Blockchain Papers

Ulrich Schmitt

The predicted embracing of thriving knowledge societies is increasingly compromised by threatening perceptions of information overload and attention poverty, opportunity divides and career uncertainties. By integrating system dynamics, discrete-event, and agent-based modeling, this paper traces the roots of these symptoms back to their causes of information entropy and structural holes, invisible private and undiscoverable public knowledge which together characterize the sad state of our current knowledge management (KM) and creation practices. Looking forward, it proposes a decentralized generative KM approach that prioritizes the capacity development of autonomous individual knowledge workers not at the expense but as a viable means to foster a fruitful co-evolution with traditional organizational KM systems. As part of an ongoing design science research and prototyping project, this systems thinking and hybrid model perspective complements a succession of prior multidisciplinary publications on the subject.

Tyson R. Browning

Since the beginning, humans have worked, and many have sought to do so more productively. Although one can point to many earlier innovations in management, scientific management has its roots in mechanical engineering in the 1880s from the techniques of Frederick Taylor (Crainer, 2003; Drucker, 1993; Kanigel, 1997; Taylor, 1903, 1911). In a natural progression from Adam Smith (1776) and his predecessors, who observed the benefits of labor specialization, Taylor advocated for the separation of managers (not just supervisors, but planners and schedulers) from other workers, making management a technical discipline. He also sought to increase the productivity of workers and machinery by observing, measuring, and developing theories about the best ways of doing work. Although many of Taylor's specific recommendations have not endured, his scientific approach underlies much of the research output in the management academy, which established a scholarly perspective by the 1920s (the first business journal appeared in 1928) and began to flourish post-World War II. In a development that would not surprise Adam Smith, the management academy subsequently divided into specialized disciplines—such as strategy, leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, human resources, and information systems—and drew in other relevant ones such as finance and accounting. Along the way, operations management (OM) research occurred under various monikers, including factory management, production management, industrial management, management science, operations research, and decision sciences. 1 To this day, and more so than other management disciplines, OM scholars work in academic departments with highly varied names and participate in a wide variety of professional societies and conferences with diverse emphases and perspectives. Meanwhile, relevant research on managing work has continued in the fields of industrial and mechanical engineering, as well as in engineering management. Over time, conceptions of the scopes and boundaries of these disciplines and nearby fields have evolved. So, what is the scope of the OM discipline now, at the 40th anniversary of the Journal of Operations Management (JOM)? This question is important to consider when determining what topics should fit into JOM, but it is also essential to the community of OM scholars. I suspect that some contemporary conceptions of the scope and extent of OM are too narrow. Herein, I advance a more generous view of OM, one that acknowledges the management of all of the work required to operate an enterprise 2 (and across supply chains)—a work-based view. In his famous book, Taylor (1911) stated that its ambitious purpose was “to show that the fundamental principles of scientific management are applicable to all kinds of human activities, from our simplest individual acts to the work of our great corporations.” Ironically, this pervasive view may have impeded the emergence of OM as a field, because, until the mid-1950s, many still equated OM with “virtually the entire field of industrial management,” and many OM textbooks included chapters on “personnel management, finance, marketing, organization and general management” (Buffa, 1980, p. 1). By 1980, on the first page of the inaugural issue of JOM, Buffa regarded OM as having finally emerged as “a functional field of management.” Ten years later, however, Meredith and Amoako-Gyampah (1990) noticed that many academicians affiliated with OM still had trouble defining its boundaries. As Hayes (2000, p. 105) later remarked, the discipline of OM does not have clear limits, because operations occur everywhere; they “encompass most of the resource-consuming and value-creating activities within a company.” Over the past 40 years, OM has taken on a wider view with respect to areas such as services, behavioral operations, sustainability, and supply chain management (SCM). Many in OM have embraced SCM especially—even though it is not just “within a company”—incorporating it into OM curricula or even rebranding their departments as SCM. Operations and supply chain management (OSCM) has become a common term. While this embrace represents a welcome increase in scope and level of analysis, it has also transferred some momentum and attention away from managing internal operations. How do our teaching materials define the discipline? Let us consider some examples. According to Jacobs and Chase (2017, p. 3), OSCM is “the design, operation, and improvement of the systems that create and deliver the firm's primary products and services,” and it involves acquiring and managing resources. Heizer and Render (2014, p. 4) defined OM as “the set of activities that creates value in the form of goods and services by transforming inputs into outputs.” These definitions include terms like “systems” and “set of activities” that imply processes of doing work—processes that require, transform, and add value to resources. Indeed, the concept of managing work relates closely to that of managing processes, a concept firmly embedded in OM. According to Swink et al. (2017, p. 1), OM “is the management of processes used to design, supply, produce, and deliver valuable goods and services to customers.” And Krajewski et al. (2013, p. 2) stated that OM “refers to the systematic design, direction, and control of processes that transform inputs into services and products for internal, as well as external customers.” Holweg, Davies, De Meyer, Lawson, and Schmenner (2018) advocated well for process theory as foundational to OM. Although OM 3 has expanded its scope since 1980, Hayes (2000) cautioned that OM scholars require focus and must impose limits on their own activities, because they must spend a good deal of their professional time on common ground. In search of a solution, Skinner pragmatically stated that OM is essentially what practicing