In online outsourcing platforms where clients (buyers) can procure diverse services from freelancers (service providers), skill certification systems are usually offered for freelancers to signal ...their private service expertise. This study considers a multi-stage online outsourcing context where the freelancers may participate in skill certification before bidding for a client's service contract in a buyer-determined reverse auction. The paper examines the interactions of the freelancers' certification, bidding, and service effort decisions with the client's design and award of the outsourcing contract, and it highlights the impacts of the certification system on the transaction parties' decision results. Moreover, the paper also investigates the platform's adoption and optimization decisions towards the certification system. The results show that freelancers would participate in certification, if and only if their expertise exceeds a threshold that is decreasing in both the transaction efficiency (which decreases in the commission rates charged by the platform) and certification informativeness. The client should set a smaller project scope and a lower penalty for low-quality delivery when the certification informativeness is higher or the transaction efficiency is lower. Both the client and the freelancers are more likely to benefit from the certification system when the certification informativeness or transaction efficiency is higher, or when the certification cost is lower. For the platform, the certification system is valuable, and its value is increasing in the certification informativeness. The platform can optimize the commission rates such that the resulting transaction efficiency is decreasing in the certification informativeness and increasing in the certification cost.
Terceirizacao: um conceito in contexto Firmo, Fernando
Interseções : revista de estudos interdisciplinares,
06/2012, Letnik:
14, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The world of work in general and outsourcing in particular will be the focus of this article. I intend to unfold different viewpoints and considerations to contextualize the concept of outsourcing ...taking into account two distinct groups of workers (regular employees and outsourced employees) of the former itabira Special Steels Company (Companhia de Acos Especiais itabira), ACESUTA, nowadays known as Aperam, whose plant is located in the city of Timoteo, Minas Gerais State. 0 mundo do trabalho, especialmente, a terceirizacao, sera o foco do presente artigo. A partir de dois grupos operarios (funcionarios do quadro fixo e funcionarios terceirizados) da antiga companhia de Acos Especiais Itabira, ACESITA, atual Aperam, cuja planta industrial esta localizada na cidade de Timoteo-MG, explicito distintos pontos de vistas e consideracoes para contextualizar o conceito de terceirizacao. Palavras-chave Trabalho. Terceirizacao. Acesita. Etnografia. Keywords Work. Outsourcing. Acesita. Ethnography.
Terceirizacao: um conceito in contexto Firmo, Fernando
Interseções : revista de estudos interdisciplinares,
06/2012, Letnik:
14, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The world of work in general and outsourcing in particular will be the focus of this article. I intend to unfold different viewpoints and considerations to contextualize the concept of outsourcing ...taking into account two distinct groups of workers (regular employees and outsourced employees) of the former itabira Special Steels Company (Companhia de Acos Especiais itabira), ACESUTA, nowadays known as Aperam, whose plant is located in the city of Timoteo, Minas Gerais State.
Obtaining timely and accurate traffic information is one of the most important problems in intelligent transportation system, which will make vehicles run smoothly, avoid road congestion, save road ...running time and reduce vehicle energy consumption. In the current Internet of Vehicles system, the traffic management center can learn from the feedback information of all vehicles to improve the ability of decision-making and traffic command. However, the existing feedback mechanism does not respond to the spatial-temporal characteristics of data in time, due to the lack of communication capability of the current equipment. So, it cannot meet the requirements of ultra-low delay, high reliability and high security in the Internet of Vehicles. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a blockchain-based proxy vote and revocation scheme for decision feedback in Internet of Vehicles, which allows the intelligent system to ignore the unevenness and heterogeneity in the 6G technology. In addition, blockchain technology notarizes the vote data of vehicles and outsources microservices. Secondly, we use the attributes of decision-related nodes instead of their identities to enable anonymous vote. Smart contracts can automatically expand the scalability of outsourced microservices. Finally, the security proof of the proposed scheme ensures the security and consistency of outsourced microservices. The simulation results also show that our scheme greatly improves the efficiency of voting feedback.
The H-1B program allows firms in the United States to temporarily hire high-skilled foreign citizens. The government restricts inflows of new H-1B workers and therefore creates potential rents ...typical of a quota. Importantly, however, the US allocates H-1B status by random lottery. We develop a theoretical model demonstrating that this lottery creates a negative externality that destroys quota rents by incentivizing firms to search for more workers than can actually be hired. Some firms specialize in hiring foreign labor and contracting out those workers’ services to third-party sites. These outsourcing firms exacerbate the search externality. Numerical exercises suggest that these processes result in an annual economic loss exceeding $10,000 per new H-1B worker hired relative to what would occur in the absence of lottery allocation.
