The emerging paradigm of service-oriented computing requires novel techniques for various service-related tasks. Along with automated support for service discovery, selection, negotiation, and composition, support for automated service contracting and enactment is crucial for any large scale service environment, where large numbers of clients and service providers interact. Many problems in thi...

Uptime-guarantee maintenance contracts reflect the obligation of service providers to maintain full functionality of equipment in certain fractions of working time in a period. In this paper, we study the optimal design of uptime-guarantee contracts for a service provider who does not know the customer’s exact valuation for having the equipment up and running per unit of working time. We first ...

We consider a supply chain with an upstream supplier who invests in innovation and a downstream manufacturer who sells to consumers. We study the impact of supply chain contracts with upstream innovation, focusing on three different contract scenarios: (i) a wholesale price contract, (ii) a quality-dependent wholesale price contract, and (iii) a revenue-sharing contract. We confirm that the rev...

We consider a supply chain with an upstream supplier who invests in innovation and a downstream manufacturer who sells to consumers. We study the impact of supply chain contracts with endogenous upstream innovation, focusing on three different contract scenarios: (i) a wholesale price contract, (ii) a quality-dependent wholesale price contract, and (iii) a revenuesharing contract. We confirm th...

There is a growing trend for asset intensive industries to outsource maintenance services of their complex assets since outsourcing through service contract reduces upfront investments in infrastructure, expertise and specialised maintenance facilities. Estimation of costs for such contracts is complex and it is important to the user and the service providers for economic variability. The servi...

A novel approach to the formal description of service contracts is presented in terms of automata. We focus on the basic property of guaranteeing that in the multi-party composition of principals each individual gets his requests satisfied, so that the overall composition reaches its goal. Depending on whether requests are satisfied synchronously or asynchronously, we construct an orchestrator ...

We present a methodology for the automated selection and aggregation of (Web) services with the purpose of satisfying client queries. A key ingredient of our approach is the notion of service contract, which consists of signature (WSDL), ontology information (OWL), and behaviour specification (YAWL). The methodology inputs a registry of service contracts and a client service contract, and it au...

Extended service contracts have been the major profit generator for many consumer electronics retailers as they contribute to half of the retailers' profit. My dissertation studies how consumers make purchase decisions of extended service contracts and how the ESC purchase decisions are related to the product purchase decisions. Essay 1: " Why Do Consumers Buy Extended Service Contracts? " The ...

This paper analyzes the effect of competition among downstream Žrms on an upstream Žrm’s payoff and on its incentive to integrate vertically when Žrms in both segments negotiate optimal contracts. We argue that as downstream competition becomes more intense, the upstream Žrm obtains a larger share of a smaller downstream industry proŽt. The upstream Žrm may encourage downstream competition (eve...

In this paper, we address some of the challenges raised by the emerging serviceoriented computing paradigm in what concerns the ability to define dynamic interactions between core services for flexible and agile business processes. We claim that, from this point of view, service interaction and composition is well beyond the reach of object-oriented and componentbased techniques. We argue inste...