Exploring the duality between product and organizational architectures: A test of the “mirroring” hypothesis

A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that this organization produces. Specifically, products tend to “mirror” the architectures of the organizations in which they are developed. This dynamic occurs because the organization's governance structures, problem solving routines and communication patterns constrain the space in which it searches for new solutions. Such a relationship is important, given that product architecture has been shown to be an important predictor of product performance, product variety, process flexibility and even the path of industry evolution.We explore this relationship in the software industry. Our research takes advantage of a natural experiment, in that we observe products that fulfill the same function being developed by very different organizational forms. At one extreme are commercial software firms, in which the organizational participants are tightly-coupled, with respect to their goals, structure and behavior. At the other, are open source software communities, in which the participants are much more loosely-coupled by comparison. The mirroring hypothesis predicts that these different organizational forms will produce products with distinctly different architectures. Specifically, loosely-coupled organizations will develop more modular designs than tightly-coupled organizations. We test this hypothesis, using a sample of matched-pair products.We find strong evidence to support the mirroring hypothesis. In all of the pairs we examine, the product developed by the loosely-coupled organization is significantly more modular than the product from the tightly-coupled organization. We measure modularity by capturing the level of coupling between a product's components. The magnitude of the differences is substantial—up to a factor of six, in terms of the potential for a design change in one component to propagate to others. Our results have significant managerial implications, in highlighting the impact of organizational design decisions on the technical structure of the artifacts that these organizations subsequently develop.     

Toward a systematic framework for research on dominant designs, technological innovations, and industrial change

The concept of a dominant design has taken on a quasi-paradigmatic status in analyses of the link between technological and industrial dynamics. A review of the empirical literature reveals a variety of interpretations about some aspects of the phenomenon such as its underlying causal mechanisms and its level of analysis. To stimulate further progress in empirical research on dominant designs, we advocate a standardization of terminology by conceptualizing products as complex artifacts that evolve in the form of a nested hierarchy of technology cycles. Such a nested complex system perspective provides both unambiguous definitions of dominant designs (stable core components that can be stable interfaces) and inclusion of multiple levels of analysis (system, subsystems, components). We introduce the concept of an operational principle and offer a systematic definition of core and peripheral subsystems based on the concept of pleiotropy. We also discuss how the proposed terminological standardization can stimulate cumulative research on dominant designs.     

基于质量属性的系统构架分析与实践

本文概要地介绍了软件构架的有关理论和概念，阐述了软件构架技术的设计思想和过程。探讨了系统开发过程中，如何根据系统的需求和质量属性来构建软件系统。考虑到项目的行业特殊性，利用软件构架理论对电子商务系统进行了分析和论述，从而在实践中论证了软件构架在提高系统的性能、安全性、可扩光性和易用性方面的现实意义。     

From transaction to transformation costs: The case of Polaroid's SX-70 camera

Innovation in a product's design can have significant implications for the organization of competencies across a production network. Currently, discussions on product designs and the distribution of competencies across production networks are based on transaction costs considerations. However, such a view does not consider the transformation costs that arise when competencies across a production network are reorganized because of design changes. We explore the nature of these costs by examining the dynamics associated with Polaroid Corporation's greatest innovation, the SX-70 camera. Our longitudinal study suggests that it is not costless to redraw the boundaries of a firm. In the SX-70 camera case, Polaroid's relationships with its important stakeholders were adversely affected resulting in a deterioration of its competitive position. From this study, we suggest that it is critical to consider the transformation costs involved with radical innovations in order to gain a more complete picture of change in systemic industries.     

The power of integrality: Linkages between product architecture, innovation, and industry structure

A substantial literature stream suggests that many products are becoming more modular over time, and that this development is often associated with a change in industry structure towards higher degrees of specialization. These developments can have strong implications for an industry's competition as the history of the PC industry illustrates. To add to our understanding of the linkages between product architecture, innovation, and industry structure we develop detailed product architecture measurements based on a previously proposed method [Fixson, S.K., 2005. Product architecture assessment: a tool to link product, process, and supply chain design decisions. Journal of Operations Management 23 (3/4), 345-369] and study an unusual case in which a firm - through decreasing its product modularity - turned its formerly competitive industry into a near-monopoly. Using this case study we explore how existing theories on modularity explain the observed phenomenon, and show that most consider technological change in rather long-term dimensions, and tend to focus on efficiency-related arguments to explain the resulting forces on competition. We add three critical aspects to the theory that connects technological change and industry dynamics. First, we suggest integrating as a new design operator to explain product architecture genesis. Second, we argue that a finer-grained analysis of the product architecture shows the existence of multiple linkages between product architecture and industry structure, and that these different linkages help explain the observed intra-industry heterogeneity across firms. Third, we propose that the firm boundary choice can also be a pre-condition of the origin of architectural innovation, not only an outcome of efficiency considerations.     

