ABSTRACT:
This issue opens the twenty-second volume of JMIS, in a significantly expanded format. The expansion will give us a further opportunity to contribute to our field. Owing to your support as readers, authors, reviewers, and editors, the Journal has been experiencing a continuing growth of excellent contributions. In pragmatic terms, the thicker issues will help us avoid publication delays for the accepted papers—a commitment we consider necessary, given the technology-driven nature of our field.
The translation of individual-level skills into a group phenomenon is the subject of the first paper in the issue. Amrit Tiwana and Ephraim R. McLean investigate empirically how the creativity of a development team working on an information system (IS) project arises from the expertise of the team members. Achieving creative solutions to IS problems is important in itself. Beyond that, the integrative processes that give rise to the—desirably, positive—outcomes at higher levels of analysis are of vast importance in the study of intellectual capital creation, and this work is of significance.
The next paper, by Weidong Xia and Gwanhoo Lee, also addresses IS development projects. The authors produced and extensively validated a model reflecting the complexity of these projects. A combination of organizational and technological factors, along with structural and time-dependent determinants, all produce the sparse set of 15 metrics of the model. It is of obvious use in project risk and cost estimation, and in an IS portfolio analysis. The model will be, no doubt, further refined by considering the complexity of the development stages, for example.
A different metric-oriented model is being offered and validated by Jerry Cha-Jan Chang and William R. King. Called a functional scorecard, it aims to measure the performance of the IS function in supporting the organizational processes, goals, and long-term performance. The work is encompassing in its purpose. When taken together with the model presented by Xia and Lee, the two measurement tools will help in understanding how the organizational IS can be controlled, and they are the instruments of such control.
Two papers bring up vividly the importance of group norms in the organizational use of IS. System implementation has always been problematic, and perhaps never more so than in the case of systems whose use relies almost exclusively on the potential user’s volition. Although it is true that many IS implementations that expect user compliance fail by not considering the discretionary aspect of use, the systems whose use is entirely voluntary need to evince deep user commitment. The sources of such commitment are investigated here by Yogesh Malhotra and Dennis Galletta. The authors present a model of commitment to use, rooted in the social influence theory. The interplay of personal values and the ever-important group norms is analyzed to surface subtle distinctions between the factors leading to the adoption and those leading to the continuing use of a system.
Group norms loom large also in the analysis of workplace use of information technology offered by Michael J. Gallivan, Valerie K. Spitler, and Marios Koufaris. Once again, the usual implementation facilitation, and training in particular, is found wanting in its outcomes. Rather, the authors show empirically the importance of social processes that translate the coworkers’ use of technology into its use by their colleagues. This work, when taken together with the preceding paper, should lead to a reconsideration of our analytical and pragmatic approaches to IS implementation and infusion.
There have been many and various analytical explanations offered for IS outsourcing. James A. Hall and Stephen L. Liedtka present here another—and a very interesting—one. The publicly available data for 51 firms, when analyzed by the researchers, suggest that the financial incentives available to the CEOs significantly influence the decisions to outsource. In other words, difficult-to-reverse large-scale outsourcing decisions can be traced to managerial self-interest. In the light of this finding, it behooves corporations to review the compensation structure with this bias in mind, and to provide board oversight over large-scale IS outsourcing decisions.
The remaining papers in the issue deal with various aspects of e-commerce, in its entire spectrum from the electronic marketplaces to supply chain management. Khawaja A. Saeed, Varun Grover, and Yujong Hwang show that e-commerce competence is associated with a superior organizational performance, and explain the mediating factors of that relationship. The authors provide their conceptualization of e-commerce competence and employ a broad view of organizational performance, both in the short and in the long runs.
The work of G. Premkumar, K. Ramamurthy, and Carol Stoak Saunders addresses the context of interorganizational supply chains. The authors deploy information processing theory to model the construct of fit between the information processing needs of a firm and its information processing capabilities. The study expands the theoretical foundations of our discipline, and will no doubt engender further refinement of the capability side of the notion of fit.
Michael R. Galbreth, Salvatore T. March, Gary D. Scudder, and Mikhael Shor present a model of participation growth in e-marketplaces, predicated on the network effects creating increasing value for the participants, if the virtuous upward spiral is reached. The intermediary marketplaces serving as the context here have struggled, and very many of them have failed. Using a game-theoretic model, the authors show how various parameters, such as the costs of intermediation, and the pricing reactions of sellers and buyers, can lead to desirable equilibria.
The prerequisites of e-commerce success, but in an entirely different governance setting, are also targeted by the work of Jai-Yeol Son, Sridhar Narasimhan, and Frederick J. Riggins. The authors investigate empirically some of the factors leading to effective supplier–customer relationships enabled by electronic data interchange (EDI). As newer technologies are slowly taken up by the organizations, EDI remains the workhorse of the interorganizational systems. The authors show that the cooperative approaches, including reciprocal investments—as opposed to the one-sided exercise of power—lead to successful arrangements.
