We consider outsourcing in two important service settings: call center and order fulfillment operations. An important factor in both is the inherent economies of scale. Therefore, we advance a unifying model covering both applications and study the associated contracting problem under...

Firms that rely on functioning mission-critical equipment for their businesses cannot afford significant operational downtime due to system disruptions. To minimize the impact of disruptions, a proper incentive mechanism has to be in place so that the suppliers provide prompt restoration and...

MMM is an infrastructure for managing the deployment and use of distributed application services on the WWW. MMM propagates a paradigm that enables the leasing of software components, as opposed to the classical software licensing model. Applications reside and execute on the software provider's...