operations managers care about, and about the challenges they face (Hayes, 2000). So, what do practicing operations managers care about, and what challenges do they face? I expect that there are many things of which I am unaware, but I will highlight two key considerations. First, OM is often represented in executive ranks by a chief operating officer (COO). What does a COO do? Where the COO position exists, this person is often the second-in-command after the chief executive officer (CEO) and in charge of implementing a firm's strategy. This is a large role, even in comparison to other C-level executives, and it spans multiple functional areas. “Often, companies turn responsibility for all areas of operations over to the COO—this typically includes production, marketing and sales, and research and development” (Bennett & Miles, 2006, p. 72). Executing a strategy requires marshaling resources and managing processes across the enterprise and beyond. This is no small role with no shortage of challenges, most of them cross-functional and cross-disciplinary. Does the current scope of OM research cover the full spectrum of these challenges? A second but related consideration pertains to the work and processes within a firm. What if we conceived of a set of processes representing all of the work done in an enterprise? Figure 1 gives a generic example, where the work divides into three categories and a dozen enterprise processes (EPs). Each EP is multifunctional—for example, “Develop Product/Service” properly involves designers, engineers, marketers, financers, accountants, producers, procurers, customer supporters, et al.—so the mapping from EPs to functions is not one-to-one. Figure 1 does not show all of the information and work products flowing among the EPs, although multiple, bilateral flows occur between each, as well as to and from external customers and suppliers. Many companies have their own version of this model, which goes by various names, such as process architecture or enterprise architecture, 4 and gets explained using various metaphors, such as the company genome or operating system. Typically, the COO owns the second leadership process, “Manage Company Operations,” which entails integrating and coordinating all of the other EPs. Whereas some may conceive of a broad definition of OM as encompassing just the “Core Value Processes,” a COO must furthermore ensure that all of the firm's “Enabling Processes” are appropriately integrated into the whole. Indeed, the COO's challenge is to streamline and synchronize the flow of inputs and outputs throughout the company's operating system. With the EPs as the vehicle, the COO drives the company toward its chosen destination (its strategy). The COO is responsible for integrating and coordinating practically all of the work done within the enterprise, and its interactions with external suppliers and customers. The responses have always been along the lines of “who knows?” Clearly, with the scale and complexity of contemporary operations, practicing operations managers face some immense challenges. Addressing them will require taking a larger view of work, its results, and the processes that assimilate them in enterprises. The process perspective is essential, but it could benefit from expanding in at least five ways. First, as discussed above, all EPs—not just “Produce and Distribute Product/Service”—require attention, visibility, integration, coordination, synchronization, management, and improvement. This will require approaching some other disciplines (e.g., marketing, sales, engineering, finance, accounting, information technologies, and human resources) from a work-activity- and work-product-based perspective, to understand the flow of the actions and interactions required to transform valuable inputs into more valuable outputs in their areas. This is not intended to usurp their work or invade their domains, but rather to integrate with it, because that is sorely needed, and who better to do it than us? As Buffa (1980, p. 2) stated, “we have seldom attempted to deal with interfunctional relationships, though I feel that we do this as well or better than our colleagues in other functional disciplines.” JOM's founding editor Lee Krajewski noted, “Thinking of operations management issues from the perspective of their relationships to the entire enterprise saved the field in the 1980s” (Meredith, Krajewski, Hill, & Handfield, 2002, p. 4). We can view OM from a COO's perspective, as the integration, synchronization, and management of most processes across the entire enterprise. Second, some conceive of processes only as formal approaches to be followed, rather than as an objective, observer-independent reality. Processes exist even when they have not been mapped, modeled, or standardized. I tell my students that, in their working careers, if they are ever asked, “Do you have a process for that?,” to always say “yes”—because if work is being done and results are being produced, then there is a way that is happening. That way may not be documented, efficient, effective, or consistent, but it exists. The process is out there. Working processes need to be discovered, described, and understood before they can be improved, controlled, and prescribed. Quite a bit of work is needed merely to describe some of the important activities, practices, processes, and operating systems utilized in diverse organizations. Only then can we begin to sink our teeth into developing better theories about how best to manage them. Third, we need to investigate processes across the full continuum of work, from purely repetitive tasks like mass production to unique, one-time, novel tasks (e.g., some projects). All types of work break down into a network of related activities (i.e., a process) that is supposed to yield a result of value. Yet, I still see some making a false dichotomy between projects and processes. Of course, there are differences. Project processes often entail a flow of information rather than physical components. And project processes should be analyzed differently than repetitive processes—for example, with throughput time (critical path) rather than capacity (bottleneck) as the primary constraint—but both may be modeled as activity networks (Adler, Mandelbaum, Nguyen, & Schwerer, 1995; Browning & Ramasesh, 2007). It would be useful to develop a more unified theory of managing workflows across various kinds of process architectures. Fourth, OM scholars tend to focus on existing, mature, steady-state operational systems. Most give little attention to the genesis of such systems. How should operations begin and grow, from entrepreneurial startups to mature enterprises? What process architectures and operating systems make sense for a small, fast-moving startup; a stable, 50-person business; a growing, 200-person organization; and so on? What does OM contribute to making new ventures more efficient, effective, and likely to