Electronic Commerce Research Research Articles

Special Section: Electronic Commerce Architectures: Chains, Networks, and Communities

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsPaula M.C. SwatmanPAULA M.C. SWATMAN is Associate Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Information Systems at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include electronic commerce, interorganizational information systems, and business reengineering. She is Director of the Electronic Commerce Research Group within the department, where she is also currently Acting Head, as well as a foundation Director of the inter-university electronic commerce research group CollECTeR. She is presently continuing research into the nature and genesis of electronic commerce, EDI evaluation, EC education, and Efficient Consumer Response. From January 1998, Dr. Swatman will be Professor of Information Technology and Dean of the School of Information Technology at Bond University on Queensland’s Gold Coast. She received her B.Ec. from LaTrobe University in Melbourne and her P.G.Dip. Bus. (BusSys) and Ph.D. from Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia.

Apathy: a neuropsychiatric syndrome

Traditionally, apathy has been viewed as a symptom indicating loss of interest or emotions. This paper evaluates evidence that neuropsychiatric disorders also produce a syndrome of apathy. Both the symptom and the syndrome of apathy are of conceptual interest because they signify loss of motivation. An apathy syndrome is defined as a syndrome of primary motivational loss, that is, loss of motivation not attributable to emotional distress, intellectual impairment, or diminished level of consciousness. Loss of motivation due to disturbance of intellect, emotion, or level of consciousness defines the symptom of apathy. Neuropsychiatric literature dealing with apathy is reviewed within the framework of three approaches to defining the concept of a syndrome. Clinical and investigative approaches for evaluating apathy when it occurs in association with other syndromes are described.

Bounded Rationality and Organizational Learning

Abstract : If organization theory finds it useful to draw upon some of the ideas that have emerged in cognitive psychology, it will be advantageous to borrow also the terminology used in discussing these ideas. Without working toward a higher level of consistency in terminology than prevails in organization theory today, it will be difficult or impossible to cumulate and assemble into a coherent structure the knowledge we are gaining from individual case studies and experiments. We will be continually reinventing wheels. That is a luxury we cannot afford. The happy band of researchers on organization theory is sufficiently small to be kept fully occupied discovering and verifying the theory just once. (Author) (kr)

Auctioning Incentive Contracts

This paper draws a remarkably simple bridge between auction theory and incentive theory. It considers the auctioning of an indivisible project among several fi rms. The firms have private information about their future cost at th e bidding stage, and the selected firm ex post invests in cost reduct ion. The authors show that (1) the optimal auction can be implemented by a dominant strategy auction that uses information about both the first bid and the second bid; (2) the winner faces a (linear) incenti ve contract; (3) the fixed transfer to the winner decreases with his announced expected cost and increases with the second lowest announce d expected cost; and (4) the share of cost overruns borne by the winn er decreases with the winner's announced expected cost. Copyright 1987 by University of Chicago Press.

Bank Interchange of Transactional Paper: Legal and Economic Perspectives

Bank Interchange of Transactional Paper: Legal and Economic Perspectives

The Structure of Ownership and the Theory of the Firm

The separation of ownership from control produces a condition where the interests of owner and of ultimate manager may, and often do, diverge, and where many of the checks which formerly operated to limit the use of power disappear.... In creating these new relationships, the quasi-public corporation may fairly be said to work a revolution. It ... has divided ownership into nominal ownership and the power formerly joined to it. Thereby the corporation has changed the nature of profit-seeking enterprise.1

Networks and Places: Social Relations in the Urban Setting.Claude S. Fischer , Robert Max Jackson , C. Ann Stueve , Kathleen Gerson , Lynne McCallister Jones , Mark Baldassare

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsNetworks and Places: Social Relations in the Urban Setting. Claude S. Fischer , Robert Max Jackson , C. Ann Stueve , Kathleen Gerson , Lynne McCallister Jones , Mark Baldassare Noah FriedkinNoah Friedkin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 87, Number 3Nov., 1981 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/227520 Views: 12Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1981 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Qiang Zhang, Ji Wu, J. Leon ZHAO, Liang Liang The antecedents and consequences of social interactions in firm-sponsored community: a social network perspective, Electronic Commerce Research 28 (Aug 2022).https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-022-09586-0

Advertising as Information

This paper tries to show how the major features of the behavior of advertising can be explained by advertising's information function. For search qualities advertising provides direct information about the characteristics of a brand. For experience qualities the most important information conveyed by advertising is simply that the brand advertises. This contrast in advertising by these qualities leads to significant differences in its behavior. How does advertising provide information to the consumer? The producer in his advertising is not interested directly in providing information for consumers. He is interested in selling more of his product. Subject to a few constraints, the advertising message says anything the seller of a brand wishes. A mechanism is required to make the selling job of advertising generate information to the consumer. [Авторский текст]

Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory

A modification of economic analysis to incorporate incomplete information and uncertain foresight as axioms is suggested here. This approach dispenses with “profit maximization”; and it does not rely on the predictable, individual behavior that is usually assumed, as a first approximation, in standard textbook treatments. Despite these changes, the analytical concepts usually associated with such behavior are retained because they are not dependent upon such motivation or foresight. The suggested approach embodies the principles of biological evolution and natural selection by interpreting the economic system as an adoptive mechanism which chooses among exploratory actions generated by the adaptive pursuit of “success” or “profit.” The resulting analysis is applicable to actions usually regarded as aberrations from standard economic behavior as well as to behavior covered by the customary analysis. This wider applicability and the removal of the unrealistic postulates of accurate anticipations and fixed states of knowledge have provided motivation for the study.