•The US allocates H-1B status to skilled foreign workers through a lottery.•This lottery destroys quota rents and generates labor search cost externalities.•Domestic outsourcing specialists exacerbate these losses.•Compared to alternative allocation, lottery costs exceed $10,000 per H-1B hired.
The continued growth of logistics outsourcing and dependence on third-party logistics (3PL) providers highlights the need for firms to strategically consider their dependence on their supply chain. ...We draw on resource dependency theory to propose guanxi (a cultural tradition in China of interpersonal connections that facilitate a mutual exchange of favors) as a dependency-coping strategy. Integrating transaction cost economics, we propose the effectiveness of guanxi as a dependence coping strategy is contingent on the level of exchange hazards (i.e., uncertainty and asset specificity) in logistics outsourcing. Based on data collected from 149 3PL users in China, we found that guanxi is a more potent strategy in highly uncertain environments and less relevant when extensive relationship-specific assets are involved. Implications and directions of future research are discussed.
•We study the manufacturing and procurement outsourcing strategies of two competing OEMs.•We investigate the impacts of component discount rate and fixed manufacturing investment cost.•Our analysis ...reveals the strategic interplay between manufacturing outsourcing and procurement outsourcing.•A deeper supplier discount and a larger market potential may hurt the OEMs and CM.
To cope with market competition and focus on core competence, many Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) choose to outsource their product manufacturing and/or component procurement functions to Contract Manufactures (CMs). In this paper, we aim to investigate the strategic interplay between manufacturing outsourcing and procurement outsourcing in a three-tier supply chain consisting of one component supplier, one common CM, and two competing OEMs. Each OEM has four outsourcing strategies: no outsourcing, “manufacturing-only” outsourcing, “procurement-only” outsourcing, and “manufacturing + procurement” outsourcing. We build a two-stage game model, where two OEMs simultaneously choose their outsourcing strategies in the first stage; in the second stage, the CM and two OEMs make wholesale prices and quantity decisions based on the outsourcing structure formed in the first stage. We find that OEMs’ equilibrium outsourcing strategies depend on the discount rate of component price and the fixed investment cost of manufacturing. Our analysis also reveals the strategic relationship between manufacturing outsourcing and procurement outsourcing: OEMs would not outsource procurement until the product manufacturing is outsourced. Moreover, there may exist Prisoners’ Dilemma, where both OEMs earn higher profits when they choose “manufacturing + procurement” outsourcing, but neither OEM is willing to outsource procurement. Interestingly, we show that OEMs’ and CM’s profits may decrease with the discount rate and market potential, but increase in the fixed investment cost.
Maximizing returns on software development costs have been a prime objective of product organizations. As the products mature, the organization explores alternatives to extend an existing product's ...life or retire it from its product portfolio. This article examines the changing trends of the outsourcing model for software product organizations based on a product's lifecycle and technology maturity. Adopting an ethnographic action research methodology, we study the journey of a software product's (re)aligning outsourcing strategy while evolving a parallel strategy for retiring products by either shifting focus from fixed to variable costs or monetizing them as "software assets." As part of the conclusion, a software life-extending outsourcing model has been proposed based on the specific phase of product development and technology maturity. The article includes research implications for practice and academia in strategizing outsourcing based on a product's development phase.
Secret Image Sharing (SIS) is the technology that shares any given secret image by generating and distributing n shadow images in the way that any subset of k shadow images can restore the secret ...image. However, in the existing SIS schemes, the shadow images will be easily tampered and corrupted during the communication, which will pose serious security issues. Recently, blockchain has emerged as a promising paradigm in the field of data communication and information security. To securely communicate and effectively protect the secret image data in wireless networks, we propose a Blockchain-based Secure and Efficient Secret Image Sharing (BC-SESIS) scheme with outsourcing computation in wireless networks. In the proposed BC-SESIS scheme, the shadow images are encrypted and stored in the blockchain to prevent them from being tampered and corrupted. The identity authentication-enabled smart contract is deployed to achieve the ( k, n ) threshold for secret image restoring. Furthermore, to reduce the computational burden of smart contract and users, an efficient outsourcing computation method is designed to outsource the restoring task, which is securely implemented by agent miners in the encryption domain. Theoretical analysis and extensive experiments demonstrate that the BC-SESIS scheme can achieve desirable communication security and high computational efficiency in the wireless networks.
