Special Issue: Competitive Strategy, Economics, and Information Systems - Clemons, Eric K; Dewan, Rajiv M; Kauffman, Robert J (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2004)
Amid the many changes that we have seen in the global economy and the market for information technology (IT) and e-business services in the past five years, certain business issues and research themes have held a continuing interest and timeless appeal to the people in the information systems (IS) and economics research community. The papers that appear in this special issue of the Journal of Management Information Systems represent the theme of “competitive strategy, economics, and IS.” They include research that presents new methods to gauge the business value of IS, new theoretical perspectives on intellectual property rights and the ownership of interorganizational systems, and extensions to our knowledge of the market structure for search engines and Web portals in e-commerce and their influence on the concentration of media content. Also in this issue are several papers on relatively new topics in IS research. One explores how to organize the market for utility computing (especially the emerging opportunities with grid computing) to ensure appropriate investment and capacity. Another examines the creation of optimal market segmentation strategies for producers of various kinds of information goods when there is an opportunity to identify a “digital divide” in consumer preferences and access to the Internet. These papers represent new thinking in IT strategy from the faculty of leading business schools in the United States and reflect the increasing importance of the ties between IS research and problems in related business disciplines. The first two papers present new methodologies that are motivated by methods from finance that structure the analysis of financial assets. Ram L. Kumar’s paper, “A Framework for Assessing the Business Value of Information Technology Infrastructures,” offers an innovative approach to the assessment of IT infrastructure flexibility in the firm. The emphasis of the author’s modeling approach is on the measurement and analysis of multiple sources of managerial uncertainty that affect infrastructure value. He conceptualizes this in terms of stochastic value jumps that arise due to market shocks, which can be traced through in terms of the business value of the IT infrastructure. He illustrates his methodology in the context of the IT infrastructure investment of a large, diversified financial institution. Indranil Bardhan, Sugato Bagchi, and Ryan Sougstad’s paper, “Prioritizing a Portfolio of Information Technology Investment Projects,” addresses how portfolio evaluation principles work in the context of the IT projects of a single firm and the managerial flexibilities that they create. Their nested real option model identifies several kinds of interdependencies that occur among IT projects, including sequential interdependencies and intertemporal interdependencies, in which the initiation or completion of one project creates constraints and capabilities for effective cost controls or enhanced value flows of another. The authors also discuss a new heuristic for dynamic multiperiod IT project portfolio optimization. They illustrate this new approach for the IT projects of a large electrical utility firm, for which they implement a portfolio management model with budget constraints. A related paper on the theme of IT value, by Matt E. Thatcher and David E. Pingry, is entitled “Understanding the Business Value of Information Technology Investments: Theoretical Evidence from Alternative Market and Cost Structures.” The authors employ game-theoretic monopoly and duopoly models to examine the impact of IT investments on firm profit, firm productivity, and consumer welfare, when the firm makes a choice between product quality and product price. The key insights derived from their models suggest that there should be greater consistency among the predicted outcomes between IT investments and the predicted economic outcomes when there is less competition (i.e., the monopoly case versus the duopoly case) and lower marginal costs for achieving product quality (i.e., zero marginal costs, at one extreme). The authors argue in favor of two universal theorems. The first is that some of the highest-value investments in IT result when the emphasis is on the improvement of product quality. The second is that investments in IT made to lower a firm’s marginal cost of production are likely to have multiple positive effects on firm productivity, profitability, and consumer welfare. The next two papers in this special issue explore problems that occur with interorganizational information sharing. Eric K. Clemons and Lorin M. Hitt’s paper, entitled “Poaching and the Misappropriation of Information: Transaction Risks of Information Exchange,” offers a new theoretical contribution that emphasizes inappropriate exploitation of information. The authors define poaching risk as occurring in any transactional relationship where information that is transferred between parties for the purposes specified in a contract is deliberately used by the counterparty for its own economic benefit, to the detriment of the information provider. Their theory of poaching argues that weak intellectual property protection, the existence of complementary assets, limited observability of the counterparty’s actions, and bounded rationality predispose a transactional relationship between two firms to result in the misappropriation of information. They offer a number of suggestions to help firms to avoid information poaching. In “Information Exploitation and Interorganizational Systems Ownership,” Kunsoo Han, Robert J. Kauffman, and Barrie R. Nault investigate how the business value of interorganizational systems can be sustained in the presence of inappropriate sharing of information. They use the theory of incomplete contracts as a means to explain why ownership changes provide a remedy to constraints on IT asset value growth when IT adoption decisions are made in the presence of poaching risk. The authors present a set of theoretical propositions to analyze the market conditions and provide an explanation for why the J.P. Morgan Bank of New York chose to spin off an IT-based financial risk management product asset, RiskMetrics, to Reuters and other financial institutions. The authors show why the possibility of information exploitation depressed the value of Morgan’s financial risk management IT assets, leading to underinvestment and stalling adoption. Their model shows that higher returns would be achieved through a spin-off of the free service. The authors show the generality of their theoretical perspective through additional illustrative mini-cases in the airlines and Internet advertising sectors. Search engines and Web portals provide some of the foundational technological capabilities for the conduct of electronic commerce on the Internet. Rahul Telang, Uday Rajan, and Tridas Mukhopadhyay, in “The Market Structure for Internet Search Engines,” observe that lower-quality and higher-quality search engines on the Internet typically are offered free of charge, when most other products of differing quality are differentiated by lower and higher prices. They note an especially puzzling situation that exists in e-commerce: free lower-quality search engines continue to occupy a viable niche in the existing market structure in the presence of higher-quality ones. The authors explain this in terms of the stochastic quality of the search results that free search engines yield, leading to residual demand for less-than-the-best search engines. They examine models involving vertical quality differentiation and horizontal product differentiation. The former provides the modeling basis to establish the authors’ basic results, and the latter is used to show the reasons why horizontal differentiation-induced residual demand should lead to higher-quality search engines with more homogeneous features and capabilities. Frederick J. Riggins’s paper, “A Multichannel Model of Separating Equilibrium in the Face of the Digital Divide,” extends the discussion about product differentiation and price discrimination by examining how consumers who prefer higher- and lower-quality goods make purchase choices for products sold via an Internet storefront and through a traditional bricks-and-mortar store. The author develops an analytical model to show how the digital divide (i.e., access or lack of access to the Internet) permits sellers to more effectively segment consumers by charging different prices and selling different products in each of the channels. He also explains why having the capability to segment the market through the digital divide reduces the likelihood of cannibalizing sales of the higher-priced product. According to the author, bridging the digital divide (i.e., making both channels available to all consumers) will tend to increase the seller’s impetus to cannibalize its higher-quality product with lower-quality sales to high-type consumers in physical stores. The implications of sequential introduction of products with different quality attributes and intertemporal price discrimination are also discussed in terms of their effects on the firm’s optimal pricing, quality, and channel choices. Rajiv M. Dewan, Marshall L. Freimer, Abraham Seidmann, and Jie Zhang’s paper, entitled “Web Portals: Evidence and Analysis of Media Concentration,” provides an explanation of why a disproportionate degree of market concentration is observed in Web portal sites, in terms of expenditures of advertising dollars and portal user visits. The authors argue that when competition becomes fiercer, Web portal firms respond by competing for users and offering more functionality and additional services. Yet, to be profitable over the long run, it is necessary for the portals to differentiate themselves from one another in terms of their quality and the quantity of their contents. The authors report on the conditions that give rise to an asymmetric equilibrium, in which a few portal players focus on making available a lot of free content bundled with advertising, while others focus on specialty contents, similar to the contrast between a supermarket’s and a convenience store’s services. The final paper, by Hemant K. Bhargava and Shankar Sundaresan, is entitled “Computing as Utility: Managing Availability, Commitment, and Pricing Through Contingent Bid Auctions.” This work opens up new directions for research on utility computing, which emphasizes on-demand e-services, including grid computing, network computing and network data storage, and the outsourcing of other related computing services. But without a market mechanism to organize capacity of utility computing in the face of distributed demand for it, there will be no way to effectively guarantee the availability of the needed services at the appropriate levels of capacity. With this business problem in mind, the authors propose a contingent bid auction mechanism involving three pricing schemes for establishing pay-per-use prices with refunds when a buyer of computing services capacity fails to see demand materialize in its business. The authors suggest that this kind of approach will help to encourage further growth of intermediary services in the marketplace for utility computing, and overcome the potential for underinvestment. This year marks the first time that the Journal of Management Information Systems is publishing a full issue of papers devoted to new research on competitive strategy, economics, and information systems. The Guest Editors wish to thank the Editor-in-Chief, Vladimir Zwass, for the opportunity to put together this special issue. We also appreciated the authors’ willingness to permit us to shape their work through the regular review process of the journal, and the review process for papers that were invited from the Thirty-Seventh Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, held in January 2004. Finally, we thank our faculty, industry, and doctoral program colleagues, who were kind enough to provide as many as three rounds of reviews to help bring these papers into their current form, and Kunsoo Han and Donna Sarppo at the MIS Research Center at the University of Minnesota for their assistance with the review process and communications with the special-issue authors.

Special Section: Information Systems, Electronic Commerce, and Economics--The Interdisciplinary Research Frontier - Kauffman, Robert J; Bin, Wang (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2003)
PRIOR RESEARCH ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS (IS) and electronic commerce has explored a wide spectrum of topics including information technology (IT) investments and strategic decision-making, IT adoption and diffusion, supply-chain management and business-to-business (B2B) electronic markets, information goods, and the bundling of software products. The six papers that we present in this Special Section of the Journal of Management Information Systems represent some of the newest thinking, adding significant insights to the existing body of theoretical and managerial knowledge in the field. Collectively, the new research that we present pushes the boundaries of what we know. The first paper employs real options thinking in a way that has never been used before. A second sheds light on how decision-makers benchmark against one another in evaluating the business value of an IT in order to decide when it is appropriate to adopt. The third paper shows how the codifiability of a product that is transacted in an electronically intermediated market plays a role in determining whether its exchange primarily occurs based on longer-term contracts or in spot markets. The papers also provide counterintuitive results that challenge our thinking about information goods and other products that are delivered via the Internet. A fourth paper explores how the incentives for a software vendor and the consumers of its products can be aligned through the bundling of a base product with add-in software capabilities. A fifth provides a new theoretical perspective on how contingent pricing can be used for information goods and services sold via the Internet. The final paper examines how profits from information goods can be protected through the optimal construction and enforcement of incompatible international standards in the presence of regional piracy. We believe that JMIS readers will see the high relevance of this work for the ongoing dialog between academic researchers, who will value the theoretical and methodological perspectives displayed, and industry practitioners, who will be interested in the new managerial findings and fresh perspectives. The Special Section begins with a paper that answers the following questions: How should the evaluative process for large-scale investments in IT be conceptualized when there is a need to trade off decision-making speed with managerial uncertainties? What does a senior manager do when he or she wants to apply real options thinking, but is short on historical data and not all of the assumptions of the Black-Scholes model or the binomial model are met? Eric Clemons of the University of Pennsylvania and Bin Gu of the University of Texas, Austin, in a paper titled “Justifying Contingent Information Technology Investments: Balancing the Need for Speed of Action with Certainty Before Action,” deal with these questions. They develop and illustrate a new technique that is based on the theory of real options to help senior managers to frame the right choices of strategic actions among which they must select the most effective and value-bearing one. The authors suggest how to structure the analysis so that the investment actions can be staged as new information becomes available to the firm. They also emphasize the idea of chunkification, which they propose as a means to divide an IT project-related investment into a series of stages that permit sequential implementation as real options. To bring their message to a managerial audience, the authors examine preemptive strategies in the retail credit card business for industry leader. They analyze the potential business value associated with the implementation of sophisticated data mining systems that help to identify customers for which longer-term profit-maximizing product policies will be more effective than short-term policies to extract the greatest interest income. A unique aspect of this work compared to other real options approaches is that the authors present a technique that can be used even when the assumptions and historical data on asset prices and volatility that typically are required are not available. The second paper explores a related set of issues: How does the process of information transmission among senior managers at different firms about the expected business value of IT investments affect the extent to which clustered or herd adoption is observed? And how does information transmission affect the propensity and timing of firms’ decisions to adopt? In “What Do You Know? Rational Expectations in Information Technology Adoption and Investment,” Yoris Au of the University of Texas, San Antonio, and Rob Kauffman of the University of Minnesota present a new theoretical perspective on IT adoption that incorporates the theory of rational expectations and adaptive learning from macroeconomics. The development of shared expectations creates a basis for senior management decision-makers to adopt in a “herd” fashion, rather than uniformly over time, as one might expect due to the heterogeneity of the business value that each firm will attribute to an IT innovation based on its own strategic situation. The authors present a series of propositions and an interpretative framework to determine the breadth of potential applications of the new theory. They also discuss three mini-cases—electronic bill payment and presentment, Wi-Fi wireless telecommunications, and XML software capabilities—that illustrate the application of the new theories for creating new insights for senior managers. The next paper shifts the focus to supply-chain management-related issues. In particular, under what conditions is forward-contracting preferred to spot-purchasing in B2B e-market-based procurement as a value- maximizing business policy for the buyer firm? And, as a result, what kinds of transactions are appropriate to be handled in a B2B electronic market setting? In “Codifiability, Relationship-Specific Information Technology Investment, and Optimal Contracting,” Moti Levi of Pennsylvania State University, Paul Kleindorfer of the University of Pennsylvania, and D.J. Wu from the Georgia Institute of Technology explore how the relative codifiability of products will affect exchange in an electronic market. Codifiability is an indicator of how well the buyer and the supplier are able to agree upon a set of contractual specifications in a written electronic form for the goods or services that are to be exchanged. Based on an optimizing model that involves buyer selection of procurement contracts from many suppliers, the authors are able to show the sellers’ bidding strategies, the buyer’s optimal contract portfolio, and the conditions that result in a Nash equilibrium. The authors argue that lower transactional codifiability makes it less attractive for the buyer to purchase from a larger number of sellers and to procure in the spot market. In addition, they suggest that high investment levels in e-market IT transaction capabilities to support electronic codifiability will tend to reduce the number of contract-based purchases. When software vendors bundle add-ins in software products, are consumers and producers better off, or is bundling add-ins only good for the vendors? The fourth paper in the Special Section, “Consumers Prefer Bundled Add-Ins,” by Rajiv Dewan and Marshall Freimer of the University of Rochester, explores vendor bundling strategies for profitability and consumer welfare relative to base software with add-in products using game theory. An add-in is a piece of software that adds to the functionality of a base product, such as an extension to an operating system or a plug-in for an Internet browser. The authors model the inclusion of a software add-in to the base software product in terms of customers who value the add-in and those who do not. For the latter, the all-in price of the bundle is likely to include what the customer perceives as a penalty component. The software vendor’s profits come from a number of different segments, including users who purchase just the base software and users who will purchase the base and add-in software together. The authors’ model reveals that the profit-maximizing price satisfies the conditions for a Nash equilibrium, and that the price for a bundled-based software with an add-in should be lower than the straight sum of the prices. A counterintuitive result is that the total surplus of all consumers increases when bundling leads to a higher profit level for the producer of the base software product. This apparent alignment of incentives between the software vendor and consumers provides an interesting commentary, adding caution to the claim in prior research that vendors tend to prefer bigger software bundles. One characteristic of many IT products and services such as online trading execution, Internet service provision, and Web hosting is that product delivery and consumption are concurrent. To what extent is it appropriate for IT product and service vendors to offer rebates to customers when their products perform poorly, and how should they configure the related contingent prices? Do customers benefit from firms’ offering of rebates on goods and services that may be delivered with different levels of quality? Quality-contingent pricing is one means that firms have at their disposal to signal to potential customers about the quality of their IT products and services when uncertainty exists in the marketplace. Hemant Bhargava, University of California, Davis, and Shankar Sundaresan, Penn State University, explore how to effectively strategize about the offering of quality- contingent prices and customer rebates. Their paper, “Contingency Pricing for Information Goods and Services Under Industrywide Performance Standard,” develops a mathematical model that permits the analysis of monopoly and duopoly competitors who sell with quality-contingent prices. Bhargava and Sundaresan demonstrate the important role of private information about the firm’s ability to deliver a product or service at a given level of quality. They also find that contingent pricing is the dominant strategy for the firm when the market underestimates the quality of its goods and services. The work has implications for IT-intensive businesses that include telecommunications services, e-commerce, and information goods, as well as IT infrastructure and systems and transactions outsourcing services. How should firms make business decisions to create disincentives for piracy in the market for DVD movies and related information goods? Is it appropriate to maintain regional standards for incompatibility? The final paper of the Special Section is “Economic Implications of Variable Technology Standards for Movie Piracy in a Global Context,” by Ram Chellappa and Shivendu Shivendu of the University of Southern California. At present, the primary approach to control information goods piracy is technological; for example, DVD makers and movie studios have created standard cryptographic codes that differ in various regions of the world, and that tie in with the capability of DVD players to decode the encoded discs. The authors develop a profit-maximization model to represent the producer’s disc quality, pricing, and compatibility choices. They find that in the presence of regionally incompatible standards, it is optimal for the movie studio to sell a higher-quality fully-enhanced DVD in one region with a higher price, and a lower-quality less-enhanced version in another region with a lower price. However, when two regions have consumers with different levels of willingness to pay, profit-maximizing DVD producers should build incentive compatibility into their pricing scheme so that the appropriate products are purchased by self-selecting consumers in the different regions. The authors also show how to construct pricing policy in the presence of piracy for enhanced-quality DVDs by distinguishing between the movie studios’ need to pay information rents, which ensures incentive-compatible purchasing, and moral rents, which ensures that consumers of high morality will continue to exhibit legitimate purchasing behavior. Two managerial contributions in this research stand out. First, the authors show why it makes sense to offer different quality standards and prices in different regions when consumer willingness to pay and regional enforcement are different. Second, when widespread piracy is occurring, DVD producers will not find it profitable to produce enhanced-quality DVDs for consumers in developed countries, leading to a significant loss in welfare for both the producers and developed-country consumers. Whenever we complete our work on a Special Section of papers for the JMIS, there is a round of thanks to share. This year, the main thanks go to our special issue reviewers, who started their work on the papers in early June 2002. They helped us to finalize papers for the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) and then provided additional rounds of input on the revised papers that they read after the conference. Our process of obtaining an updated paper for review after the conference, as well as the reviewers’ input, ensures that the papers that the JMIS publishes here are well developed. Additional thanks are due to Rajiv Dewan of the University of Rochester, who handled most of the HICSS papers’ reviews. We also thank Eric Clemons for his invitation to Bin Wang to be a coeditor of this issue, based on her past participation in the conference and in the review processes of the past two or three years, and Vladimir Zwass for agreeing that her capabilities had developed to the point where she would be a strong contributor to the overall quality of the issue. Rob Kauffman thanks the HICSS Cochairs and the Editor for their continued contributions toward making the e-commerce economics and IT strategy mini-tracks premier opportunities each year for getting feedback on research in these areas, and the MIS Research Center at the University of Minnesota for supporting this work. Key words and phrases

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2003)
INFORMATION SYSTEMS ARE INCREASINGLY BECOMING an essential infrastructure of our supply webs, our marketplaces, our utilities, our communications and transportation networks, indeed of our lives. The advent of the Internet and the Web, the nonproprietary software standards, the common protocols, the emerging uniform patterns of use all enable integration on a variety of levels. Grids of our civilization are increasingly based on integrated information technologies (IT). This is, of course, an immense benefit. It is also an immense vulnerability—on many levels and to many and various threats. Our research field has many contributions to make to the reduction and containment of these vulnerabilities. Fundamental approaches are necessary to make software-driven networks of transactions, services, and relationships more reliable, more secure, and more resilient. The field of MIS possesses the intellectual endowment to visibly lead in research on systems combining people with IT in organizational settings. Indeed, the points of dramatic failure are frequently the issues arising from human interaction with technology and from the way these interactions are composed into organizational functioning. In many systems, these should be the lines of defense, rather than defeat. It is time we have addressed in a programmatic way this large opportunity to contribute. A marked contribution to this very large pursuit is actually already being made in the MIS research. The Guest Editors of our Special Section on Assuring Information Quality, Donald Ballou, Stuart Madnick, and Richard Wang, have been the long-time leaders in the field captioned in their section. The four papers they have selected address several fundamental issues concerning the data quality necessary to assure information quality. The Guest Editors will introduce this very important area and the papers to you. The contribution of IT to firm productivity has been studied intensely, and particularly so since Robert Solow declared himself unable to find the effects of IT in productivity statistics, thereby initiating the problem of the “productivity paradox.” Recently, in the same rather unobvious venue, Solow wrote about “the rather sudden and unexpected acceleration of productivity in the U.S. after 1995, which was not shared by other industrial countries. Very likely some of it was the late-arriving benefits of information technology” [3, p. 51]. As any other capital input, IT has to be deployed well and appropriately to the organizational and marketplace contexts in order to render benefit. It has also become apparent that, like its predecessor transformational technologies, IT engenders productivity effects on a national scale only after an extensive lag. This journal has published much of the work investigating IT productivity, starting with one of the earliest scholarly empirics on the subject [1]. In the present issue, building on the work previously published in JMIS, Jing “Jim” Quan, Qing Hu, and Paul J. Hart analytically study the effects of IT on firm’s performance under a duopoly. Using their model, the authors are able to draw distinctions between the nature of investments leading to enhanced performance by a firm and others, depending also on the nature of the markets in which the firm operates. Software development for information systems has been managed with two principal techniques. In the process approach, development methods and performance criteria are specified. In the structure approach, standards, procedures, and organizational structures are prescribed. In the next paper of the general section, Sarma R. Nidumolu and Mani R. Subramani attempt a synthesis of these into four possible managerial control modes. Using a survey, the authors then study the comparative effectiveness of these control modes in the software industry. Among the results of the study is the effectiveness of combining the standardization of performance criteria with the autonomy of methods deployed to achieve the given level of performance. Trust deficit has been one of the reasons for the slow take-up of the business-to-consumer e-commerce (also known as e-tail). This fact has, in turn, precipitated extensive research interest in trust in the field of MIS. A typology of trust operative in e-commerce has been developed [2]. In their paper in the present issue, Robin Pennington, H. Dixon Wilcox, and Varun Grover investigate the role of the system trust, engendered by institutional structures. This form of trust derives from guarantees, vendor ratings, and seals of approval. Based on their survey-driven empirics, the authors are able to formulate several recommendations for practice and broader research. Organized and maintained with IT support, virtual teams have become organizational units of growing importance. With the expanding offshore outsourcing of knowledge work, we may expect the ever-increasing reliance on this organizational form. The virtuality of the team is clearly not an advantage when it comes to leading it. Through action research, David J. Pauleen has identified here three fundamental steps team leaders use to build relationships with team members. Through rich case descriptions, the author is able to convey the subtleties of succeeding (or not) during each of these steps. As collaborative applications proliferate, user training needs to change. David King and Radhika Santhanam engaged in a longitudinal field study of a work flow application in order to refine the initial framework they had developed for the training process. The authors are able to offer an enhanced framework, rooted in the understanding of collective processes of incremental knowledge appropriation during the actual , use of the system. The exploratory study will undoubtedly lead to further research on “learning while doing” with the support of collective systems.