succeed? OM scholars could work with entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners to understand the needs, structures, and flows of work at varied scales and evolutionary rates. Fifth, to what extent should the process perspective—indeed, even OM theory—extend toward the “micro” level of individual workers? For example, self-productivity guru David Allen's book Getting Things Done (Allen, 2001) discusses how to manage personal activities, projects, and workflows. Should OM theory guide and inform individual work (and vice versa) as well as companies and supply chains? That was certainly part of Taylor's stated ambition for his 1911 book (q.v., “from our simplest individual acts”), yet much of the research on the management of work at the individual level seems to occur outside of the OM discipline. For these reasons, I see room to expand OM's process perspective in macro and micro directions. I see OM broadly as managing work to produce valuable results. Expanding this a bit, we could state that OM entails managing work, using resources and tools, to produce results (physical or digital products, processes, and/or services), all with particular goals. Each of these items—work, resources/tools, results, and goals—as well as the organizations of people involved—is a kind of system (Browning, Fricke, & Negele, 2006). Figure 2 depicts the situation. OM tends to focus on the process, the system of work actions and interactions (often including the resources and tools employed), but this is merely the nexus of the systems that execute (organizations of people with behaviors), emerge from (result), and guide (goals) that process—all of which are enmeshed in a context/environment. 5 Each of these systems merits the attention of OM scholars, and certainly the implications of the systems' interactions and coevolution would help generate more powerful and integrative theories. We must double down on Chase's (1980, p. 12) admonition to study broader, system-wide issues. (His point at the time was merely to include people as well as equipment, but the intent is easily expanded.) For example, a firm's capabilities to produce particular kinds of results are likely due to appropriate configurations of people, processes, and tools. Improved operations require much more than better, faster workers and equipment, because how activities and resources are organized and managed makes a huge difference (Schmenner, 2015). 6 We must consider operations as complex, multilayered networks of processes connected to people, tools, results, goals, and contexts—sometimes with decentralized controls—and even facilities, firms, and to OM to such as operations, and other and and services that expanding of across such areas will require working with other disciplines, including management, information engineering, and so in OM that as an or the is that important topics will be with or For example, should of be done only by management scholars (e.g., & rather than OM OM research often outside the OM example, and study of work science, industrial and other areas of management are processes, time management, project management, management, and many other such topics that well within the of OM. of the from contemporary organizations in and information systems scholars may be doing a better of useful about OM issues from these Hayes (2000, p. that the discipline of OM to a that people outside the field of OM doing our many of the topics we have our was more must integrate EPs across functions in can we do the in our own we of our management rather than merely a false sense of past other & OM scholars should the on effective, how can we What should our and focus a practicing operations care about of a when so many practitioners are too to care about some things that they I that we can our view of OM focus on the management of work, a work-based view. in processes, and as a of be more as discussed A process should a result of value to its and how to in process and/or on the of value in a particular which the not entails the value by an the purpose and of good a of of OM on the of operations research, the founding of for the into OM (Buffa, 1980, p. we should expand our view of the work to be The of work to as more and more contemporary operations work. According to p. is the only The of have not but they have become He goes on to state that our challenge is to increase the of work. This in well with the concept of processes and information as has production processes over the past will most likely transform work processes over the of this These a of research For example, as with factory will too as their to process improvement are a processes at the of and How do and relationships in workflows How should the work of a as the one by the be and managed for and What innovations are in work to these types of well within a broad view of that includes areas such as process will be relevant to practicing and operations With this broad of OM as managing work to produce valuable results, what of management are not we the of in the management we would be to on the of the other departments in business While we to in integrative research, it could focus on how work flows to and from the activities in strategy, marketing, sales, human resources, finance, accounting, and so than on how activities occur OM theory useful on the and of such a COO the role in a or OM focus more on how all the of an enterprise fit rather than on the of course, such as production, and What work products and results do various activities contribute to an enterprise, and what make them more or on we not only in but in the academy as How do organizations and supply How do they And how does this to better I have defined OM broadly as managing work to produce valuable results. The point of this is not to for taking Taylor's or about scientific management to the am I an OM perspective where and managing work is not the of is still of room for our disciplines in the academy to make their work is and to it within and across organization or or and supply all managers must that down What work should be is it What should its result How to do Where to do or what should do should it and How do we what we need to do the many the and of resources to appropriate results even more Meanwhile, we face the of and of both and and productivity must not be to become in benefits to some It is essential to consider not just their on and and but also their appropriate in to and respect for This will require to (e.g., et and of value. Indeed, OM is a more than merely and managing suppliers. OM is an discipline with no shortage of and challenges to so will require integrating across other management disciplines in a more way, and taking on more of the of a The of this is to our community to more broadly about the challenges and A work-based view gives and focus to these it to things an efficient, effective, consistent, and is no better approach than

