices and their impact on boys and girls. Results are discussed in light of empirical research on parenting, temperament, attachment, and children's self-conscious emotions. Finally, potential limitations in the measurement of child reported self-conscious emotions are also discusse

Indirect control and power in mutual control structures

In a mutual control structure agents exercise control over each other. Typical examples occur in the area of corporate governance: firms and investment companies exercise mutual control, in particular by owning each others’ stocks. In this paper we formulate a general model for such situations. There is a fixed set of agents, and a mutual control structure assigns to each subset (coalition) the subset of agents controlled by that coalition. Such a mutual control structure captures direct control. We propose a procedure in order to incorporate indirect control as well: if S controls T, and S and T jointly control R, then S controls R indirectly. This way, invariant mutual control structures result. Alternatively, mutual control can be described by vectors of simple games, called simple game structures, each simple game describing who controls a certain player, and also those simple games can be updated in order to capture indirect control. We show that both approaches lead to equivalent invariant structures. In the second part of the paper, we axiomatically develop a class of power indices for invariant mutual control structures. We impose four axioms with a plausible interpretation in this framework, which together characterize a broad class of power indices based on dividends resulting both from exercising and from undergoing control. By adding an extra condition a unique power index is singled out. In this index, each player accumulates his Shapley-Shubik power index assignments from controlling other players, diminished by the sum of the Shapley-Shubik power index assignments to other players controlling him

Effectivity and Power

We axiomatically develop a class of power indices for effectivity functions, both for the case where the set of alternatives is finite and where it is infinite. Such power indices make it possible to take the issues under consideration into account, in contrast to power indices defined just for simple games. As an example, we consider the US legislative system. We also show that our approach can be used to develop power indices for spatial political games. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Hide your pain : social threat increases pain reports and aggression, but reduces facial pain expression and empathy

Earlier research studying the effects of social threat on the experience and expression of pain led to mixed results. In this study, female participants (N = 32) came to the lab with 2 confederates. Both confederates administered a total of 10 painful electrocutaneous stimuli to the participant. The framing of the administration was manipulated in a within-subjects design: In the low social threat condition the participant was told that the confederate could choose between 10 and 20 pain stimuli, thus they believed that this confederate chose to administer the minimum allowed number of pain stimuli. In the high social threat condition the confederate had a choice between 1 and 10 stimuli, thus they believed that this confederate chose to administer the maximum allowed number of stimuli. Participants reported on the intensity, unpleasantness, and threat value of the painful stimuli, and their facial expression was recorded. Moreover, aggression and empathy toward the confederates were assessed. As hypothesized, participants reported increased pain intensity, unpleasantness, and threat in the high social threat condition compared to the low social threat condition, but showed less facial pain expression. Finally, participants exhibited increased aggression and reduced empathy toward the confederate in the high social threat condition. Perspective: Social threat reduces painful facial expression, but simultaneously increases pain reports, leading to a double burden of the person in pain. Additionally, social threat affected social relationships by increasing aggression and reducing empathy for the other