Special Issue: Economics of Electronic Commerce - Bapna, Ravi; Barua, Anitesh; Whinston, Andrew B (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2014)
RAVI BAPNA is the Board of Overseers Professor of Information and Decision Sciences at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Bapna is the founding academic co-director of the University of Minnesota’s Social Media and Business Analytics Collaborative (SOBACO). His research interests are in the areas of economics of information systems, social media, big-data analytics, peer influence, monetization and design of freemium communities, human capital issues in the IT services industry, online auctions, e market design, grid computing, and the design of the IT organization. His research has been published in a wide array of journals such as Management Science, Informs Journal on Computing, Statistical Science, Information Systems Research, Journal of Retailing, MIS Quarterly, Decision Sciences, and others. His views have been featured in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and other outlets. Dr. Bapna serves as a senior editor for MIS Quarterly and has been an associate editor for Management Science and Information Systems Research. He has served as the co-chair of the Workshop on Information Systems Economics (WISE) 2010, and the Conference on IS and Technology (CIST) 2009. He is one of the three founders of the Statistical Challenges in E Commerce (SCECR) workshop. ANITESH BARUA is the William F. Wright Centennial Professor of Information Technology in the Department of Information, Risk and Operations Management at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests are in the areas of economics of information systems, outsourcing governance, and social media. He has published over 75 articles in academic journals and refereed conference proceedings. He has served as associate editor for Management Science and Information Systems Research and as senior editor for Information Systems Research. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Management Information Systems and International Journal of Electronic Commerce. ANDREW B. WHINSTON is the Hugh Roy Cullen Centennial Chair in Business Administration, professor of information systems, computer science and economics, and director of the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Whinston is the co-author or co-editor of 23 books and over 300 articles. ELECTRONIC COMMERCE HAS COME A LONG WAY since the advent of Web-based business in the early to mid-1990s. With a rich array of theories regarding information asymmetry, network effects, switching cost, bundling, pricing, and transaction costs, economics has been the dominant reference discipline in this line of research in information systems. By encouraging and publishing high-quality electronic commerce articles for two decades, the Journal of Management Information Systems has played a key role in the development of the academic literature in this domain. This special issue showcases a wide variety and richness of problems, as well as the sophistication of methodology and insights representing the cutting edge in contemporary electronic commerce research. The first three articles of this special issue involve the organization, design, and growth of electronic markets. Eric Overby and Sabyasachi Mitra, in “Physical and Electronic Wholesale Markets: An Empirical Analysis of Product Sorting and Market Function,” examine the coexistence of wholesale physical and electronic markets for used automobiles. They analyze adverse selection and transaction costs, and find that electronic markets serve as spot markets, while physical markets play the role of the general exchange. The results offer new insights into the distribution of supply and demand across the two channels. Chris Parker and Bruce W. Weber, in “Launching Successful E-Markets: A Broker-Level Order-Routing Analysis of Two Options Exchanges,” focus on electronic exchanges for options and analyze strategies to build the all-important critical mass for new entrants. More specifically, they focus on the unique aspects of the International Securities Exchange (ISE) and Boston Options Exchange (BOX)—instantaneous order execution, direct user access, and low costs—to understand the growth pattern of these new markets. They find that broker order-routing patterns predicted by member affiliations (rather than network effects) are a key driver of market growth. In a study of the design of electronic auctions, Jochen Reiner, Martin Natter, and Bernd Skiera, in “The Impact of Buy-Now Features in Pay-per-Bid Auctions,” analyze an auction market strategy where losing bidders in pay-per-bid auctions can apply the bidding fees toward buying the auction item with a buy-now feature. The authors demonstrate that this feature increases participation, and results in more aggressive bidding, higher profits per auction, and loyalty, though the opposite holds true for voucher auctions. The authors suggest that the buy-now feature can mitigate many of the problems associated with pay-per-bid auctions. Digital goods play a vital role in electronic commerce. Four studies in this special issue focus on various facets of digital products including bundling and customization, critical success factors in the mobile app market, motivation behind virtual gifting, and piracy. Using theories of behavioral economics, Jesse C. Bockstedt and Kim Huat Goh, in “Customized Bundling and Consumption Variety of Digital Information Goods,” study customized bundling of digital goods using both experimental and empirical approaches. They introduce two new constructs—design cost effects and compromise effects—and show that while lower transaction costs may increase supply-side variety, consumption variety may be reduced due to these effects. The results have important implications for bundling and customization strategies that are commonly witnessed in music and other digital products. Mobile applications offered through app stores have ushered a revolution in mobile Internet usage. Gunwoong Lee and T.S. Raghu, in “Determinants of Mobile Apps’ Success: Evidence from the App Store Market,” study drivers of survival and success in this hypercompetitive market. Using data from the Apple App Store, they find that a wider assortment of product offerings across categories, free offers, initial ranks, review scores, focus on less competitive categories, and continuous quality improvements help mobile applications enter the Top 300 chart and increase the chances of staying there. One of the key recommendations of the study is that sellers of these applications should take advantage of the diversity of preferences among consumers. Sigi Goode, Greg Shailer, Mark Wilson, and Jaroslaw Jankowski, in “Gifting and Status in Virtual Worlds,” study a unique issue involving virtual gifts that users can purchase with real money. The authors link virtual gifting to seeking enhancement of social status in online friendship networks, and show that virtual gift giving increases the use of the system. The authors identify antecedents of virtual gifting, which can help system proprietors identify users who are most likely to purchase virtual gifts. With the rapid proliferation of digital goods, piracy has become a key concern for developers and sellers. Matthew J. Hashim, Karthik N. Kannan, Sandra Maximiano, and Jackie Rees Ulmer, in “Digital Piracy, Teens, and the Source of Advice: An Experimental Study,” study acts of music piracy in an experimental setting where teenage consumers receive advice on music from their parents, a record label, and an external regulator. The results suggest that minimum (maximum) piracy results when parents (external regulator) are the source of advice. The authors conclude that social ties and potentially negative consequences (e.g., penalties faced by parents for their children’s actions) reduce digital piracy, while the absence of such ties aggravates the piracy problem. While much of the electronic commerce literature has focused on business-to-consumer (B2C) or consumer-to-consumer (C2C) issues, business-to-business (B2B) commerce has been the dominant player in terms of the volume of money involved. Yan Dong, Xiaowen Huang, Kingshuk K. Sinha, and Kefeng Xu, in “Collaborative Demand Forecasting: Toward the Design of an Exception-Based Forecasting Mechanism,” analyze an exception-based mechanism in collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment (CPFR) to induce truthful sharing of information among supply chain partners. They demonstrate that in the presence of information asymmetry between B2B partners, incentive-based contracts involving revenue-sharing, cost-sharing, transfer payment, and CPFR-specific exception resolution can all be used for truthful information sharing, though with different business outcomes. The authors recommend exercising caution in designing and customizing B2B collaboration mechanisms. It is evident from this brief description that the articles in this special issue represent some of the emerging areas and the latest thinking in the field. These studies contribute significantly to our understanding of economic issues in electronic commerce, and are likely to spawn new research in related areas.

Special Issue: Collaboration Technology, Modeling, and End-User Computing for the 1990s - Nunamaker Jr, Jay F; Sprague Jr, Ralph H (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1992)

Special Section: Creating Value with Information - Briggs, Robert O; Nunamaker Jr, Jay F (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2012)
Every academic discipline has a unique and enduring purpose that sets its boundaries and drives its research. The purpose of psychology is to understand the mechanisms of the human mind. The purpose of economics is to understand the ways in which people allocate resources to satisfy their wants and desires. The purpose of computer science is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of computer systems. Psychology, economics, and computer science are but three of the many reference disciplines for information systems (IS), each of which contributes great value to our work. Psychology, economics, and technology, however, do not define the purpose or the boundaries of IS as an academic discipline. The unique and enduring purpose of IS that distinguishes it from its reference disciplines is this: To understand and improve the ways people create value with information. This purpose is foundational assumption for everything we research and everything we teach. It is the raison d’être for every phase of the systems life cycle, and for every observation, theory, experiment, and prototype that emerges from our science. As an academic discipline, we seek to discover, describe, and quantify the benefits stakeholders seek to attain and the detriments they seek to forestall with their systems. We seek to design, build, and test and deploy, operate, and manage systems to realize and maximize that value in a sustained way. Technically, we can declare success when we create a system that gives the stakeholders the value they want. That, however, is only the beginning of possibilities; we can do more. By taking a creative approach to our work, we can provide the stakeholders with value they did not imagine. Consider, for example, a real case of a resort and casino in the western United States that we will call "Fortunato’s." The two largest expenses for that industry are (1) gamblers who cheat and (2) slip-and-fall frauds who seek large settlements for pretended injuries. To combat cheating, Fortunato’s installed cameras that register every bet of every patron in every game. They added a cutting-edge facial recognition system to link each bet to a specific guest. They implemented sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms to flag possible instances of cheating. They used license plate recognition and facial recognition to compare patrons to a database of known cheaters. To forestall slip-and-fall frauds, they installed high-definition video cameras in every public space inside and outside the casino. They developed algorithms that could automatically reconstruct the movements of any specific guest throughout the resort grounds. When a guest filed a lawsuit claiming injury due to negligence, they could replay every moment of the guest’s visit in chronological order, and so detect and defend against spurious claims. Loss reductions the first year more than covered the cost of the system. One could, therefore, declare victory for the system and move on. A creative IS professional, however, noticed that the same technology and the same information could be used in other ways to create more value. Analysis showed that more than 80 percent of Fortunato’s revenue came from the top 2 percent of its customers. With minor adaptations to the system, the security information could be used to significantly improve the customer experience for these elite patrons. Now, the moment a top customer drives onto the property, the license plate and facial recognition systems alert the doorman via wireless headset, "Ms. Smith will be arriving in 30 seconds. She was last here on Tuesday." Inside the casino, the bartender gets a wireless message to mix Ms. Smith’s favorite cocktail. Her favorite floor manager gets the heads up that she is on her way, and that she has a favorite slot machine. The floor manager goes to the machine and offers the current player a $100 bill to move to a different machine. He then moves to the bar, picks up her drink, and heads to the front door. When Ms. Smith pulls up, the doorman greets her by name, "Hello, Ms. Smith, it’s nice to have you back. We haven’t seen you since Tuesday. Oh, look, here comes Rick with your mai tai. He’ll walk you in to your favorite slot machine. Have a nice stay." Fortunato’s now derives more profit by using its security information to improve the customer experience than it does by its considerable gains from loss prevention. This is IS thinking at its best: How can we understand and improve the ways people create value with their information? This Special Section of JMIS brings together a number of papers that contribute to this core purpose of our field. Four of the papers deal with deriving new value from existing information. One of the papers deals with the challenges of transitioning a valuable system into an organization, and one addresses governance of a large-scale multiorganizational system to ensure that it continues to create value equitably for all stakeholders. In the first Special Section paper, Radu E. Vlas and William N. Robinson demonstrate how informal natural language communications in social media can be automatically analyzed to obtain valuable formalized insights--in this case, system requirements. Their paper, "Two Rule-Based Natural Language Strategies for Requirements Discovery and Classification in Open Source Software Development Projects," compares two approaches, and finds value in each. In their paper, "Supporting Agile Organizations with a Decision Guidance Query Language," Alexander Brodsky, Nathan E. Egge, and X. Sean Wang reconceive decision optimization as an inverse of database management reporting. They demonstrate that existing reporting queries can be transformed into mathematical programming formulations that can be efficiently solved. This approach can leverage past investments in database design and implementation and make decision optimization more intuitive. Experiments with prototypes demonstrate that the new approach compares favorably with mathematical programming models generated by human experts. Dorit Nevo, Izak Benbasat, and Yair Wand examine approaches to expertise location--finding people who have the knowledge and experience to address a particular challenge—in their paper, "Understanding Technology Support for Organizational Transactive Memory: Requirements, Application, and Customization." The paper examines how transactive memory--shared knowledge about who knows what--can be scaled from small groups, where it emerges without conscious effort, to large organizations, where it must be deliberately created and maintained. The paper takes a holistic view of the factors involved in providing technology support for transactive memory in organizations and explores specific meta-memory approaches used by expertise seekers and how the approaches are used differently in different contexts. The paper "Theory-Informed Design and Evaluation of an Advanced Search and Knowledge Mapping System in Nanotechnology," by Yan Dang, Yulei Zhang, Hsinchun Chen, Susan A. Brown, Paul Jen-Hwa Hu, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., proposes and evaluates a generalizable solution to an important class of problems--information overload during search and retrieval for specific kinds of information in massive data sets like the Worldwide Web. Drawing on cognitive fit and cognitive load theories, the paper develops a knowledge mapping system and demonstrates its efficacy in the domain of nanotechnology, an excellent instance of the problem because of the rapid acceleration of information available from patents, grants, and research papers. The paper validates the solution with controlled experiments to evaluate the functions of an exemplar instance of the solution, a prototype called "Nano Mapper," by evaluating search effectiveness, efficiency, and evaluations of system usefulness, ease of use, and satisfaction. Gwendolyn L. Kolfschoten, Fred Niederman, Robert O. Briggs, and Gert-Jan de Vreede explore the challenges of transitioning an unfamiliar collaboration system into an organization in their paper, "Facilitation Roles and Responsibilities for Sustained Collaboration Support in Organizations." The paper identifies several types of support the users require to use the technology successfully and analyzes three classes of support tasks: (1) design tasks (e.g., designing work processes and designing the technology to support the processes), (2) application tasks (to apply the process and to use the technology), and (3) management tasks (to monitor and control the process and to oversee the maintenance of the technology). It explores how these tasks are associated with organizational roles, how the tasks can be anchored in organizations, and how task allocation patterns correspond to sustained use of collaboration technology. The final contribution, "Going Concerns: The Governance of Interorganizational Coordination Hubs," by M. Lynne Markus and Quang "Neo" Bui, explores governance structures for standards-based information technology platforms that are open to use by all qualified members of defined organizational communities, for example, the Visa payment network and the CapWIN public safety information--sharing network. The paper examines five cases and suggests that the governance of interorganizational coordination hubs is not the starkly categorical choice between collective (member owned) and investor-owned forms as suggested by prior theory. Instead, many hybrid arrangements were observed. The papers in this Special Section were selected from the best papers at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences and refereed and revised for this Special Section. Each represents a challenging and interesting perspective. We commend them to your reading.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1996)
The three papers in the special section on strategic and competitive information systems that opens this issue address, respectively, the redesign of interorganizational business processes, supported by interorganizational information systems; why more money spent on information technology (IT) is associated with lower average total spending by organizations, particularly by large ones; and the deployment of IT in contesting the marketplace by segmenting the customers and pricing accordingly. The Guest Editors of the Special Section, Eric K. Clemons and Bruce W. Weber, introduce those papers at greater length and more analytically. The papers in the general part of the issue form two distinct sections. The first three papers provide an analysis of information systems development from several organizational perspectives, while the three remaining papers deal with the adoption and diffusion of information technology in organizations. Interestingly, both concerns overlap in the last paper of the issue. Information systems are complex. The complexity of software as their driving component has several underlying factors, including the varied and multifaceted interactions with the system's environment, the very large number of states that can be assumed by software during the system's operation, malleability and the resulting ease of corruption, and modifiability as the basic rationale for employing software. This complexity expresses itself in the uncertainty in software development, which leads, in turn, to the violation of at least one, and often all, of the precepts of "on time, within budget, and up to the specifications." Indeed, with the system specifications generally a moving target, even the precepts themselves are dubious. The appropriate coordination of information systems development projects is, therefore, a continuing concern. Sarma R. Nidumolu articulates and explores two perspectives on this coordination. According to the first perspective, the project performance is determined by the fit between the coordination mechanism and the uncertainty of a given development project, as determined by the uncertainty in the user requirements. According to the second, software project coordination is the exercise of appropriate risk management. Thus, greater uncertainty regarding the requirements leads to greater project risk. Nidumolu's study of a large number of actual projects finds both perspectives, but in particular the first one, lacking in explanatory power. It appears that a synthesis of the two approaches, combined with a classification of projects with respect to their uncertainty, is in order. Pending further theoretical work, the author offers several empirically derived suggestions for better project coordination based on such a synthesis. Eric W. Stein and Betty Vandenbosch find information system development efforts generally lacking on a very different count-that of organizational learning. These authors discuss projects that aim to develop and advanced information system, that is, a system that goes to the very marrow of the firm's functioning and becomes a model of an important aspect of this functioning. Such projects are opportunities to challenge the extant assumptions in the organization and can lead to the development of new models of business and the resulting improvement of organizational performance. The authors suggest that such opportunities are usually missed. They offer a systematic set of recommendations to ameliorate this state of affairs, and thus further the rule-remaking higher-level learning. That determining user requirements is the crucial phase of information systems development is rather implicit in the preceding two articles, but is explicit in the third paper of the systems-development section. Ritu Agarwal, Atish P. Sinha, and Mohan Tanniru compare the object-oriented and process-oriented methodologies for establishing these requirements. Using the cognitive-fit approach, they explore whether a process-oriented tool for requirements modeling will lead to a superior performance when applied to a process-oriented task. It does indeed. However, no such fit is found in the object-oriented domain. Since this result begs a number of questions regarding the practice, instrumentation, and study in this newer and very important domain of computing, it is expected that these questions will be asked in the future and answered through further work. The organizational adoption of information technology is an abiding aspect of MIS practice and research. Kar Yan Tam offers a longitudinal study of the diffusion of mainframe computing. He finds that price elasticity of the technology rapidly increases as diffusion progresses. The author suggests that the results have general applicability and thus can be used both to price IT artifacts and to steer the adoption behavior. Patrick Y.K. Chau takes a closer look at the factors of perceived usefulness and ease of use or the widely accepted technology acceptance model. He posits that one should distinguish between near-term, instrumental, usefulness and long-term usefulness. Long-term usefulness is reflected, for example, in the user's career prospects and symbolic gains, such as enhanced status. This long-term usefulness is found to exert a lower, but perceptible, degree of influence on the adoption behavior. Based on his operationalization and data set, with all of their limitations, Chau also questions the value of the ease of use as a persistent stimulus to the use of technology. The final paper of the issue, by Arun Rai and Ravi Patnayakuni, brings together the concerns of both regular sections by investigating the adoption of computer-aided software engineering (CASE) technology. This adoption process is still problematic in terms of its benefits and (consequently or not) its scope. Parsing the adoption factors into the need-pull and technology-push categories, the authors find several catalysts and inhibitors of CASE adoption. Since these tools are-and will be-redefined as time goes on, the results reported here will no doubt be refined further.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1996)