Web-based commerce presents extensive opportunities of differentiation by offering an augmented product, with the original product converted by inclusion of services and experiences into a bundle, by intent distinctive in the marketplace. In fact, the ability to extract profits in e-markets depends to a great degree on the ability to offer such augmented products. Ramnath K. Chellappa and K. Ravi Kumar examine analytically the pricing and long-term customer retention strategies in devising augmented products. The authors state recommendations to the vendors on the extent to which the augmenting services should be offered cost-effectively to maintain customer loyalty. This is an important contribution to our thinking about product offerings in e-marketplaces.
The conclusion of another volume of the Journal is always an occasion to thank our reviewers as the primary guarantors of quality. The Journal’s expansion makes it an excellent occasion. Here are the JMIS referees:
Niv Ahituv
Pervaiz Alam
Paul Alpar
Donald L. Amoroso
Murugan Anandarajan
Hayward P. Andres
Dorine Andrews
Solomon Antony
Yoris Au
Sulin Ba
Barbro Back
Akhilesh Bajaj
P.R. Balasubramanian
Dirk Baldwin
Donald P. Ballou
Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay
Indranil R. Bardhan
Reza Barkhi
Henri Barki
Stuart J. Barnes
Dinesh Batra
Irma Becerra-Fernandez
Salvatore Belardo
Skip Benamati
Michael Benaroch
Raquel Benbunan-Fich
Samuel Bendahan
François Bergeron
Hemant Bhargava
Anol Bhattacherjee
Sudip Bhattacherjee
M. Brian Blake
Gilbert Bock
Indranil Bose
Robert M. Brown
Glenn J. Browne
Jeffrey Butterfield
Terry A. Byrd
Edward G. Cale, Jr.
Sven Carlsson
Houston H. Carr
William J. Carroll
Robert P. Cerveny
Sergio de Cesare
Jerry Cha-Jan Chang
Debabroto Chatterjee
Patrick Chau
Ramnath K. Chellappa
Hong-Mei Chen
Kuan Chen
Minder Chen
Hsing Kenneth Cheng
Robert T.H. Chi
Roger Chiang
Alina M. Chircu
William C. Chismar
Jong-min Choe
H. Michael Chung
Wingyan Chung
Theodore H. Clark
Roger Clarke
Randolph Cooper
Qizhi Dai
Ronald Dattero
Donald L. Davis
Bruce Dehning
Gordon Depledge
Sarv Devaraj
Rajiv M. Dewan
Gisela von Dran
Peter Duchessi
Omar A. El Sawy
Sean B. Eom
J. Alberto Espinosa
Ming Fan
Bijan Fazlollahi
Steven Feiner
Eliezer M. Fich
Kirk Fiedler
Edmond P. Fitzgerald
Jerry Fjermestad
Steven W. Floyd
Chiara Francalanci
Michael R. Galbreth
Dennis Galletta
Gordon Gao
Edward J. Garrity
Judith Gebauer
David Gefen
Paulo B. Goes
Janis L. Gogan
Thomas Goh
Dale Goodhue
Ram D. Gopal
Sanjay Gosain
Martin D. Goslar
Paul Gray
Saul Greenberg
Robert K. Griffin
Michael D. Grigoriades
Bin Gu
Kemal Guler
Alok Gupta
Jungpil Hahn
Barbara Haley
James A. Hall
Ingoo Han
Paul Hart
Stephen Hayne
Ann Hickey
Starr Roxanne Hiltz
Rudy Hirschheim
Richard Hoffman
John A. Hoxmeier
Paul Hu
Qing Hu
Wayne Huang
Cary Hughes
Kai Lung Hui
Ard Huizing
E. Gerald Hurst
Zahir Irani
Gretchen I. Irwin
Bharat A. Jain
James J. Jiang
Alice Johnson
Linda Ellis Johnson
Kailash Joshi
Boris Jukiæ
Nenad Jukiæ
Charles Kacmar
Surinder Kahai
Timo Kakola
Ajit Kambil
P.K. Kannan
Jahangir Karimi
Michael Kattan
Timothy Kayworth
Julie E. Kendall
William J. Kettinger
Omar E.M. Khalil
Melody Y. Kiang
Ruth King
Rajiv Kishore
Gary Klein
Rajiv Kohli
Esther Koster
Marios Koufaris
Kenneth A. Kozar
Kenneth L. Kraemer
Allan Krebs
Ramayya Krishnan
Uday Kulkarni
Akhil Kumar
Ram Kumar
Mary C. Lacity
Simon S.K. Lam
Karl R. Lang
Tor J. Larsen
Kathy S. Lassila
Heeseok Lee
Ho Geun Lee
Jungwoo Lee
Yang Lee
Zoonky Lee
Dorothy Leidner
Richard Leifer
Jan Marco Leimeister
Katherine N. Lemon
Mary Jane Lenard
Hugo Levecq
Ting-Peng Liang
Stephen L. Liedtka
Nancy Lightner
John Lim
Kai Lim
Yihwa Irene Liou
Astrid Lipp
Henry C. Lucas, Jr.
