EXTENSIONS TO THE THEORY OF MARKETS AND PRIVACY: MECHANICS OF PRICING INFORMATION

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

CIO's Beware: Very Large Scale Systems Projects

Very-Large Scale Systems (VLSS) play a powerful role in shaping what an organization does and can do in a practical sense. VLSS are deeply embedded in an organization's procedures, business plans, and strategies. These systems evolve over long periods of time, often not according to some rational plan, and for a limited time they provide a significant competitive advantage over other firms. In the long run, however, VLSS become strategic liabilities and must be rebuilt. Many organizations experience great difficulty rebuilding VLSS. Indeed, most organizations attempt to avoid rebuilding VLSS until the last possible moment. Often, the organization is in a state of crisis, a strategic transition. Because of the complexity and size of VLSS, existing methodologies often are not helpful. To make matters worse, the typical management incentive structure discourages rebuilding VLSS. In a typical VLSS effort, participants soon discover that they must rebuild the organization in order to take full advantage of new technologies. A major organizational engineering effort is often required. Senior management as well as systems management routinely underestimate the complexity of the task before them. Consequently, large errors are made in estimating costs and time. Drawing on research in both the private and public sector, this paper examines why VLSS fail, why are VLSS so difficult to rebuild, what are the strategy options, and how can senior management guide the rebuilding process.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

THE WIRED SOCIETY: PROMISE AND PERFORMANCE

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

A Prolegomenon to Information Technology Ethics

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Impact of changing DOC concentrations on the potential distribution of acid sensitive biota in a boreal stream network

DOC concentrations have increased in many surface waters in Europe and North America over the past few decades. As DOC exudes a strong influence on pH this DOC increase could have detrimental effects on acid sensitive biota in many streams and lakes. To investigate the potential implications of changes in the DOC concentration on stream water biota, we have used a mesoscale boreal stream network in northern Sweden as a case study. The network was sampled for stream water chemistry at 60 locations during both winter base flow and spring flood periods, representing the extremes experienced annually in these streams both in terms of discharge and acidity. The effect of changing DOC on pH was modeled for all sampling locations using an organic acid model, with input DOC concentrations for different scenarios adjusted by between −30% and +50% from measured present concentrations. The resulting effect on pH was then used to quantify the proportion of stream length in the catchment with pH below the acid thresholds of pH 5.5 and pH 5.0. The results suggest that a change in stream water DOC during base flow would have only a limited effect on pH and hence on the stream length with pH below the acid thresholds. During the spring flood on the other hand a change in DOC would strongly influence pH and the stream length with pH below the acid thresholds. For example an increase in DOC concentration of 30% at all sites would increase the proportion of stream length with pH below 5.5 from 37% to 65%, and the proportion of stream length with pH below 5.0 would increase from 18% to 27%. The results suggest that in high DOC waters, even a marginal change in the DOC concentration could impact acid sensitive biota in a large portion of the aquatic landscape

CIO's Beware: Very Large Scale Systems Projects

Very Large Scale Systems (VLSS) play a powerful role in shaping what an organization does and can do in a practical sense. VLSS are deeply embedded in the organizational procedures, business plans, and strategies. These systems evolve over long periods of time, often not according to some rational plan, and for a limited time they provide a significant competitive advantage over other firms. In the long run, however, VLSS become strategic liabilities and must be rebuilt. Many organizations experience great difficulty rebuilding VLSS . Indeed, most organizations attempt to avoid rebuilding VLSS until the last possible moment. Often, the organization is in a state of crisis, a strategic transition. Because of the complexity and size of VLSS, existing methodologies often are not helpful. To make matters worse, the typical management incentive structure discourages rebuilding VLSS. In a typical VLSS effort, participants soon discover that they must rebuild the organization in order to take full advantage of new technologies. A major organizational engineering effort is often required. Senior management as well as systems management routinely underestimate the complexity of the task before them. Consequently, large errors are made in estimating costs and time. Drawing on research in both the private and public sector, this paper examines why VLSS fail, why are VLSS so difficult to rebuild, what are the strategy options, and how can senior management guide the rebuilding process.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

The essential value of long-term experimental data for hydrology and water management

We would like to thank the European Research Council ERC for funding the VeWa project and most of Tetzlaff's time (project GA 335910 VeWa). No data were used in producing this manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Using isotopes to constrain water flux and age estimates in snow-influenced catchments using the STARR (Spatially distributed Tracer-Aided Rainfall-Runoff) model

Acknowledgements. This work was funded by the NERC/JPI SIWA project (NE/M019896/1) and the European Research Council ERC (project GA 335910 VeWa). Numerical simulations were performed using the Maxwell High Performance Computing Cluster of the University of Aberdeen IT Service, provided by Dell Inc. and supported by Alces Software. The isotope work in Krycklan is funded by the KAW Branch-Point project together with SKB and SITES. We would like to thank Marjolein van Hui- jgevoort for her help with the STARR code, and Masaki Hayashi and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions that significantly improved the paper. The Supplement related to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-5089-2017-supplement.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, INVESTMENT IN IT, AND PRODUCTIVITY

Previous literature on IT and productivity does not take into account different organizational goals and different management strategies for achieving these goals. But productivity and ROI relationships can easily differ as organizational goals and management strategies differ. Therefore, we argue, it is no longer appropriate to ask, "Does IT lead to productivity enhancement." or "Is the ROI on IT investments large or small or nonexistent? The better question is under what conditions of organizational climate and management choice does IT enhanced productivity result. To illustrate the powerful effect of organizational goals and management strategy on IT-productivity relationships, we examine the twenty year history of two of the largest IT users in the world: the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration. And we find that these two very similar agencies experienced very different results from massive investments in IT despite sharing a similar production function. There is nothing in micro economics however to explain the different strategies pursed by these managers. Instead we must turn to political and sociological models of organizations to understand the social construction of productivity results.Information Systems Working Papers Serie