Two broad themes emerge in this issue of the Journal. The first three papers investigate the strategic issues of management information systems. Their authors analyze, respectively, the match between a firm's organizational structure and its information systems architecture, the match between a firm's competitive strategy and the rank and role of its top MIS executive, and the most effective prescriptions for strategic information systems planning. The second part of the issue is devoted to the end-user aspects in organizational computing, with the users acting-with varying degrees of success-as consumers, participants in the development, and developers of information systems. In the first paper of the issue, Kirk Dean Fiedler, Varun Grover, and James T.C. Teng empirically relate a novel taxonomy of organizational information-system architecture to the organizational structure. The authors base their classification on three well-grounded criteria: centralization of information processing, support of organizational communication, and sharing of data and software resources. An extensive survey finds positive relationships between specific combinations of these characteristics of organizational computing and certain organizational structures. Although no causality has been established and no prescriptions can be made based on this work, the strong indications of "matches" between certain MIS architectures and specific organizational structures will be of interest to practitioners as well as researchers. Unlike its predecessor, the next paper in the issue, by Albert L. Lederer and Vijay Sethi, is unabashedly prescriptive with respect to its subject-strategic information systems planning. In other words, the authors study the process of identifying a portfolio of information systems to support long-term corporate plans. Their prescriptions are based on extensive survey empirics. The authors first derive a comprehensive and parsimonious set of prescriptions based on the existing literature and then conduct a survey to tease out those leading to a greater degree of success (or to the greatest satisfaction of planners, which is a very different thing). The authors find that the planners face the tall task of producing a credible plan promptly. As we all know, the principal peril of lengthy long-term planning is that its product may become invalid during the very planning process owing to rapidly changing circumstances. Jahangir Karimi, Yash P. Gupta, and Toni M. Somers study the linkage between a company's competitive strategy (prospectors-analyzers-defenders-reactors) and the rank and role of its top MIS executive. The researchers also provide new evidence to assist the external-hire versus internal-promotion decision. Like the authors of the first paper in the issue, they find several "matches." As is the case with that paper, similar caveats apply, but suggestive implications follow. Five papers in the second part of this issue of the Journal deal with various aspects of the role and performance of information-systems users-that is, the members of the organization at large. Because of perceptual differences between the personnel of information centers and the end users they assist, end-user participation in the selection of software packages is found indispensable by Ali R. Montazemi, David A. Cameron, and Kalyan Moy Gupta. The authors prove that, absent such participation, the use of the packages will be affected adversely. John Tillquist studies the potential dichotomy between the intentions of MIS dvelopers and the actual system use patterns. His findings indicate that people use a computer system for interpersonal communicaiton in the manner intended by the develpers when these users believe that the system supports the aspects of work they value. The incorporation of the work-values approach into the analysis of information systems assisting communication and collaboration is an important contribution of the paper. The results can be, perhaps, extended in the future in the analysis of the many reported cases of the inadequate use of groupware such as Lotus Notes. The following paper in the issue also addresses user motivations. Magid Igbaria, Saroj Parasuraman, and Jack J. Baroudi find empiricall that the perceived usefulness of microcomputer-based systems, as opposed to several other variables included in the existing motivational models, is the principal motivator of use. The perceived system complexity, social pressure, and user skills are also found to affect the usage. The authors offer suggestions based on their findings that can promote broader and more appropriate use of microcomputers. User participation in the development of informaiton systems by informaiton systems professionals has generated controversy. Although generally considered a good thing, especially from the point of view of systems acceptance and institutionalization, on somewhat closer examination it has not always been found to contribute to the success of the system under development. Naveed Saleem presents empirical results showing that if user participation is to have such a beneficial outcome, the selection of the participants with appropriate background is critical. Indeed, the users selected to participate should be those with the system-related functional expertise-the people who will not accept the new system otherwise. Further, if users possessing such expertise are selected to participate on the development team, they should be allowed to exert significant influence on the system design, lest they ultimately reject the system. System development by end users has recently proliferated ot complement the development by MIS professionals. Dana T. Edberg and Brent J. Bowman inject a word of caution. Their paper compares performance of end users with that of surrogate MIS professional (also known as MIS students) on several limited-complexity projects. The performance of the end users is found wanting compared to that of even surrogate professionals, in terms of both productivity and product quality. Much further research is necessary to define the perimeters of the MIS profession. However, it would appear that professional expertise is indeed required for informaiton systems development to professional standards. In a note conluding the issue, Ram L. Kumar revisits earlier results (reported in this Journal) in applying option-pricing theory to the justification of MIS investments. The author shows that even more caution is required in selecting riskier projects than was previously thought and provides a critierion for identifying the less desirable investments. As we enter the thirteenth year of JMIS publication, it gives me great pleasure once again to thank the Editorial Board, authors, readers, and the entire MIS community for their contribution and support. It is a special opportunityy and privilege to thank the Journal's reviewers, who stand behind the quality of each paper and are the primary guarantors of the quality of the Journal. Here are the names of the reviewers of the Journal of Management Information Systems: (a list of the names of the reviewers of JMIS follows) After several months of sporting the "Under Construction" sign, the electronic home of the Journal is fully habitable. Thanks to the efforts of our Electronic Site Editor Tomas Isakowitz and his student crew, the Web site of the Journal of Management Information Systems is accessible over the Internet as: http://www.jmis-web.org We welcome your participation in all the future activities of the Journal-both on paper and in cyberspace. Vladmir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Special Issue: Management Support Systems - Nunamaker Jr, Jay F (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1990)
This section introduces a series of articles related to research topics in management information systems. Articles discussed include "A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of Group Decision Support Systems on Group Development," by Laku Chidambaram, Robert P. Bostrom, and Bayard E. Wynne, "The Strategic Business Objectives Method for Guiding Executive Information Systems Development," by Linda Volonino and Hugh J. Watson, and "The Object-Oriented Entity-Relationship Model (OOERM)," by Kevin Gorman and Joobin Choobineh.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1991)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2007)
The perceptual measures of the impacts of information technology (IT) have long met with mistrust. Reflecting the assumed biases of the general managers assessing the impacts, perceptions are generally considered inferior to the objective indicators of performance. The IT-related perceptual assessments are quite specialized and thus open to another set of doubts. Yet the objective measures are frequently not accessible to researchers, and the subjective assessments can deliver a potentially rich set of metrics, leavened by the insight and experience of the individual managers. In the opening paper of this issue, Paul P. Tallon and Kenneth L. Kraemer deploy the sensemaking theoretical lens to establish empirically just how reliable the corporate executives’ perceptions of IT impacts really are. Within the scope of their investigation, the authors find that these perceptions are quite reliable indeed, on the process and on the firm level. This result will help to enrich the toolbox of our researchers, just as it can give credence to the assessments for the organization’s own uses, politics permitting. The finding is important for the progress of our field. Business-to-business electronic marketplaces were a notable set of failures during the close of the Web 1.0 period. This intermediary segment has hardly recovered during the present Web 2.0 stage. A marketplace needs a critical mass of participants. Here, Jai-Yeol Son and Izak Benbasat deploy a dual theoretical perspective to establish the factors that could lead to organizations’ participation in these marketplaces. The authors distinguish among the factors that antecede the initial adoption and those that influence the level of continuing participation. The findings will be of interest to the marketplace builders as well as to the researchers expanding our perspectives on these transformative institutions. The implementation of enterprise systems is fraught with many a danger and the critical success factors have been studied at length. But those factors do not exert their influence in isolation and the study of their interactions requires a coherent theoretical perspective. Here, Jahangir Karimi, Toni M. Somers, and Anol Bhattacherjee use the approach derived from the innovation diffusion theory to study the circumstances under which the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system brings about the desired outcomes for business processes. The results offer a more intricate picture of dependencies than heretofore available. Geographically distributed software development has been on a steep rise since the advent of the Internet–Web compound. Coordination of such an effort is a multifaceted challenge. In their paper, J. Alberto Espinosa, Sandra A. Slaughter, Robert E. Kraut, and James D. Herbsleb determine empirically what exactly those facets are. Their approach to the issue is rooted in the study of team cognition as a collective phenomenon. Of course, evolving collective knowledge of a geographically distributed team through several mechanisms analyzed by the authors brings its own challenges. The authors, therefore, offer a set of general propositions concerning the coordination of the team effort, as well as the propositions stemming from work dispersion. The knowledge-oriented perspective is taken up in the next paper as well. Radhika Santhanam, Larry Seligman, and David Kang study the patterns of knowledge transfers following an information system implementation. In a sense, a system is never fully implemented; it persists in a state of implementation, with modifications accompanied by such knowledge transfers. Specifically, the authors study here the nature of the transfers between the system users and the help-desk IT professionals. Different types of knowledge circulate within these groups and are exchanged between them. The research surfaces a thick set of knowledge-based interactions and learning processes that require organizational support. The authors find that these implementation-enhancing processes would be endangered in outsourcing of the technical support function. The last theme is vastly amplified in the next paper of the issue. Dowan Kwon, Wonseok Oh, and Sangyong Jeon study the impact of organizational restructuring (such as a downsizing, for example) on the information-processing networks in the organization. These networks, formed by the people supported by IT, are vital to the enactment of an organization’s knowledge processes. Basing themselves on the theory of social networks, the authors offer a taxonomy of such networks in an organization and proceed to study through simulation modeling their robustness and efficiency in the event of an organizational restructuring. They find that some of the structures are more stable than others and the efficiency gains, if achieved, differ as well. Even more important, the researchers also tease out the transitional measures for alleviating the ill effects of downsizing on social information–processing networks in an organization. Wide-ranging implications result both for corporate strategy and for the new methods of future research on the organizational collective knowledge processes. Open source software (OSS) has changed the nature of competition in software markets (and, beyond that, is changing our understanding of the nature of production in the presence of the Internet–Web compound, with the multiple capabilities it furnishes). Ravi Sen provides here a strategic analysis of the competition between OSS and proprietary software. The author offers a novel analytical model as a workbench for the study of this competition. By exercising the model, he is able to offer specific, unobvious, and theory-grounded strategic recommendations to software vendors. IT outsourcing in toto has been an object of intense study in our field. However, outsourcing decisions are frequently taken at the project level. The decision-making process leading to such an outsourcing is targeted here by Amrit Tiwana and Ashley A. Bush. The researchers study the managers’ approach to an outsourcing decision from three theoretical perspectives in order to understand the deeper assumptions these managers work under in their decision making. Moreover, the study encompasses Japanese and U.S. IT managers and offers a rich set of similarities and contrasts in the relative ascriptions of importance to various factors by these two sets. The work surfaces an understanding of the hierarchy of factors in outsourcing decisions and produces pragmatic advice on the governance of outsourced projects that stems from some of these factors. Monideepa Tarafdar, Qiang Tu, Bhanu S. Ragu-Nathan, and T.S. Ragu-Nathan study the impact of the IT-induced technostress. In an empirical study, the authors trace this form of stress to five factors. They further show how technostress affects the individual’s role stress and how both of these stress forms sap productivity. Theoretical value of the proposed model is in our deeper understanding of this frequently spoken about, but rarely acted on, form of stress. In practical terms, the authors offer a diagnostic instrument for the evaluation of the degree of stress in the organization, so that appropriate measures can be taken. Intrusion prevention is an essential security measure in information systems, and thus a measure that underpins organizational operations today. This approach to security goes beyond intrusion detection by detecting and preventing an attack on the information system from taking effect. Intrusion prevention systems can be configured to operate reactively, by sending all the alarms to human analysts, or proactively, by blocking the suspicious traffic. Costs differ and serious organizational consequence may result from a wrong decision. Here, Wei T. Yue and Metin Çakanyildirim offer an analytical model to make these decisions, based on the key parameters. Considering the importance of organizational resilience under a great variety of attacks, the model is certain to see further use and refinement. Opening another, the twenty-fourth, volume of JMIS is an excellent occasion to express our—the Editorial Board’s and mine—gratitude to our referees, always the primary guarantors of the top-ranked Journal’s quality. Here are the JMIS referees: Niv Ahituv Pervaiz Alam Gove Allen Paul Alpar Donald L. Amoroso Murugan Anandarajan Hayward P. Andres Dorine Andrews Yoris Au Benoit A. Aubert Sulin Ba Barbro Back Akhilesh Bajaj Dirk Baldwin Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay Ravi Bapna Indranil R. Bardhan Reza Barkhi Henri Barki Stuart J. Barnes Anitesh Barua Richard Baskerville Dinesh Batra Irma Becerra-Fernandez Skip Benamati Michel Benaroch Raquel Benbunan-Fich François Bergeron Hemant Bhargava Anol Bhattacherjee Sudip Bhattacherjee Gilbert Bock Wai Fong Boh Indranil Bose Robert M. Brown Glenn J. Browne Jacek Brzezinski Scott Buffett Kelly Burke Brian Butler Terry A. Byrd Jinwei Cao Sven Carlsson William J. Carroll Hasan Cavusoglu Susy Chan Jerry Cha-Jan Chang Debabroto Chatterjee Patrick Chau Ramnath K. Chellappa Hong-Mei Chen Kuan Chen Hsing Kenneth Cheng Robert T.H. Chi Roger Chiang Alina M. Chircu Jong-min Choe H. Michael Chung Wingyan Chung Theodore H. Clark Roger Clarke Randolph Cooper Qizhi Dai Ronald Dattero Sergio De Cesare Bruce Dehning Didem Demirhan Sarv Devaraj Rajiv M. Dewan Debabrata Dey Peter Duchessi Kaushik Dutta Omar A. El Sawy Sean B. Eom J. Alberto Espinosa Ming Fan Xiaofen Fang Steven Feiner Eliezer M. Fich Kirk Fiedler Edmond P. Fitzgerald Jerry Fjermestad Chiara Francalanci Mark Fuller Brent Furneaux Michael R. Galbreth Dennis Galletta Michael Gallivan Dale Ganley Gordon Gao Edward J. Garrity Judith Gebauer David Gefen Michiel van Genuchten Anindya Ghose Sanjay Goel Janis L. Gogan Thomas Goh Dale Goodhue Ram D. Gopal Sanjay Gosain Peter Gray Stefano Grazioli 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 Alan R. Hevner Ann Hickey Starr Roxanne Hiltz Richard Hoffman John A. Hoxmeier Paul Hu Qing Hu Ming-Hui Huang Wayne Huang Cary Hughes Kai Lung Hui Ard Huizing Ghiyong Im Zahir Irani Gretchen I. Irwin Bala Iyer Varghese Jacob Bharat A. Jain Matthias Jarke Bao-Jun Jiang James J. Jiang Alice Johnson Linda Ellis Johnson K.D. Joshi Surinder Kahai Timo Kakola Ajit Kambil Atreyi Kankanhalli P.K. Kannan Jahangir Karimi Michael Kattan Timothy Kayworth Julie E. Kendall William J. Kettinger Omar E.M. Khalil Melody Y. Kiang Sia Siew Kien Ruth King Rajiv Kishore Gary Klein Dong-Gil Ko Cenk Kocas Chang Koh Rajiv Kohli Esther Koster Marios Koufaris Kenneth A. Kozar Kenneth L. Kraemer Allan Krebs Ramayya Krishnan Uday Kulkarni Akhil Kumar Ram Kumar Vineet Kumar Mary C. Lacity Atanu Lahiri Simon S.K. Lam Karl R. Lang Tor J. Larsen Gwanhoo Lee Heeseok Lee Ho Geun Lee Jungwoo Lee Thomas Lee Yang Lee Zoonky Lee Richard Leifer Jan Marco Leimeister Katherine N. Lemon Mary Jane Lenard Hugo Levecq Natalia Levina Dahui Li Xiaotong Li Ting-Peng Liang Stephen L. Liedtka John Lim Kai Lim Ming Lin Yihwa Irene Liou Jacqueline Lipton Alexandre Lopes Paul B. Lowry Henry C. Lucas Jr. Mark Lycett Jane M. Mackay Simha R. Magal M. Adam Mahmood Arvind Malhotra Yogesh Malhotra Ji-Ye Mao Salvatore T. March Nelson Massad Anne P. Massey Charles H. Mawhinney Jerrold H. May William McCarthy Roy McKelvey Ephraim R. McLean Nigel Melville Nirup Menon Shaila Miranda Rajesh Mirani Dinesh Mirchandani Prasenjit Mitra William Money Ali R. Montazemi Ramiro Montealegre Jolene Morrison Michael D. Myers Peter P. Mykytyn Jr. Barin N. Nag Murli Nagasundaram Fiona Nah R. Ryan Nelson Boon Siong Neo Fred Niederman Mark Nissen Dmitri Nizovtsev Rosalie Ocker Wonseok Oh Bob O’Keefe Lorne Olfman James Oliver Carl Pacini Jonathan W. Palmer Raymond R. Panko Manoj Parameswaran Michael Parent Jeffrey Parsons Ravi Patnayakuni Souren Paul David J. Pauleen Paul A. Pavlou Kenneth Peffers Robin Pennington Francis Pereira Roger A. Pick 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 Richard G. Ramirez H.R. Rao R. Ravichandran T. Ravichandran Sury Ravindran Amy W. Ray Louis Raymond Paul Resnick Hyuen-Suk Rhee William B. Richmond Frederick Riggins Daniel Robey Nicholas C. Romano Jr. Sherry D. Ryan Young U. Ryu Timo Saarinen Rajiv Sabherwal Naveed Saleem G. Lawrence Sanders Sunanda Sangwan Radhika Santhanam Suprateek Sarker Surendra Sarnikar Carol Saunders George Schell Petra Schubert Judy Scott Larry Seligman Ravi Sen Kishore Sengupta Nainika Seth Vikram Sethi Theresa M. Shaft Michael Shaw Steven Sheetz Jim Sheffield Olivia Sheng Morgan M. Shepherd Michael Shields Siew Kien Sia Keng Siau Mark Silver Atish P. Sinha Sumit Sircar H. Jeff Smith Michael D. Smith Charles A. Snyder Toni M. Somers Jai-Yeol Son Scott Spangler William E. Spangler Valerie K. Spitler Rajendra P. Srivastava Thomas F. Stafford Stephen Standifird Sandy Staples Eric W. Stein Dick Stenmark Katherine Stewart 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 Sonny Tambe Bernard C.Y. Tan Yao-Hua Tan Qian Candy Tang Mohan R. Tanniru Monideepa Tarafdar Alfred Taudes Nolan Taylor David P. Tegarden Rahul Telang Gary F. Templeton James T.C. Teng Thompson Teo Jason B. Thatcher Matthew Thatcher Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong Amrit Tiwana Kerem Tomak Leon van der Torre Jonathan K. Trower Gregory E. Truman Yanbin Tu Ilkka Tuomi Brad Tuttle Tuure Tuunanen N.S. Umanath Andrew Urbaczewski Rustam Vahidov Vasja Vehovar Viswanath Venkatesh Roumen Vragov Michael Wade Steven Walczak Zhiping Walter Bin Wang Jingguo Wang Michael S. Wang Shouhong Wang Weiquan Wang Y. Richard Wang Molly Wasko 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 Rolf Wigand Fons Wijnhoven Christopher Wolfe Charles A. Wood Hans Wortmann D. J. Wu Mu Xia Weidong Xia Christopher Yang Mun Yi Byungjoon Yoo Fatemeh Zahedi Dongsong Zhang Han Zhang Ping Zhang Zuopeng Zhang Huimin Zhao J. Leon Zhao Lina Zhou Kevin Zhu Youlong Zhuang Ilze Zigurs Moshe Zviran Let us now read the papers. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Auctioning Vertically Integrated Online Services: Computational Approaches for Real-Time Allocation - Bapna, Ravi; Goes, Paulo B; Gupta, Alok (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2008)
We develop three auction-based pricing and allocation solution methods for the case where a capacity-constrained online service provider offers multiple classes of unique, one-time services with differentiated quality. Consumers desire exactly one of the many service classes offered. We call such a setting a vertically integrated online services market. Examples of these services are webcasting of special events over the Internet, provision of video-on-demand, and allocation of grid computing resources. We model the pricing and allocation decision faced by firms in such a setting as a knapsack problem with an added preference elicitation dimension. We present a variety of computational solution approaches based on adaptations of the traditional greedy heuristic for knapsack problems. The solution approaches vary in efficacy depending on whether bidders are restricted to bid in one service class or allowed to bid in multiple service classes, as well as on the overall variability of the demand. In the case bidders can bid in multiple classes but are interested in consuming only one service class, a direct application of the heuristics developed for the single service case results in a nonfair allocation. We develop a novel data structure to eliminate the unfair allocation while maintaining the original computation complexity of the simpler setting. The paper contributes by presenting a menu of auction clearing mechanisms for selling vertically integrated online services.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2015)
