Recent empirical researches show that consumers’ preferences could vary with dynamic processes of environments such as increase of the number of product items to be selected. This paper focuses especially on dynamic processes of consumers’ selection rules that are constructed based on their utility functions. The analysis of this paper is based on the agent-based simulation and tries to reveal the “mechanism”, i.e. logical explanation, of evolutionary processes of consumers’ preferences.

The framework formulated in this paper models each consumer as an agent with internal model that expresses agent’s selection rule, and can help to explore processes on the evolution from compensatory selection rules to non-compensatory ones.

This paper conducts some simulation experiments based on a type of the inverse simulation using genetic algorithm as a tool for giving effective evolutionary steps in improving internal models of agents.

Using the developed simulation model, this paper applies the proposed framework to some virtual societies to verify its effectiveness.

It is expected that external organizations such as consulting or outsourcing companies support computerization in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in which shortage of financial and human resources is a general problems. On the other hand, some researchers reported that consultants didn’t bring good results while utilization of internal human resources was effective for computerization. How can SMEs with insufficient financial and human resources promote computerization utilizing internal/external human resources? In this study, the data gathered using questionnaire are analyzed to reveal the causal relationship between shortage of financial and human resources and effects of information systems (IS) through utilization of internal/external human resources.

The study revealed that the utilization of internal human resources for IS management and that of external resources for IS education were both effective, whereas utilization of external resources for IS management had the opposite effects. Furthermore, lack of human resources was found to affect utilization of internal resources.

Failures of knowledge management projects in many firms are mainly due to the lack of incentives to knowledge suppliers. In economics, the market mechanism has been considered to balance supply and demand autonomously through prices. We introduce a knowledge management system where suppliers of knowledge set prices for their documents, and users, namely consumers, pay for them upon usage. A mathematical model demonstrates that the market mechanism motivates potential knowledge suppliers to produce documented knowledge and furthermore suppresses unnecessary production of similar knowledge which may be substituted by the existing knowledge.

This paper deals with modeling and analysis of information sharing in collaboration among firms and its application. Especially, we focus on the role of information sharing in the demand forecast and the quality control of finished goods. At first, we extend the basic model of demand forecast and related information sharing scheme between a retailer and a manufacturer. The result shows that the information sharing decreases the inventory, but we see also the cost of information sharing may cancel the effect. Secondary, we consider the information sharing in the production and testing of finished goods as a selection of contract between maker and supplier, and then analyze the effect in the form of profit on both sides. Moreover, the model is extended to include the change of environment in the market, and we employ the dynamic programming to obtain the optimal solution. As a result of simulation studies, the selection of optimal contract lead the maker and supplier to better common reward level.

We have analyzed alliances from the viewpoints how their forms are influenced by firm’s organizational structure. Using the outcomes from resource-based theory and social exchange theory, forms of alliances are categorized by (1) relationships of management resources to be exchanged, (2) relationships of partners to exchange, and (3) alliance structures which characterize such exchange. Firm’s organizational structures are also categorized by range of their own function, scope of their business, and location of their incorporation. Propositions are created to explain how firm’s organizational structure determines their selection of alliance forms, and they are validated using empirical cases in the semiconductor industry. Following three propositions are validated: “Firms with specific function, compared to firms with all function, tend to select asymmetrical alliances rather than symmetrical alliances.”, “Firms with diversified business, compared to firms with dedicated business, tend to select horizontal alliances rather than vertical alliances.”, “Firms in Asia, compared to firms in U.S. and Europe, tend to select non-equity alliances rather than equity alliances.”

Taking the enterprise information system as the subsystem, which belongs to manufacturing system creating directly the profits of enterprise, the economics of the information system is evaluated by use of the method, “imbedding them into the whole system”. Firstly, classifying the information system into the intra-enterprise information system, such as ERP, and the extra-enterprise information system, such as CRM/SCM. Then the economic evaluating framework of information systems is proposed to individually evaluate these information subsystems, the combined information system and the whole system ―the enterprise system― integrating the manufacturing system with the information system. As the economic evaluation indices, NPV and Real Options are selected from the viewpoint of practicality, after comparing the economic evaluation indices having additivity, such as NPV, Monte Carlo DCF, Decision Tree and Real Options. NPV is applied to manufacturing system and the intra-enterprise system, and Real Options to the extra-enterprise system, assuming phased investments. The simulation based on the framework is run to prove the usefulness of proposed framework.