The Preliminary Specifications Bibliography

I'm pleased to provide an updated Bibliography for the Preliminary Specification. And it's also a good time to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We'll see you in 2024.

Academic Research & Books

Bailey, Ronald. Post Scarcity Profit: Economist Paul Romer on Growth, Technological Change and an Unlimited Future. Reason Magazine. (December 2001). https://reason.com/2001/12/01/post-scarcity-prophet-2/

Baldwin, Carliss Y., Where do transactions come from? Modularity, transactions, and the boundaries of firms, Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 17, Issue 1, February 2008, Pages 155–195. https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtm036

Baldwin, Carliss Y., Clark, Kim B., Where do Transactions Come From? A Network Design Perspective on the Theory of the Firm. Harvard Business School. May 2006. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=2f68bbe46c7392e726a1af85e1863c889eb44f66

Bryan, Lowell L., Joyce, Claudia. The 21st-century Organization. (2005). McKinsey & Company. https://michaelsamonas.gr/images/Mixalhs/resources/21st_Organization.pdf

Carrol, M., Rosson, M., (October 1998). Interfacing Thought: Cognitive Aspects of Human - Computer Interaction. Cambridge MIT Press, pp. 80 - 111. https://www.amazon.ca/Interfacing-Thought-Cognitive-Human-Computer-Interaction/dp/0262532212

Chandler, Alfred D., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press; Revised ed. edition (Jan. 1 1993). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674940520 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674940529 https://amzn.to/4503zvC

Chesbrough, H., Teece, D., (August 2002), Organizing for innovation: When is Virtual Virtuous? Harvard Business Review. 80 (8) 127 - 134. https://store.hbr.org/product/organizing-for-innovation-when-is-virtual-virtuous-hbr-classic/R0208J

Christensen, C. M., (1997). The Innovator's Dilemma. New York, HarperCollins Publishers. Inc. https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=the+innovator%27s+dilemma&i=stripbooks&hvadid=599429907053&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9001316&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=2181510476241427953&hvtargid=kwd-300611435248&hydadcr=16958_13463073&tag=googcana-20&ref=pd_sl_6dwz4yzhbb_e

Coase, Ronald H., (1937), The Nature of the Firm. Economica, 4: 386-405. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937.tb00002.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937.tb00002.x

Coase, Ronald H., The New Institutional Economics. American Economic Review 88 (2). (May 1988.) pp. 72 - 74. http://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Coase%20New%20Institutional%20Economics.htm

Colpan, Asli M., Hikino, Takash, Lincoln, James R., Economic Institutions and the Boundaries of Business Groups. The Oxford Handbook of Business Groups. (2010) 9780199552863, Oxford University Press pp. 629–649. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199552863.003.0022 

Date, C. J., An Introduction to Database Systems. Pearson; 8th edition (July 22 2003). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0321197844 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0321197849 http://www.amazon.ca/dp/0321197844

Davenport, T., Beck, B, Beck, J., (2002 March / April). The Strategy and Structure of Firms in the Attention Economy. Ivey Business Journal, pp. 48 – 54. https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/the-strategy-and-structure-of-firms-in-the-attention-economy/

Dosi, Giovanni and Gambardella, Alfonso and Grazzi, Marco and Orsenigo, Luigi, Technological Revolutions and the Evolution of Industrial Structures: Assessing the Impact of New Technologies Upon the Size and Boundaries of Firms. Capitalism and Society, Vol. 3, Issue 1, Article 6, 2008. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2209120

Dosi, Giovanni, (1995/01) Hierarchies, Markets & Power: Some Foundational Issues on the Nature of Contemporary Economic Organizations. Journal Article, Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 4, Issue 1, 1995, Pages 1–19, https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/4.1.1-a https://www.ioea.eu/pdf/textes_2007/Dosi_ref1.pdf

Dosi, Giovanni., (1988). Sources, Procedures, and Microeconomic Effects of Innovation. Journal of Economic Literature, 26(3), 1120–1171. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2726526

Farrell, D., (2003, October). The Real New Economy. Harvard Business Review, pp. 104 – 112. https://hbr.org/2003/10/the-real-new-economy#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20an%20important%20dynamic,improving%20productivity%20across%20the%20sector.

Forsberg, K., Mooz, H., Cotterman, H., (2000) Visualizing Project Management. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0471648485 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0471648482 https://www.amazon.ca/Visualizing-Project-Management-Frameworks-Mastering/dp/0471648485

Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley, University of California Press. https://a.co/d/92YWfl2

Glover, M., Prawitt, D., Romney, M., (1999), Implementing ERP. Internal Auditor February. https://www.google.com/search?q=Implementing+ERP.+Internal+Auditor&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA730CA732&oq=Implementing+ERP.+Internal+Auditor&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.1004j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Habermas, Jurgen.  The Theory of Communicative Action. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/

Hagel, J., Brown, J., (2002). Break on Through to the Other Side: A Missing Link in Redefining the Enterprise pp. 1 – 23. Retrieved November 20, 2003. http://www.johnhagel.com/

Hagel, J., Brown, J., (2002). Compendium Overview pp. 1 – 7. Retrieved November 20, 2003. http://www.johnhagel.com/

Hagel, J., Brown, J., (2002). Control vs. Trust – Mastering a Different Management Approach pp. 1 – 10. Retrieved November 20, 2003. http://www.johnhagel.com/

Hagel, J., Brown, J., (2002). Orchestrating Business Process – Harnessing the Value of Web Services Technology pp. 1 – 13. Retrieved November 20, 2003. http://www.johnhagel.com/

Hagel III, J. & Seely Brown, J. (October 2001) Your Next IT Strategy. Harvard Business Review, 79 (9) 105 - 113. https://store.hbr.org/product/your-next-it-strategy/R0109G

Hanson, Victor Davis, The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. Basic Books; Illustrated edition (Oct. 17 2017). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465066984 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465066988 https://www.amazon.ca/Second-World-Wars-Global-Conflict/dp/0465066984

Harper, Stephen, Right Here, Right Now: Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption. Penguin (Oct. 9 2018). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0771038623 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0771038624 https://www.amazon.ca/Right-Here-Now-Leadership-Disruption/dp/0771038623/ref=sr_1_1?crid=FXTQS9S3553D&keywords=right+here%2C+right+now&qid=1702312851&s=books&sprefix=right+here%2C+right+now%2Cstripbooks%2C169&sr=1-1

Hayek, F. A., The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition (Volume 17.) University of Chicago Press. (April 2011). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780226315393 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226315393 https://www.amazon.ca/Constitution-Liberty-Definitive-F-Hayek/dp/0226315398/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=667162488719&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9001316&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=18394470049021819216&hvtargid=kwd-323973891034&hydadcr=23307_13656903&keywords=the+constitution+of+liberty&qid=1702666371&sr=8-1

Hayek, F. A., (1945). The Use of Knowledge in Society. https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html

Henderson, R., (2002). The Next Tech Boom. MIT Technology Insider Newsletter September 2002 pp. 6 Retrieved September 18, 2003 , from the MIT Enterprise Technology Review World Wide Web: http://www.technologyreview.com/

J Hill, L.C Thomas, D.E Allen, Experts' estimates of task durations in software development projects, International Journal of Project Management, Volume 18, Issue 1, (2000), Pages 13-21. ISSN 0263-7863, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0263-7863(98)00062-3 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263786398000623

Hood, Tom, Seven Skills Every Accountant Needs in the Age of Automaton. CEO Maryland Association of CPAs, Oracle Blog. https://blogs.oracle.com/modernfinance/7-skills-every-accountant-needs-in-the-age-of-automation

Jiang, J. J. & Klein, G. (2001). Software project risks and development focus. Project Management Journal, 32(1), 4–9. https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/software-project-risks-development-focus-2000

Jiang, J. J., Klein, G., & Chen, H.-G. (2001). The Relative Influence of IS Project Implementation Policies and Project Leadership on Eventual Outcomes. Project Management Journal, 32(3), 49-55. https://doi.org/10.1177/875697280103200307

Jiang, James & Klein, Gary & Means, Thomas. (2000). Project Risk Impact on Software Development Team Performance. Project Management Journal. 31. 19-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/875697280003100404

