Specialization at work has been recognized as a key driver of learning and productivity since the days of Adam Smith. More recently, researchers have noted that exposure to task variety can enhance learning. We examine how exposure to specialization and variety jointly drive employee...

We model the effects of alternative coordination structures on the performance of a firm that faces uncertain demand in multiple horizontal markets. The firm's coordination structure is jointly determined by its decision-rights structure and by its information structure. We compare the...

In an era of revolutionary new developments in basic information technology, innovation in its employment among organizations is increasingly crucial to competitive survival and success. The Information Systems (IS) unit within the business is largely responsible for meeting this challenge. Yet,...

The interplay between organizational structure, the decisions made by agents within the structure, and the technology supporting those agents is an important and complex, but not well understood, phenomenon in modern organizational studies. In this paper we describe how simulating key aspects of...

Performance information systems minimally consist of a performance standard, performance measurement, incentives to match performance to the standard, and periodic reports on performance. In this study four performance information systems are imposed on laboratory groups solving simple routine...

This paper investigates the incentives for cooperation in market surveys among competitive firms. The analysis relies on a game theoretic model. The main conclusion is that the value of information in a competitive market exhibits a sharp decrease as the number of firms that share the...

This paper is concerned with organizational information systems. Examples of such systems include intelligence systems, communications systems, management information systems, decision support systems, and administrative control systems. Systems such as these are critical to an organization's...

This paper presents an introductory survey for this special issue of Management Science on electronic markets. We acquaint the reader with some fundamental concepts in the study of electronic market mechanisms, while simultaneously presenting a survey and summary of the essential literature in...

Many of the concepts and procedures of product quality control can be applied to the problem of producing better quality information outputs. From this perspective, information outputs can be viewed as information products, and many information systems can be modeled as information manufacturing...

The concept of "participative systems design" should be as applicable to strategic management decision support systems as it is generally believed to be to lower-level systems. This study tests hypotheses concerning participative design using data describing the participation and performance of...