Davide Lasi, Lukas Saul

The mining of bitcoin is modeled using a system dynamics model that represents both the mechanism of coin creation and the adjustment of the network hash rate based on the economic incentive of mining. The results show that the past evolution of the network hash rate can be explained, to a large extent, by an efficient market hypothesis applied to the mining of blocks. The possibility of a decreasing trend in the network hash rate from the halving event of May 2020 is exposed, implying that the network may be close to ’peak hash’ if the price of bitcoin and the revenues from transaction fees will be insufficient to cover the operational expenditures of mining.

Victor Dostov, Pavel Shust

No abstract is available for this record.

Jyoti Satpathy, Banita Mallik, Suruchi Gorg

Neuroscience and managerial-sciences have witnessed tremendous advance since turn of this Century. Making neuronal-directed neurostrategy-based judgements is a complex management action. Hominids share designed structural sphere and project stimulus on neurostrategy-based judgement processes. Neuroscience, along with cognito-management, has made unprecedented insights into human brain and nature. Fissures amongst judiciousness-based scrutiny adopt proxies and anthropological comportment in shepherding behavioural exploration on neurostrategy-based judgement making. Business actors, models and axioms of management tend to focus on either competences of business ‘actors’ or resources of organisation. Actor’s neurostrategy-based judgement dynamics has extended from behaviourist approach to cognitive that focuses on processes prior to response. ‘Deciding to Decide’, ‘Preferring to Prefer’, ‘Deciding to Prefer’ and ‘Preferring to Decide’ are four ‘bordered boundaries’ where business actor has to arrive at an optimal neurostrategy-based judgement. Managers (‘Actors’) contract high uncertainty, ambiguity, time pressure and emotional stress. Neural mechanisms of neurostrategy-based judgement making require integration of evidence over time until a response threshold is reached. Cognito-management investigates neurostrategy-based judgement making by using ‘cognito-tactical monikers’ (CTM) to investigate how brain behaves in circuit of higher cognitive functions. This has transitioned from mapping confined effects to evolving extrapolative models that assimilate data scattered across brain structures. In a progressively complex management milieu, managers struggle between tactical arrangements and precise methods to gauge degree of accomplishment of predetermined goals. Neurostrategy-based judgement-oriented planning assists as ‘catalyst’ in terms of cognitive behaviours. There is need to understand neurobiological ‘drivers’ for investigating underlying neurocomputational formulation mechanisms of neurostrategy-based judgement processes that underlie neurostrategy-based judgement making. These are skills to meet new age challenges. In this, scope is to understand how managerial traits mapping divulge behavioural insight. The factual lateral lies on analysis of available verifiable, reliable and significant information, filtering and sieving of available information and accessing expressive information. This is supplemented by actions of neuron cells to further process interactive-oriented actions. Managers’ generally count on heuristics in an air of improbability. In real world, encountered with multifaceted choice circumstances, managerial judgements surface from complex, complicated, cognitively demanding and intertwined set of data and information. Perceptive procedures are principal ‘drivers’ to calculate diverse optimal alternatives to grasp a judgement. Skin owns power-driven chattels (‘skin conductance’) that transform on relatively short time gauge of minutes allied to psycho-neurostrategy-based judgemental techniques. As a representation for neural action, transdisciplinary ‘skin-conductance driver’ aid merger of all neurostrategy-based judgement-related aspects. This ‘driver’ noise for ‘agent-oriented’ sculpting and psycho-managerial investigation efforts. Imaging tools have motivated neuromanagerial ‘skin-conductance driver’ of internal order of neurostrategy-based judgement making. ‘Skin-conductance driver’ exhibits potential for fundamental changes in how ‘Smart Managers’ contemplate, perceive and archetype judgement. Through ‘skin-conductance driver’, skin absorbs data, recognises and edges problematical ‘business climate’ towards suitable responses. ‘Smart Managers’ decide on judgements that represent ‘conflicting principles’. Question is how ‘Smart Managers’ makes judgements in a climate of vicissitudes in skin conductance. How judgements are carried out in skin of ‘Smart Managers’? Curiosity is on possibilities, philosophies, behaviours and stratagems that ‘Smart Managers’ uses to make judgements. How do portions of ‘Smart Managers’ skin administer judgement crafting, synchronise and engross in tactical explanation while deciding? There are unsolved problems in ‘skin geometry’ where neuromanagement seeks to explain ‘behaviour shapes’ (coherent ‘skin geometry’) towards neurostrategy-based judgement crafting? This experimental paper aims at exploring prospects and challenges in significant role of ‘neuronics’ in prototyping managerial neurostrategy-based judgements. Points of focus are on driving ‘information-agents’ and ‘information-elements’. What neuronal-strategic choices underpin neurostrategy-based judgements? Does systemic analysis reveal neuronal factors that contribute to explain effective mapping of neurostrategy-based judgements? In a quasi-experiment, a set of Managers were chosen and subject to information based neurostrategy-based judgement mapping. Results indicate that ‘information-agents’ and ‘information-elements’ do have a positive influence on neurostrategy-based judgement edifice of neurostrategy-based judgement prototyping. This paper attempts to analyse approaches to behavioural thinking in neuroscientific philosophy of biology experiments. CTM techniques explain neural basis of neurostrategy-based judgement making and endeavours to reconnoiter ‘skin-geometry’ phenomenon to screen theoretic contexts and empirical methods for appreciating heterogeneity of neurostrategy-based judgement circuit. Objective is to screen theoretic and empirical contexts in neuro-dermatological ‘skin geometry’ framework of ‘neurostrategy-based judgement circuit’. Methodology includes data collection was via single-phase process. For clinical tests, one (01) volunteer respondent (single-subject; N = 01) was chosen. Purpose is to assess that ‘skin geometry’ have stimulus on managers’ choice. Focus is on comparing neuro-dermatological observations to replicate philosophy of biology in research. Results demonstrate indications for spontaneous counterfactual replication in province of high-level reasoning. Major finding is that manager attempts to address a neuro-dermatological circuit using ‘skin geometry’ medium. Paper discusses findings and future directions to guide biology in neurostrategy-based judgement neuroscience via neuronal apparatus. Research offers ‘Golden Anchorage’ of neuro-locking of skin and neurostrategy-based judgement making dynamics to appreciate how ‘Smart Managers’ make judgements to neurostrategy-based judgemental questions.

Antti Majakivi

The research focuses on identifying Bitcoin ecosystem factors and modeling a causal loop diagram of the complete ecosystem. Bitcoin is a complex social, economical and technical system and a brand. Defining Bitcoin is very hard or even impossible, as it is a peer-to-peer phenomenon without central authority or formal definition. System dynamics methods are used to create a causal loop diagram of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Semi-structured expert interviews are used to improve and validate the CLD model and to gain insight about what is Bitcoin, why and how it works and generally about factors related to Bitcoin. Results, in addition to the CLD model, show that Bitcoin is a complex phenomenon without definition and with loads of subjective opinions about what it really is.

Shreekanth M. Prabhu, K. N. Balasubramanya Murthy, Subramanyam Natarajan

The idea of Balanced Development is to ensure equitable distribution of necessities of life and creation of productive remunerative employment across society. Balanced development is a prerequisite for sustainable economic growth and shared prosperity. To facilitate this challenging task, we have proposed an Ontology-based Tantra Social Information Management Framework that can help set goals, design and evaluate interventions, define and monitor relevant metrics in an ongoing basis. Tantra Framework represents social information using ideas from Zachman Framework and concepts from Unified Foundational Ontology. Tantra Framework inter-operates with well-regarded models. Balanced Scorecard is used to define development objectives. Bartels’ Theory of Separations is used to identify barriers to access, consumption and profitable participation. Theory of Change process is used to arrive at right intervention. Distributed Ledgers are proposed to handle Change Management. A Social Information Management Process is proposed to keep the framework populated, complete and current. Tantra Framework can lead to broader Digital Governance Framework with strong cognizance of Social dimension. The paper explains how Tantra Framework can be used to realize Economic Development in Indian context.