Big data analytics has prominently emerged as a tool on which many hopes have been pinned for moving to the next level of organizational performance. For these hopes to become reality, we need to understand the mechanisms through which the access to big data and the information systems built around it lead to enhanced outcomes and, in some cases, competitive advantage. Toward that weighty end, Daniel Q. Chen, David S. Preston, and Morgan Swink develop and test a model showing the antecedents of the organizational use of big data and the effects of big data on the key components of value creation, that is, asset productivity and business growth. The model is aptly based on dynamic capabilities theory because the effective deployment of the organization’s big data in combination with external data sources specializes organizational capabilities for marketplace competition. Heeding these research results will help in committing a firm’s resources to the big data initiatives. App ecosystems and open source software are two of the defining phenomena in the present software environment. Apps are what makes platforms such as Android or iOS so highly valuable to users; a huge set of apps is a complementarity that needs to keep growing in order to keep the platform relevant. Conversely, desertion by app developers may lead to a platform’s collapse, as has been observed in several prominent cases. In the next paper, Amrit Tiwana offers an analysis, based on coordination theory as applied to modular systems, of why developers desert a platform. Empirically grounded, the work argues that micro-level design choices that improperly distribute decision rights within the ecosystem can lead to platform collapse owing to abandonment by app developers. Apparently, minor design solutions can have vast effects. Two works address social media and social commerce. The first, by Liangfei Qiu, Qian Tang, and Andrew B. Whinston, presents a study of the growing format of user-generated content, namely, online videos. With the ever expanding telecommunications capacity, this highly expressive format can be expected to play an increased role in value co-creation by individuals. In an analytical model, the authors consider two mutually reinforcing factors of online diffusion of videos: network effects and the learning effects of the otherwise private information being shared. In possession of a unique YouTube data set, the authors are able to empirically identify the differential effects of each of these two factors, as well as relate these effects to different types of videos. They show how online video diffusion differs from that of movies and they make a novel contribution to our understanding of the specificities of social media. Do “likes” sell? This question is answered in a nuanced fashion in the paper authored by Kyunghee Lee, Byungtae Lee, and Wonseok Oh. Their research is based on data acquired from a social commerce platform, and the answer is largely positive. The role played by the transparency of user identities on such platforms is stressed by the authors as a source of trust and enhanced sharing of experiences with products. At the same time, significant differences in the effects of “likes” exist across the spectrum of products and deals offered. The results contribute to the development of the theory of social commerce and, quite obviously, can improve its practice. The next paper argues that the truly effective deployment of complex information technology, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, requires loyal use by a firm’s employees. HsiuJu Rebecca Yen, Paul Jen-Hwa Hu, Sheila Hsuan-Yu Hsu, and Eldon Y. Li devise and verify a model of loyal use built on two levels. The organizational level of analysis is couched in theories of social information processing. The authors’ individual level of analysis addresses both the behavioral aspects of continuing use and, notably, psychological buy-in and commitment to the system. The authors define loyalty as a deep psychological commitment leading to advocacy. They show how the success of the system emerges from the interaction of the organizational and individual factors at deeper levels than previously thought. The following paper deals with the ever present issue of information security. It echoes the theme of commitment that is so prominent in the preceding work. Its authors–Clay Posey, Tom L. Roberts, and Paul Benjamin Lowry–investigate empirically the impact of the commitment of the insiders to an organization on their motivation to protect its information assets. Indeed, it is the firm’s employees who are frequently the agents of security breaches; conversely, we can look to them to enhance the protection of these assets. Technology is by far not enough: it is people who are at the core, if properly motivated. Here, the authors present the model of what “properly motivated” means. The work provides a new lens for our research on information security and will be generative. By combining the knowledge of technology and of its use in design science, our field has much to contribute to the protection of various spaces, from organizational to national or international. Deception detection is an exemplar here. The authors of the next paper in the issue, Nathan W. Twyman, Jeffrey Gainer Proudfoot, Ryan M. Schuetzler, Aaron C. Elkins, and Douglas C. Derrick present a proof-of-concept study for an automatic deception-screening system relying on multiple indicators, such as pupil dilation and kinesic rigidity. The authors show experimentally the effectiveness and limitations of multi-indicator systems in combating the countermeasures that may be deployed by deceptive individuals. They also surface the need for more sophisticated classification algorithms that would combine the readings of the indicators. Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has become a key factor in online retailing. There is by now an ingrained faith in the effectiveness of eWOM in driving sales. Here, Zhijie Lin and Cheng-Suang Heng throw some cold water on this belief. They deploy the established behavioral theories to collect data from a large electronic mall and then present three paradoxical findings that might shake belief in the linearity of the effects of eWOM. The paper makes stimulating reading and challenges some of the established verities, which will undoubtedly be taken up in future research. For now, we have several useful recommendations for e-tail practice. The concluding paper of the issue, by Benjiang Lu, Xunhua Guo, Nianlong Luo, and Guoqing Chen, is a study of the differentiated effects of corporate blogs on job performance. The authors find the distinction between work-related and nonwork-related blogging participation to be essential in the effects on job performance. The researchers draw on social network theory in teasing out the effects of social relationships sustained in blog networks. The relational, structural, and cognitive dimensions of social networks significantly differ in their effects in the two types of uses of corporate blogs. The authors’ use of digital traces collected from blogs is an interesting methodological contribution as well. Taken together, this and the preceding paper contribute fine-grained insights to our understanding of users’ articulations online that affect the way we now produce and consume.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2016)
We have all come to rely on the user-generated content that goes under the names of consumer reviews, electronic word of mouth (eWOM), and user opinions. This content is a part of value cocreation by customers of the firms whose hotels, cars, books, electronics, and restaurants they review on infomediary sites. This is obviously good for consumers. Or is it? In the first paper of the issue, Panos M. Markopoulos, Ravi Aron, and Lyle H. Ungar look at the phenomenon with the beady eyes and formal apparatus of information economics and are here to tell us that perhaps we should be more critical. That is, critical not of the reviews themselves, which have been and continue to be thoroughly researched by our field, but of the role of the reviews in informing customers. The authors demonstrate that firms have also come to rely on consumer reviews—as a partial substitute for providing customer information themselves, with the attendant savings increasing the firms’ profits. The researchers go on to demonstrate that this tripartite system of informing consumers actually may take away from consumer welfare. The results are highly interesting and will undoubtedly be found controversial—which should lead to further research. Of course, the relative independence of consumer reviews has the value of disclosure and transparency that might not be expected to be provided by the producers. However, the assessment of the authors calls for a rebalancing of the roles in providing customer information. The authors of the next paper, Eun Hee Park, Balasubramaniam Ramesh, and Lan Cao significantly enhance our knowledge about the use of real options in the valuation of information technology (IT) investments by including the role of emotion in decision making. The authors focus specifically on the role of regret. In their qualitative research reported here, they deploy the setting of decisions regarding the adoption of RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology by four organizations. Both productive and counterproductive strategies of decision making in the presence of regret are surfaced. The consideration of cognitive and emotional aspects of decision making allows us to gain a richer understanding of the real options approach in the IT context. It is also in line with gains reached in economics by the behavioral approach taken in recent decades. Jordan B. Barlow and Alan R. Dennis look empirically for the emergence of collective intelligence in virtual groups that use computer-mediated communication. Such emergence has been asserted and found by the prior research in the domain. The present authors do not find it. This negative finding will no doubt lead to controversy. Most important, it will lead to further research into the functioning of virtual groups and their instrumentation. Clearly, not all tasks are equally suitable to virtual handling—and yet, ever more frequently this operation will be called for. This work should stimulate a broader and more granular investigation of IT-supported virtual groups. At a deeper level, it will bring under closer scrutiny the construct of collective intelligence. We cannot do enough to increase information systems (IS) security. In fact, we are not doing enough. However, our field is now contributing a broad research program that addresses behavioral IS security. Here, Bonnie Brinton Anderson, Anthony Vance, C. Brock Kirwan, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, and David Eargle show empirically how the brain habituates to security warning messages. Their use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allows them to directly observe this habituation. Furthermore, the authors devise dynamic polymorphic warnings aimed at defeating habituation and they proceed to show that such warning designs are indeed effective. This is a contribution to our security arsenal as well as a demonstration of the effectiveness of the NeuroIS approach in our research. As the apportionment of tasks between humans and “machines” is changing rapidly and drastically, the construct of trust acquires ever greater salience. Different designs of decision-support (and, increasingly, decision-making) technology will lead to different levels of trusting beliefs on the part of users. Beyond that, they might lead to beliefs of a different nature, with competence, integrity, and benevolence identified as three kinds of such beliefs. Recommendation agents (RAs) are a broadly used technology that appears in many implementations, from online shopping sites to personal assistants. In the next paper, Weiquan Wang and Izak Benbasat take a granular approach to tease out empirically which performance factors displayed by an RA lead to what trusting beliefs in the user. Suggestions for RA designs follow from these results. The task-apportionment theme is continued in the next work, by Fatemeh Mariam Zahedi, Nitin Walia, and Hemant Jain. The authors offer a theory-based design for an augmented virtual doctor office, devised to support group medical visits online. Group medical visits is a relatively recent trend aimed at efficiency and, perhaps, also cocreation with a group of patients. In the physical world, privacy issues may be difficult to surmount. In the augmented physical-virtual world, the preservation of privacy can be built into the design, and the appropriate aspects of the patient information compartmentalized and kept private. The authors provide a twofold assessment of their design and contribute to the design-theory line of IS research. This work can be extended to other settings. The role of IT in defining the boundaries of the firm in the organizational design and in the firm’s performance is a well-researched topic that remains open to further investigation in many of its aspects, particularly when the research is based on a comprehensive data set. This multifaceted subject is pursued here by Jaime Gómez, Idana Salazar, and Pilar Vargas, who test their hypotheses against the data relating to Spanish manufacturing firms that include large, medium-size, and small manufacturers. The authors pay particular attention to the effects of taper integration, which combines in different ways the market and hierarchy approaches in organizational design, and of diversification on the firms’ information-processing needs and on the resulting IT capabilities. We obtain a more nuanced view of an important domain. Ferdinand Thies, Michael Wessel, and Alexander Benlian study the effects of the social interaction on platforms in the context of crowdsourcing venues. The relative influence of eWOM (opinion) and actors’ popularity (inferred from actions) on funding decisions is investigated with the use of a large data set of crowdsourcing campaigns conducted on Indiegogo. Among other effects, the authors demonstrate how social interactions act as quality indicators on these platforms and serve to contain investment risks. They further show how these interactions can make the platform itself thrive. A novel combination of social network analysis and text mining over a variety of data sources allows Michael T. Lash and Kang Zhao to offer a method for early prediction of a movie’s profitability. Indeed, it is early enough to influence investment decisions. Beyond that, the decision support system devised by the authors can suggest to users who the profit-maximizing cast members might be. No doubt this system can be deployed alongside the consideration of artistic merit as well (task apportionment again). The authors demonstrate the superiority of their forecasting method with respect to the existing benchmark methods of prediction. This research work indeed shows that our discipline is not remote from the concerns of the world at large. It contributes to both theory and practice. Privacy breaches are, regrettably, a matter of routine these days. Customer data entrusted to a firm is often liberated by miscreants. These breaches need to be followed by the effective recovery of customer relationships. Such a tactic should be a part of the broader sociotechnical recovery protocol. In the concluding paper of the issue, Ben C.F. Choi, Sung S. Kim, and Zhenhui (Jack) Jiang show what “effective” means in this context. They base their work on the theory of justice and use a scenario approach to gain a large data set of responses by consumers online. This contributes to our understanding of the perception of privacy violation by consumers. It also offers practical guidelines for companies affected by a breach—for which all firms should be prepared.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2020)
Network effects are the grounding of many highly successful business models in the contemporary commerce with online aspects. Although such effects are more frequently claimed than realized, the super-linear value increase with each additional customer is a powerful means for the platforms to expand their market (and other) power with their size. There are several kinds of network effects, they vary in their degree, and they are not always positive. Being able to estimate the magnitude of such effects is of a great moment as we witness the entrenchment and the expansion of the leading platforms in several industry segments. These effects, particularly if data-based, also allow the platforms to cross the boundaries of their industries. Indeed, today’s regulatory debates turn to a large degree on our ability to assess network effects in specific cases. The first paper of the issue makes a significant contribution to this ability. Oliver Hinz, Thomas Otter, and Bernd Skiera propose and test a new model for the estimation of network effects in two-sided markets, the common seller-buyer marketplaces these days prominently realized by large intermediary platforms. Positive network effects present themselves both in the increased ability to attract new customers and in the increased activity of the existing ones. Supported by a more granular data set, the influx-outflow model offered here includes both same-side and cross-side effects and accounts not only for the acquisition of new actors on the platform but also for their inactivity or exit. The cumulating data and other advantages of bigness affect market entry and the capacity of autonomous growth of the relatively successful more recent entrants, leading to market distortions, and this research should be studied carefully and built upon. The ability of enhanced estimation will also be, perhaps ironically, of advantage to the principal beneficiaries of the network effects. As the authors build on the prior work, so this contribution will be a foundation of further research in this important area. With behavioral economics, we learn ever more about the homo economicus as an actual human being as opposed to a utility-maximizing stick figure the Latin designation has come to stand for. We know that an individual’s willingness to pay is not a fixed number, but rather a contingent amount influenced by some the four Ps of classical marketing. How can this amount be affected in e-commerce by priming in the form of digital nudging? This is the question tackled empirically by Alan R. Dennis, Lingyao (Ivy) Yuan, Xuan Feng, Eric Webb, and Christine J. Hsieh in the next paper. The authors compare the effects of two forms of nudging: numeric and semantic (via prior exposure to related products). A nudge can be delivered online in the form of an advertisement. The analysis is conducted in the terms of System 1 (automatic) and System 2 (deliberate) cognitions. The authors find significant impacts of anchoring via digital nudging, with several contingent and differential effects with respect to the type of nudging and the nature of the price (fixed versus discovered in an auction). The digitalization of our world spells profound changes to our labor markets, the availability of human labor places, and the nature of human labor. Two papers investigate different aspects of this. David Durward, Ivo Blohm, and Jan Marco Leimeister focus on crowd work, conducted by extra-organizational individuals reached, selected, and organized online. In the context of the developed economies, the authors take the perspective of crowd workers and inquire into their satisfaction and identification with crowd work in dependence on financial compensation and the task characteristics. Deploying the self-determination theory of human motivation, the researchers use the data of several crowd working platforms to tease out the dependencies between these two aspects of crowd work, where fractured tasks and low pay often sap workers’ motivation. Contributing to the theory of IT-based work, the authors also have advice to offer to the designers of crowd working platforms. Software permeates our economic and personal life. A thick understanding of software development processes and habitus is therefore of key importance. Here, Shahla Ghobadi and Lars Mathiassen present the results of a qualitative study of software developers who are what the authors term precocious users of social networking, in other words, individuals whose social activities have revolved around these facilities since early age. What are the distinct expectations of these generational cohorts? How do they perceive the product- and process-related objectives of software development? This research accomplished several ends. The usefulness of the generational perspective on the workforce is affirmed. The co-evolutionary view, in which the social context created in part by the powerful new tools evolves together with the expectations and norms of the new digital workforce, has yielded a more granular understanding of this workforce. We can hope that this understanding will lead to more robust software, greater developer satisfaction, and societal good beyond those. In the next paper, Mario Silic and Paul Benjamin Lowry address the perennial problem of compliance with the organizational IS security by gamifying security training, relying on established theories of motivation and learning. They also deploy the hedonic-motivation system adoption model, co-proposed earlier by one of the authors. Thus, if the sometimes dreary training process can bring fun or even joy to the learners, and they can be motivated to learn, corporate security can be significantly enhanced. Notably, the authors use a field experiment to test the relevant propositions. Indeed, they apply a design-science approach to move from the proof-of-concept to the proof-of-value of the gamified training system. They also set out the procedure for establishing proof-of-use in a broader testing. This is a very promising approach that may be applied more broadly in IT-based organizational training. Online communities suffer, decline, or cease due to member inactivity. Jungwon Kuem, Lara Khansa, and Sung S. Kim contribute to our theory-based understanding of what can be done about it. They define prominence of the community in the members’ thoughts and feelings as a construct different from and complementary to the members’ engagement in the community. The authors analyze the differences between the two constructs in the context of self-determination theory, operationalize the new construct, and test their model with the data collected from a highly popular social networking platform. The prominence-engagement model proposed by the researchers displays stronger explanatory power than the engagement-only approach to the antecedents of the members’ active contribution to the community. The obvious theoretical contribution is accompanied by guidance to platform offerors. We know full well that malicious hackers are a bane of our existence. The authors of the next paper, Ravi Sen, Ajay Verma, and Gregory R. Heim find a silver lining (or, rather, a silver patch). In a formal modeling of the software marketplace, they show that the presence of such hackers may result in a competitive marketplace where their absence could lead to a monopoly. Beyond that, in their two-platform model the authors establish that — under the circumstances they describe — software platform under hacker attack may drive a more secure platform out of business. There is an experiential and intuitive backing for the authors’ contention, and they present it. They also draw up regulatory implications in their conclusions. IT-enabled collaborative innovation by multiple firms can bring in truly valuable fruit owing to the multiple kinds of diversity. This fruit is also difficult to reach for — again, due to the diversity and what the authors term knowledge distance. What capabilities need to be honed and actualized by the partnering firms to support such collaboration and counteract this distance? Tingru Cui, Yu Tong, Hock-Hai Teo, and Jizhen Li address this question in their multi-method research work where they develop and test a model with the data from 258 firms. The authors focus on the IT capabilities in dyadic collaboration arrangements. They address both the product and the process aspects and offer both a theoretical contribution and managerial advice based on it. The rich qualitative data