Corruption and Power in Democracies

According to Acton: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. We study the implications of Acton’s dictum in models where citizens vote (for three parties) and governments then form in a series of elections. In each election, parties have fixed tastes for graft, which affect negotiations to form a government if parliament hangs; but incumbency changes tastes across elections. We argue that combinations of Acton’s dictum with various assumptions about citizen sophistication and inter-party commitments generate tight and testable predictions which cover plausible dynamics of government formation in an otherwise stationary environment.Corruption, government dynamics

M/G/ oo with Batch Arrivals

OR 169-87 Revised Version. Original copy, WP1932-87 September 1987, also enclosed was submitted to the University of Rochester.Let po(n) be the distribution of the number N(oo) in the system at ergodicity for systems with an infinite number of servers, batch arrivals with general batch size distribution and general holding times. This distribution is of impotance to a variety of studies in congestion theory, inventory theory and storage systems. To obtain this distribution, a more general problem is addressed . In this problem, each epoch of a Poisson process gives rise to an independent stochastic function on the lattice of integers, which may be viewed as a stochastic impulse response. A continuum analogue to the lattice process is also provided

Trade-offs in Organizational Architecture: Information Systems, Incentives and Work Design

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Dynamics of Assignee Networks: A New Approach for Measuring the Impact on Patent Value Based on Network Analysis

This article outlines a network approach to the study of impact factors of patent value. Firms protect their property right of each innovation as the assignee of the patent. Advanced technological capabilities constitute a major resource for firms trying to achieve and maintain competitive advantages. Firms are also assessed by the overall value of its intellectual properties, especially the patents. Researchers have been trying to quantify patent value and study the related influence factors. Among all the characteristics of patents, citations represent the knowledge flows between innovations. This information can be used to measure and track the significance of each patent. The activity of a firm citing patents from other firms during a patent application indicates its R&D intention and interest, creating a strategical link between the assignees of the involved patents. In this study, a new approach of studying the impact of an assignees role on patent value by network analysis is proposed. Our analysis showed that in-degree centrality and betweenness centrality of an assignees position in the interaction network have a significant impact on its patent value, while the effect of out-degree centrality is inconclusive. This approach provides a perspective of assessing the overall patent value of a firm, which can serve as a reference for managerial purpose of allocating firm resources and investments

Information Systems, Incentives and Workflow Logic: Strategic Implications for Reengineering Business Processes

We use a series of case studies to motivate the analysis of the organizational impact and performance associated with information systems and workflow design topologies. Our study places a special emphasis on processes involving information intensive tasks that require information sharing and extended information access. The role of various information technologies is examined in the light of their effects on process workflows, worker incentives and worker performance. Our analytical research framework incorporates the effects of queuing lead times, incentives, data sharing and the consolidation of tasks. We show that the following task attributes — information intensity, skill requirements, specifications variability, and technology returns — have a critical role in the success of process redesign. We prove that technology that streamlines information flows not only improves job control, but can also reduce the cost of incentive compensation. Our results also explain why, under certain circumstances, information technology investments and enhanced worker incentives are substitutable. We conclude with several managerial guidelines for process redesign

The Optimal Software Licensing Policy under Quality Uncertainty

The rapid rate of standard software development, and the need of users to stay current, has unleashed unprecedented levels of process and product innovations in the software industry. A new service model has emerged which delivers application software and services over the Web on a lease or subscription basis. Software vendors such as Sun, Oracle, and Microsoft have already adopted this innovative business model. They have expanded their sales offerings with lease contracts that augment their traditional one-time purchase transactions. Our paper studies the optimal licensing policy of a software vendor that uses that business model. We look at software vendors that are both selling (at a posted price) or leasing their products where as lessor they guarantee that the lessee will always have the latest version of the software on their desktop. We address some of the specific issues of implementing this policy at the packaged software market, including the impact of network externality, negligible marginal production costs, and upgrade compatibility. We show that by properly defining their pricing structure, software vendors can segment the market and realize effective second- degree price discrimination and show how and when software vendors can maximize their profits through the use of this new licensing policy

Building and Sustaining Interorganizational Information Sharing Relationships: The Competitive Impact of Interfacing Supply Chain Operations with Marketing Strategy

Information technology has radically altered the management of supply chain operations; many business partners who are adjacent on the supply chain can gain from entering inter-organizational information sharing (IOIS) relationships and sharing information that was previously accessible to only one of them. This situation is typical in retailer-supplier logistics management relationships. The first part of our study analyzes different forms of virtual integration - relationships between independent companies that result in some of their operations resembling those of a single vertically integrated firm - and classifies them based on their models of information sharing across the supply chain. We find that there are four primary policies that firms adopt when they exchange information across the supply chain; these are EDI, vendor managed inventory (VMI), continuous replenishment (CR) and category management (CM). Typically, corporations view the development of inter-organizational information systems, and the sharing of information as being targeted at increasing operational efficiency by reducing ordering costs, inventory costs and supply lead times. Many studies have focused on studying IOIS technology issues, and estimating the value generated from these arrangements using traditional models of inventory and ordering costs. However, we find that in a number of cases, the information shared can have cross-functional value - it can also be used to improve a supplier's production planning, and to alter their marketing and sales strategies. Paradoxically, however, suppliers who receive such information feel that not only are their benefits minimal, but they often end up worse off than before the IOIS was implemented. The second part of our study explains this paradox. We show how retailers and other buyers can successfully contract to end up with more value than is generated by the sharing of information. Using game-theoretic models of strategic interaction, we show that this effect intensifies as the competitive value of the information to the supplier's marketing and sales departments increases. Besides, as the value that could be generated by the sales and production divisions of the supplier increases, we demonstrate how the supplier loses more and more value. Furthermore, the buyer need not actually share the information to derive these rents; we indicate why the possibility of sharing is sufficient, even when the buyer cannot independently create value from that information. The practical contributions of this inter-disciplinary study are manifold. We provide a clear and lucid description of the different levels at which organizations share information. We also describe a fairly general modeling framework which lays the foundation for a deeper analysis of this increasingly important area. Our strategic results demonstrate that a single focus on the technological or operational aspects of IOIS can mislead managers significantly. The true costs and benefits of these relationships can only be judged by recognizing the cross-functional impact of the information flows on the operational architecture, the marketing strategies of the suppliers and buyers, and the nature of competition within the respective organizations' industries.Information Systems Working Papers Serie