Klein, Peter, The Capitalist & The Entrepreneur. Ludwig von Mises Institute (Feb. 13 2019). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1933550791, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1933550794 https://www.amazon.ca/Capitalist-Entrepreneur-Essays-Organizations-Markets/dp/1933550791

Klein, P. G., Economic calculation and the limits of organization. Rev Austrian Econ 9, 3–28 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01103327 or https://cdn.mises.org/rae9_2_1.pdf

Langlois, Richard N., The Austrian Theory of the Firm: Retrospect and Prospect (May 2007). Working Paper First Draft, George Mason Law School Conference, May 23 - 25, 2007, “Austrian Market-based Approaches to the Theory and Operation of the Firm.” https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Langlois/publication/228918886_The_Austrian_Theory_of_the_Firm_Retrospect_and_Prospect/links/0deec519e188f8b8bd000000/The-Austrian-Theory-of-the-Firm-Retrospect-and-Prospect.pdf

Langlois, Richard N. and Foss, Nicolai J., Capabilities and Governance: The Rebirth of Production in the Theory of Economic Organization (January 1997). Druid Working Paper No. 97-2, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=77668 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.77668

Langlois, Richard N., Capabilities and the Theory of the Firm (December 1994). https://www.academia.edu/51155727/Capabilities_and_the_Theory_of_the_Firm

Langlois, Richard N., Capabilities and Vertical Disintegration in Process Technology: The Case of Semiconductor Fabrication Equipment (January 1998). https://richard-langlois.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1617/2019/09/mesa97.pdf

Langlois, Richard N., Competition Through Institutional Form: The Case of Cluster Tool Standards (July 2004). University of Connecticut Economics Working Paper No. 2004-10, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=594542 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.594542

Langlois, Richard N., (2004). Chandler in a Larger Frame: Markets, Transaction Costs, and Organizational Form in History. Enterprise & Society, 5(3), 355–375. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23700119

Langlois, Richard N., Comment on 'Technological Revolutions and the Evolution of Industrial Structures' (by Giovanni Dosi, Alfonso Gambardella, Marco Grazzi, and Luigi Orsenigo). Capitalism and Society, Vol. 3, Issue 2, Article 7, 2008. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2209176

Langlois, Richard N., 2009/01/01 “Economic Institutions and the Boundaries of the Firm: The Case of Business Groups.” University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, Working papers. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199552863.003.0022 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Langlois/publication/46450875_Economic_Institutions_and_the_Boundaries_of_the_Firm_The_Case_of_Business_Groups/links/0deec519e189326c5c000000/Economic-Institutions-and-the-Boundaries-of-the-Firm-The-Case-of-Business-Groups.pdf

Langlois, Richard N., (2007), The Entrepreneurial Theory of the Firm and the Theory of the Entrepreneurial Firm*. Journal of Management Studies. 44: 1107-1124. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2007.00728.x

Langlois, Richard N., The institutional approach to economic history: Connecting the two strands, Journal of Comparative Economics, Volume 45, Issue 1, 2017. Pages 201-212, ISSN 0147-5967, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2016.04.004 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596716300075

Langlois, Richard N., Modularity in technology and organization, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 49, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 19-37. ISSN 0167-2681, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-2681(02)00056-2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268102000562

Langlois, Richard N., "Modularity in Technology, Organization, and Society" (1999). Economics Working Papers. 199905. https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/econ_wpapers/199905

Langlois, Richard N., "Organizing the Electronic Century" (2007). Economics Working Papers. 200707. https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/econ_wpapers/200707

Langlois, Richard N., "Schumpeter and Personal Capitalism" (1996). Economics Working Papers. 199605. https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/econ_wpapers/199605

Langlois, Richard N., "The Secret Life of Mundane Transaction Costs" (2005). Economics Working Papers. 200549. https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/econ_wpapers/200549

Langlois, Richard N., Transaction-cost Economics in Real Time, Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 1, Issue 1, 1992, Pages 99–127. https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/1.1.99

Langlois, Richard N., "Transaction Costs, Production Costs, and the Passage of Time" (1995). Economics Working Papers. 199503. https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/econ_wpapers/199503

Langlois, Richard N., “The Vanishing Hand, the Changing Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism.” (2003/4/1) Industrial and Corporate Change. Volume 12, Issue 2. Pages 351-385. Oxford University Press. https://www.edegan.com/pdfs/Langlois%20(2003)%20-%20The%20vanishing%20hand.pdf

Langlois, Richard N., The Corporation and the Twentieth Century, The History of American Business Enterprise. Princeton University Press (June 27 2023).  ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 069124698X ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691246987 https://www.amazon.ca/Corporation-Twentieth-Century-American-Enterprise/dp/069124698X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=10T238PV16C7O&keywords=langlois&qid=1689618224&s=books&sprefix=langlois%2Cstripbooks%2C449&sr=1-1

Langlois, Richard N., “The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism: Schumpeter, Chandler and the New Economy.” Routledge; 1st edition (June 23 2014). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1138806226 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1138806221 https://amzn.to/3zJwpCk

Langlois, Richard N., Robertson, Paul L., "Firms, Markets and Economic Change: A Dynamic Theory of Business Institutions." Routledge; 1st edition (1995). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0-203-19923-5 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0-203-19926-X https://books.google.ca/books?id=iPeHAgAAQBAJ&dq

MacDonald, J., (1998). Systems Engineering: Art and Science in an international context. International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). https://homepages.laas.fr/kader/se.pdf

McIntosh, M., Electronic Commerce and Enterprise Integration: Drivers for the Business in the New Economy. June 13 - 14, 1999. Saint John, New Brunswick.

Mills, Mark P., Why Chips Won’t Change the Game: Government Subsidies Can’t Overcome Regulatory Obstacles to American Industrial Competitiveness. August 2022) City Journal. https://www.city-journal.org/why-chips-wont-change-the-game#.YyPRiCL3Z6s.link

Mills, Mark P., The “New Energy Economy:” An Exercise in Magical Thinking. (March 2019). The Manhattan Institute. https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf

Orlikowski, W. J., (1992, August). The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations. Organization Science, (3:3), 398–427. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2635280

Porter, M. E., (1998) Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. New York, The Free Press. ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0684841487 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0684841489 https://www.amazon.ca/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Industries-Competitors/dp/0684841487/ref=asc_df_0684841487/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=293006031037&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1210013701671932249&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001316&hvtargid=pla-432954142559&psc=1&mcid=15e505e921bd305085e6e9c51e492644

Porter, M. E., (1998). On Competition. Boston, Harvard Business Review Press; 1st edition (Sept. 9 2008). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781422126967 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1422126967 https://www.amazon.ca/Competition-Michael-Porter/dp/142212696X/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2T5ZL6B63TCUR&keywords=On+Competition&qid=1702600221&s=books&sprefix=on+competition%2Cstripbooks%2C128&sr=1-3

Porter, M., (March 2001). Strategy and The Internet. Harvard Business Review 79 (3) 63 - 78. https://hbr.org/2001/03/strategy-and-the-internet

Procaccino, Verner, Overmyer, Darter (Jan, 2002). Case study: Factors for early prediction of software development success. Information and Software Technology, 44 (1) 53-62. ISSN 0950-5849, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0950-5849(01)00217-8 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950584901002178

Paulk, M., Curtis, B., Chrissis Mary B., Weber C. V., (August 2002). Capability Maturity ModelS™ for Software, Version 1.1. Software Engineering Institute Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. https://insights.sei.cmu.edu/documents/1092/1993_005_001_16211.pdf

Robertson, Paul L.; Jacobson, David; and Langlois, Richard N., "Innovation Processes and Industrial Districts" (2008). Economics Working Papers. 200803. https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/econ_wpapers/200803

Robertson, Paul L., Langlois, Richard N., Institutions, Inertia and Changing Industrial Leadership, Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 3, Issue 2, 1994, Pages 359–378. https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/3.2.359

Romer, Paul M., Endogenous Technical Change. The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 98, No. 5, Part 2: The Problem of Development. A Conference of the Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Systems. (Oct 1990) pp. S71 - S 102. https://web.stanford.edu/~klenow/Romer_1990.pdf?utm_source=Stanford

Sasser, W. Earl, and Josep Valor. "Information at the World Bank: In Search of a Technology Solution (B)." Harvard Business School Case 898-054, September 1997. (Revised October 1997.) (Knoop, C, I., Valor, J., & Sasser, W.E. Case 2: Information at the World Bank: In search of a technology solution (A). (September 1997) Harvard Business School Case 9-898-053.) https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=25473

Schmidt, Roy & Lyytinen, Kalle & Keil, Mark & Cule, Paul. (2001). Identifying Software Project Risks: An International Delphi Study. J. of Management Information Systems. 17. 5-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2001.11045662 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220591356_Identifying_Software_Project_Risks_An_International_Delphi_Study/citation/download

Schumpeter, Joseph A., (1942) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy: 82 - 84. Harper Perennial Modern Classics; unknown edition (November 4, 2008). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0061561614 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061561610 https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Socialism-Democracy-Joseph-Schumpeter/dp/0061561614

Seely Brown, J., Duguid, P., (1998, Spring). Organizing Knowledge. California Management Review Vol. 40 No. 3 pp. 90 – 111. https://doi.org/10.2307/41165945

Simmons, M. R., (April 2001). 30 TCF by 2010? Can North America meet its gas requirements? The Energy Forum. New York, New York.