makes for a rich paper. Many IT platforms deliver their services via application programming interfaces (APIs). As assert the authors of the next paper, Jochen Wulf and Ivo Blohm, we still need a unifying theory of the design of such interfaces in order to deliver strategic results to the platforms. Based on their survey-based data collection, the authors proceed to develop a model of the interaction between the three archetypal API designs they identify and the two value creation strategies: production economies of scope and innovation. Combined with cloud computing, the API paradigm for platforms will see further and more intensive deployment. No doubt, the present work will see further expansion and refinement. As a relatively new form of fintech, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending is a form of crowdsourcing of money that — if implemented properly — can bring high returns to lenders and, as compared to the alternatives, low cost to borrowers. The “if” is the risk, and the proper implementation turns on the assessment of that risk. In the concluding paper of the issue, Zhao Wang, Cuiqing Jiang, Huimin Zhao, and Yong Ding present and evaluate empirically a novel method of credit risk evaluation in the domain. They use text mining to automatically extract semantically meaningful soft factors from the loan-request descriptions. When combined with the hard factors generally used in credit assessment, the mined and processed soft factors show superior performance with respect to the current methods. Lowering the risk of funding in P2P marketplaces lowers the prevailing interest rates, assists in the securitization of loans, and expands the domain. We have here a novel mining technique, a superior credit assessment method, and a way to broaden the use of peer-to-peer lending owing to an increased trust in the overall system. As we enter the new publication year, we are welcoming the new members of JMIS Editorial Board: Indranil R. Bardhan (University of Texas at Austin), Geneviève Bassellier(McGill University), Line Dubé (HEC Montréal), Janis L. Gogan (Bentley University), Lara Khansa (Virginia Tech), Fei Ren (Peking University), Yuqing Ren (University of Minnesota), and Carsten Sørensen (London School of Economics and Political Science). The long-term service of Nabil R. Adam, Robert O. Briggs, John C. Henderson, and Tosiyasu L. Kunii, who are leaving the Board, is being recognized and acknowledged. The opening of the 37th JMIS volume is also an occasion to offer tanks to the Journal’s referees, the primary guarantors of the quality of the papers we publish. Here are the names of our reviewers:Marc Adam Ashish Agarwal Manju Ahuja Hyung Jun Ahn JaeHyeon Ahn Tolga Akcura Eleftherios Alamanos Oliver Alexy Muhammad Aljukhadar Paul Alpar Kemal Altinkemer Naveen Amblee Bonnie Anderson Corey Angst Ofer Arazy Kursad Asdemir Yoris Au Hyunmi Baek Qing Bai Akhilesh Bajaj Hillol Bala Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay Youngsok Bang Gaurav Bansal Qing Bao Reza Barkhi Henri Barki Jordan Barlow Richard Baskerville Genevieve Basselier Dinesh Batra Daniel Beimborn D. France Belanger Skip Benamati Michel Benaroch Hind Benbya Victor Benjamin Alexander Benlian François Bergeron Ganesh Bhatt Sudip Bhattacharjee Tammo Bijmolt David Biros Ivo Blohm Jesse Bockstedt Riccardo Bonazzi Antal van den Bosch Indranil Bose Laura Brandimarte Tobias Brandt Nicola Breugst Glenn J. Browne Sebastian Bruque Scott Buffett Judee Burgoon Andrew Burton-Jones Ashley Bush Brian Butler Terry A. Byrd Sonia M. Camacho Jinwei Cao Lan Cao Hasan Cavusoglu Ron Cenfetelli Hsin-Lu Chang Young Bong Chang Mohamed-Hédi Charki Sutirtha Chatterjee Michael Chau Patrick Chau Aihui Chen Andrew Chen Daniel Chen Guoqing Chen Hailiang Chen Hong-Mei Chen Hsinchun Chen Jianqing Chen Jin Chen Kay-Yut Chen Kuan Chen Li Chen Min Chen Rui Chen Wei Chen Hsing Kenneth Cheng Xusen Cheng Yi Cheng Christy M.K. Cheaung Mike Cheung Roger Chiang Benjamin Chiao Ananth Chiravuri Chaochang Chiu Jong-min Choe Ben Choi H. Michael Chung Sunghun Chung Wingyan Chung Theodore H. Clark Randolph Cooper Kevin Craig Robert E. Crossler Kevin Crowston Qizhi Dai John D’Arcy Elizabeth Davidson Gregory Dawson Jason Dedrick Benedict Dellaert Chrysanthos Dellarocas Haluk Demirkan Tianjie Deng Xuefei Deng Amit Deokar Sarv Devaraj Rajiv Dewan Debabrata Dey Jens Dibbern Indika Dissanayake Su Dong Tianxi Dong Quanzhou Du Line Dubé Peter Duchessi Robert Easley Dana Edberg Christophe Elie-Dit-Cosaque Aaron Elkins Mike Eom Sean B. Eom J. Alberto Espinosa Andrea Everard Kelly Fadel Ming Fan Patrick Fan Xiao Fang Yu-Hui Fang Yulin Fang Dennis Fehrenbacher Rei Fen Jane Feng Xuan Feng Daniel R. Fesenmaier Thomas A. Fischer Jerry Fjermestad Chris Forman Chiara Francalanci Shixuan Fu Johann Füller Brent Furneaux John Gallaugher Gordon Gao Hong Gao Monica Garfield Rajiv Garg Ina Garnefeld Ruyi Ge Hosssein Ghasemkhani Abhijeet Ghoshal Janis L. Gogan Kim Huat Goh Thomas Goh Sigi Goode Dale Goodhue Anand Gopal Ram D. Gopal Peter Gray Dawn G. Gregg Shirley Gregor Ulrike Gretzel Robert K. Griffin Michael D. Grigoriades Xitong Guo Xunhua Guo Yue Guo Zhiling Guo Saurabh Gupta Nicole Haggerty Jungpil Hahn Kunsoo Han Ingoo Han Lin Hao Andrew Hardin Taha Havakhor Matthew Hashim Irina Heimbach Cheng-Suang Heng Hemantha Herath Tejaswini Herath Traci Hess Alan R. Hevner Oliver Hinz Chad (Yi-Chun) Ho Susanna Ho Christian P. Hoffmann Richard Hoffman Jason Hong Kevin Hong Weiyin Hong Yili (Kevin) Hong Zhe Hong John A. Hoxmeier Jove Hou Jeffrey Hu Nan Hu Paul Hu Qing Hu Yuheng Hu Chun-Yao Huang Ming-Hui Huang Shiu-Li Huang Wayne Huang Xiaowen Huang Thomas Huber Kai Lung Hui Wendy Hui Ard Huizing Ghiyong Im Gretchen I. Irwin Anja Ischebeck Varghese Jacob Bharat A. Jain Hemant Jain Jeevan Jaisingh Tabitha James Dietmar Jannach Jeff Jenkins Matthew Jensen James J. Jiang Qiqi Jiang Yang Jiang Zhengrui Jiang Zhenhui Jiang Gong Jing Monica Johar Alice Johnson Eric Johnson Emmanuel Josserand Surinder Kahai Arnold Kamis P.K. Kannan Maurits Kaptein Prasanna Karhade Jahangir Karimi Sabrina Karwatzki Michael Kattan Timothy Kayworth Weiling Ke Mark Keith William J. Kettinger Lara Khansa Moutaz Khouja Melody Y. Kiang Antino Kim Byung Cho Kim Dan J. Kim Dongmin Kim Hee-Woong Kim Keongtae Kim Kihoon Kim Seung Hyun Kim Sung S. Kim Taekyung Kim Young-Gul Kim Ruth King Rajiv Kishore Brent Kitchens Giban Khuntia Gary Klein Richard Klein Sven Kleinknecht Stefan Knoll Cenk Kocas Chang Koh Rajiv Kohli Tobias Kollman Praveen K. Kopalle Kenneth A. Kozar Oliver Krancher Ramayya Krishnan Kevin Kuan Akhil Kumar Naveen Kumar Ram Kumar Subodha Kumar Jason Kuruzovich Hyeokkoo Eric Kwon Juhee Kwon Ohbyung Kwon Atanu Lahiri Karl R. Lang Nishtha Langer Kai R. Larsen Michael Lash Benjiang Lee Brian Lee ByungJoon Lee Byungtae Lee Daniel Lee Dong-Joo Lee Gene Moo Lee Goonwoong Lee Gwanhoo Lee Heeseok Lee Ho Geun Lee Hyung Koo Lee Jong Seok Lee Jungwoo Lee Thomas Lee Yang Lee Youngjin Lee Pierre-Majorique Léger Christine Lehrer Dorothy Leidner Chen Li Dahui Li Jiexun Li Mengxiang Li Seth Li Shengli Li Ting Li Weifeng Li Xiaobai Li Xiaotong Li Xin Li XinXin Li Xitong Li Yan Li Chen Liang Huigang Liang Nan (Peter) Liang Ting-Peng Liang Paul Licker John Lim Shi Ying Lim Aleck Lin Fu-ren Lin Mei Lin Zhijie Lin Charles Zhechao Liu De Liu Jun Liu Ying Liu Yipeng Liu Alexandre Lopes Paul B. Lowry Benjiang Lu Jingdu Lu Yixin Lu Henry C. Lucas, Jr. Andy Luse Christoph Lutz Mark Lycett Kristina McElheran Jane M. Mackay Dan Ma Xiao Ma Ephraim R. McLean Massimo Magni Pruthikrai Mahatanankoon M. Adam Mahmood Bin Mai Feng Mai Ronald Maier Yogesh Malhotra Deepa Mani Ravi Mantena Kent Marett Panos Markopoulos Likoebe M. Maruping Anne P. Massey Lars Mathiassen Sabine Matook Kurt Matzler Xiaowei Mei Martin Meissner Nigel Melville Philip Menard Nirup Menon Thomas Meservy Shaila Miranda Dinesh Mirchandani Abhay Nath Mishra Stephanie Missonier Kannan Mohan William Money Ali R. Montazemi Ramiro Montealegre Alan Montgomery Greg Moody Jolene Morrison Oliver Mueller Barin N. Nag Fiona Nah Guofang Nan Ravi Narayanaswamy Derek Nazareth Matthew Nelson R. Ryan Nelson Boon Siong Neo Derrick Neufeld Dirk Neumann Dorit Nevo Saggi Nevo Michael Newman Tingting Nian Mark Nissen Dmitri Nizovtsev Oded Nov Jeong-ha Oh Joo Hee Oh Lih-Bin Oh Onook Oh Wonseok Oh Bob O’Keefe Lorne Olfman James Oliver Nadia Olivero Bob Otondo Peter Otto Eric Overby Zafer D. Ozdemir Asil Oztekin Gautam Pant Manoj Parameswaran Michael Parent Insu Park SungJune Park Craig Parker Bhavik K. Pathak Praveen Pathak Ravi Patnayakuni Souren Paul David J. Pauleen Kenneth Peffers Robin Pennington Christoph Peters Chee-Wei Phang Roger A. Pick Alain Pinsonneault Selwyn Piramuthu Huseyin Polat Jean-Charles Pomerol Jaana Porra Constance Porter Clay Posey John H. Prager David Preston Jeffrey Proudfoot Sandeep Purao Jessica Pye Hamed Qahri-Saremi Liangfei Qiu Lingyun Qiu Xin Xue Qu Wen Guang Qu Arik Ragowsky Rex Kelly Rainer, Jr. Balaraman Rajan Vandana Ramachandran Arkalgud Ramaprasad Bala Ramesh R. Ravichandran Gautam Ray Louis Raymond Jan Recker Blaize Horner Reich Bruce Reinig Fei Ren Paul Resnick Hyuen-Suk Rhee Amir Riaz William B. Richmond Christoph Riedl René Riedl Lionel Robert Nicholas Roberts Michael Rogich Huaxia Rui Ko de Ruyter Sherry D. Ryan Young U. Ryu Michael Sacks Khawaja Saeed Rajib Saha Otavio Sanchez G. Lawrence Sanders Radhika Santhanam Saonee Sarker Surendra Sarnikar Carol Saunders Kevin Scheibe George Schell Michael Schermann Hans J. Scholl Petra Schubert Ryan Schuetzler Judy Scott Isabella Seeber Eric See-To Stefan Seidel Ravi Sen Sagnika Sen Sylvain Sénécal Alexander Serenko Nainika Seth Vikram Sethi Theresa M. Shaft Zhe Shan Tushar Shanker Raj Sharman Jim Sheffield Hong Sheng Zhan Shi Hung-Pin Shih Choon-Ling Sia Siew Kien Sia Keng Siau Anna Sidorova Michael Siering Mark Silver Harpreet Singh Param Vir Singh Atish P. Sinha Sumit Sircar Bernd Skiera Stefan Smolnik Jaeki Song Scott Spangler William E. Spangler Rajendra P. Srivastava Shirish C. Srivastava Thomas F. Stafford Eric W. Stein Dennis Steininger Stefan Stieglitz Theofanis C. Stratopoulos Diane M. Strong Ayoung Su Mani Subramani Chandra Subramaniam Ramanath Subramanyam Daewon Sun Heshan Sun Tianshu Sun Arun Sundararajan Shankar Sundaresan Juliana Sutanto Ali Tafti Paul P. Tallon Chee-Wee Tan Chuan-Hoo Tan Yao-Hua Tan Yuliang (Ricky) Tan Quian Tang Xinlin Tang Yong Tang Mohan R. Tanniru Nolan Taylor Orkun Temizkan Gary F. Templeton Hock Hai Teo Thompson Teo Matthew Thatcher Ferdinand Thies Dominic Thomas Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong Ryad Titah Monica Chiarini Tremblay Manuel Trenz Dimitrios Tsekouras Yanbin Tu Ofir Turel Tuure Tuunanen Doug Twitchell Nathan W. Twyman Sonja Utz Rustam Vahidov Peter van Baalen Wietske van Osch Ganesan Vaidyanathan Daniel Veit Goetz Viering Leo Vijayasarathy Padmal Vitharana Joseph Vithayatil Douglas Vogel Sebastian Voigt Jan vom Brocke Heinz-Theo Wagner Eric Walden Jeffrey Wall Joseph Walls Zhiping Walter Alan Wang Bin Wang Chong (Alex) Wang Eric T.G. Wang Jingguo Wang Michael S. Wang Qiu-Hong Wang Shane Wang Shouhong Wang Sophia Wang Weiquan Wang Xin Wang Yinglei Wang Y. Richard Wang Deepa Wani Sidne Ward Mary Beth Watson-Manheim Sunil Wattal Thomas Weber Chih-Ping Wei Markus Weinmann Tim Weitzel John Wells Michael Wessel Robert West Jonathan Whitaker Michael E. Whitman Jeffrey L. Whitten George Widmeyer Rolf Wigand Fons Wijnhoven E. Vance Wilson Robert Winter Christopher Wolfe Christina Wong Charles A. Wood Hans Wortmann Ryan Wright Dazhong Wu Choon Ling Xia Lan Xia Xiao Xiao Mingdi Xin Guiyang Xiong David Xu Heng Xu Junjie (Calvin) Xu Jennifer Xu Lizhen Xu Peng Xu Yunjie (Calvin) Xu Ling Xue Lucy Yan Yinping Yang Zhiyong Yang Oliver Yao Cheng Yi Denny Yin Zhitao Yin Byungjoon Yoo Ivy Yuan Yufei Yuan Wei T. Yue Chun Zeng Xiaouhua Zeng Dongsong Zhang Han Zhang John Zhang Kungpeng Zhang Ping Zhang Xiaoquan Zhang Yulei Zhang Zhu Zhang Huimin Zhao J. Leon Zhao Kang Zhao Kexin Zhao Xia Zhao Zhiqiang Zheng Lei Zhou Lina Zhou Phil Zhou Wenqi Zhou Yilu Zhou Zhongyun Zhou Hongwei Zhu Wenqi Zhu Youlong Zhuang David Zimbra Let us turn our attention to the papers of the first issue of our 37th volume.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2012)
THE THREE PAPERS THAT OPEN THIS ISSUE OF JMIS present empirical investigations of diverse aspects of the use of information systems (IS) by teams and groups, with the researchers employing different theoretical lenses. Massimo Magni, Corey M. Angst, and Ritu Agarwal show how the network structure of teams influences the use of the newly implemented systems by team members. Social network theory underlies the study and helps to tease out unobvious dependencies between a team's internal closure and external bridging on the one hand and the infusion of a complex IS into the practices of its individual members. The theme is continued in the next work. Monica J. Garfield and Alan R. Dennis investigate the group development aspect of the introduction of a collaboration technology. The authors focus on the enactment of shared routines. They show that this enactment versus the disruption of the established routines during the introduction of new technology is the key to the understanding of the trajectory of group. Using this lens, the authors formulate an integrated model of group development. Ofer Arazy and Ian R. Gellatly study the motivation and the engagement of the members of groups forming around corporate wikis, an increasingly active component of knowledge generation, sharing, and longitudinal management. Relying on the theory of social cognition and on regulatory focus theory, the researchers examine the role of wiki leaders in the prevalence of one of the two forces that, respectively, motivate or demotivate the full engagement of group members with the wiki. Two subsequent works rely on different methodologies to study organizational information security. As a part of the general trend to outsource, use process specialists, focus on core competencies, and seek the external expertise and economies of scale (the terms depend on your perspective), many firms outsource a large part of their information security function. In the case of security, particularly when conformance to regulations is sought, this may lead to a new and serious category of risks stemming from system interdependencies through the common outsourcer. In a formal economic analysis, Kai-Lung Hui, Wendy Hui, and Wei T. Yue show that stringent and narrow security regulations, such as certifications, may lead to increased outsourcing to a few managed security service providers--and to increased security exposures owing to the interdependencies. This is an important warning. Of course, we are not facing total security outsourcing yet. What about the internal compliance with the organization's security policies? Yan Chen, K. (Ram) Ramamurthy, and Kuang-Wei Wen present an empirical study that shows the relative advantages of rewards (in combination with punishment) in seeking this compliance. The tenets of the combined deterrence and reward reinforcement theories lead the authors to a scheme of combined reward and punishment, which they proceed to validate in the setting of two financial firms. E-commerce turns to a large degree on the ever-more voluminous, multi-attribute, detailed, integrated, and closely exploited data on consumers. Therefore, the possession of such data is a coveted corporate asset. Yet, even competing firms trade some of this data with one another. Xia Zhao and Ling Xue conduct a formal economic analysis of such trade during the competition between firms selling the same products and using targeted advertising based on the consumer behavioral data. The model surfaces the rational policies the firms should pursue in the data trades depending on their information differences--as well as the viability of exchanges for trading consumer data. The potential of e-commerce methods for closing the gap between the supplier and the prospective buyer is not as yet fully realized. Fixed and dynamic price settings, and price discovery via various auction mechanisms still leave much of the more involved transacting to human negotiation--which does not scale up too well. Of course, complex contracts will always require an often protracted negotiation by specialists. However, there is a middle range of complexity, where relatively small and relatively simple transactions can be conducted by humans negotiating over the Web with software agents. Yinping Yang, Sharad Singhal, and Yunjie (Calvin) Xu offer the design theory of such a negotiation agent and investigate experimentally the alternative negotiation strategies. The authors surface an effective strategy and demonstrate this efficacy in respect to the acceptance ratio, utilities, and buyer satisfaction. This line of investigation will certainly push the frontier of selling in e-commerce toward a broader range of transactions. Two subsequent papers present empirical investigations of the organizational use of IS. We know well that intrinsic motivations generally bind more strongly. Weiling Ke, Chuan-Hoo Tan, Choon-Ling Sia, and Kwok- Kee Wei propose two organizational levers for inducing such motivations in the employees' exploring of enterprise systems, which can lead to a deeper infusion in the system's use. By unpacking the construct of intrinsic motivation, the authors are able to push forward the theory of IS use and, we hope, its practice. The same concern with more effective IS use after a system's adoption is evinced by the work presented by Xuefei (Nancy) Deng and Lei Chi. These authors adopt the perspective of removing the obstacles to such effective use. Using network analysis and revealed causal mapping, the authors surface seven categories of such emergent obstacles and show their differential effects on user categories and system-usage phases. Clear implications for practice follow from both works. In the concluding paper of the issue, Gimun Kim, Bongsik Shin, and Ohbyung Kwon apply a novel, in this context, perspective to the study of the multifaceted IT capability of a firm. The lens of sociomaterialism helps the researchers to perceive the continuing interaction between the human agency, with it's the ability to set out and realize goals, and the material agency, that is, the capacity of technology for presenting affordances and constraints. The authors further bifurcate the relevant human agency into that of the users and the IT unit. They proceed to develop a multidimensional model of the firm's IT capability based on the entanglement conceptualization stemming from the adopted perspective and show that this perspective offers a closer view of the firm's IT capability as compared to the preexisting views. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2012)
COMPETITIVE ACTION IN TODAY'S ECONOMY occurs within multiple layers of networks, from the infrastructure of the Internet, to social network platforms, to distributed groups of actors, on to the networks of collaborating and competing firms---within a region or across the world. Information and information products play a crucial role in addressing the marketplaces and in creating value in the commons. The Special Section that opens this issue of JMIS showcases the research that investigates the interplay of networks and information in creating value both in the marketplaces and in the commons. The Guest Editors of the Special Section on Information and Completive Strategy in a Networked Economy, Robert J. Kauffman, Thomas A. Weber, and D.J. Wu, will introduce its papers to you. Co-creation of marketable (although not necessarily marketed) value by consumers, along with the producers, is occupying ever larger space in the economic activity surrounding the Internet-Web. Two fundamental activity domains are the autonomous co-creation by consumers or consumer communities (as, say, in a consumer-review site) and sponsored co-creation, performed by consumers at the behest of producers. The first paper of the general section, presents a model situated in the latter domain, addressing the sponsored co- creation brainstorming. The model is validated empirically on the data from the two and a half years of the operation of Dell IdeaStorm. The authors, Li Chen, James R. Marsden, and Zhongju Zhang, determine the factors associated with high contribution levels and with continuing participation in co-creation. Couching their model within a general taxonomic framework of co-creation, the researchers make an important contribution to categorical knowledge cumulation in the domain. The navigability of Web sites is---as we know well---still a challenge to many of them. Perhaps, if we could measure and compare navigability using objective metrics, we could also improve this necessary characteristic of successful sites. A data-driven approach to such a metric is presented by Xiao Fang, Paul Jen-Hwa Hu, Michael Chau, Han-fen Hu, Zhuo Yang, and Olivia R. Liu Sheng. The work is well grounded in information processing theories and offers a method for the calculation of the proposed metrics. Beyond that, the authors have implemented a prototype system that allowed them to evaluate their method with the participation of users. The theoretical and practical importance of the work is apparent. Skillful use of information technology (IT) underlies business process outsourcing (BPO). BPO is---by necessity---grounded in incomplete contracts, as the contingencies that will impact long-term contracts cannot be foreseen in the face of rapid technological change and market shifts. Success has to emerge from the governance process as well as from the contract enforcement. In the next paper of the issue, Arun Rai, Mark Keil, Rob Hornyak, and Kim Wüllenweber examine a large number of BPO ventures to understand the influence of the governance method on the client's satisfaction. Comparing the effects of contractual governance factors to those of relational governance, the researchers find the partial substitutability of the two sets of factors. However, they also find the dominance of relational factors, notably trust and the mechanisms for information exchange and conflict resolution. Two subsequent papers present theory-based empirics related to the IT use in health care. In the first, Corey M. Angst, Sarv Devaraj, and John D'Arcy investigate the effects of IT-assisted communication on patient care in the cardiology unit of numerous hospitals. The authors rely on the structure-process-outcome framework, the last component of the triad being conceptualized as mortality, loyalty, and patient satisfaction. Nuanced results of IT deployment are found, with the cardiology-specific IT exerting a positive impact on the objective measures of care. However, administrative IT is shown to affect adversely the processes of interpersonal care---confirming the fears of many physicians. Clearly, much remains to be learned about the effective use of IT in patient care. Indeed, as the next paper states and as we perceive experientially, the adoption of the patient-facing IT has lagged the use of consumer- facing technology in other sectors of the economy. Aaron Baird, Michael F. Furukawa, and T.S. Raghu present an empirical study of the factors that can lead to early adoption of Web-based portals by outpatient health care providers. On the theoretical base of diffusion of innovations, the authors examine the effect of various contingencies and find several nontraditional influences on the adoption process. Since patient portals lead to continuing co-creation of care, they can have significant impact on health care economics as well as patient outcomes. The work is thus of practical importance, along with its theoretical contribution to the contingency theory. To finish on a strong note, the issue brings to you a contribution to our understanding of the IT business value. Nianxin Wang, Huigang Liang, Weijun Zhong, Yajiong Xue, and Jinghua Xiao dichotomize this value into organizational resource structuring versus capability building. Seeing resources as primarily tradable assets that are inputs to production, and capabilities as nontradable, embedded abilities to utilize resources, the authors establish empirically the relative impact of each set. They find that the business value of IT is realized primarily through resource structuring in stable environments and through capability building in dynamic ones. This result ties well into contingency theory. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

From the Editor-in-Chief - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1986)
This article announces that Edward A. Stohr will serve as guest editor for this issue of "Management Information Systems."

