Unlike manufacturing processes, knowledge-intensive projects are often iterative, stochastic, and collaborative. In this paper, we study how contractual arrangements affect the work dynamics between a vendor and a client in finite-deadline collaborative projects. We consider a project that has...

In this paper, we analyze the contracting issues that arise in collaborative services, such as consulting, financial planning, and IT outsourcing. In particular, we investigate how the choice of contract type, among fixed-fee, time-and-materials, and performance-based contracts, is driven by the...

In some strategic alliances, a firm shares its manufacturing capacity with another, and the latter shares its distribution capacity with the former. Even though such bidirectional alliances have become common, they remain challenging to manage due to the frequent disputes over capacity...

We study the problem of the manager of a project consisting of two sub-projects or tasks which are outsourced to different subcontractors. The project manager earns more revenue from the project if it is completed faster, but he cannot observe how hard subcontractors work, only the stochastic...