Sobel, Russel S., Clemons., The Essential Joseph Schumpeter (Essential Scholars). The Fraser Institute (April 22, 2020). ASIN : ‎B087LSPQGY https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Joseph-Schumpeter-Scholars-ebook/dp/B087LSPQGY

Tichy, N. M., (1983) Managing Strategic Change: Technical, Political and Cultural Dynamics. John Wiley & Sons. Wiley; 1st edition (May 3 1983). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0471865591 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0471865599 https://www.amazon.ca/Managing-Strategic-Change-Technical-Political/dp/0471865591

Volkoff, Olga, "Using the Structurational Model of Technology to Analyze an ERP Implementation" (1999). AMCIS 1999 Proceedings. 84. https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis1999/84

Westland, J. C., & Clark, T., (2000). Global Electronic Commerce. Cambridge, The MIT Press.MacDonald, J., (1998). Systems Engineering: Art and Science in an international context. International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). http://www.incose.org ISBN: 9780262528474 https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262528474/global-electronic-commerce/

Winter, Sidney G., Toward a Neo-Schumpeterian Theory of the Firm. Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 125-141, 2006. https://ssrn.com/abstract=914693

Whittaker, B., What Went Wrong? Unsuccessful Information Technology Projects. 1 March 1999 Information Management & Computer Security. ISSN: 0968-5227 https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09685229910255160/full/html#:~:text=Common%20reasons%20for%20project%20failure,-Common%20reasons%20for&text=Poor%20project%20planning%20(specifically%2C%20risks,the%20project%20plan%20was%20weak).&text=The%20business%20case%20tor%20the,areas%20or%20missing%20several%20components.&text=A%20lack%20of%20management%20involvement%20and%20support

Yergin, D. and J. Stanislaw (1998). The Commanding Heights. The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace that is Remaking the Modern World. New York, Simon & Schuster. Touchstone; Revised ed. edition (April 2 2002). ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 068483569X ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0684835693 https://www.amazon.ca/Commanding-Heights-Battle-World-Economy/dp/068483569X/ref=asc_df_068483569X/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=293014791721&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6078239189220152082&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001316&hvtargid=pla-564388576043&psc=1&mcid=7a3a8d91189d3885a33307614ee85cb7

Yermack, David, Journal Article Corporate Governance and Blockchains (March 2017), Review of Finance, Vol 21, Issue 1, pp. 7 - 31, SN 1572-3097. https://doi.org10.1093/rof/rfw074 https://academic.oup.com/rof/article/21/1/7/2888422

Zollo, M., & Winter, S. G. (2002). Deliberate Learning and the Evolution of Dynamic Capabilities. Organization Science, 13(3), 339–351. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3086025

YouTube & Video

Botsman, Rachel, Ted Talks, We’ve Stopped Trusting Institutions and Started Trusting Strangers. https://youtu.be/GqGksNRYu8s?si=CTh4BxLIxttv9FMx

Catz, Safra, Driving Impactful Business Results: Oracle CloudWorld 2022. https://youtu.be/1QQO5yZw0Zs

Ellison, Larry, Keynote Presentations Oracle Corporation. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=larry+ellison+keynote

How does the Blockchain Work: Simply Explained. https://youtube.com/watch?v=SSo_EIwHSd4&si=BWxyrzJeODAZ3WbT

Oracle CloudWorld 2023. https://www.youtube.com/@Oracle/playlists

Project Open Wonderland. https://youtu.be/oyxbmjQivZI https://youtu.be/am_qWxc0tVs https://youtu.be/9hoOMZmyngI https://youtu.be/1xI04ZmSsvI

Tapscott, Don, Understanding Blockchain in Under 7 Minutes. https://youtube.com/watch?v=isuAPyuqS7Y&si=mzn-YrEB1rRWC0iO

Tapscott, Don, Ted Talks, How the Blockchain is Changing Money and Business. https://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_how_the_blockchain_is_changing_money_and_business

Warburg, Bettina, Ted Talks, How Blockchain Will Radically Change the Economy. https://youtu.be/RplnSVTzvnU?si=LvdfZaV7Cw8nwDaz

Blogs & Articles

Boaz, Nate, Fox, Erica, A., Change Leader, Change Thyself. (March 2014). McKinsey Quarterly. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/change-leader-change-thyself

Borodovsky, Les @SoberLook (Twitter / X). https://t.co/5su7faaWB7 https://twitter.com/SoberLook

Wall Street Journal

Miss Your Office? Some Companies Are Building Virtual Replicas. https://www.wsj.com/articles/miss-your-office-some-companies-are-building-virtual-replicas-11590573600?st=6kza04nhx7khkoa&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Big Oil’s Talent Crisis: High Salaries Are No Longer Enough. https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-oils-talent-crisis-high-salaries-are-no-longer-enough-194545be?st=d0wyewt94cbnvnp&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

Vendors

ARK Investments Cathie Wood. https://twitter.com/CathieDWood

Oracle. https://www.oracle.com/erp/

Oracle Cloud ERP. https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/applications-common/23d/faser/index.html#COPYRIGHT_0000

Oracle Blockchain. https://cloud.oracle.com/blockchain

Oracle Sponsored IDC Whitepaper. https://go.oracle.com/LP=65050?elqCampaignId=117657&src1=ad:pas:go:dg:paas1&src2=wwmk170927p00089c0001&SC=sckw=WWMK170927P00089C0001&mkwid=sE7Ycdvy5%7Cpcrid%7C254634085580%7Cpkw%7Coracle%20blockchain%7Cpmt%7Ce%7Cpdv%7Cc%7Csckw=srch:oracle%20blockchain

Investopedia 

Price Maker Definition. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pricemaker.asp

Price Taker Definition. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pricetaker.asp

PriceWaterhouseCoopers. http://usblogs.pwc.com/emerging-technology/the-blockchain-challenge/

PriceWaterhouseCoopers blockchain validation. https://www.pwc.com/us/blockchain-validation

SAP

The Intelligent Enterprise. https://www.sap.com/documents/2017/02/c675c3b0-aa7c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.html

SpaceX and Swarm. https://www.starlink.com/

Wikipedia. 

Definition of Collusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion

Quotations

Friedman, Milton. “Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” https://mfidev.uchicago.edu/about/tribute/mfquotes.shtml

Simon, Herbert A., “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8502027-in-an-information-rich-world-the-wealth-of-information-means-a

This Concludes the Year 2023.

 A couple of quick points to note. This will be the last blog post for 2023 barring unforeseen circumstances. We will return in late January or early February 2024 with regular updates and the results of the work we're undertaking in the next three months.

People, Ideas & Objects' competitive advantages are Intellectual Property, our user community and research. Effective last Friday we completed a comprehensive review and rewrite of the Preliminary Specification and addressed some of its weaknesses. We incorporated recent developments in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and enhanced its readability. Since March 2014 our user community has been our priority and we have and will continue to work diligently on its development. In terms of research there has been nothing undertaken since the Preliminary Specification publication in August 2012. Research is a necessary element of our product's development and quality and we need to bring this aspect of our organization up to speed. I’ll set out our organization's approach to research and the areas of concern we'll look at. 

