This study aims to contribute to the literature on IT outsourcing governance by advancing our understanding of mechanisms of substitution and complementarity between formal and relational governance. ...Our study illustrates certain conditions under which substitution and complementarity can occur and depicts a two‐way causal relationship between them. Our examination further provides a more in‐depth assessment of relational governance by using the concept of the psychological contract. Our results demonstrate that the psychologically binding nature of the psychological contract makes it a particularly forceful substitute to formal governance, while its associations with other relationship aspects make it a forceful complement.
This article presents a comprehensive methodology for the selection of a logistic service provider. The proposed methodology consists of two parts: (i) preliminary screening of the available ...providers, and (ii) analytic network process (ANP)-based final selection. The criteria, which are relevant in the selection of a provider, have been identified and used to construct an ANP model. Thereafter, the application of ANP for the final selection of a provider has been demonstrated through an illustrative example. The results of this example indicate that compatibility between the user and the provider companies is the most important determinant, which influences the final selection process. This approach also enables the decision-makers to better understand the complex relationships of the relevant attributes in the decision-making, which may subsequently improve the reliability of the decision.
Attribute based encryption (ABE) is an encrypted access control mechanism that ensures efficient data sharing among dynamic group of users. Nevertheless, this encryption technique presents two main ...drawbacks, namely high decryption cost and publicly shared access policies, thus leading to possible users’ privacy leakage.
In this paper, we introduce PHOABE, a Policy-Hidden Outsourced ABE scheme. Our construction presents several advantages. First, it is a multi-attribute authority ABE scheme. Second, the expensive computations for the ABE decryption process is partially delegated to a Semi Trusted Cloud Server. Third, users’ privacy is protected thanks to a hidden access policy. Fourth, PHOABE is proven to be selectively secure, verifiable and policy privacy preserving under the random oracle model. Five, estimation of the processing overhead proves its feasibility in IoT constrained environments.
A healthcare network as a new context-aware cyber-physical system (CPS) includes embedded sensors, Internet of Things technology, and cloud computing. With the intellectualization of mobile terminal ...devices, mobile healthcare networks are automatically generated and can provide convenient healthcare services and real-time communication. However, two problems in the CPS need to resolved. A solution to the first problem is to mitigate the computational and storage cost of a mobile terminal. A solution to the second problem is to provide the cyber-physical privacy and security for healthcare data. Ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) can provide data privacy and secure sharing in an open environment. In this article, a fast CP-ABE scheme is provided in order to satisfy the use of mobile terminal devices with low computational and storage power. In the proposed scheme, the work of a system can deliver expensive computational tasks to semitrusted third parties, ensuring a constant number of simple local computations. The scheme can also verify the correctness of the decryption result by using a Boneh-Lynn-Shacham short signature scheme. The CP-ABE scheme not only ensures the cyber-physical security of healthcare data, but also reduces the local load from the efficiency analysis and experimental results.
New Publicly Verifiable Databases with Efficient Updates Chen, Xiaofeng; Li, Jin; Huang, Xinyi ...
IEEE transactions on dependable and secure computing,
2015-Sept.-Oct.-1, 2015-9-1, 20150901, Letnik:
12, Številka:
5
Journal Article
The notion of verifiable database (VDB) enables a resource-constrained client to securely outsource a very large database to an untrusted server so that it could later retrieve a database record and ...update it by assigning a new value. Also, any attempt by the server to tamper with the data will be detected by the client. Very recently, Catalano and Fiore 17 proposed an elegant framework to build efficient VDB that supports public verifiability from a new primitive named vector commitment. In this paper, we point out Catalano-Fiore's VDB framework from vector commitment is vulnerable to the so-called forward automatic update (FAU) attack. Besides, we propose a new VDB framework from vector commitment based on the idea of commitment binding. The construction is not only public verifiable but also secure under the FAU attack. Furthermore, we prove that our construction can achieve the desired security properties.
While an increasing number of firms outsource their logistics activities, the failure rate of logistics outsourcing is still high. To address such issue, this study draws upon transaction cost theory ...(TCT) and extended resource-based view (ERBV) to examine the mechanism through which transaction attributes (i.e., 3 PL providers’ asset specificity and logistics technological uncertainty) affect logistics outsourcing success. We argue that top management plays an essential role in mediating transaction attributes to exercise their influences on logistics outsourcing success. However, such a mediating mechanism is effective only when trustworthy alternative 3 PL providers are available in the market. The data from 250 manufacturing subsidiaries in China are used to test our model. Important implications for research and practices are discussed.
•Transaction attributes have positive impacts on outsourcing success.•Top management beliefs significantly mediate these impacts.•The mediation effect is significant only when supplier presence is high.
Research summary: In this article, we address the role of R&D offshoring strategies in the sales growth of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We propose that different governance modes of R&D ...offshoring—insourcing versus outsourcing—may lead to growth, but that they differ in their effects. In turn, we argue that innovation mediates the relation between international R&D sourcing strategies and sales growth. Based on a large database of SME manufacturing enterprises in Spain, we find that offshore outsourcing positively affects sales growth both directly and indirectly, while offshore insourcing only affects sales growth indirectly via innovation results. The analysis reveals different contributions of each governance mode to sales growth and the mediating role of innovation in the relation between R&D offshoring and firm growth. Managerial summary: We analyze how different governance modes of international R&D sourcing—offshore insourcing and outsourcing—may contribute to growth in SMEs. Modes of offshore R&D outsourcing positively affect the growth of sales in two ways. One effect is direct, produced by improved efficiency, flexibility, enhanced resources, and access to new markets. And the other effect is indirect as offshore R&D outsourcing favors the achievement of innovations, and this in turn, positively affects firm growth. For their part, captive modes only exert an indirect effect. Offshore R&D insourcing contributes to the achievement of innovations, and thus, ultimately to firm growth in so far as these innovations enable SMEs to increase sales. Therefore, innovation results perform a mediating role in the relation between R&D offshoring and sales growth.
The reach and impact of outsourcing has grown rapidly to include a variety of strategic objectives. Significant issues of cooperation and coordination in strategic outsourcing necessitate investments ...in formal controls that specify and monitor execution of the outsourced task to mitigate unforeseen contingencies and improve predictability in the attainment of desirable goals. In this study, we investigate the nature of formal controls in strategic outsourcing contracts and their impact on client satisfaction and financial performance. Specifically, using rich field data on 390 strategic outsourcing contracts, we examine the differential impact of output controls, activity controls, and capability controls on client satisfaction and vendor profitability. We find that activity and capability controls are positively associated with client satisfaction and profitability; in contrast, output controls differentially impact satisfaction and profitability, reflecting potential tradeoffs between the two outcomes. Our results, in addition to contributing to the research in control theory, provide actionable insights for technology vendors into the appropriate strategy and tactics required to compete efficiently and effectively in strategic services markets.
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