Firm boundaries have been the subject of much scholarly interest in recent years, as firms increasingly hire external, "contingent" workers and outsource previously core activities. However, little empirical research has directly studied what happens differently inside the firm's boundaries, versus…

This report elucidates the linguistic representation of temporal relations among events. This involves examining sentences that contain two clauses connected by words like once, by the time, when, and before. Specifically, the effect of the tenses of the connected clauses…

In recent years, researchers in artificial intelligence have become interested in replicating human physical reasoning talents in computers. One of the most important skills in this area is predicting how physical systems will behave. This thesis discusses an implemented program…

This paper presents a knowledge-based approach to
reducing impediments to collaboration in a
distributed environment. A major impediment to
such collaboration is the issue of communications -
clearly and efficiently expressing the desires of every
stakeholder in the process, as…

One important purpose for creating clinical practice guidelines is to improve quality of care by reducing variations in practice. In the current healthcare environment, guidelines are being advocated as a means to disseminate research findings, standardize care, improve quality of…

This paper demonstrates the importance of knowledge for effective
management of outsourcing. Drawing on an empirical study on automakers?
management of supplier involvement in product development in Japan, this paper shows
that the level of own knowledge is critical for…

We have developed a method and prototype program for assisting two experts in their attempts to construct a single, consensus knowledge base. We show that consensus building can be effectively facilitated by a debugging approach that identifies, explains, and resolves…

(cont.) as well, firms have an incentive to require coordinated investments in technology across the enterprise. Still, research in IS has also highlighted the fact that the productivity of computer investments is highly dependent on co-investment in complementary assets (for…

The decline in Pharmaceutical R&D productivity has been attributed to high clinical failure rates suggesting that targets, leads and clinical candidates may be of lower quality in recent years. Senior R&D management generally believes that a greater integration of drug…

This thesis analyzes how the Auto-ID technology and information infrastructure will change the management and distribution of pharmaceutical products within the health care industry by enabling item level product traceability functionality. The complexity of the health care industry is steadily…