I have a few theories to develop in many areas. Service provider organizations have the highest priority. Being the result of enhanced, or hyper-specialization, and division of labor, this has reduced some work to mundane and boring activities. This does not resonate with our user community. Which is one of the last things producers need to ensure profitability in oil & gas operations. Therefore if it is an issue we’ll have to research to ensure that isn’t the case, and if so determine how to avoid it. These are opportunities to make the necessary changes quickly and effectively, at low cost.

Based on our sample of third-quarter reports. Over the years I’ve commented that their financial statements have homogenized. The only thing that sets them apart is the size of their production profile. Each producer then reports a cookie-cutter presentation of their balance sheet and earnings based on what is an acceptable template. Using only financial statements, it is impossible to determine which producer is winning and which is losing. All of them seem to report the same standard indistinguishable metric. 

It is evident today in these third quarter 2023 reports that the same can be stated regarding the boom / bust cycles. Whether the industry is prospering or struggling through difficult economic times makes no difference in producers' performance. Financial reporting homogeneity is now so comprehensive that it is impossible to determine any producer's performance or the state of affairs in the oil & gas community. They are just numbers from Pravda or MSNBC. And everyone knows and understands that. 

This One's Nuclear, Part III

 We’ve noted throughout our discussion the decline in natural gas prices since the financial crisis, and most recently, the further decline in early 2023. A fourteen year period in which nothing was done by producers other than to chronically and systemically overproduce hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas at discounted prices that provided nothing but destruction throughout the industry. Recent prices were barely higher than 1983. This occurred during a time when the ability to organize to realize a newly formed “global” natural gas price was available in the form of the newly rewritten Preliminary Specifications decentralized production models, price maker strategy. It has been available since August 2012. And the development of a natural gas export market since 2016 of over 13 BCF / day through LNG.

To take advantage of opportunities and avoid difficulties, every aspect of life requires organization and structure. Since 2009, trillions of dollars of waste has been realized due to a lack of organizational capability. The industry structure today cannot understand where it makes or loses money. It has never acquired the production discipline necessary to realize business benefits. Consequently, a much-needed chance to establish the natural gas industry on a profitable basis for the long term was not missed, but actively avoided by producer officers and directors. 

Realizing as little as one third of the value of natural gas produced since 2009 is tragic, however all is not lost. We stand today with this lesson learned and the newly rewritten Preliminary Specification available to us. This is to provide for organizational needs to realize the full value of future natural gas production. We also have a noticeable development in LNG export markets. The United States' current LNG export capacity is 13.44 BCF / day. There is additional capacity of 10.32 BCF / day coming online in the next two years. And there are regulatory approvals for an incremental 18.26 BCF / day beyond that. This brings incremental capacity of 28.58 BCF / day for a total capacity to 42.02 BCF / day. In terms of size that would be 40.2% of today’s total U.S. domestic production. A far more significant opportunity than what has been lost, or alternatively, in the "status quo" officers and directors, a far greater disaster if unrealized. 

Therefore it is incumbent upon this industry to focus on organizing itself to capture and realize this value. Otherwise we know and have seen what will happen. They fooled us once, and we’ve all suffered. If they do it again, who should we see then?

From the Preamble of the Preliminary Specification 

The following graph was provided by Les Borodovsky from @SoberLook. This graph represents the status quo perception of costs and production management in oil & gas.

Producer officers and directors perceive their total costs for each barrel of oil produced in the various shale formations are $48 to $54. Operating and royalty costs vary between $28 and $37. I would point out that the $20 to $23 in capital costs are based on an allocation of their capital costs across the entire reserves of the property. We’ve argued that this allocation is unreasonable in a capital market where the demands for capital performance are far greater than what can be achieved when a producer cycles their cash through their investments in a manner that retrieves their investment over several decades or more, or if at all. This is further aggravated when shale exposes prolific reserves and demands substantial incremental capital to offset shale gas' inherent steep decline curves. This is to maintain deliverability. 

People, Ideas & Objects recommends that producers retire their capital costs within the first 30 months of the property's life. This will allow previously invested capital to be captured and reused. In turn, it provides them with the means to meet their internal demands for future capital expenditures, shareholder dividends and debt repayments. In addition, they can better match shale's rapid decline rates to compete on North American capital markets. This can only be done if the producer sells their commodities at a price above their break-even point. This considers an appropriate accounting of exploration and production costs. And to reuse their assets repeatedly on this basis rather than every second decade. 

This graph reflects producers' current policy position on Well Break Even and Shut-in prices. At any point, and as long as the commodity price covers the operating costs, the property would continue to produce regardless of the impact on capital costs. If a dollar of capital costs was returned, or one dollar above the shut-in price, the property would continue production. Only at the point in time where the commodity price dropped below operating costs would the producer allegedly shut-in their production. This is a fundamental misinterpretation of the term break-even. It is the reason the industry struggles and why producers have lost money for four decades. Break-even is not what's interpreted here. The producer assumes that as long as there is cash flow above operating costs, they make money and continue to produce. What they’re stating is they may not be breaking-even, and as a result over the long term, stranding unrecovered and unrecoverable capital costs in abandoned properties is acceptable.

According to People, Ideas & Objects in our newly rewritten Preliminary Specification, the point at which the property would be shut-in would be at break-even or below, if we assume the accuracy of the graph numbers. (Note that our break-even point would be higher due to competitive recognition of all capital over a thirty month period. The reason for this being the production discipline gained through knowing that producing any property unprofitably only dilutes corporate profits.) Producing below the break-even point is unprofitable. Producing below the break-even point for one producer, in an industry whose commodities are price makers, will drop the price everywhere for all producers. When all producers continue to operate below the break-even price for four decades it exhausts the value of the industry on an annual and wholesale basis. Which I believe occurred in the 1990s and since then, times have only been " favorable " when investors were willing.

To avoid the allegation of collusion officers and directors would have us believe that they were operating the industry within the law. Losses of catastrophic proportions have been realized, displacing and disrupting producers' financial resources over the long term. Today the industry's financial, operational and political frameworks are in tatters. This is considered the normal course of business operations for officers and directors. Imposing the destruction of their firm's assets, the capacity and capabilities of the oil & gas and service industries is the price that they believed needed to be paid as a consequence of its acceptance of a “boom / bust” business by way of “muddle through.” This is unnecessary and unacceptable when the Preliminary Specification is available to operate the oil & gas business as a business.

Using Decentralized Production Models and Price Maker Strategies, the newly rewritten Preliminary Specification provides the inverse situation. In an environment where the Preliminary Specification will be operational, higher commodity prices would bring about production volumes that meet profitability thresholds. Therefore, previously shut-in properties would return to production. Enhanced commodity prices would allocate financial resources to innovative exploration and production methods. Providing the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable North American producer with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. 

The organizational objective is to satisfy consumer demand for energy with abundant, affordable, reliable and profitable energy. The value proposition of a barrel of oil equivalent is 10 to 25 thousand man hours of equivalent mechanical leverage. Living without oil & gas is impossible in the most advanced society with the most productive economy. Oil & gas producers' value proposition to their consumers is therefore the most substantial of any business.  

People, Ideas & Objects feel that oil & gas has distinct characteristics that need to be recognized and adhered to. These commodities are valuable and limited in the long run. How do we ensure that we can prove to future generations that we used our share of these resources appropriately? The first way is to show that all of them were produced profitably everywhere and always. As well as passing along a profitable and viable oil & gas and service industry. To do otherwise would be unwise and unjustified. When oil & gas commodities follow the principles of price makers, it is unnecessary to do so. Consumers know the only effective way to have secure, reliable and affordable energy independence in North America is when producers are financially successful. Why this hasn’t been done is a question that needs to be answered by those that have not done so. They had the alternative in the form of the Preliminary Specification available since 2012, and the LNG export market developing since 2016.

Operating the primary industry of oil & gas profitably, everywhere and always, will enable them to maintain the capacities and capabilities of the broader oil & gas industrial economy. That People, Ideas & Objects were subjected to abuse and punishment for this position and other content contained within the Preliminary Specification is evidence that officers and directors knew better, that our alternative was available and it was refused as it disintermediated the officers and directors method of management and personal compensation. They now need to live with their destructive legacy.