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1998)
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY HAS ENABLED A GREAT VARIETY of organizational workspace arrangements by offering communication, coordination, and collaboration capabilities to knowledge workers. The authors of the three papers in this issue's Special Section explore such issues as the organizational factors of satisfaction in telecommuting arrangements, the emergence of trust in global virtual teams, and the community-building experience using Web-based groupware. You may note the key notions of satisfaction, trust, and community in high profile. The Guest Editor of the Special Section, Magid Igbaria, introduces the papers in greater detail. In the first paper of the general section, Paul J. Hart and Carol S. Saunders investigate rather similar issues, but they use a radically different unit of analysis. Hart and Saunders study the roles of trust (largely on the supplier's side) and power (mostly that of the customer) in the information partnerships emerging from the use of bilateral electronic data interchange (EDI). Among other results, trust was found to be related to a more diverse use of EDI, a finding of importance to both researchers and practitioners. Software reuse is currently on the very top of information-technology agendas. In their broad analytical survey of the area, Yongbeom Kim and Edward A. Stohr accentuate the organizational, economic, behavioral, and legal issues that may lead to the success or failure of a technologically best conceived program. The authors derive from their framework a specific research program for the area. The creation of IS-based organizational memory is a vital component of the recent drive toward knowledge management by many leading organizations. In many of these firms, project teams have emerged as a basic unit of work. Mark Weiser and Joline Morrison present a design of project memory system that helps capture and make accessible for future use the comprehensive history of the project, incorporating the history of both the process and the product. The availability of such memories can shorten the learning time and increase performance level on future projects in the owner firm. The experience with a prototype system is evaluated. John W. Satzinger and Lorne Olfman discuss the unexpected results of their laboratory experiments concerning the interface consistency of end-user applications. The consistency of such interfaces is, of course, touted as an absolute good. The authors, however, find that inconsistent visual appearance of the applications resulted in a greater accuracy of user performance. Satzinger and Olfman provide a theoretical explanation of their results and offer suggestions for interface designers. Human resource management in the information-systems area, with the high demand it places on well-performing professionals, is a challenge. Proper organizational socialization can lead to a more stable work environment and higher levels of performance, including innovation. Ruth C. King and Vikram Sethi show empirically which socialization tactics lead to desirable behaviors of information-systems professionals. Their work opens a rich field for future research and has direct implications for practice. In the concluding paper of the issue, Mary Jane Lenard, Gregory R. Madey, and Pervaiz Alam present the design and discuss the validation of a hybrid information system developed to support a semistructured decision process. The system combines a statistical decision-support type of model with an expert system in order to achieve a greater requisite variety of responses. The hybrid system has been developed for the auditors' need to assess the ability of a firm to continue as a going concern. The validation suite has shown the effective synergy of the hybrid approach in an exploratory use by novice auditors. Key words and phrases : ,

About This Issue - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1985)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1987)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2000)
THE SPECIAL SECTION THAT OPENS THIS ISSUE IS DEVOTED TO Technology Strategy for Electronic Marketplaces and is guest-edited by Eric K. Clemons and Yu-Ming Wang. The papers highlight the need for subtle strategic direction in the by now well-known tactics of information technology (IT) deployment in electronic markets. Excessive product customization can lead to a profit deficit for all market participants. Unless measures-such as those identified here-are taken, the regulation of insurance markets, undertaken in the face of genetic testing combined with data mining, can lead to market failure. The value of IT investments is subject to erosion after the implementation due to several factors that may prevent the value appropriation by the investing firm; specific collateral investments need to be planned to prevent this erosion. Taken together, the three papers, ably introduced by the Guest Editors, offer both results and methodologies to move our thinking about electronic markets to a higher level. Strategic alliances have become a common means to combine core competencies of participating firms and to leverage the knowledge they have and create. Customer and supplier firms are a vital source of knowledge as well. In these partnering arrangements and supply networks, organizational learning needs to be augmented by interorganizational learning. Using grounded theory in the context of the disk-drive industry, Judy E. Scott analyzes the role IT can play in facilitating this learning. This work confirms once again that the deployment of advanced technology has to be complemented and leveraged by advanced thinking about and action directed at building several forms of trust. It provides an important link that explains why and shows how to use IT to link organizations at a deeper level. Related to Scott's approach is the work presented by John Tillquist, who shows in vivid detail the process through which IT-enabled organizational change is being planned, to be cast into new realities. The author analyzes how the three categories of the organizational change rules are interpreted during the change planning, and what these interpretations lead to later on. Tillquist shows how bad things can happen to good plans. The consultants in the cases analyzed here constrain the available options to the detriment of exploiting unique organizational possibilities of the firms. The professional discourse is channeled within a narrow tunnel of a doctrine. Explanation facility is an important component of knowledge-based systems (KBS), which help in product configuration, diagnosis, training, monitoring, process control, and other tasks. Based on cognitive theories, Ji-Ye Mao and Izak Benbasat design experiments to analyze the use of these explanations. Using process tracing, the authors establish empirically when explanations are requested and to what purpose they are used by novices and by experienced professionals. By providing explanations (in some cases, automatically) when they may be needed, and of the nature appropriate to the task and to the intended user, designers would be able to enhance the usefulness and acceptance of KBS and, ultimately, the level of performance of the overall person-machine system. Group interaction processes are central to the outcomes achieved from the use of group support systems (GSS). Yet little research centers on the processes, as opposed to the outcomes. Here, Wayne Huang and K.K. Wei study the impacts of GSS and task on the task-directed and social interaction processes during the group's work. By adopting the influence perspective, the authors are able to parse the study of the processes and, going beyond the presented results, offer a rich program for future research. Steering committees are a widely adopted means for guiding organizational MIS. They are able to bring multiple perspectives to such tasks as long-term planning, resource allocation, and the organization of the MIS function. Indeed, these high-level entities can play many roles in an organization. Jahangir Karimi, Anol Bhattacherjee, Yash P. Gupta, and Toni M. Somers study the relationship between the roles a steering committee plays in a firm and the level of IT management sophistication achieved by it. Beyond this, the study shows which dimensions of this sophistication are related to what roles of the committee. It goes without saying that the results will help in role development for steering committees. VLADIMIR ZWASS Editor-in-Chief

Special Issue: Knowledge Management - Davenport, Thomas H; Grover, Varun (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2001)
IT IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY CLEAR THAT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT is here to stay. Although the movement has aspects of faddishness (an abundance of conferences, books, and articles in the business press), and therefore may lose some of its current level of visibility, it must become part of the basic fabric of successful businesses. There are far too many knowledge workers dealing with too much knowledge for knowledge management to disappear. While knowledge management was developed first in industries and functions that are basically selling knowledge-professional services, pharmaceuticals, research and development functions-it is quickly moving into other industries, including manufacturing, financial services, even government and military organizations. It can be expected that at some point every industry will view itself as knowledge-intensive and will adopt knowledge management approaches in virtually every business unit and function. To date the primary emphasis has been on building professional capabilities-knowledge management specialists, formal procedures, and separate knowledge management skills. To fully institutionalize knowledge management, the focus must shift to the amateurs-those whose roles in organizations are not primarily knowledge management, but accomplishing their real organizational missions. We must begin to hire workers for their aptitude and motivation around knowledge, design knowledge activities into everyday roles, and create a culture in which every worker views knowledge management as part of his or her job. When we began work on this Special Issue, there was a great deal of business interest in knowledge management. However, formal research in this area had yet to be seen in mainstream IS journals, although the interest was apparent from the incidence of panels and presentations on the topic in IS-related conferences. We sought to remedy this by providing a journal medium for developing some of the interesting work from its nascent stage. We also sought to bridge the gap between research and practice by focusing on research that had direct implications for practitioners struggling to deal with knowledge management issues. The results of this process can be observed in this issue. The articles represent a blend of topics, methods, and approaches that reflect various aspects of the phenomenon. The authors represented have significant experience in conducting research in field settings. Some of the ideas proposed begin to develop "theory," whereas others report on field research using qualitative or quantitative methods. All articles develop implications for practice. Further, consistent with practice, there seems to be clear recognition that knowledge is created and applied only in the minds of human beings. Technology can provide assistance in knowledge management, but its importance pales in comparison to developing knowledge-oriented cultures, motivating individuals to share and use knowledge, and encouraging workers to view their jobs in terms of effective knowledge management.

Special Section: Social Aspects of Sociotechnical Systems - Briggs, Robert O; Nunamaker Jr, Jay F; Sprague Jr, Ralph H (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2010)
Robert O. Briggs is Director of Academic Affairs for the Center for Collaboration Science and Professor of Management in the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He earned his Ph.D. in Management and Information Systems from the University of Arizona in 1994. He researches the cognitive and social foundations of collaboration and applies his findings to the design and deployment of new collaborative techniques, work practices, and technologies. He has published scholarly works on theoretical, empirical, and applied aspects of collaboration science. Jay F. Nunamaker Jr. is Regents and Soldwedel Professor of MIS, Computer Science, and Communication and Director of the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He received his Ph.D. in Operations Research and Systems Engineering from Case Institute of Technology, an M.S. and B.S. in Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University. He received his professional engineer’s license in 1965. In a 2005 journal article in Communications of the AIS, he was recognized as the fourth- to the sixth- most-productive researcher for the 1991--2003 period. Dr. Nunamaker received the LEO Award from the Association of Information Systems (AIS) at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Barcelona, Spain, December 2002, and he was elected a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems in 2000. Ralph H. Sprague is Professor of Information Technology Management in the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawaii. He has over 40 years of experience in teaching, research, and consulting in the use of computers and information technologies in organizations. His specialties are decision support systems, strategic systems planning, the management of information systems, and electronic document management. He has published widely in these areas. In 2006 he was elected Fellow of the Association for Information Systems. He has served as chairman or cochairman of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences for the past 33 years. The purpose of information systems (IS) is to provide information to people who must make choices about the disposition of scarce resources. One goal of IS research is, therefore, to improve those choices by finding ways to increase the timeliness, accuracy, and completeness of information at a minimum of costs---economic, cognitive, political, social, affective, and physical. At the heart of IS research, then, is a complex optimization problem. Information can be made timelier, for example, by making it less accurate and less complete. Less accurate, less complete information, however, may yield a lower likelihood of useful choices and a higher likelihood of unintended consequences, with a potential for negative economic, political, and social outcomes. Complete information, on the other hand, may impose untenably high cognitive load, which may engender negative affect, which in turn may have political, social, and economic implications. IS optimized along several dimensions---say, economic, cognitive, and social---may nonetheless invoke negative value along another dimension---for example, political---and so fail at great expense. IS research, therefore, finds itself at the crossroads of many social and technical disciplines, drawing insights from each and returning scientific contributions to each. The unique contribution of IS research, however, is an understanding of these many concepts as systems to inform choice. IS/IT (information technology) artifacts are central to the IS we create and study. IS are, however, more than their hardware, software, and data. IS also encompass the people and the work practices needed to produce the information the system yields. They are, therefore, characterized not as technical, but as sociotechnical. Another goal of IS research is to find ways to develop and deploy systems so as to maximize utility and acceptability for users while minimizing cost, development time, and system defects. Systems developers must design and create IS/IT artifacts and work practices and transfer them to users and decision makers. Those they serve, IS professionals, also use structured work practices supported by IS/IT artifacts, and so the IS/IT artifact is also central to systems development research. As with IS, however, IS development is a sociotechnical endeavor. It is important, therefore, that the IS research community focus not only on the technical issues but also on the human issues of IS. Toward that end, in this Special Section of JMIS, we focus on the social aspects of sociotechnical systems. The issue presents eight papers drawn from the best-paper nominees of the 2009 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Each paper addresses a topic pertaining to the people and work practices involved in designing, developing, and deriving value from IS. In the first paper of the Special Section, "‘Follow the Sun’ Workflow in Global Software Development," Erran Carmel, J. Alberto Espinosa, and Yael Dubinsky draw on the literature and field experience to derive the logic for predicting and explaining the efficiency of work practices for follow-the-sun software development. In follow-the-sun projects, subteams in different geographical locations hand off development tasks at the end of each day to another subteam in an earlier time zone. The authors present arguments for 12 propositions pertaining to the duration and efficiency of follow the sun and derive simple formulas for calculating several aspects of efficiency and for predicting the effects of changes in efficiencies on the duration of projects. The arguments advanced in the paper provide a foundation for much future academic inquiry and provide useful guidelines for IS professionals about when to choose a follow-the-sun approach and how to conduct it so as to derive its potential benefits. In their paper, "Perpetual Versus Subscription Licensing Under Quality Uncertainty and Network Externality Effects," Jie (Jennifer) Zhang and Abraham Seidmann address optimizing the value realized by software developers from the software they create. The authors examine issues pertaining to network effects, quality uncertainty, upgrade compatibility, and vendor ability to commit to future prices in a dynamic environment and demonstrate how a software vendor can manage the trade-offs of perpetual licensing and subscription to optimize profit and the welfare of consumers. The insights in the paper will be useful not only for making specific decisions but also for those forming a longer-term strategy of licensing vendor software. In "The Power of Patterns and Pattern Recognition When Developing Information-Based Strategy," Eric K. Clemons discusses six patterns pertaining to competitive advantage, profitability, and the changing nature of the organization. These patterns are derived from a 20‑year research stream on strategic use of IS. The research began with a focus on the effects of information on business practices and drew on interviews with leaders in many industries. At the nexus of three domains---information, strategy, and economics---this work has implications for all three fields and should be useful to future researchers and organizational leaders who seek to deploy information and technology to strategic advantage. Steven Poltrock and Mark Handel compare and contrast eight different approaches to modeling collaborative work practices and discuss their value for designers and users of collaboration technologies in their paper, "Models of Collaboration as the Foundation for Collaboration Technologies." The authors organize the modeling conventions into two categories: (1) ostensive models that define how a collaborative work practice should be executed and (2) performative models that capture the ways that collaborative work is actually conducted. They argue that ostensive models are useful for documenting, planning, analyzing, simulating, and automating collaborative work practices, whereas performative models are useful for discovering deviations from normative practices, for discovering new ways that people use existing systems, and for discovering and nurturing important relationships. The paper posits that no single modeling convention provides a complete understanding of a system and that each is useful to creating a whole understanding. In their paper, "Bounded Ideation Theory," Robert O. Briggs and Bruce A. Reinig advance a theory to explain the relationship between the number of ideas a group produces and the number of good ideas that emerge from an ideation session. Bounded ideation theory (BIT) posits that boundaries of understanding, attention resources, goal congruence, mental and physical stamina, and the solution space moderate a primary relationship between individual ability and idea quality, yielding an ideation function with an inflected curve. Drawing on the logic of the theory, the paper proposes six strategies for improving ideation. It challenges Alex F. Osborn’s often-cited conjecture that the more ideas a group produces, the more good ideas will result. The authors suggest that two widely used measurement approaches for comparing the merits of ideation techniques are flawed and advocate the use of a third approach. They question the value of the quantity focus of ideation research in the IS/IT literature and argue that a quality focus would be more useful. The paper provides researchers with new ways to approach ideation research and may provide practitioners with ways to gain more value from their ideation sessions. In "Network Externalities and Technology Use: A Quantitative Analysis of Intraorganizational Blogs," Sunil Wattal, Pradeep Racherla, and Munir Mandviwalla explore the degree to which an individual’s system usage can be predicted by a network effect---system usage by others in one’s social network, and by the degree to which others provide positive or negative feedback about the system. The researchers also study the degree to which these effects may be moderated by age and gender. They find that network effects are more pronounced among men than women, and they report a nonlinear effect for age. They find that positive responses to a user’s blog postings correlate with higher blog usage and that people whose managers blog are more likely to blog themselves. Their paper describes phenomena that bear further theoretical and experimental research and may be useful to managers who wish to implement blogs in service of organizational goals. The paper "Technology Dominance in Complex Decision Making: The Case of Aided Credibility Assessment," by Matthew L. Jensen, Paul Benjamin Lowry, Judee K. Burgoon, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., examines the use of decision aids for developing solutions to complex problems, focusing in particular on the challenge of assessing the credibility of others with whom one interacts. Drawing on the theory of technological dominance, the paper presents findings of an experiment that provided both novices and experts with a decision aid for detecting deception in a high-stakes scenario. Both professionals and novices improved their assessment accuracy using the decision aid, although they tended to discount the aid’s recommendations when the aid contradicted their assessments. This research should be useful in a wide range of high-stakes scenarios where the credibility of one’s interaction partners is crucial. The paper suggests new research directions both for credibility assessment and for improving the theory of technological dominance. Finally, in their paper, "Team Size, Dispersion, and Social Loafing in Technology-Supported Teams: A Perspective on the Theory of Moral Disengagement," Omar Alnuaimi, Lionel P. Robert Jr., and Likoebe M. Maruping report on a study of factors that influence social loafing in a team setting. Building on the foundation of moral disengagement theory, the authors posit three cognitive mechanisms to explain observed correlations of team size and dispersion with social loafing---diffusion of responsibility, attribution of blame, and dehumanization. In a study of 32 student teams, they found that diffusion of responsibility, attribution of blame, and dehumanization partially mediate the effects of team size on social loafing, while only dehumanization fully mediates the effects of dispersion on social loafing. Each of the papers in this issue examines a different social aspect of IS. These papers bring together a diversity of theoretical perspectives and a variety of methodological approaches. We commend them to your reading.