Mark Lycett
Kalle Lyytinen
William McCarthy
Jane M. Mackay
Roy McKelvey
D. Harrison McKnight
Ephraim R. McLean
Poppy L. McLeod
Simha R. Magal
M. Adam Mahmood
Arvind Malhotra
Yogesh Malhotra
Ji-Ye Mao
Salvatore T. March
Ivan Marsic
Anne P. Massey
Charles H. Mawhinney
Jerrold H. May
Roberto J. Mejias
Shaila Miranda
Rajesh Mirani
Ali R. Montazemi
Ramiro Montealegre
Jeanette Moody
Steven Morris
Jolene Morrison
Michael D. Myers
Peter P. Mykytyn, Jr.
Barin N. Nag
Murli Nagasundaram
R. Ryan Nelson
Boon Siong Neo
Fred Niederman
Mark Nissen
Rosalie Ocker
Wonseok Oh
Bob O’Keefe
Lorne Olfman
James Oliver
Levent Orman
Carl Pacini
Jonathan W. Palmer
Raymond R. Panko
Michael Parent
Jeffrey Parsons
Souren Paul
David J. Pauleen
Paul A. Pavlou
Kenneth Peffers
Norman Pendegraft
Mark Pendergast
Robin Pennington
Roger A. Pick
Leo L. Pipino
Mitzi G. Pitts
Jean-Charles Pomerol
Gerald Post
John H. Prager
G. Premkumar
Sandeep Purao
Jim J. Quan
S. Raghunathan
Arik Ragowsky
T.S. Ragu-Nathan
Arun Rai
Rex Kelly Rainer, Jr.
K. Ramamurthy
K.S. Raman
B. Ramesh
Neil C. Ramiller
Richard G. Ramirez
Bharat Rao
H.R. Rao
R. Ravichandran
T. Ravichandran
Sury Ravindran
Amy W. Ray
Louis Raymond
Paul Resnick
Hyuen-Suk Rhee
Vernon Richardson
William B. Richmond
Frederick Riggins
Suzanne Rivard
Daniel Robey
Michael B. Rogich
Nicholas C. Romano, Jr.
Sherry D. Ryan
Young U. Ryu
Timo Saarinen
Rajiv Sabherwal
G. Lawrence Sanders
Radhika Santhanam
Carol Saunders
Naveed Saleem
Surendra Sarnikar
George Schell
Petra Schubert
Judy Scott
Ravi Sen
Kishore Sengupta
Vikram Sethi
Theresa M. Shaft
Jim Sheffield
Olivia Sheng
Morgan M. Shepherd
Michael Shields
Siew Kien Sia
Atish P. Sinha
Sumit Sircar
H. Jeff Smith
Michael D. Smith
Charles A. Snyder
Toni M. Somers
Jai-Yeol Son
William E. Spangler
Valerie K. Spitler
Rajendra P. Srivastava
Thomas F. Stafford
Stephen Standifird
Sandy Staples
Eric W. Stein
Dick Stenmark
Lee Stepina
John M. Stevens
Mani Subramani
Girish Subramanian
Ramesh Subramanian
Robert T. Sumichrast
Shankar Sunarajan
Arun Sundararajan
Shankar Sundaresan
Tae Kyung Sung
Roderick I. Swaab
Edward J. Szewczak
Paul P. Tallon
Kar Yan Tam
Bernard C.Y. Tan
Yao-Hua Tan
Mohan R. Tanniru
Alfred Taudes
Nolan Taylor
David P. Tegarden
Gary F. Templeton
James T.C. Teng
Hock-Hai Teo
Thompson Teo
Jason B. Thatcher
Matthew Thatcher
Ron Thompson
James Y.L. Thong
John Tillquist
Amrit Tiwana
Gholamreza Torkzadeh
Leon van der Torre
Jonathan K. Trower
Duane Truex
Gregory E. Truman
Yanbin Tu
Ilkka Tuomi
Brad Tuttle
Tuure Tuunanen
N.S. Umanath
Andrew Urbaczewski
Rustam Vahidov
Yaniv Vakrat
Vasja Vehovar
Viswanath Venkatesh
Michael Wade
Steven Walczak
Zhiping Walter
Bin Wang
Michael S. Wang
Shouhong Wang
Y. Richard Wang
Carol Watson
Mary Beth Watson-Manheim
Thomas Weber
Chih-Ping Wei
Charles E. Wells
John Wells
Larry West
J. Christopher Westland
Seungjin Whang
Michael E. Whitman
Jeffrey L. Whitten
George Widmeyer
Fons Wijnhoven
Charles Willow
Barbara Wixom
Charles A. Wood
Hans Wortmann
D.J. Wu
Mu Xia
Weidong Xia
Christopher Yang
Byungjoon Yoo
Han Zhang
Ping Zhang
J. Leon Zhao
Lina Zhou
Kevin Zhu
Ilze Zigurs
Moshe Zviran
Let us now turn our attention to the—expanded—journal.
Vladimir Zwass
Editor-in-Chief