Helen Toxopeus

The importance of transitioning to a sustainable economy - one which safeguards ecological life-support systems and provides equity within and between generations - has become increasingly urgent. A crucial ingredient of such a transition is sustainable innovation by new or existing enterprises, to develop business activities that realize both societal and financial value. However, obtaining finance for sustainable innovation is often a challenge due to both principal-agent and (double) externality problems. While society benefits from investments into sustainable innovation, the – financial and societal - return for individual financiers is highly insecure. 
\nThis dissertation explores how to enable finance for sustainable innovation, with a focus on banks and crowdfunding platforms. It makes use of two theoretical lenses. First, it studies how to overcome principal-agent problems through different lending technologies. Second, and more novel, it takes a collective action perspective to address the double externality problem embodied in sustainable innovation finance. This research fills a gap because there exist empirically well-defined mechanisms for solving collective action problems that have not yet been applied to the finance domain. Furthermore, the dynamics of collective action appear particularly relevant in the emergence of technologically driven, decentralized financial instruments like crowdfunding. 
\nThis dissertation draws conclusions regarding the role of relationships, cash flows and assets as enablers of sustainable innovation finance, as well as regarding motivations of crowdfunders to undertake such investments. It highlights the challenge of enabling sustainable innovation finance while guarding the quality of the investment decisions in line with the motivation of the financier.

Martina Z. Huber Kolpondinos

Stakeholder participation is a cornerstone of effective Requirements Engineering (RE). It supports the development and evolution of software systems so that they fit their intended purpose within their application domain. To enable successful stakeholder participation RE experts have created a broad variety of approaches for different circumstances and project phases. These approaches focus on traditionally dedicated software systems, which have closed and location-bound user groups. The stakeholders of these systems usually are members of the organizations that commission or build the system. Meanwhile, technological development has opened doors for ubiquitously deployed and openly available software systems. Stakeholders of these systems are rarely members of those organizations. Instead, they are so-called outside organizational reach and typically unknown to RE experts. Hence, in contrast to stakeholders of traditionally dedicated software systems, they can neither straightforwardly be identified nor be requested to participate in RE. Moreover, they are likely location-independent, numerous and highly heterogeneous. Current RE approaches do not suffice to address these challenges. Established RE approaches provide limited means to identify stake- holders outside organizational reach, let alone motivate them to voluntarily participate in RE. They also cannot support collaboration in distributed settings or on a large scale, yet, collaboration is known to be essential for the development of novel systems and in unknown domains. Feedback mechanisms and social network sites enable distributed and large-scale collaboration. However, their effectiveness is limited as they originally have no RE purpose and typically are restricted to their members. Latest RE approaches close this gap and also apply motivation strategies, which, however, are simplified, missing the high heterogeneity of stakeholders out- side organizational reach; thus, risking to demotivate them. This thesis presents the GARUSO (Game-based Requirements Elicitation) approach, a novel RE approach specifically designed for stakeholders outside organizational reach. It provides (1) a strategy to identify them and (2) a social media based platform that enables their collaborative participation in RE and applies gamification to motivate them to do so. The GARUSO platform is the core of the thesis. Its conceptual solution is inspired by the structure of user stories, the experiential learning theory, motivational psychology and game design. As a proof of concept, it was implemented to elicit and prioritize requirements and evaluated in a field study with promising results: The identified stakeholders build a highly heterogeneous crowd which participated - over a period of three months - in platform activities. They perceived the platform easy to understand, interesting to use and during their participation increased their knowledge on the application domain of the software system of interest.

Anamika Dey, Anil K. Gupta, Gurdeep Singh

No abstract is available for this record.

Torben Juul Andersen, Carina Antonia Hallin

Abstract Contemporary organizations with multinational business activities must strive to achieve strategic responsiveness to thrive and survive as they operate across a highly dynamic and complex global business environment. Here we emphasize the importance of combining the slow analytical strategy processes at headquarters with the fast autonomous responses taken by frontline agents in the subsidiaries in view of the changing conditions. New business developments are observed first in the fast activities around the multinational periphery where updated experiences from ongoing responses create useful insights that can be used strategically if management at headquarters is cognizant about its existence and able to collect this information. We introduce the notion of democratizing the strategic engagement of managers and employees at all levels and locations of the multinational corporation (MNC) as an essential leadership paradigm. The implied interaction between slow central analytical reasoning at headquarters and updated insights from fast decentralized initiatives in local subsidiaries constitutes an effective dynamic responsive mechanism. This dynamic interaction implies that critical strategic decisions made in the MNC must be informed by the diverse updated insights of managers and employees operating on the corporate frontlines tapping into the crowd wisdom readily available in and around the organization.

Kristoffer Nærland, Christoph Müller-Bloch, Roman Beck, Søren Palmund

Many decentralized, inter-organizational environments such as supply chains are characterized by high transactional uncertainty and risk. At the same time, blockchain technology promises to mitigate these issues by introducing certainty into economic transactions. This paper discusses the findings of a Design Science Research project involving the construction and evaluation of an information technology artifact in collaboration with Maersk, a leading international shipping company, where central documents in shipping, such as the Bill of Lading, are turned into a smart contract on blockchain. Based on our insights from the project, we provide first evidence for preliminary design principles for applications that aim to mitigate the transactional risk and uncertainty in decentralized environments using blockchain. Both the artifact and the first evidence for emerging design principles are novel, contributing to the discourse on the implications that the advent of blockchain technology poses for governing economic activity.

Tom Hagström, Tomas Backström

Decentralization is 1 way of mastering flexibility demands in postindustrial societies, increasing the need for employees’ autonomous work performance. Company cultures have been applied to integra ...