Production Discipline

Production discipline is the issue at hand. Today producers employ the high throughput production model which seeks to offset their high overhead costs across the largest base of oil & gas production. Maintaining 100% capacity is standard practice in the industry. Continuing to practice this for over four decades causes commodity prices to fundamentally collapse. Through a variety of natural gas or oil price collapses since the 1986 initial oil price collapse. Producers have employed their “muddle through” strategy and continue to produce at full capacity everywhere and always. For them to know and understand where and how they are earning profits or losing money is impossible using the current ERP systems they employ. One of the feature characteristics of the Preliminary Specification is that we provide detailed actual, factual, standard and objective financial statements for each and every Joint Operating Committee. Each property can be dealt with separately to determine profitability. If unprofitable, it can be shut-in to achieve the following benefits.

• Maximize corporate profitability by ensuring only profitable properties produce. No longer dilute profitable properties with losses from profitless properties.
• Save their reserves for when they can be produced profitably.
• Reserve costs don’t have to carry incremental costs of additional losses.
• Unprofitable production and storage costs are reduced if commodities are kept as reserves.
• Our method provides the current replacement value of the commodity. Price makers only increase production when it is profitable.
• By removing unprofitable production, commodity markets find their marginal costs.
• Making independent business decisions based on detailed actual, factual, standard and objective accounting that determines profitability is not collusion. 
• Marginal prices for all producers' properties across North America.
• Markets provide one thing, and only one thing, price. If the price provides profitable operations, they’ll produce.
• While shut-in producers will innovatively work the property back into profitable production. 

Production discipline is acquired through this process when producers compete for capital across capital markets. Diluting their earnings through the production of losing properties will not achieve the performance criteria that their competitors in the industry can attain. They will not maintain capital markets' overall performance expectations. Producer officers and directors will know the consequences of continuing to operate in that manner. Capital discipline which is claimed today is a dull instrument when used for production discipline. It is best considered the willing destruction of productive capacity over the long term. And that is all. People, Ideas & Objects decentralized production models, price maker strategy is the only fair and reasonable means of production discipline available. All others have been tried and failed when no one is satisfied with their allocation of production quotas. Production discipline is attained through performance and profitability. Achieve those and produce. Fair and reasonable which no one disputes. 

The standard and objective nature of the Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider organizations is critical in ensuring that each producer knows and understands that their assessment of profitability in our Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas Software & Service is fair and reasonable. When a producer's financial statement reports a loss at a property, they will know that all properties in North America were assessed on the same accounting basis. As a result, they will shut-in their property to gain the benefits noted above. 

Bringing this production discipline to North American oil & gas producers is part of the People, Ideas & Objects value proposition. These are some of the quantifiable and tangible benefits necessary for the industry to undertake its difficult and significant role in society. As a primary industry producers must understand that the service industry is wholly dedicated to its needs. Without the service industry producers would lose flexibility, innovation, and speed in their field operations. Oil & gas producers generate revenues and profits through the service industry. As it is with their internal staff. To continue to have geographical and technical flexibility, a healthy and prosperous service industry is a critical foundation for the oil & gas industry's health and prosperity. It is these tangible benefits derived from an appropriate accounting of oil & gas exploration and production costs. These benefits will fund these industries' health and prosperity. 

In addition to the tangible benefits there are unidentifiable and unquantifiable benefits to the Preliminary Specification that are potentially as material as those already noted. The Preliminary Specification lists a defined and supported culture from our seven Organizational Constructs. These establish an understanding for everyone operating within the industry. And include specialization and the division of labor, the only means of generating value in any organization since Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations in 1776. With our Cloud Administrative & Accounting for Oil & Gas Software and Service, we incorporate Professor Paul Romer's non-rival costs or "New Growth Theory." Relieving each producer from having to develop unshared and unshareable, in-house, non-competitive accounting and administrative capacities and capabilities within each producer firm. Rather than being a fixed cost for each producer. The Preliminary Specification makes overhead a variable cost of each Joint Operating Committee, variable based on profitable operations. When a property is shut-in, all costs are variable and it incurs a null operation, no profit but also no loss. Providing the production and capital discipline necessary. And subsequently, overhead is treated as a cost and not an asset as it is today. Therefore overhead costs are passed to the consumer in the current period, priced into the profitable commodity produced and therefore the cash incurred for these overheads is returned in the following month to establish and support a producer's “cash float.” Today, overhead is capitalized and realized over decades. Demanding that producers seek outside sources of capital to fund overheads and capital expenditures. 

Cash flow in capital intensive industries is strong, and these have been used to compensate oil & gas officers and directors handsomely. There are more roles and responsibilities that producers must undertake. In the service industry and providing an affordable, abundant and secure source of energy for the consumer. Therefore, the internal generation of these financial resources will need to be the source of capital for these roles and responsibilities. And although there were significant volumes of capital in the past, the inappropriate management of those resources is not what is required for the order of magnitude of resources being demanded. This will obviously be beyond the scope and comprehension of the current officers and directors. Producers will have all the money they want if they turn their organizations profitable. 

In Conclusion

What purpose would there be if we were sitting here in four years' time? A time when we can conclude, possibly, that consolidation is a failure. When no natural gas market price rehabilitation has taken place after the incremental 28 bcf / day of LNG has been brought online. Serially addressing the industry with one solution at a time is a luxury no industry has considered for decades. Yet oil & gas with their “muddle through” strategy can only approach one solution at a time. They need to pursue a multitude of solutions and have the results of each experiment determine the possibility of resolving their issues. Hiding in the crowd of those chanting "consolidation" ensures no accountability when failure occurs. With "muddle through" it's been that way for every meme, clean energy, shale, heavy oil, offshore… It’s never one individual that can be held accountable for past failed decisions. Accountability doesn't apportion blame. It intends to remediate the issue and determine how it occurred. It also seeks to resolve how to overcome it in the future. To avoid repeated mistakes.

Producers must provide vision and leadership for the marketplace and seed it with funding. In a paper written by Professors Richard Langlois and Nicholas J. Foss entitled “Capabilities and Governance: the Rebirth of Production in the Theory of Economic Organization," they note.

The organizational question is whether enhanced capabilities are best acquired through the market, through internal learning, or through some hybrid organizational form. And the answer will depend on (A) the already existing structure of capabilities and (B) the nature of the economic change involved. p. 20.

Officers and directors must focus on where the producer can generate the greatest value, on finding and developing oil & gas reserves, otherwise...

If by contrast, the old configuration of capabilities lies within large vertically integrated organizations, creative destruction may well take the form of markets superseding firms. History offers many examples of both. p. 20.

OCI Rewrite Complete

 I just wanted to drop a note that states for all intents and purposes the November 10, 2023 post was the last post involved in the rewrite of the Preliminary Specification. We began rewriting our product on November 1, 2022 due to Oracle CloudWorld 2022 conference contents. We were impressed with the impact it had on our ERP product and the incremental value it brought to the North American oil & gas marketplace. Further evidence of this impact was presented at the Oracle CloudWorld 2023 conference. We also wrote our Operations Management module. To coordinate these new technologies, data, and information with the Joint Operating Committee to ensure that oil and gas producers have a dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable operating environment. 

I am pleased to be involved in bringing this opportunity to the industry at this time. I feel the industry needs many changes to its administration, accounting, operations and management in order to ensure that we provide a profitable operation to producers' shareholders and the lowest cost oil & gas products to energy consumers. This can only be accomplished through a common sense approach that is comprehensive in nature. The short, medium and long term issues affecting the oil and gas industry are the focus of our approach. There is critical and difficult work to do. The Preliminary Specification provides a viable vision for people to follow. It is a comprehensive plan based on a workable business model that organizes the overall industry. An approach to this opportunity that deals with the issues we will fail in far more than just the oil & gas industry.

Today the Preliminary Specification stands at 14 modules. Although there has been a reduction in the wording for clarity purposes, the addition of the Operations Management module, Oracle automation and Generative AI has pushed the total word count to 383,492. It is comprehensive in nature and a lucid description of how our business model resolves the most pressing oil & gas challenges. More than anything however, is our commitment to our user community and user driven ERP software development. It is the only way to build a quality product, and quality will be the only product that People, Ideas & Objects delivers.

