課程名稱︰資訊管理導論
課程性質︰資管系必修
課程教師︰魏志平
開課學院：管理學院
開課系所︰資管系
考試日期（年月日）︰110.06.09
考試時限（分鐘）：160
試題 :
1. The following fihure shows how the optimal vertical firm size can be determ-
ined by trading off "the external coordination costs" and "the internal coordi-
nation costs and operations costs". The optimal vertical firm size is at the p-
oint where the total cost (i.e., the sum of the two costs) is the lowest.
https://imgur.com/IiOGYiS
(a) Assume that a firm plan to move the optimal vertical firm size from the cu-
rrent point to the left (i.e., reducing the firm's vertical size). To achi-
eve this goal, which type of information systems should the focal firm fur-
ther invest? Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, or cus-
tomer relationship management systems? Please provide detailed explanations
to justify your answer. (8 points)
(b) Assume that a firm attempt to move the optimal vertical firm size from the
current point to the right (i.e., increasing the firm's vertical size). Pl-
ease describe how knowledge management systems can be employed to help the
focal firm achieve this goal. Please be specific about which business proc-
ess can be facilitated by knowledge management systems, what types of know-
ledge management systems should be adopted? (10 points)
2. Codification i.e., creating knowledge repositories) and connectivity (i.e.,
improving knowledge access) represent two major knowledge management strategies
commonly adopted by firms. Specifically, the codification strategy aims to acq-
uire knowledge workers' lnowledge and store the acquired knowledge in knowledge
repositories so that other users can access and use. In contrast, the connecti-
vity strategy aims to record and make available who in the organization knows
what by building knowledge directories (i.e., expert networks).
(a) Assume the knowledge workers of a firm often use tacit knowledge to solve
problems. Is the codification strategy or the connectivity strategy more a-
ppropriate to the focal firm? Please provide detailed explanations to just-
ify your answer. (6 points)
(b) Assume that a company is pursuing the cost leadership strategy (aiming to
become a low-cost producer of products and services in the industry). Is t-
he codification strategy or the connectivity strategy more appropriate to
this company? Please provide detailed explanations to justify your answer.
(10 points)
3. We all are witnessing the fast growth of sharing economy. Please answer the
following two questions related to sharing economy.
(a) We have heard of many successful sharing-economy stories, such as Airbnb,
Uber Eats, taskRabbit, Rover, and BlaBlaCar. However, we have also seen ma-
ny unsuccessful cases, in which sharing economy companies (platforms) disc-
ontinued their operations (e.g., Homejoy, Josephine). Please identify at l-
east three characteristics of services that are better suited for the shar-
ing economy model (i.e., have a higher success rate)? Please use the afore-
mentioned successful or unsuccessful cases to illustrate your answer. (12
points)
(b) BlablaCar is a carpooling (ride-sharing) service, which connects drivers a-
nd passengers willing to travel together between cities and share cost of
the journey. Please propose two (big) data analytics applications for Blab-
laCar to, for example, improve its business operations, provide better ser-
vice experiences to its current users (drivers or passengers), offer new s-
ervices to its current users, and so on? For each of the (big) data analyt-
ics applications that you propose here, please describe the purpose of this
application, input data, and possible data analytics (or data mining) tech-
nique(s) to be employed. (14 points)
4. The following questions are about electronic commerce.
(a) Why information asymmetry between consumers and suppliers will be reduced
in digital markets (in electronic commerce environments)? (6 points)
(b) The removal of an intermediary that is responsible for certain activities
between trading partners (usually in a supply chain) is referred to as dis-
intermediation. For example, in the traditional market, travel agents who
help consumers make airline reservations and buy airline tickets are an in-
termediary between airline companies and air travelers. However, in electr-
onic commerce environments, consumers can reserve and buy airline tickets
directly from the websites of airline companies, thereby possibly removing
the intermediary (i.e., travel agents). In the air travel industry, is it
possible that reintermediation occurs? If so, please illustrate what types
of services that can be provided by new or by traditional intermediaries?
If not, please explain why reintermediation is unlikely occur in the air t-
ravel industry. (12 points)
5. The following table shows a set of training examples for predicting whether
an employee will quit his/her job in the next 6 months. Assume that the indepe-
ndent variables (i.e., attributes) include the recent performance of the emplo-
yee (RecPerf), the social ties with his/her colleagues (SocTies), promotion wi-
thin the past 12 months (Promot), and job rotations within the past 24 months (
JobRotat), and the expertise of an employee (Expertise). The types of expertise
include: programming (Prog), business (Busi), Economics (Econ), and Engineering
(Eng). An employee can have one or multiple types of expertise.
https://imgur.com/undefined
(a) What is the information gain of the RecPerf attribute? (4 points)
(b) What is the gain-ratio of the RecPerf attribute? (4 points)
(c) Obviously, the information gain of the Expertise attribute cannot be calcu-
lated. If we still want to use the decision tree induction algorithm to bu-
ild a classification model for this task, we need to transform the Experti-
se attribute into a form so that the decision tree induction algorithm can
be applied. One possible transformation is to count the number of types of
expertise an employee has. For example, after transformation, the value of
the Expertise attribute for the trainning example $1 will be 2, and that f-
or the training example #2 will be 1. Is this transformation appropriate?
Why or why not? (4 points)
(d) Please develop a better transformation than the one depicted in (c) for the
Expertise attribute. You need to explain why your transformation is better
than in (c). (10 points)