Erik de Waard, Henk Volberda, Joseph Soeters

Purpose – Crisis management entails among other things developing organizational systems that are capable of reacting to unpredictable and different types of crises. It also involves designing cohesive operational elements to deal with the local dynamics of an actual crisis situation. This challenge of responsiveness – where organizations simultaneously need to react to change demands of different task environments – has hardly been investigated in management theory. The purpose of this paper is to initiate to shed more light on this blind spot. Design/methodology/approach – Modular organizing and organizational sensing are introduced as key drivers of organizational responsiveness. Based on a large-scale survey among 1,200 senior officers the study investigates how these two variables have influenced the responsiveness of the Netherlands armed forces for crisis response deployment. Findings – The findings indicate that the level of modularization is an important facilitator of organizational responsiveness. Organizational systems that are made up of semi-autonomous work groups are in a better position to simultaneously live up to the change demands of different environmental levels than organizations that follow a fine-grained modularization approach. Originality/value – It uses the military crisis response organization as an exemplary case for project-based organzations in general to take advantage of.

Fred Powledge

Climate change—fears of it; predictions about it; proposed reactions to it; and in some cases, denials of it—is a momentous issue for humanity, and it promises to become even more important. However, despite its importance—and mountains of scientific research on the topic—real progress by those with the means to address climate change has been slow in coming. The warming climate, with its accompanying intense weather, rising seas, and wrenching changes in agriculture, human health, and ecosystems in general, is not a recent discovery. Scientists and policymakers have been talking about it for decades. Climate scientists have produced reams of information about the change that is upon us—some showing that the shift is well under way, some offering ideas about how to cope with it by mitigating its effects or by adapting to it. Scientists are starting to develop the tools necessary to discover links between global change and specific local events, such as floods and droughts. Much of the US-based research is directed at people who make political decisions: members of Congress, the president, state legislators, municipal officials. But whereas the flow of information from scientists has been copious, the response from policymakers, including those at the topmost positions in government, has been minuscule. Interest in preparing for climate change seems to have been superseded by concerns about the economy. But the problems of a changed climate march on (see National Research Council definitions box), and at some point, policymakers will have to deal with them. As far back as 1978, Congress passed the National Climate Program Act in response to a need “to assist in the understanding and response to natural and man-induced climate processes and their implications.” The legislation stated that “Congress finds and declares” that “an ability to anticipate natural and man-induced changes in climate would contribute to the soundness of policy decisions in the public and private sectors,” and that “the United States lacks a well-defined and coordinated program in climate-related research, monitoring, assessment of effects, and information utilization.” Today, after dozens of data-heavy reports on climate change, bolstered by the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the crisis remains unaddressed, in large part because the issue has become a partisan arguing point—increasingly so as a presidential election looms. In April 2011, the House of Representatives considered action stating that “Congress accepts the scientific findings… that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” The national legislators voted the proposition down 240 to 184, largely along party lines. Scientists who study climate change, then, are left with the following question: How do we communicate in a meaningful way with policymakers? Climate change, in the United States and elsewhere, covers most areas of the human experience. A report from the US National Research Council lists the following areas of concern: changes in the climate system; sea-level rise and its effects on the coastal environment; freshwater resources; ecosystems, ecosystem services, and biodiversity; agriculture and aquaculture; public health; cities and the “built environment”; transportation systems; energy systems; solar radiation management; national and human security; and climate policy. First of all, says Pamela A. Matson, an interdisciplinary earth scientist at Stanford University, scientists should not tell policymakers what to do. Matson chaired one of four expert panels charged by the US National Academies in 2009 with studying climate change and recommending responses to it. The panels—Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change, Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change, Informing an Effective Response to Climate Change, and Advancing the Science of Climate Change—each produced extensive reports. Together, these reports and a summary volume form a solid tutorial on the challenges facing the nation (see For more information). Matson headed the Advancing the Science of Climate Change panel. “We can't do much about politics,” said Matson in an interview, “other than to keep reminding people that there is a huge amount of evidence about climate change, its causes, and the risks associated with it. Decisionmakers of all sorts will need to decide if they want to take the risks and expose future generations to even greater risks, but scientists can do our best to provide the best and most clear information about those risks and uncertainties. We can also help by providing viable options for reducing those risks—options that make sense from social, economic, technical, and environmental perspectives. The Advancing report calls for more research designed to develop such options and thus support decisionmakers who want to respond to the risks of climate change by limiting it and adapting to it.” In practically all of the heavyweight studies of climate change, including those in the National Academies quartet, the panelists assumed that the federal government is the logical leader in climate policymaking, if only because climate does not respect local boundaries (or international ones either). But there are scant signs of leadership from federal officials, and there is active opposition to any climate action (or even the notion that climate change exists) among some national legislators. Progress at the federal level, says Peter Raven, cochair of the National Academies panel Informing Decisions and Actions, is missing. His panel recommended that the federal government create “comprehensive, robust, and credible information systems to inform climate choices and evaluate their effectiveness.” “My impression,” said Raven recently, “is that it hasn't happened. The United States is the only nation in the world where serious doubt is expressed about the scientific conclusion that the climate is warming rapidly and that human beings are the principal underlying factor. That kind of anti-intellectualism can only hurt as we try to maintain our standing in science and technology against some very stiff competition internationally.” Robert Fri, visiting scholar at Resources for the Future, chaired the Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change panel, which recommended “a framework of national goals and policies” to limit greenhouse gases. Asked about the report's reception, he replied, “Policy attention has been focused on the economy recently. Not much has happened on the climate front as a result.” So the search for leadership has turned elsewhere—to local, state, and regional governments and private organizations. Several states have undertaken serious studies of climate change problems, many of them as a result of gubernatorial executive orders issued a few years ago, when climate change was considered less controversial. Some went a step further and set up commissions to recommend legislative action. The results of those efforts have been mixed; the economic crisis has sapped much of the climate change energy of local, as well as national, politicians. Arizona's Policy on Climate Change, instituted on 2 February 2010, under Governor Jan Brewer, seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “while maintaining Arizona's economic growth and competitiveness.” Yet in the same executive order that established the policy, Brewer pulled her state out of a promising regional effort, the Western Climate Initiative, to limit the gases. The 15-member commission created by Brewer's executive order included representatives of electric power, manufacturing, and mining companies, but no scientists. Arctic sea ice reaches its annual minimum in September. The satellite images above show September Arctic sea ice in 1979 (upper panel), the first year these data were available, and in 2007 (lower panel). Source: US Global Change Research Program (www.globalchange.gov). For a free download of the National Academies 2009 expert panel reports and a summary volume, among other reports on climate, go to www.nap.edu. A 1990 law created the National Climate Assessment, which evaluates federal global research programs. The most recent assessment was in 2009; to see an outline of the forthcoming 2013 report, visit http://globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment. Information on climate research may be found through the US Global Change Research Program Web site, at http://globalchange.gov/. