IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/mitccs/142.html

Ownership Principles for Distributed Database Design

Author

Listed:
  • Marshall Van Alstyne
  • Erik Brynjolfsson
  • Stuart Madnick

Abstract

This research addresses the issues of database ownership and incentives and their impact on information sharing and system performance. Existing research has identified the benefits of centralized control and has formalized the importance of a vested authority setting standards, working towards user transparency, and reducing organization wide data inconsistencies. In practice, however, many centralization and standardization efforts have failed, typically because departments lacked incentives or needed greater local autonomy. Unfortunately, motivational factors have typically eluded formal characterization. Using an "incomplete contracts" approach from economics, it is possible to model the costs and benefits of decentralization, including critical intangible factors. This paper presents normative principles of database decentralization; it derives formulas that give the principles a theoretical underpinning; and it illustrates the application of each principle in actual practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Marshall Van Alstyne & Erik Brynjolfsson & Stuart Madnick, 1993. "Ownership Principles for Distributed Database Design," Working Paper Series 142, MIT Center for Coordination Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:wop:mitccs:142
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/CCSWP142/CCSWP142.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wop:mitccs:142. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://ccs.mit.edu/wpmenu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.