松散耦合系统:技术创新网络组织结构研究

将技术创新网络看成是由模块化结点形成的复杂网络组织，网络结点模块的双重性特征，使得合作创新网络的整体性和模块结点的独立性之间的矛盾需要协调，超越了传统的组织理论。Weick等的松散耦合理论为我们理解这一问题提供了新的视角。通过对技术创新网络及其结点模块特征的分析。从网络整体性与模块独立性两个维度出发，构建了松散耦合理论映像的N—M（Network—Modularity）矩阵，提出了技术创新网络是一个松散耦合系统的观点，并对技术创新网络的松散组织结构与弱耦合关系强度及耦合过程进行了讨论。     

从意向性到映射：系统复杂性测度的理论架构

 为了能够科学地定量刻画系统的复杂性,从哲学上和数学上建立一个系统复杂性测度的理论“源头”十分必要。首先,从现象学和意向性科学入手,提出意向性结构模型,明确系统复杂性测度是一个二步意向性解释过程,奠定了复杂性测度的哲学基础;然后,探析指标化演绎过程和复杂性演绎过程的数学条件,确立复杂性测度的数学过程,使复杂性测度的数学基础和条件得以明确;最后,提出复杂性测度一般情况下应该采取的步骤——系统分析和指标数据采集、可测度分析与测度方法选择、测度与评价。     

Making knowledge visible: Using expert yellow pages to map capabilities in professional services firms

Professional services firms survive by exploiting the skills and knowledge of their employees to deliver a range of projects for clients. As a result of working on these projects, an organization's capabilities evolve in unpredictable and often divergent ways. In order to help their staff conduct these projects, services firms have invested heavily in knowledge management systems. To date, few attempts have been made to use the information contained in these knowledge management systems to understand the nature and evolution of capabilities in professional services firms. Using the expert yellow pages of Arup, one of the world's leading engineering consultancies, we develop a new approach based on co-word and proximity analysis to map the knowledge and skills of professional services firms. This approach provides a mechanism to allow such firms to better understand what they know and help them to deploy their skills in new and potentially lucrative ways.     

巧妙设计机房网络供电系统实现机房网络用电安全——筑牢统计“四大工程”根基:电源安全,确保网络传输中枢各节点正常运转

文章为经探索和实践得出的一款低费用、高安全、易于操作和推广的机房网络供电系统线路设计方法,并详细列出了机房网络电源供电系统安全设计上需要的基本材料:双向开关、25平方铜电缆线、6平方铜线、4平方铜线、60节电池、3个电池柜、两台UPS电源。给出了电路设计拓扑图,提出了安全电源供电系统使用的注意事项等,非常直观地展现给用户。     

Social network data to alleviate cold-start in recommender system: A systematic review

Recommender Systems are currently highly relevant for helping users deal with the information overload they suffer from the large volume of data on the web, and automatically suggest the most appropriate items that meet users needs. However, in cases in which a user is new to Recommender System, the system cannot recommend items that are relevant to her/him because of lack of previous information about the user and/or the user-item rating history that helps to determine the users preferences. This problem is known as cold-start, which remains open because it does not have a final solution. Social networks have been employed as a good source of information to determine users preferences to mitigate the cold-start problem. This paper presents the results of a Systematic Literature Review on Collaborative Filtering-based Recommender System that uses social network data to mitigate the cold-start problem. This Systematic Literature Review compiled the papers published between 2011–2017, to select the most recent studies in the area. Each selected paper was evaluated and classified according to the depth which social networks used to mitigate the cold-start problem. The final results show that there are several publications that use the information of the social networks within the Recommender System; however, few research papers currently use this data to mitigate the cold-start problem.     

How to facilitate knowledge diffusion in complex networks: The roles of network structure,knowledge role distribution and selection rule

The diffusion of knowledge within organizations provides opportunities for interpersonal co-operation, improves creative ability and therefore leads to competitive advantage. Focus of prior literature on knowledge diffusion has been on identifying factors that influence individuals' behavioral intentions to seek and share knowledge. However, knowledge diffusion as an enigmatic, emergent and organizational-level process is more than the simple aggregation of individual attributes and needs to be further investigated. Accordingly, this study focuses on three distinct system-level factors, i.e., architectures of connections among individuals, distributions of knowledge roles and designs of selection mechanisms and analyses their effects on knowledge diffusion. To be more specific, we examine three distinct knowledge roles: seekers, contributors and brokers. We also distinguish between three types of selection mechanisms: objective selection mechanisms, feedback-based selection mechanisms and random selection mechanisms. By conducting agent-based simulations on four representative networks, i.e., regular networks, random networks, small-world networks and scale-free networks, our results show that the optimal knowledge diffusion performance can be achieved on scale-free networks where all agents implement objective mechanisms and show characteristics of brokers. Moreover, our results (a) highlight the significance of brokers, (b) illustrate the superiority of objective selection rules and (c) demonstrate that scale-free networks provide an optimal framework for knowledge diffusion. Furthermore, we also find the interdependent relevance of these three factors to knowledge diffusion and propose a qualitative explanation of these findings.