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change publishes the “Climate Change 101” series, available at www.pewclimate.org/globalwarming-basics/climate_change_101. For detailed state reports on plans and recommendations for adaptation, see Massachusetts's at www.mass.gov/eea/docs/eea/energy/cca/eea-climate-adaptation-report.pdf. For a critical look at America's willingness to adapt to climate change, see Robert Repetto's 2008 report for the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at http://environment.yale.edu/publication-series/climate_change/5790. The Colorado Climate Project created a blue-ribbon action panel in 2007 that, a year later, produced 70 recommendations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for the coming changes. The panel's efforts appear to have been received favorably by policymakers. Texas, beset by wildfires in 2011 that some experts linked to climate change, has no state adaptation plan, according to a survey by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Texas leads the states in carbon dioxide emissions. In Connecticut, the Governor's Steering Committee on Climate Change says that it is “working with stakeholders” and “assessing the impacts of climate change.” However, the committee's Web site devotes approximately half of its space to thanking the company that designed its logo. Massachusetts has made a more strenuous effort. In September 2011, the state sent a report to its legislature in which the expected impacts were analyzed and suggestions were made for reactions to them. The proof of the pudding in Massachusetts, as in the nation as a whole, lies in what happens after the recommendations go to the policymakers. In the Bay State, that would include the office of Frank I. Smizik, the chair of the House Committee on Climate Change. Smizik believes that climate change is going to affect “every corner of our lives,” is already creating problems, and is “one of the most complex and interrelated problems we face. And that makes it even more of a challenge to confront.” In an interview, the legislator praised the state's framework report both for its “long-term and far-reaching strategies” and for the “small, incremental improvements we can make at little or no cost. This aspect of the report makes the necessary task of climate adaptation seem more feasible.” Does this mean that Massachusetts's policymakers will rush to enact laws to deal with the well-documented menace? “Ideally, the need to adapt to climate change will be taken seriously, and these strategies will be swiftly transformed into reality in Massachusetts,” said Smizik. “Realistically, it won't be that easy. My job as the Chair of the House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change is to advocate for the strategies that I think are not only most effective but also the most politically feasible at this time. I could see some of the more short-term, cost-effective strategies making progress in the State House as legislative packages. Meanwhile, some strategies will be directly implemented by state agencies. “I feel these issues are very pressing and they warrant our immediate attention. But… the legislating and governing process takes time, with good reason. The release of this adaptation report is an important step for our state, but it's hard to say how quickly or slowly these adaptation measures will become law. The economic climate is such that legislators are very focused on job creation and the like, and environmental issues are often pushed to the back burner in this situation.” The state of Washington is another place where policymakers take climate change seriously. Hedia Adelsman is the director of the state's Department of Ecology. Her predecessor in that job was Christine Gregoire, who went on to become the state's attorney general and then governor. Adelsman credits Gregoire with helping move climate awareness into action. Also, the University of Washington produced an exhaustive examination of climate change and ways to react to it that has served as a vital resource for legislators and other policymakers. Within 50–100 years, 2400 miles of major roadway are projected to be inundated by sea-level rise in the Gulf Coast region. The map shows roadways at risk in the event of a sea-level rise of about 4 feet, which is within the range of projections for this region in this century under medium- and high-emissions scenarios. In total, 24 percent of interstate highway miles and 28 percent of secondary road miles in the Gulf Coast region are at elevations below 4 feet. Source: US Global Change Research Program (www.globalchange.gov). Even though Washington is more environmentally conscious than most other states, economic troubles have hampered action on the climate front. “The conversation is not as active as it used to be,” said Adelsman in an interview, “[for] a couple of reasons: One of them—no surprise—is all the budget problems that the state is facing. And when you talk about the impact of climate change, people really see it as in the future. And right now we have all these urgent problems facing us. Some of the impacts that would be due to climate change… people don't see as something that's happening now. They see it as happening a little bit more in the future. So they feel like they can get back to it later… But the communication continues. “It all depends on how you describe it,” she said. “If you are describing the problem as a water-availability issue—if we are going to face a major issue with water available for irrigation; for municipal, for our fish, the salmon—you get people to listen. If you talk about it as global warming, it's immediately, ‘go away.’ “It's kind of sad to not call it by what it is, but it's much easier to communicate with the public and with the policymaker if you put it in these terms.” Some, including the authors of the National Research Council's panel Advancing the Science of Climate Change, think that a likely source of federal leadership can come, with a few modifications, from an existing organization: the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which was created in 1989 as a presidential initiative by George H. W. Bush. USGCRP coordinates and integrates the global change work of 13 agencies, from the US Department of Agriculture to the US Department of Defense to the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Smithsonian Institution. Thomas Armstrong, of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is USGCRP's executive director. In an interview, he said that he certainly agreed with the panels' findings. “But the real challenge comes not when you recommend strategic changes but when you get down to the nuts and bolts of implementing programs.” One potential obstacle, he said, could come if 13 agencies, which together receive $2.8 billion in global change research funds, are asked not only to funnel their work through a single office—his—but are made to redirect their agencies' funding as well. “If we were to take this level of enterprise and now say that it is no longer just coordinated but actually run out of my office, with all the resources coming to my office, that would be a big change in our collective way of doing to say the said is the 13 agencies, and the 13 are The of 13 them and a of leadership of this I would be that in their we would be the and of 13 federal who their research and to 13 agencies' In we would be the USGCRP out of what makes this program so the Science in climate information to policymakers. one is the climate change who can of all science in the of some is the of of scientific which scientists by their as does the in of such as very out of out of very than out of and so deal with communication such as these and many there has a of or for a can be government agencies, such as the that produced the state action or state such as Hedia in and federal such as the USGCRP they can be such as the regional Climate Science that were established in 2009 by the US Department of the The are by the US and by one or more significant of communication is by private and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which has been to and information on climate Climate an of and a for natural systems in the face of climate change.” The which a large of for for adaptation, dozens of studies from The appear to be some in scientific information into the of those who already want to it in their program director at the Climate for the part of a regional program run by the National and says that it that are more with decisionmakers much to the in of decisions that may be to scientific for something more to We certainly people who are out scientific information to make decisions that help them deal with of these decisions to the that has the region for years and are vital to policymakers who deal with water does a of its when public and private including a to a are also for scientific about adaptation and a then, is on the that climate change is important. are who for one or climate or climate change as something they really need to more about into their it's because a to attention to of the US Department of the have been under orders now to make climate change part of their it's because an like their is to the impacts of climate, and they want to more so they can to address this it's because an or government has a climate impact that them into The is an of as is in the United States and for how are projected to become more A so that it is years would other year or more by the of the century under the Source: US Global Change Research Program (www.globalchange.gov). But on many other the science of climate change has a much was one of states that active in the issue of climate change State and a the on Global Climate Change and it with the problems of global warming, as well as with into ways to the and with the potential of carbon The commission for years and up with the of that time, the legislature to the commission to its State who was cochair of the now says that the effort. in the way of the scientific evidence and any for doing about a she said in an “We a from the with the of so They all up and to recommend of We a very large and it was so it was to Even with she said, that make it out of her at the As the climate that are to Source: US Global Change Research Program (www.globalchange.gov). says that opposition to progress from and such as the and who of the US are major of and “It was she said. “I could get an passed that that our state the impact of climate change and make recommendations as to policy changes and other even any to deal with I that we would be that climate change is an issue in will see little to no to address climate change the leadership is in This is we are the most in the to sea-level she said. In the state is for and has also and said, “We are one of the of greenhouse at in the than many that the state has to a of and has its carbon The for those measures was For climate change legislation to on its she said, “I we will need federal