Special Section: Realizing Value from Information Technology Investment - Kauffman, Robert J; Mukhopadhyay, Tridas (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1993)

Special Section: Information and Competitive Strategy in a Networked Economy - Kauffman, Robert J; Weber, Thomas A; Wu, D J (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2012)
ROBERT J. KAUFFMAN is currently the 2012-2013 Lee Kuan Yew Fellow for Research Excellence and a professor of information systems and strategy at the School of Information Systems and the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University. He also serves there as associate dean of research and deputy director of the Living Analytics Research Center. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for Digital Strategies of the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. Previously he was on the faculty at Arizona State University, the University of Minnesota, New York University, and the University of Rochester. He also visited in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and worked in international banking and finance prior to beginning his academic career. His articles have recently appeared in Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, IBM Research and Development Journal, Decision Support Systems, and Review of Economics and Statistics. Dr. Kauffman's research focuses on technology and strategy, the economics of IT, technology in financial services and e-business, managerial decision making, and innovations in research methods. He served as a co-chair for the 2011 ICIS Doctoral Consortium and will also do this for the 2012 ACM SIGMIS Doctoral Dissertation Award Competition. He played a similar role for the 2012 Summer Institute on Analytics for Business, Consumer and Social Insights at Living Analytics Research Centre (LARC), and the 2012 International Conference on Electronic Commerce in Singapore in August 2012. THOMAS A. WEBER is head of the Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, where he holds the chair of Operations, Economics and Strategy. Between 2003 and 2011 he was a faculty member in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Professor Weber is ingénieur des arts et manufactures (Ecole Centrale Paris) and diplom-ingénieur in electrical engineering (Technical University Aachen). He holds an S.M. in both technology and policy and electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in managerial science and applied economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2008, he was a visiting faculty member in the Department of Economics at the University of Cambridge, and in 2009 in the Department of Mathematics at Moscow State University. Between 1998 and 2002 he was a senior consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. His current research interests include the economics of information and uncertainty, the design of contracts, and strategy. Professor Weber's papers have appeared in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Information Systems Research, Decision Support Systems, Economics Letters, Economic Theory, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Journal of Regulatory Economics, Operations Research, Optimal Control Applications and Methods, and Theory & Decision. He is the author of Optimal Control Theory with Applications in Economics, published by MIT Press in 2011. D.J. WU is an associate professor of information technology management at the College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His current research interests include electronic markets, economics of enterprise software, platform ecosystems, and cloud computing economics. Dr. Wu's work has appeared in journals such as Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, European Journal of Operational Research, Decision Support Systems, among others. His work won the "Best Paper in Valuing IT Opportunities" award, the "Best Paper in Web- Based Information Systems and Applications" award at ICIS 2006, and the Runner-Up Best Conference Paper Award at ICIS 2009. He currently serves as an associate editor for Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and as a senior editor for Production and Operations Management. He served as a co-chair for the 2011 Workshop on Information Systems and Economics. ONE OF THE TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGES OVER THE PAST DECADE has been the way networks have enabled the distributed generation of value and how businesses and organizations have managed to capture a portion of this value. This has resulted in a plethora of innovative business ideas and new strategies. The present special section deals with the incentives for distributed content generation; counterintuitive network effects in the security software market, which features an intrinsic negative externality; and the possibility for collaboration between different platforms in a two-sided market. The included papers offer an interesting mix of theoretical and practical insights. All of the contributions are rooted in practical applications and present field observations that are instantiated in a microeconomic model to allow out-of-sample predictions about the mechanisms at hand. Such a data-driven and at the same time model-based approach is ideal to develop counterintuitive insights for competitive strategy; the insights become logical consequences of the assumptions in the model- based analysis. The tools vary from network analysis, structural dynamic estimation techniques and dynamic programming, to game-theoretic modeling. A surprising side-effect of social networking is the creation of content that, when properly organized, markedly increases social welfare. Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang and Chong (Alex) Wang, in "Network Positions and Contributions to Online Public Goods: The Case of Chinese Wikipedia," examine the impact the network structure may have to encourage social content contribution. The authors take advantage of several natural experiments in China, triggered by various Internet content blocks between 2004 and 2008, when the government on the mainland made Wikipedia unavailable. The blocks changed the network positions of the remaining editors, which is used to establish that a contributor's network centrality tends to significantly influence the editor's incentives to contribute. A different angle on user incentives is provided by "Content Contribution for Revenue Sharing and Reputation in Social Media: A Dynamic Structural Model," by Qian Tang, Bin Gu, and Andrew B. Whinston. Based on an assumption that contributors to YouTube value content views, subscribers to their respective channels, and reputation, the authors estimate a dynamic structural model for the payoff function. At the heart of this estimation procedure is the dynamic programming problem that underlies each agent's intertemporal decision about the intensity of the contribution effort. Network externalities as the key first-order consequence of the connectedness of many agents have been thoroughly explored in the literature ever since the early 1970s. Those externalities are usually positive, because as the number of users, say, in a communication network, increases, the utility of participating in the network increases for each agent (e.g., by Metcalfe's law, the increase is quadratic in the number of participants). Debabrata Dey, Atanu Lahiri, and Guoying Zhang provide an interesting twist on this standard story in their paper "Hacker Behavior, Network Effects, and the Security Software Market," where a higher penetration, and thus larger, network, tends to decrease a user's ex ante benefit. This occurs because the likelihood of indirect attacks via unprotected users is diminished, similar to the well-known vaccination problem. As a result, in a fulfilled-expectations equilibrium, it becomes unprofitable for firms to fully cover the market. Finally, Ravi Mantena and Rajib L. Saha provide insights on the "Co-opetition Between Differentiated Platforms in Two-Sided Markets." They show that co-opetition (competition and cooperation) between platforms depends on technology asymmetries. While small asymmetries in platform technologies can translate into large differences in their profitability, large technology asymmetries soften the degree of competition, generally favoring the sharing of networks. The degree of cooperation in a network economy therefore depends on the size of the competitive advantage of the technologically dominant firm. Because of the heterogeneous consumer base, a dominant firm is unable to capture the entire market, and the authors obtain more nuanced findings than in the usual setting where customers are of a single type.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2019)
This 36th volume of JMIS is opened by the Special Section on Engineering Artifacts and Processes of Information Systems. The Section brings together the works focusing on Enterprise Architecture Management, Bitcoin blockchain, and Collaboration Engineering, three aspects of IS design undergirding the contemporary delivery of information services. The Guest Editors, Justin Scott Giboney, Robert O. Briggs, and Jay F. Nunamaker, introduce the significance of each of the papers to you. In the first paper of the general section, Likoebe M. Maruping, Viswanath Venkatesh, James Y.L. Thong, and Xiaojun Zhang introduce and test empirically a risk-mitigation framework for IS projects worked on by teams with diverse predominant cultural values, thus foregrounding the role of these values in risk management. Integrating several theoretical perspectives, the authors develop a people-process-technological aspects framework that allows them to offer practical suggestions to software-development managers. Notably, the paper opens an avenue to a further granular study of cultural impacts on the multiple facets of risk management in the team-based software production. Two subsequent papers show the effectiveness of the IS research in the context of ameliorating serious societal and personal afflictions. Julia Klier, Mathias Klier, Lea Thiel, and Ritu Agarwal address the pressing issue of youth unemployment with their study of the mobile peer-group counseling approach. Implemented on a well-known messaging platform, the peer-group support system has been found by the researchers to be a highly meaningful complement to the traditional career-counseling sessions. The study shows how the peer-group support app was grounded in the theoretical premises and how the randomized field experiment allowed the researchers to draw the conclusions regarding its effectiveness. Along with the authors, we may note that this lightweight peer support approach may be extended to many other environments. The next paper in the issue highlights the effectiveness of a related approach in a more fraught context. Online health communities, or communities of affliction, have become a highly important means of social support, morale boosting, and—vitally—the means of exchanging the information among the participants on the ways of addressing their condition. The totality of the experiential knowledge exchanged surpasses in many cases that possessed by the individual physicians and serves, under the ethical precautions, the pharma companies. Here, Langtao Chen, Aaron Baird, and Detmar Straub study with econometric methods the aspects of the effectiveness of discussion boards focused on several chronic diseases. Their findings include the conclusion that helping others has a stronger effect on the attitude of the participants than being helped themselves. Co-creation of value indeed. In the next paper, Randall K. Minas and Alan R. Dennis show how the use of creativity support systems (CSS) may be made more effective with priming. Specifically, the authors use visual music as the priming stimulus concurrent to the task. The videos were unrelated to the tasks, yet focusing on victory and achievement. The tasks consisted in idea generation, and the priming was found significantly effective in broadening the participants’ solution space. The authors provide a careful analysis of the results and show how the currently used CSS, as well as other information systems (IS), may be enhanced with such priming add-ons. Kevin Craig, Jason Bennett Thatcher, and Varun Grover define and operationalize an important construct that many of us encounter and recognize intuitively. They call the construct the IT identity threat, and find it culpable in the resistance to the adoption and use of information systems. Deploying several disciplinary literature streams on identity and self-esteem, the researchers recognize several personal, social, and work-related threats that may be perceived by an individual and lead to the resistance. The work is important in defining a key construct and testing the model encompassing its nomological network. As the authors point out, this work also offers the first operational measure of an identity threat of any kind and is a reciprocal contribution to the reference disciplines to which we are in debt. User engagement is the key to success of online knowledge exchange platforms. The engagement has, of course, multiple dimensions, quantity and quality of contributions being the most obvious. The motivation to contribute has been a subject of extensive research, with the intrinsic motivations often found to crowd out the extrinsic ones, such as payment for contribution (asking or answering), via psychological effects. As the next paper in the issue shows, further study and contingency analyses are required. Zhijun Yan, Lini Kuang, Ni Huang, and Yili Hong conduct a study of financial incentives in a quasi-natural experiment on a platform with hybrid dual paid and voluntary services. Among the nuanced results is the finding that, beyond the salutary effects on knowledge contribution, the financial incentives spill over to affect positively the non-incentivized user behaviors. It follows that the role of financial incentives in value co-creation by users requires further investigation. Global virtual teams develop much of the software we use. Leading these teams has always been a challenge, if only owing to their non-colocation, cultural dispersion, and frequent round-then-clock operation. Leadership is frequently shared among several team members, the sharing assumed generally to have a good effect. However, as the concluding paper of the issue shows, this is not always the case. The authors, Emma Nordbäck and J. Alberto Espinosa, classify the contingencies of shared leadership. They go on to present the results of their qualitative investigation of the effectiveness of the coordination mechanisms under shared leadership, and are able to offer practical contingency-based guidelines. The opening of the new volume is the occasion to thank the members of our Editorial Board and our referees, the primary guarantors of the quality of the papers we publish. Here are the names of the JMIS reviewers: Ahmed Abbasi Marc Adam Ashish Agarwal Hyung Jun Ahn JaeHyeon Ahn Manju Ahuja Tolga Akcura Oliver Alexy Muhammad Aljukhadar Gove Allen Paul Alpar Niek Althuizen Kemal Altinkemer Naveen Amblee Bonnie Anderson Corey Angst Ofer Arazy Kursad Asdemir Norman Au Yoris Au Hyunmi Baek Qing Bai Akhilesh Bajaj Hillol Bala Dirk Baldwin Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay Youngsok Bang Gaurav Bansal Reza Barkhi Henri Barki Jordan Barlow Richard Baskerville Genevieve Basselier Dinesh Batra Daniel Beimborn D. France Belanger Skip Benamati Michel Benaroch Alexander Benlian François Bergeron Ganesh Bhatt Sudip Bhattacharjee Tammo Bijmolt David Biros Ivo Blohm Jesse Bockstedt Riccardo Bonazzi Indranil Bose Tobias Brandt Nicola Breugst Glenn J. Browne Sebastian Bruque Scott Buffett Judee Burgoon Andrew Burton-Jones Ashley Bush Brian Butler Terry A. Byrd Sonia M. Camacho Jinwei Cao Lan Cao Hasan Cavusoglu Ron Cenfetelli Hsin-Lu Chang Young Bong Chang Mohamed-Hédi Charki Sutirtha Chatterjee Michael Chau Patrick Chau Aihui Chen Andrew Chen Daniel Chen Guoqing Chen Hong-Mei Chen Hsinchun Chen Jianqing Chen Jin Chen Kay-Yut Chen Kuan Chen Li Chen Liwei Chen Rui Chen Hsing Kenneth Cheng Xusen Cheng Yi Cheng Mike Cheung Robert T.H. Chi Roger Chiang Benjamin Chiao Ananth Chiravuri Chaochang Chiu Jong-min Choe Ben Choi H. Michael Chung Sunghun Chung Wingyan Chung Isabelle Comyn-Wattiau Randolph Cooper Robert E. Crossler Kevin Crowston Qizhi Dai John D’Arcy Elizabeth Davidson Gregory Dawson Jason Dedrick Benedict Dellaert Chrysanthos Dellarocas Haluk Demirkan Tianjie Deng Xuefei Deng Amit Deokar Sarv Devaraj Rajiv Dewan Debabrata Dey Jens Dibbern Indika Dissanayake Su Dong Tianxi Dong Line Dubé Peter Duchessi Robert Easley Dana Edberg Christophe Elie-Dit-Cosaque Aaron Elkins Mike Eom Sean B. Eom J. Alberto Espinosa Andrea Everard Kelly Fadel Ming Fan Patrick Fan Xiao Fang Yu-Hui Fang Yulin Fang Dennis Fehrenbacher Rei Fen Jane Feng Daniel R. Fesenmaier Thomas A. Fischer Jerry Fjermestad Chris Forman Chiara Francalanci Shixuan Fu Johann Füller Brent Furneaux John Gallaugher Gordon Gao Hong Gao Monica Garfield Rajiv Garg Ina Garnefeld Edward J. Garrity Ruyi Ge Abhijeet Ghoshal Janis L. Gogan Kim Huat Goh Thomas Goh Sigi Goode Dale Goodhue Anand Gopal Ram D. Gopal Nelson Granados Peter Gray Dawn G. Gregg Shirley Gregor Ulrike Gretzel Robert K. Griffin Michael D. Grigoriades Ken Guo Xitong Guo Xunhua Guo Zhiling Guo Saurabh Gupta Nicole Haggerty Jungpil Hahn Ingoo Han Kunsoo Han Shu Han Il-Horn Hann Andrew Hardin Matthew Hashim Taha Havakhor Irina Heimbach Cheng-Suang Heng Raymond Henry Hemantha Herath Tejaswini Herath Traci Hess Alan R. Hevner Oliver Hinz Chad (Yi-Chun) Ho Susanna Ho Christian P. Hoffmann Richard Hoffman Jason Hong Kevin Hong Weiyin Hong Yili (Kevin) Hong Zhe Hong John A. Hoxmeier Jeffrey Hu Nan Hu Paul Hu Petra Hu Qing Hu Chun-Yao Huang Ming-Hui Huang Shiu-Li Huang Wayne Huang Xiaowen Huang Thomas Huber Kai Lung Hui Wendy Hui Ard Huizing Ghiyong Im Gretchen I. Irwin Anja Ischebeck Varghese Jacob Bharat A. Jain Hemant Jain Jeevan Jaisingh Tabitha James Dietmar Jannach Jeff Jenkins Matthew Jensen James J. Jiang Qiqi Jiang Yang Jiang Zhengrui Jiang Zhenhui Jiang Monica Johar Alice Johnson Eric Johnson Emmanuel Josserand Surinder Kahai Arnold Kamis P.K. Kannan Maurits Kaptein Prasanna Karhade Jahangir Karimi Michael Kattan Timothy Kayworth Weiling Ke Mark Keith Peter Kenning William J. Kettinger Lara Khansa Moutaz Khouja Melody Y. Kiang Byung Cho Kim Dan J. Kim Dongmin Kim Hee-Woong Kim Keongtae Kim Kihoon Kim Seung Hyun Kim Taekyung Kim Young-Gul Kim Ruth King Rajiv Kishore Brent Kitchens Gary Klein Richard Klein Sven Kleinknecht Stefan Knoll Cenk Kocas Chang Koh Rajiv Kohli Tobias Kollman Praveen K. Kopalle Kenneth A. Kozar Ramayya Krishnan Uday Kulkarni Akhil Kumar Ram Kumar Subodha Kumar Jason Kuruzovich Hyeokkoo Eric Kwon Juhee Kwon Ohbyung Kwon Atanu Lahiri Karl R. Lang Nishtha Langer Kai R. Larsen Michael Lash Benjiang Lee Brian Lee ByungJoon Lee Byungtae Lee Daniel Lee Dong-Joo Lee Gene Moo Lee Goonwoong Lee Gwanhoo Lee Heeseok Lee Ho Geun Lee Jong Seok Lee Jungwoo Lee Thomas Lee Yang Lee Youngjin Lee Pierre-Majorique Léger Dorothy Leidner Chen Li Dahui Li Jiexun Li Mengxiang Li Seth Li Shengli Li Ting Li Weifeng Li Xiaobai Li Xiaotong Li Xin Li XinXin Li Xitong Li Yan Li Huigang Liang Nan (Peter) Liang Ting-Peng Liang Paul Licker John Lim Shi Ying Lim Aleck Lin Fu-ren Lin Mei Lin Zhijie Lin Charles Zhechao Liu De Liu Jun Liu Ying Liu Yipeng Liu Alexandre Lopes Paul B. Lowry Benjiang Lu Jingdu Lu Yixin Lu Henry C. Lucas, Jr. Andy Luse Christoph Lutz Mark Lycett Dan Ma Xiao Ma Jane M. Mackay Massimo Magni Pruthikrai Mahatanankoon M. Adam Mahmood Bin Mai Feng Mai Ronald Maier Yogesh Malhotra Deepa Mani Ravi Mantena Kent Marett Panos Markopoulos Likoebe M. Maruping Anne P. Massey Lars Mathiassen Sabine Matook Kurt Matzler Kristina McElheran Ephraim R. McLean Nigel Melville Philip Menard Nirup Menon Thomas Meservy Shaila Miranda Dinesh Mirchandani Abhay Nath Mishra Stephanie Missonier Prasenjit Mitra Kannan Mohan William Money Ali R. Montazemi Ramiro Montealegre Alan Montgomery Greg Moody Jolene Morrison Barin N. Nag Fiona Nah Guofang Nan Ravi Narayanaswamy Derek Nazareth Matthew Nelson R. Ryan Nelson Boon Siong Neo Derrick Neufeld Dirk Neumann Dorit Nevo Saggi Nevo Michael Newman Tingting Nian Mark Nissen Dmitri Nizovtsev Oded Nov Jeong-ha Oh Joo Hee Oh Lih-Bin Oh Onook Oh Wonseok Oh Bob O’Keefe Lorne Olfman James Oliver Nadia Olivero Bob Otondo Peter Otto Eric Overby Zafer D. Ozdemir Asil Oztekin Gautam Pant Manoj Parameswaran Michael Parent Insu Park SungJune Park Craig Parker Bhavik K. Pathak Praveen Pathak Ravi Patnayakuni Souren Paul David J. Pauleen Kenneth Peffers Robin Pennington Christoph Peters Chee-Wei Phang Roger A. Pick Selwyn Piramuthu Huseyin Polat Jean-Charles Pomerol Jaana Porra Constance Porter Clay Posey John H. Prager David Preston Jeffrey Proudfoot Sandeep Purao Jessica Pye Hamed Qahri-Saremi Liangfei Qiu Lingyun Qiu Wen Guang Qu Xin Xue Qu Arik Ragowsky Rex Kelly Rainer, Jr. Balaraman Rajan Vandana Ramachandran Arkalgud Ramaprasad Bala Ramesh R. Ravichandran Gautam Ray Louis Raymond Blaize Horner Reich Bruce Reinig Fei Ren Yuqing Ren Paul Resnick Hyuen-Suk Rhee Amir Riaz William B. Richmond Christoph Riedl René Riedl Lionel Robert Nicholas Roberts Michael Rogich Huaxia Rui Ko de Ruyter Sherry D. Ryan Young U. Ryu Michael Sacks Khawaja Saeed Rajib Saha Otavio Sanchez G. Lawrence Sanders Radhika Santhanam Pallab Sanyal Saonee Sarker Surendra Sarnikar Carol Saunders Kevin Scheibe George Schell Hans J. Scholl Petra Schubert Judy Scott Isabella Seeber Eric See-To Ravi Sen Sagnika Sen Sylvain Sénécal Alexander Serenko Nainika Seth Vikram Sethi Theresa M. Shaft Zhe Shan Tushar Shanker Raj Sharman Jim Sheffield Hong Sheng Zhan Shi Hung-Pin Shih Siew Kien Sia Keng Siau Anna Sidorova Mark Silver Harpreet Singh Param Vir Singh Rajendra Singh Atish P. Sinha Sumit Sircar Bernd Skiera Stefan Smolnik Jaeki Song Scott Spangler William E. Spangler Rajendra P. Srivastava Shirish C. Srivastava Thomas F. Stafford Eric W. Stein Dennis Steininger Stefan Stieglitz Theofanis C. Stratopoulos Diane M. Strong Ayoung Su Mani Subramani Chandra Subramaniam Ramanath Subramanyam Ayoung Suh Daewon Sun Heshan Sun Arun Sundararajan Shankar Sundaresan Juliana Sutanto Ali Tafti Paul P. Tallon Chee-Wee Tan Chuan-Hoo Tan Yao-Hua Tan Quian Tang Xinlin Tang Mohan R. Tanniru Monideepa Tarafdar Nolan Taylor Orkun Temizkan Gary F. Templeton Hock Hai Teo Thompson Teo Matthew Thatcher Ferdinand Thies Dominic Thomas Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong Ryad Titah Vilma Todri Torrie Wu Tong Monica Chiarini Tremblay Manuel Trenz Dimitrios Tsekouras Yanbin Tu Ofir Turel Tuure Tuunanen Doug Twitchell Nathan W. Twyman Sonja Utz Rustam Vahidov Ganesan Vaidyanathan Peter van Baalen Antal van den Bosch Wietske van Osch Daniel Veit Goetz Viering Padmal Vitharana Douglas Vogel Sebastian Voigt Jan vom Brocke Heinz-Theo Wagner Eric Walden Jeffrey Wall Joseph Walls Zhiping Walter Alan Wang Bin Wang Chong (Alex) Wang Eric T.G. Wang Jingguo Wang Michael S. Wang Qiu-Hong Wang Shouhong Wang Sophia Wang Weiquan Wang Xin Wang Yinglei Wang Y. Richard Wang Deepa Wani Sidne Ward Mary Beth Watson-Manheim Sunil Wattal Thomas Weber Chih-Ping Wei Markus Weinmann Tim Weitzel John Wells Michael Wessel Robert West Jonathan Whitaker Michael E. Whitman Jeffrey L. Whitten George Widmeyer Rolf Wigand Fons Wijnhoven E. Vance Wilson Robert Winter Christopher Wolfe Christina Wong Charles A. Wood Hans Wortmann Ryan Wright Dazhong Wu Choon Ling Xia Lan Xia Xiao Xiao Mingdi Xin David Xu Heng Xu Hongjiang Xu Jennifer Xu Lizhen Xu Peng Xu Yunjie (Calvin) Xu Ling Xue Lucy Yan Yinping Yang Zhiyong Yang Oliver Yao Cheng Yi Denny Yin Zhitao Yin Byungjoon Yoo Yufei Yuan Wei T. Yue Chun Zeng Dongsong Zhang Han Zhang John Zhang Ping Zhang Xiaoquan Zhang Yulei Zhang Zhu Zhang Huimin Zhao J. Leon Zhao Kang Zhao Kexin Zhao Xia Zhao Dmitry Zhdanov Lina Zhou Wenqi Zhou Yilu Zhou Zhongyun Zhou Hongwei Zhu Wenqi Zhu Youlong Zhuang David Zimbra Moshe Zviran