OCI Designing Transactions

 One area of the Accounting Voucher where the Preliminary Specification is different is the concept of designing transactions. We should define what we're discussing. Where accountants will spend their time in the future is designing transactions and leaving the processing, mostly through automation as a result of the design of the transactions, to computers. If you’ve read the Preliminary Specification you’ll be aware of the shift towards increased reliance on the marketplace as an organizational method. You'll also understand how the Joint Operating Committee interacts with the market and the producer firm. It will be with that understanding that we can begin to understand the concept of designing transactions. So let us begin with a simple description of the transaction's makeup. From Harvard Professors Carliss Baldwin and Kim Clark’s paper “Where do Transactions come from? A Network Design Perspective on the Theory of the Firm.”

In summary, objects that are transacted must be standardized and counted to the mutual satisfaction of the parties involved. Also in a transaction, there must be valuation on both sides and a backward, compensatory transfer - consideration paid by the buyer to the seller. Each of these activities - standardizing, counting, valuing, compensating - adds a new set of tasks and transfers to the overall task and transfer network. Thus it is costly to convert even the simplest transfer into a transaction.

Taken as a whole, standardizing, counting, valuing, and paying for transfers give rise to what we call “mundane transaction costs.” pp. 12 - 13.

Let's use a scenario where a group of producers have several producing wells of natural gas with some liquids production. They are situated next to a large gas plant that processes their gas in exchange for the liquids and markets their gas on the spot market. In this scenario we are evaluating these properties from the perspective of implementing them into the Preliminary Specification. We begin by analyzing the production accounting elements in the Accounting Voucher with the related Production Accounting Service Providers. Production Accounting Service Providers assess their fees based on units of work incurred during a production month. This is for any of the many processes involved and however our user community configures the software during the development of the Preliminary Specification. At each point they’ll assess a fee for their service based on transaction design principles. Our user community designs their work flow from a transactional perspective. Professors Baldwin and Clark.

The user and producer need to deploy knowledge in their own domains, but each needs only a little knowledge about the other's. 

If labor is divided between two domains and most task-relevant information hidden with each one, then only a few, relatively simple transfers of material, energy and information need to pass between the domains. The overall network structure will have a thin crossing point at the juncture of the two subnetworks. Furthermore, because the transfers are relatively few and not complex, mundane transaction costs will be low at the thin crossing point. Thus, other things equal, thin crossing points are good places to locate transactions. p. 15.

And

Placing a transaction - a shared definition, a means of counting, and a means of payment - at the completed transfer point allows the decentralized magic of the price system to go to work. p. 19.

Again if there is no production there is no basis for the Production Accounting Service Providers billing. Fulfilling the Preliminary Specifications' decentralized production model objective. This scenario shows how the Production Accounting Service Provider needs to design their transactions to produce the desired result. It also shows how to conduct their service and automate their billings. Additional transactions related to gas production, sales of natural gas, royalties, and payment of the processing fee are designed into an Accounting Voucher. This is the role of the Accounting Voucher for the producer firm and the Joint Operating Committee. Automation of innovative oil & gas industry business processes through transaction design. A production process creates an information unit that triggers the appropriate service providers to conduct their operations on the Joint Operating Committee's behalf.

The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on... Frederick Hayek (1945) The Use of Knowledge in Society

The Accounting Voucher has a “Transaction Design Interface” that provides a worksheet for accountants to design transactions. There is a defined process for analyzing these transactions. We will discuss that as we develop the Preliminary Specification. It is worthwhile to note at this point that each Accounting Voucher is used as a template for subsequent months. So once a transaction is designed, it will be reused, and built upon through the implementation of it as an Accounting Voucher template. This will provide the automation invoked each month of production which is supervised through the service provider organizations.

The role of the Accounting Voucher in determining the source of the market or the firm as the originator of the transaction is minimal. However, it ensures the costs of these transactions are minimal. If there was a simple way to describe this purpose of designing transactions it would be as a tool to coordinate the firm's or Joint Operating Committee's use of the market. This conceptually falls between transaction costs economics, capabilities, transaction design and automation. All areas Professor Richard Langlois includes in his research. We have also used Professor Carliss Baldwin for her transaction design work. Professor Richard Langlois in his paper "Capabilities and Governance: the Rebirth of Production in the Theory of Economic Organization."

However, a new approach to economic organization, here called "the capabilities approach," that places production center stage in the explanation of economic organization, is now emerging. We discuss the sources of this approach and its relation to the mainstream economics of organization. p. 1.

And

"One of our important goals here is to bring the capabilities view more centrally in the ken of economics. We offer it not as a finely honed theory but as a developing area of research whose potential remains relatively untapped. Moreover, we present the capabilities view not as an alternative to the transaction-cost approach but as a complementary area of research" p. 7.

The Accounting Voucher module of the Preliminary Specifications transaction design takes the accountant away from the benign scorekeeping role to the role of active participant in the operation. One that looks at the market from the point of view of how best to coordinate its various elements. This will provide the greatest added value to the firm or Joint Operating Committee. In Richard Langlois' “Capabilities and Governance: the Rebirth of Production in the Theory of Economic Organization"

A close reading of this passage suggests that Coase's explanation for the emergence of the firm is ultimately a coordination one: the firm is an institution that lowers the costs of qualitative coordination in a world of uncertainty. p. 11.

And this is perhaps one of the most relevant considerations of the work we do here in People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and service providers. Is the realization that each producer firm and each Joint Operating Committee will be unique. That due to their makeup they’re going to be different in material ways. Innovation will have a dramatic impact on how it is measured against each firm or Joint Operating Committee. Specialization and the division of labor, and other aspects of the changes imposed on producers will lead to broad diversity of approaches. The approach will be anything but cookie cutter. However, that does not preclude it from the process of standardization.

Either way it boils down to the same common-sense recognition, namely that individuals - and organizations - are necessarily limited in what they know how to do well. Indeed, the main interest of capabilities view is to understand what is distinctive about firms as unitary, historical organizations of cooperating individuals. p. 17.

Therefore, according to Professor Langlois' research, controlling transaction costs to ensure they are immaterial to firms and Joint Operating Committees. That is to say that they will be the same in all instances. And People, Ideas & Objects assert they will be irrelevant due to standardization through Information Technologies. These costs of coordinating the market will differentiate between firms and Joint Operating Committees. Making the Accounting Voucher module a critical tool in offering the producer firm the most profitable means of oil & gas operations.

... while transaction cost consideration undoubtedly explain why firms come into existence, once most production is carried out within firms and most transactions are firm-firm transactions and not factor-factor transactions, the level of transaction costs will be greatly reduced and the dominant factor determining the institutional structure of production will in general no longer be transaction costs but the relative costs of different firms in organizing particular activities. p 19.

We have been discussing Accounting Vouchers' “Transaction Design Interface” and its purpose as a tool to coordinate the use of markets. We want to ensure that market coordination efforts are consistent with the firm's or Joint Operating Committee objectives. They don’t conflict with the objectives of those who initiate work in Research & Capabilities or Knowledge & Learning or other modules. As we can see coordination through the Accounting Voucher of the Preliminary Specification is focused on the business end of the transaction, not on the operational side. It is a follow-up process invoked once the appropriate qualified vendor has been selected by operations.

The first question most people will have is why are we concerned about the coordination of the markets in the Accounting Voucher? In a comment made to the editor of Capitalism and Society, Professor Richard N. Langlois wrote this comment in response to an argument made by Professors Giovanni Dosi, Alfonso Gambardella, Marco Grazzi and Luigi Orsonigo (2008). 

Here again, I think the problem is one of conceptual imprecision. It is perfectly common, and often unobjectionable, to contrast a market and an organization, that is, to contrast the institution called a market and the institution called an organization (such as, notably, a firm). But the opposite of “organization” in the abstract sense is not “market” but disorganization. More helpfully, the opposite of conscious organization is unplanned or spontaneous coordination. In this sense the market-organization spectrum (and similar spectra one could imagine) are arguably orthogonal to the planned-spontaneous spectrum. One could well wonder, as I have (Langlois 1995), whether large organizations do not in fact grow far more as the unplanned consequence of many individual decisions than as the result of the conscious planning of any individual or small group of individuals. And it is certainly the case that, as Alfred Marshall understood, both firms and markets “are structures for promoting the growth of knowledge, and both require conscious organization” (Loasby 1990, p. 120). p. 10.