Cristiano Castelfranchi

This chapter presents organizations as a macro-micro notion and device; they presuppose autonomous proactive entities (agents) playing the organizational roles. Agents may have their own powers, goals, relationships (of dependence, trust, etc.). This opens important issues to be discussed: Does cooperation require mentally shared plans? Which is the relationship between individual powers and role powers; personal dependencies and role dependencies; personal goals and assigned goals; personal beliefs and what we have to assume when playing our role; individual actions and organizational actions? What about possible conflicts, deviations, power abuse, given the agents’ autonomy? MultiAgentSystems discipline should both aim at scientifically modeling human organizations, and at designing effective artificial organizations. Our claim is that for both those aims, one should model a high (risky) degree of flexibility, exploiting autonomy and pro-activity, intelligence and decentralized knowledge of roleplayers, allowing for functional violations of requests and even of rules.Request access from your librarian to read this chapter's full text.

Hans‐Peter Brunner

No abstract is available for this record.

Hartmut Brandt, Uwe Otzen

When the case is put here for the decentralization of government, it should be remembered that this approach has not only assumed considerable importance in theory and practice throughout the world, but is also repeatedly adopted for specific areas of development policy. In some newly industrializing countries too there has already been a change of direction, with major strides being taken towards decentralization (as in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Mexico). A question that has yet to be analysed, on the other hand, is why decentralization has not been consistently and comprehensively sought or achieved for rural development in more than a few instances. Regardless of whether, in the end, a decentralization option in comprehensive or weakened form is pursued (see Chapter 13), it is true to say that realistic problem-solving approaches will be possible only if the following requirements are progressively satisfied in development cooperation: 1 The focusing of government, the business community and society on key areas of development policy, according to whether public tasks or tasks of civil society are concerned; 2 The sequencing of development steps, with clear priorities set; 3 The jettisoning of development cooperation ballast from previous develop- ment decades; 4 The pooling of human and financial resources and the setting of develop- ment policy priorities, combined with new forms of technical support and development financing; and 5 Donor coordination and the creation of opportunities for an international division of labour in development cooperation.

Kenneth E. Kendall, Barbara A. Schuldt

No abstract is available for this record.

Daniel D. Corkill, Victor Lesser

Distributed problem solving networks provide an interesting application area for meta-level control through the use of organizational structuring. We describe a decentralized approach to network coordination that relies on each node making sophisticated local decisions that balance its own perceptions of appropriate problem solving activity with activities deemed important by other nodes. Each node is guided by a high-level strategic plan, which is a form of meta-level control, is represented as a network organizational structure that specifies in a general way the information and control relationships among the nodes. An implementation of these ideas is briefly described along with the results of preliminary experiments with various network problem solving strategies specified via organizational structuring. In addition to its application to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, this research has implications for organizing and controlling complex knowledge-based systems that involve semi-autonomous problem solving agents.