Browsing by Subject "Information technology--Management"
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Item The economics and technology of delivering quality of service over the Internet(2002-08) Dai, Rui; Whinston, Andrew B.; Stahl, Dale O.With the rapid growth of the Internet-based businesses and applications that heavily depend on large multimedia contents, the quality of connection to the Internet and the size of available bandwidth have become primary concerns for network operators, ISPs, web site owners, web based application service providers (ASPs), e-business companies, and consumers. The fundamental design of the Internet, however, provides "best-effort" service for all users. What quality of service (QoS) levels to provide and how to allocate traffic among the levels is an urgent research topic and is critical for the continued development of online businesses and the digital economy. This study focuses on the operationalization issues of differentiated service (Diffserv), which has been recently proposed by computer scientists and engineers aimed at creating the capacity for user-selectable multiple QoS levels through out the Internet. Although Diffserv provides the technical means to differentiate Internet traffic, many economic problems are left unanswered. My dissertation examines several mechanism and policy design issues through economic analysis and computer simulation. The first part of this dissertation attempts to analyze resource allocation issues in Diffserv. It reviews several currently proposed frameworks, including Paris Metro Pricing (PMP) and leaky-token bucket contracts, and points out the inefficiency introduced by these frameworks with rigorous mathematical analysis. Then this research takes a system-wide optimization approach and finds usagebased pricing is the most efficient pricing scheme. In order to assess the magnitude of comparative difference among different pricing mechanisms, numerical solutions to specific examples are given in the dissertation. Finally, I use simulation to setup a more realistic network environment and study the implementation issues related to the proposed pricing scheme.Item Profiles of IT payoff success : an IT capabilities and business environments perspective(2006-05) Lee, Daniel Hae-dong, 1970-; Barua, Anitesh; Tanriverdi, HüseyinBusiness value of information technology (IT) continues to be an enduring topic of importance to business leaders and academic scholars alike. Previous studies have shown that IT does make a positive contribution with regard to firm performance when IT investment is well-implemented and accompanied by complementary investments. In addition, several scholars have reported, albeit not directly and without much explanation, that business value gains differ rather significantly across industry boundaries and over different business environments. This paper, therefore, focuses on the question of “under what conditions do investments in IT generate above normal strategic gains or financial returns?” and examines the effects of business environmental factors on IT payoff. Grounded in resource-based view (RBV) and coalignment theory, three business environment characteristics--competitive pressure, environmental dynamism and IT intensity (i.e., $IT as a percent of total expenses)--are identified as potential moderating factors on the linkage between firm performance and different types of IT capabilities, namely, IT that automates, IT that informates and IT that transforms. I employ the case study method to conduct a preliminary investigation and develop testable hypotheses. With the IT announcement event study data from 1981- 1995 and business environments data from archival and secondary sources such as US Industrial Outlook and US Economic Census, I test proposed hypotheses using multivariate regression techniques. I find that environmental dynamism negatively moderates the linkage between IT capabilities and firm performance (i.e., cumulative abnormal return (CAR)), while competitive pressure and IT intensity positively moderate this linkage. In other words, when environmental dynamism is high, above normal financial returns associated with IT that transforms are shown to be dampened. For academic scholars, this study will enrich coalignment theory by specifically identifying optimal combinations of different types of IT and business environments. This study will help business managers and CIOs to make informed decisions regarding the right types of IT investments in a given business environment. The study concludes with discussions of its research contributions and implications of the study.