In today's globalized economy, there are large distances and other considerations between vendors and producers. Leaving market coordination to “spontaneous order” is asking too much of human ingenuity. Particularly with the focus of the industry on a further division of labor and specialization, where the risk and reward of oil & gas operations are so substantial, market coordination or transaction design will be a critical and necessary task to be carried out. Operations may involve more people. Once again it is from a business point of view that we are attempting to influence the operation. How will transactions and business be captured in such a manner that the firm and Joint Operating Committee incur the lowest possible costs from the most efficient methods of these business transactions? From Professor Richard Langlois Economic Institutions and the Boundaries of the Firm: The Case of Business Groups."

As Harvey Leibenstein long ago pointed out, economic growth is always a process of “gap-filling,” that is, of supplying the missing links in the evolving chain of complementary inputs to production. Especially in a developed and well functioning economy, one with what I like to call market-supporting institutions (Langlois 2003), such gap-filling can often proceed in important part through the “spontaneous” action of more-or-less anonymous markets. In other times and places, notably in less-developed economies or in sectors of developed economies undergoing systemic change, gap-filling requires other forms of organization — more internalized and centrally coordinated forms. p. 6.

And

Let’s take a closer look at the nature of the “gaps” involved. Adam Smith tells us in the first sentence of The Wealth of Nations that what accounts for “the greatest improvement in the productive power of labor” is the continual subdivision of that labor (Smith 1776, I.i.1). Growth in the extent of the market makes it economical to specialize labor to tasks and tools, which increases productivity – and productivity is the real wealth of nations. As the benefits of the resulting increases in per capita output find their way into the pockets of consumers, the extent of the market expands further, leading to additional division of labor – and so on in a self-reinforcing process of organizational change and learning (Richardson 1975; Young 1928). p. 7

We’ve seen over the past several decades that producer firms lack the speed and capacity for change. People, Ideas & Objects asserts this is attributable to producer officers and directors' desire to maintain low accountability levels through poor ERP systems. Today organizations are defined and supported by software, and most particularly ERP software, and they are therefore constrained by them. The Preliminary Specification has chosen the market to deal with this issue instead of cultural difficulties of change and the firm's historical performance as the other choice. There needs to be a means to affect the producer firms' performance trajectory. Specialization and labor division have been the only proven methods to build economic value since 1776. There is a way to access this through the market, which disrupts the culture of the producer firms. A culture that counters profitability and must be dismantled. The addition of transaction cost economics and these tools will enhance the transition. This will facilitate the performance trajectory necessary to achieve profitable energy independence in North America.

The question as to which, the firm or market, to use as the means of production in oil & gas is academic. Geographic and technical diversity is necessary to operate in the North American oil & gas marketplace. This is due to the many levels and types of operations a producer could specialize in, even in today’s market. The answer has always been the market. There is significant conflict and contradiction in the relationship between producers and the service industry. This is due to the treatment the service industry has been subjected to over the past several decades. It is suggested that producers will need to make a deliberate effort to remediate and rebuild the capabilities and capacities necessary to provide profitable energy independence in North America.

The starting point of this rebuilding process for our user community is as follows: If we recall in the Resource Marketplace module the vendors and suppliers maintain their own contact data. Within that data is their key personnel which includes their field staff. They should also include their key business personnel for the purposes of the “Transaction Design Interface” to collaborate on these interfaces. In addition, their financial data and billing information, as well as other critical data and information. This will help the producer firm or Joint Operating Committee efficiently coordinate and process transactions. Lastly a collaborative interface should be provided for everyone within the Accounting Vouchers vendor pool to discuss how the transaction is designed and the template that is used by the specific vendor. Obviously, our software development for the service industry will begin here.

OCI Revenue Model

 Our Value Proposition

People, Ideas & Objects our user community and their service providers value proposition is that we provide North American oil & gas producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. We do this by developing, providing, implementing, supporting and defining within the Preliminary Specification a business model and vision that enables the producer to be more profitable than in any other business model. Our value proposition is quantified over the next 25 years in the range of $25.7 to $45.7 trillion. This incremental value is compared to oil & gas producers' current "corporate" business model. The difference between average oil & gas prices currently realized vs. actual exploration and production costs determined by accurate and timely accounting constitutes the value of this ratio. To earn "real" profitability, producers need higher commodity prices. From Professor Richard N. Langlois' recently released book, The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise.

To economists, a “bubble” occurs when the prices of assets diverge from the “fundamentals”: when people do not trade strictly in light of a careful and sober assessment of the prospects of the firms issuing the stock, including the prospects for dividends, but rather trade purely in expectation that asset prices will continue to go up and provide them with capital gains. Essentially all popular accounts take it for granted that the crash of 1929 was the result of a stock market bubble. So too do Keynesian (and post-Keynesian) economists, who believe that financial markets are inherently unmoored from the fundamentals and are inevitably at the mercy of “irrational exuberance.” Experimental evidence suggests that even when trading is clearly grounded in fundamentals, adjustment is never instantaneous and bubbles are possible during the process.

The Preliminary Specification assumes that producers' property, plant and equipment accounts, as they stand today, will need to be exhausted in the next 30 months. Producer firms need to cease using investor capital to subsidize consumers' capital costs. All industry value and cash resources are held in producers' property, plant and equipment accounts. They’ve literally “put the cash in the ground.” This reflects the cumulative subsidies producers have forced investors to subsidize consumers by. If industry were to recognize those costs based on our Preliminary Specifications decentralized production models price maker strategy they would resume normal healthy operations without the need for outside capital. Key to this strategy and the realization of this value is the implementation of our price maker strategy. This would enable oil & natural gas prices to capture all exploration and production costs in a timely and accurate manner. This would ensure profitable operations. And therefore the industry could compete on the North American capital markets. Oil & gas is a capital intensive industry, so it is reasonable to assume that consumer costs will be predominantly capital in nature. This hasn’t been the case for four decades. Please review the Preamble to the Preliminary Specification for more information on our decentralized production model's price maker strategy.

Everyone intuitively understands that if each producer scaled back their production by 5% their revenues would triple. Oil & gas are commodities that reflect economic characteristics of price makers, not price takers as assumed today. With an elasticity of supply / demand characteristics severely affected by the incremental barrel. The issue is producer organizations built today were developed during resource scarcity. When resources are scarce, full production is assumed at all times. Therefore, using the high-throughput production model to offset high costs of an operation, especially overhead, would be a logical organizational approach. In the shale age, however, the market consistently experiences that incremental barrel, which leads to commodity price collapse. Therefore, an organizational methodology is needed to organize North American producers. One in which only profitable production is produced everywhere and always. And profitable from the point of view of all exploration and production costs being recognized on a timely and accurate basis. Turning over the capital trapped in property, plant and equipment so that capital resources, or cash, are not sitting idle waiting for decades to be returned and redeployed. In addition, investors are asked to fund basic operations. Investors are unwilling to invest their money and watch it sit in property, plant and equipment for ten to twenty five years. This is when other industries turn capital over in six months. Oil & gas producers are not competing for capital, only consuming it as evidenced by their claims of “building balance sheets” and “putting cash in the ground.”

People, Ideas & Objects are turning the entire industry's focus to where its value can best be increased. Profitable energy independence in North America. The producer's value proposition to the oil & gas consumer is quantified in the area of 10 to 25 thousand man hours of mechanical leverage. This is for each barrel of oil equivalent. The greatest contribution to society of any industry. One that civilization loses without. This needs to be the heightened focus and drive of producer firms. This is where their value is realized and the outsized role they play in the critical nature of providing abundant and affordable oil & gas products to the most powerful economy man’s ever known.

Who Are We Building Systems For?

We now apply and extend Professor Jurgen Habermas’ 1960s theory of different knowledge interests from his book The Theory of Communicative Action. We delve into the difficult question regarding what we need the Preliminary Specification for. Are we developing systems that manage oil & gas producer commercial operations? Yes we are, but that does not address the societal and individual needs of these systems. If we continue to look at just producers' needs, we leave many needs unaddressed. Society and individuals are critical elements of a profitable oil & gas industry. For example society benefits by having producers and the service industries efficiently interact, develop profitable operations, pay royalties and taxes. Individuals create innovative solutions to producers' demands for their services. Profits from primary industries such as oil & gas are necessary to ensure prosperity throughout the secondary and tertiary industries that exclusively support North American producers. Trickle-down economics is valid in its application. This has not occurred in oil & gas and now there are significant issues ahead and large consequences as a result of the past management of the industry. Today no one in oil & gas would question the need for real profitability in North America, everywhere and always.

