Information Processing in Firms

这个项目调查了公司内部的信息处理如何影响其内部组织和规模经济。公司的信息处理需要时间；延迟是代价高昂的，因为旧信息不如新信息有价值。在某种程度上，可以通过使用更多的资源来减少信息处理中的延迟。该项目将确定给定资源可达到的延迟。这将通过将公司经理建模为并行处理计算机中的处理元素来完成。研究人员对数据的非随机到达进行了研究，结果表明信息处理的层次化组织是有效的。他们将明确考虑公司的决策问题，其中使用了处理后的信息，以计算延误成本。考虑到公司必须处理的信息量随着公司规模的扩大而增加，研究人员接下来将确定处理信息的需求如何影响规模回报。然后，他们将研究数据随机到达时的信息处理，除了定期会计数据外，这是最常见的情况。这项开创性的研究承诺为信息在公司组织中的作用提供新的见解。它还将填补我们对组织和市场理解的一个重要空白。

This project investigates how information processing within firms influences their internal organization and their economies of scale. Information processing in a firm takes time; delay is costly because old information is not as valuable as new information. It is possible, up to a point, to reduce the delay in information processing by using more resources. This project will determine what delay is attainable for given resources. It will be done by modelling the managers of a firm as processing elements in a parallel processing computer. The investigators have obtained results for non-stochastic arrivals of data, and these indicate that the hierarchial organization of information processing is effective. They will consider explicitly the firm's decision problems in which the processed information is used, in order to calculate the cost of delay. The researchers will next determine how the need to process information affects returns to scale, given that the amount of information that must be processed in a firm increases with the size of the firm. Then they will study information processing when data arrives stochastically, as is most commonly the case except for periodic accounting data. This pioneering research promises to provide new insights concerning the role of information in the organization of firms. It will also fill an important void in our understanding of organizations and markets.