John Dillard

Computational Modeling of Project Organizations under Stress

Building upon prior research on enterprise centralization and knowledge dynamics, this paper uses computational methods to assess the behavior and project performance of different organization-al designs in varying environments. The results reinforce contingency theory and suggest particular characteristics of different project environments that make one form relatively more or less appropriate than another. Practically, the answers to the research questions have direct and immediate application to project/portfolio managers and senior executives. Theoretically, broad classes of organizations are generalized and prescribe a novel set of organizational design guides.

Applying Insights from Transaction Cost Economics to Improve Cost Estimates for Public Sector Purchases: The Case of U.S. Military Acquisition

ABSTRACT This article uses Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) to help characterize, explain, and ultimately reduce the cost growth that plagues many of todays major investments in military capabilities. There is mounting evidence of a systematic bias in initial cost estimates of new weapon systems purchased by the U.S. military. Unrealistically low cost estimates result in cost overruns. Fixing cost overruns can substantially impact public budgets and military readiness. Cost estimates serve a dual function: first, as an integral part of the decision-making process to evaluate military purchases/investments, and second, as a baseline for future defense budgets. In the first case, underestimating costs can result in too many new weapon program starts and excessive investments in those systems. In the second case, unrealistically low cost estimates result in overly optimistic budgets. Budgets planned on the basis of optimistic cost estimates create the illusion of more resources available than actually exist. Two factors are often blamed for unrealistically low cost estimates: bad incentives (psychological and political-economic explanations), and bad forecasts (methodological explanations). While briefly exploring the former, the focus of this study is on cost estimating methodology. Conventional public cost estimating techniques focus on the production costs of public purchases (input costs, learning curves, economies of scale and scope, etc.). The goal of this article is to improve cost estimates by expanding conventional cost estimating methodology to include TCE considerations. The primary insight of TCE is that correctly forecasting economic production costs of government purchases or acquisitions is necessary, but not sufficient. TCE emphasizes another set of costs—coordination and motivation costs (search and information costs; decision, contracting, and incentive costs; measurement, monitoring, and enforcement costs, etc.). This study encourages public officials and cost analysts to capture these costs and to understand key characteristics of public-private transactions (uncertainty, complexity, frequency, asset specificity, and market contestability) to generate more complete and reliable cost estimates and improve public sector purchases.

Optical display for radar sensing

Boltzmann headstone S = kB Log W turns out to be the Rosette stone for Greek physics translation optical display of the microwave sensing hieroglyphics. The LHS is the molecular entropy S measuring the degree of uniformity scattering off the sensing cross sections. The RHS is the inverse relationship (equation) predicting the Planck radiation spectral distribution parameterized by the Kelvin temperature T. Use is made of the conservation energy law of the heat capacity of Reservoir (RV) change T Δ S = -ΔE equals to the internal energy change of black box (bb) subsystem. Moreover, an irreversible thermodynamics Δ S > 0 for collision mixing toward totally larger uniformity of heat death, asserted by Boltzmann, that derived the so-called Maxwell-Boltzmann canonical probability. Given the zero boundary condition black box, Planck solved a discrete standing wave eigenstates (equation). Together with the canonical partition function (equation) an average ensemble average of all possible internal energy yielded the celebrated Planck radiation spectral (equation) where the density of states (equation). In summary, given the multispectral sensing data (equation), we applied Lagrange Constraint Neural Network (LCNN) to solve the Blind Sources Separation (BSS) for a set of equivalent bb target temperatures. From the measurements of specific value, slopes and shapes we can fit a set of Kelvin temperatures T’s for each bb targets. As a result, we could apply the analytical continuation for each entropy sources along the temperature-unique Planck spectral curves always toward the RGB color temperature display for any sensing probing frequency.