Organizations, individuals and society benefit from an increased and expanded division of labor and specialization. As defined by Professor Anthony Giddens' The Constitution of Society and Professor Wanda Orlikowski's structuration model. In today’s globalized, high technology workplace an expanded division of labor and specialization can be more efficiently created through permanent industry-wide software development capability. People, Ideas & Objects describes this in its Preliminary Specification. When we consider the oil & gas industry's economic output, increasing it requires increased levels of specialization and division of labor. Responsibility for increasing output does not fall on society, individuals or organizations in isolation but on all three. Therefore it is reasonable to state that what we need is the Preliminary Specification to address societies, individuals and organizations' needs. I do not foresee further development of the division of labor or specialization within the oil & gas industry without systems development involvement. In a somewhat deliberate manner where all groups are represented such as People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification.

The Flow of Funds

As well as their part-time work with People, Ideas & Objects our user community relies on this as one of two sources of funding. I now seek to clarify how our revenue model provides funds flow within these associated communities. To start we need to clearly identify the two different groups that are supported by People, Ideas & Objects revenues and who is not. These groups include (1) People, Ideas & Objects, (2) our user community members. Service providers are a separate and distinct group of independent businesses funded by producers. These funds replace their current accounting and administrative resources. They will deliver People, Ideas & Objects software with process management services directly to producers. Therefore, our user community members will receive another revenue stream since they are the service provider's principal owner and operator. The size of the service provider's revenue stream would be consistent with what is incurred today in the oil & gas industry for accounting and administration. The need for financial support for these communities is as follows.

Funds will then be distributed from People, Ideas & Objects to our user groups for their participation in our software development. Our user community members are independent business people. They define and design the systems needed by the oil & gas industry based on the Preliminary Specification vision. This is a revenue-generating activity for their organizations. It is in this way that People, Ideas & Objects acquires Intellectual Property rights to our user community members' contributions. Please see our User Community Vision for further information.

People, Ideas & Objects Capitalization

Another element of our Revenue Model is the means by which People, Ideas & Objects are capitalized. Traditionally software developers are stand-alone organizations with their own banking, regulatory and venture capital influences. People, Ideas & Objects takes a project management perspective in providing this software solution to the marketplace. Our capital structure differences are significant, with our Revenue Model being a critical element in defining and supporting these differences. Other key deliverables of this organizational structure are People, Ideas & Objects earnings, Intellectual Property royalties and Flexible Profitable Production Rights.

Our ability to maintain our focus on our user community's needs. I believe the situation in oil & gas today is the most significant issue in its history. The monetary value of our solution to the oil & gas industry is substantial. On the other hand the oil & gas industry, from an ERP perspective, is very small and raises a number of difficulties in terms of realizing any value from our efforts. Our budget is immaterial to the value created when producers implement the Preliminary Specification. Far more money is lost each month due to oil & gas overproduction and oversupply.

Our application scope and scale are very large. We need to eliminate and deal with any constraints that would otherwise occur with a compromised capital structure of People, Ideas & Objects. Therefore People, Ideas & Objects is funded by its Revenue Model and focused on its users, making it more of a project management venture. To be clear the scope and scale of People, Ideas & Objects is well beyond what venture capital groups would fund. Complicating our capital structure only complicates and compromises our software and services deliverability. To suggest that People, Ideas & Objects can be structured without investment capital might be naive for me to consider. However I do know that it would be naive to suggest that the systems as described in the Preliminary Specification could be built with the traditional influences of a capital structure. It would be contrary to the best interests of breaking from the existing failed industry culture. Theoretically our investment capital demands may require us to compromise with producers on a few key issues. To then suggest that we were focused on quality and achieved that through our user community would be a farce. Therefore, with that in mind and to ensure that the Preliminary Specification captures the full scope and scale of the technical and geographical concerns of the profitable North American oil & gas industry we can ensure that our user community basis for our software development remains our priority.

We must break from the dysfunctional culture of the current industry's administration. We will only recreate the same failed state if we need to compromise on their failing methods in order to receive our funding next month. Another issue with our funding is that we are subject to producer firms' whims. When push comes to shove, market dynamics may have changed as they did in 2022 with higher commodity prices. It would then be a good time to cancel this project by cutting its funding. Please note that 2022 may be the producers' 6th good year out of 36! Only when they have some “skin in the game” will they remain committed to the manner that will make this project successful and carry it to completion. Expecting producers to directly, or indirectly through our Profitable Production Rights, pay for large development costs. And it is to ensure that they face the difficulties and accountability necessary to firstly admit they've failed and secondly be committed to one solution.

We have discussed the risks of becoming “blind sleepwalking agents of whomever feeds us.” It's an issue of concern when discussing systems development. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model shows these risks are real and require an entirely different approach to funding our software development. It serves no one's interests, People, Ideas & Objects, our user community, service providers, producers or the service industry to proceed without dealing with this issue. It is advisable to identify these conflicts and compromise situations now, while the influences are manageable. Financial participation is how our communities are supported and can avoid becoming “blind sleepwalking agents of whoever feeds us.” People, Ideas & Objects are user focused developments. Software development projects can prioritize many choices. Users are one, technical efficiency is another and there are many other possibilities. To support the oil & gas industries' profitability needs everywhere and always. It is critical to focus on a producer's competitive advantages, their land & asset base, and their earth science & engineering capabilities. Users need to have the software tools, capabilities and means of production (the financial resources to build these products and services) under their control. If funding were to be cut or suspended mid-way through this project only the producer's officers and directors would win. There would never, or could ever, be a resurrection of the project or anything similar for the foreseeable future. Producer officers and directors need to be removed from the future success or failure of this development. Cutting their control of this project's funding is only the first step.

Change-Based Software Development Capability

People, Ideas & Objects focus on our user community. They are one of our three competitive advantages. They are our customers. Providing them with the software development capabilities they need to support oil & gas business opportunities and issues in the 21st century. This is not a static instance. As the oil & gas business changes, the software derived from the Preliminary Specification will accommodate those changes. This will be done through the establishment of our permanent software development capability and our user community. We therefore provide change-based software development capability for the North American oil & gas industry. We are not introducing “new” technology for technology's sake. Technology will have a substantial impact on our revenue model. However it is the oil & gas business, and the changes in that business that drive our user community and People, Ideas & Objects.

Traditional ERP vendors in the oil & gas marketspace "sold" a solution to oil & gas producers and supported that application through an annual service contract. Our competitors sell a product that does not keep up with changes in the business environment. Contrast that to the People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model that is dynamic in that we focus on business environment changes. Preparing Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas software and services. These changes generate our revenue stream. Without changes to the software, there would be no developments and no fees assessed in that year by People, Ideas & Objects. These fees are the annual fees incurred by producers once the Preliminary Specification is released.

It is a fundamentally different point of view. Traditional ERP vendors are constrained by their code and their customers. Any changes to the code need to be populated for the variety of customers who use their software. As a result, the vendor is resistant to change. The more code the software vendor generates the more complex the changes will be. And the more customers vendors have, the more costs and conflicts arise. Innovations and enhanced features are not covered by the software vendor's service contract. People, Ideas & Objects will use Oracle's Cloud ERP where changes will be populated for our user base on the same quarterly basis as Oracle’s product. We are oriented to the changes in the oil & gas producers business environment through the demands of our user community. These changes drive our revenue. The contrast between the traditional ERP vendor and our change-based software development capability could not be greater.

Our applications provide software development capability for the oil & gas industry, service providers and service industries. It allows the industry to adapt when opportunities and issues arise. We believe that proceeding through the 21st century without a team of committed and capable ERP software developers will unnecessarily constrain the oil & gas industry within the Preliminary Specifications definition. Evolution of that model is necessary to eliminate systemic and chronic issues. As an example, the current problem of overproduction and oversupply has been around since the mid-1970s.