Special Section: Information Systems Support for Shared Understanding - Briggs, Robert O (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2014)
ROBERT O. BRIGGS is a professor of information systems at San Diego State University. He earned his Ph.D. in management information systems at the University of Arizona in 1994. He researches the cognitive foundations of collaboration and uses his findings to design new collaborative work practices and collaboration systems. He is co-founder of the collaboration engineering field and co-inventor of the thinkLets design pattern language for collaborative work processes. He has made exploratory, theoretical, experimental, and technological contributions on team productivity, technology-supported learning, ideation, creativity, consensus, satisfaction, willingness to change, and technology transition. He has designed collaboration systems and collaborative workspaces for industry, academia, government, and the military. He co-chairs the Collaboration Systems and Technology track for the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. He lectures worldwide on collaboration theory and practice, and on the philosophy of science. SHARED UNDERSTANDING IS ESSENTIAL TO THE SUCCESS OF ANY ENDEAVOR where people work together. In our field, for example, users, requirements engineers, UI/UX (user interface/user experience) designers, programmers, testers, and a range of other stakeholders interpret and reinterpret system requirements in order to make their contributions [11]. A misinterpretation by any of them has the potential to derail a project. Likewise, every theory of organizational management assumes shared understanding to be a foundation of success. Theory X, for example, assumes an organization will succeed if and only if the boss issues the right commands, the subordinates understand and follow the commands, and the boss detects any deviations from intended outcomes and applies corrective action [12]. Theory Y, by contrast, assumes an organization will succeed if and only if the boss sets the right strategic goals, subordinates correctly interpret those strategic goals and develop realistic subgoals and fulfillment plans, and the subgoals and plans fit together to fulfill strategic goals [6]. Theory Z assumes an organization will succeed if and only if the boss and subordinates achieve consensus on goals and detailed plans, subordinates correctly interpret and implement plans, and the goals and plans start and remain right [7]. Because of its centrality to human achievement, shared understanding is a growing topic of interest to academic researchers in many fields. It can be difficult to establish shared understanding, particularly among people, for example, with different functional backgrounds [8] and organizational cultures [10], as is commonly the case in the information systems (IS) domain. Hence, research in this area is of both theoretical and practical importance. Researchers have investigated shared understanding as an abstract concept [9], in abstract contexts such as wicket problem solving [3] and virtual teams [5], and in specific problem domains as diverse as robotics [2], environmental processes [1], and IS [4]. This Special Section of JMIS brings IS solutions to bear on shared understanding from three very different perspectives. In their paper, "Creating Shared Understanding in Heterogeneous Work Groups: Why It Matters and How to Achieve It," Eva Alice Christiane Bittner and Jan Marco Leimeister provide us with a working definition of shared understanding as the degree to which people concur on the value of properties, the interpretation of concepts, and the mental models of cause and effect with respect to an object of understanding. This definition is intriguing because it frames shared understanding as a multidimensional construct, which, in turn, suggests the opportunity and necessity for research streams to explore each of its dimensions. The paper derives and field tests a repeatable structured methodology called "MindMerger" for developing shared understanding among heterogeneous groups of expert professionals in the automobile industry who had to develop training materials to help inexperienced workers execute complex tasks. The study demonstrated that the MindMerger approach did, as anticipated, result in learning behaviors that increased shared understanding of the complex tasks. Liangfei Qiu, Huaxia Rui, and Andrew B. Whinston consider shared understanding from a very different perspective in their paper, "The Impact of Social Network Structures on Prediction Market Accuracy in the Presence of Insider Information." This study explores the effects of differing social network structures on the accuracy of prediction markets in the presence of insider information-information that conveys the state of nature with high precision, but is not shared by all players. The paper found that insider information led to abnormally high performance among people in a balanced social network structure, but had less effect in a social network with a star structure. They also found that the negative effect of public information bias is more pronounced when the underlying network is a star topology. Finally, Nathan W. Twyman, Aaron C. Elkins, Judee K. Burgoon, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., in their paper, "A Rigidity Detection System for Automated Credibility Assessment," develop a practical approach for real-time automatic noninvasive detection of kinesic rigidity, a key indicator of the likelihood that a speaker is dissembling or withholding information. Working from a theoretical foundation, researchers designed and developed a new IS that could detect variations in micromovements and flag unexpected periods of rigidity in real time. Prior to this work, such detection required time-consuming manual post hoc frame-by-frame analysis of video by human coders. The study confirmed the existence of kinesic rigidity effects in highly controlled concealed information tests, and developed further theoretical insights to explain the phenomenon. The papers in this Special Section evolved from those selected from the best papers at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. They were resubmitted in expanded versions, refereed anew, and revised multiple times. Each represents a challenging and interesting perspective. We commend them to your reading. REFERENCES 1. Brewer, I.; MacEachren, A.M.; Abdo, H.; Gundrum, J.; and Otto, G. Collaborative geographic visualization: Enabling shared understanding of environmental processes. In J.D. Mackinlay, S.F. Roth, and D.A. Keim (eds.), IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, 2000. InfoVis 2000. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, 2000, pp. 137-141. 2. Bruemmer, D.J.; Few, D.A.; Boring, R.L.; Marble, J.L.; Walton, M.C.; and Nielsen, C.W. Shared understanding for collaborative control. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans, 35, 4 (2005), 494-504. 3. Conklin, J. Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. 4. Hinds, P.J., and Weisband, S.P. Knowledge sharing and shared understanding in virtual teams. In C.B. Gibson, and S.G. Cohen (eds.), Virtual Teams That Work: Creating Conditions for Virtual Team Effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003, pp. 21-36. 5. Hsieh, Y. Culture and shared understanding in distributed requirements engineering. In ICGSE'06 International Conference on Global Software Engineering. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, 2006, pp. 101-108. 6. McGregor, D. The human side of enterprise. In H.J. Leavitt, L.R. Pondy, and D.M. Boje (eds.), Readings in Managerial Psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989, pp. 314-324. 7. Ouchi, W. Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge. London: Avon Books, 1981. 8. Pelled, L.H.; Eisenhardt, K.M.; and Xin, K.R. Exploring the black box: An analysis of work group diversity, conflict, and performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 1 (1999), 1-28. 9. Puntambekar, S. Analyzing collaborative interactions: Divergence, shared understanding and construction of knowledge. Computers & Education, 47, 3 (2006), 332-351. 10. Randel, A.E., and Earley, P.C. Organizational culture and similarity among team members' salience of multiple diversity characteristics. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 39, 4 (2009), 804-833. 11. Read, A., and Briggs, R.O. The many lives of an agile story: Design processes, design products, and understandings in a large- scale agile development project. In R.H. Sprague (ed.), Proceedings of the 45th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, 2012. 12. Taylor, F.W. The Principles of Scientific Management. Norwood, MA: Plimpton Press, 1911.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1998)
THE SPECIAL SECTION ON STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS, which opens this issue and will take you into the interesting settings of the financial and software industries, will be analytically introduced to you by its Guest Editors, Eric K. Clemons and Bruce W. Weber. What motivates large-scale outsourcing of information systems? By now, this phenomenon has been studied extensively. The explanations still range from the firms' falling in step with the general trend of concentrating on their core competencies in the environment of lowered coordination costs to the more mundane ones of the outsourcing firms' saving money. It is always difficult, if not impossible, to prove motivations. In the first paper of the general part of the issue, Michael Alan Smith, Sabyasachi Mitra, and Sridhar Narasimhan go about this task by inferring the motivations from the available evidence: the financial condition of the firms prior to the outsourcing. From their analysis of the results, the authors find that what one might call defensive motivations seem to be operative: Firms move to large-scale outsourcing in order to generate cash and subsequently to reduce costs. In the next paper, Patricia A. Essex, Simha R. Magal, and Douglas E. Masteller offer a most comprehensive empirically based analysis of the factors leading to the success of information centers. The authors develop an inclusive model for end-user satisfaction with information centers. The model can serve MIS practitioners in setting up the evaluation criteria for this important component of organizational computing. Four subsequent papers deploy a variety of approaches in order to deal with several nodal issues in supporting organizational decision making. In the first of these, Michael J. Hine and Michael Goul present the design of a system to support interpretive organizational learning, which system they go on to validate. This type of organizational learning is expected to lead to a higher level of performance by generating rich cognitive interpretations of environmental events and helping the members of the organization to share these interpretations meaningfully. The authors use a knowledge-based approach to the representation of interpretations and describe the results of the use of the resulting system. A system of this type can help avoid premature consensus, while also generating a set of interpretations that can become a part of the organizational memory and help ratchet up the firm's performance in the future. In an interesting analysis of the decision maker's behavior, Niv Ahituv, Magid Igbaria, and Aviem Sella empirically examine the effects of time pressure and of the degree of information incompleteness on the performance of top and mid-level commanders. A significant role that the decision maker's experience plays in confident coping with incomplete information and time constraints is an important take-away from this work. Brian E. Menneke and Joseph S. Valacich contribute to our understanding of group decision making through a study of the effects of group history on information sharing and the consequent decision quality and satisfaction with the decision. The need to enrich the sharing by and within an in-group in the context of a larger group emerges from this research, and the authors offer several suggestions on the subject. A reader of this issue may add to these the use of an organizational learning support system developed by Hine and Goul. In the concluding paper of the issue, David M. Steiger offers a theoretical argument and a framework for advanced model analysis in the use of decision support systems (DSS). Model-analysis subsystems of DSS are not included in the most widely used frameworks of these systems, yet they are important to providing the context for and making sense of a DSS run's results. Based on a theory of understanding, the author proposes a framework for model analysis that would lead to a higher level of understanding of a problem in the context of the business environment. We can discern here another echo of the concerns of Hine and Goul's work<197>it is all about deeper understanding, richer interpretations, and then evolving these through group and organizational sharing to lead, ultimately, to higher performance levels. It is my pleasure to thank the outgoing members of the Journal's Editorial Board, Paul Cheney, Raymond McLeod, Jr., and Naftaly Minsky, for their contribution. It is also my privilege to welcome to the Editorial Board its new members: Tung X. Bui, Ronald E. Rice, and Iris Vessey. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Special Section: Data Mining - Chung, H Michael; Gray, Paul (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1999)
THREE NEW INTERRELATED TOPICS HAVE APPEARED IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS in the last several years: data mining, 1 data warehousing, and knowledge management. All three are related to obtaining more return from the information gathered by an organization. This Special Section concentrates on data mining. The objective of data mining is to identify valid, novel, potentially useful, and understandable correlations and patterns in existing data. In the popular mind, data mining refers to finding answers from a company's data that an analyst or an executive has not thought to ask. The reality is not quite that grand, though data mining does create both data and insights that add to the organization's knowledge. Data mining can proceed from the bottom up (explore raw facts to find connections) or from the top down (search to test hypotheses). Bottom-up data mining tries to find hypotheses that can then be tested. This approach differs from that used in most information systems studies, where the investigator states the hypothesis and then tests it with t-tests or other statistical techniques. Every new field has its initial successes that intrigue others to investigate it further. Early results from data mining indicate, for example: That people who buy scuba gear take Australian vacations, That men who buy diapers on Friday night also tend to buy beer, Who is likely to repay a loan, Appropriate play selection and matchups in National Basketball Association games. These results are extreme cases. Usually, data mining leads to steady incremental changes rather than major transformations. It leads to small advantages each year with each customer and each project. Over time, these changes accumulate like compound interest. Although breakthroughs occur from time to time, they cannot be counted on to happen on a regular basis. Steps in Data Mining THE FOLLOWING STEPS ARE USUALLY FOLLOWED IN DATA MINING. These steps are iterative, with the process moving backward whenever needed. 1. Develop an understanding of the application, of the relevant prior knowledge, and of the end user's goals. 2. Create a target data set to be used for discovery. 3. Clean and preprocess data (including handling missing data fields, noise in the data, accounting for time series, and known changes). 4. Reduce the number of variables and find invariant representations of data if possible. 5. Choose the data-mining task (classification, regression, clustering, etc.). 6. Choose the data-mining algorithm. 7. Search for patterns of interest (this is the actual data mining). 8. Interpret the pattern mined. If necessary, iterate through any of steps 1 through 7. 9. Consolidate knowledge discovered and prepare a report. The first two steps-understanding the application and determining the target data to be used for discovery-are common to all forms of data analysis. These steps include knowing what relevant prior knowledge exists, the goals of the project, and what data exist. If a data warehouse is available, its metadata help in pinpointing what data exist. The third step-cleaning and preprocessing the data-is the usual one used in preparing data for warehousing. Organizational data are cleaned and validated before being put in the warehouse. For knowledge discovery, further preprocessing is used to remove outliers and noise in the data. The fourth and fifth steps involve reducing the number of variables and choosing the data classification task. With too many variables, it becomes difficult to make sense of the results. Therefore, the analyst applies dimensionality reduction or transformation techniques and tries to find representations of the data that are invariant. KDD involves looking in the data for such factors as: Associations: things done together (e.g., buying groceries). Sequences: events occurring over time (e.g., house, refrigerator). Classifications: rules for recognizing patterns (e.g., days on which restaurant customers arrive and what they order). Clusters: defining new groups (e.g., market segments). Forecasting: predictions from time series (e.g., stock market fluctuation). The sixth and seventh steps (choosing the data-mining algorithm and searching for patterns) are the heart of the KDD process. The algorithm selected depends on the task to be performed. It is in these steps that the actual mining is done. They involve fitting models or determining patterns from the warehouse data. Patterns are represented according to classification rules or trees, regression functions, or other knowledge or model representation methods, clustering, and sequences. The specific models come from a variety of fields including: Statistical analysis of data. Neural networks. Expert systems. Fuzzy logic. Intelligent agents. Multidimensional analysis. Data visualization. Decision trees. The software associated with these steps is called "siftware." As used in siftware, data-mining algorithms consist of three components: The model, The preference criterion, and The search algorithm. The parameters of the model are determined from the data. The preference for a particular model depends on the data available. Usually, some form of "goodness-of-fit" criterion is used. Care has to be taken that the model does not try to infer too much (overfitting) or too little (too many degrees of freedom) from the data. The search algorithm is selected based on the model and the preference criterion being used. The selection of these three components is still an art. The eighth step introduces the human back into the picture. The results of the data-mining operation of step 7 are examined by an analyst who judges whether the outcomes are possible, internally consistent, and plausible. "Possible" implies that the result is physically possible (e.g., does not exceed the speed of light); "internal consistency" implies that the result does not contradict itself; and "plausible" means that the association found is believable, that is, it could happen. If the analyst is dissatisfied with the outcome, he or she can rerun the case with revised or refined queries and conditions. That is, the process is iterative, with the analyst asking questions after each new set of computer results. Once the analyst is satisfied with the output, the results are interpreted (step 8) and the findings are reported (step 9). These steps involve presenting the results in a form that is more understandable to decision makers. Such approaches as representing patterns graphically, structuring rules based on the patterns, resolving redundancy and conflicts with previous results, and explaining findings in natural language are all involved here. Finally, actions are based on the findings. There are limits to data mining. Data mining is still an art, requiring skillful analysis and choice of methodology. It requires subject area expertise, experience with large databases, and skills with data-mining algorithms. As indicated by the list above, the techniques being used come from existing classical statistics or artificial intelligence techniques. Problems encountered with data, including overfitting existing data, missing and noisy data, and dealing with very large databases and very high dimensionality, need to be resolved. Furthermore, for large-scale, real-world tasks, high performing algorithms (such as neural networks and genetic algorithms) must cope with long computation times and difficulties in making interpretations. Techniques associated with probabilistic learning need to be improved. Research Issues MANY ISSUES STILL NEED TO BE ADDRESSED to reap quality knowledge from the sophisticated algorithms available for data mining. For example: How good is the quality of discovered knowledge? Does the same method always produce the same results? Are different tools required for different application domains? What factors affect tool performance? How do human cognitive factors affect the results? Primary research issues include: 1. Methodological issues in applying the tools, 2. Performance improvement through the integration of tools and techniques, 3. Exogenous factors to consider in modeling, 4. Interdisciplinary perspectives, and 5. The economics of data mining. Data are an important issue. Dealing with incomplete raw data or erroneous input is not a trivial task. The size of the data set needed to apply an algorithm, duplicate data, and temporal data, as well as multimedia representation of data are concerns. How a data-mining technique can learn to improve itself through experience is another interesting issue. Algorithms differ in the ways models are generated. How the quality of an algorithm is assessed, its robustness, scalability, preprocessing, generalizability, and reliability are critical issues. The way model performance is measured is an important consideration. The same model performs differently in different domains because of the quality of the data, normative criteria, and the decision-maker factors involved. Noise tolerance and sensitivity analysis are also of interest. Scalability is particularly significant. This refers to the ability to maintain performance as the size of the database being mined increases. Scalable mining tools take advantage of parallel computing. Therefore, better parallel algorithms as well as direct access to parallel database management systems are research topics. When human decision makers are involved, decision-making modeling as well as the database often have to consider cognitive factors. In addition, domain task characteristics affect model performance. Nonlinearity and nonmonotonicity issues can be addressed by data visualization. In summary, in generating a data-mining model and in selecting the appropriate model assessment method, data-mining research needs to incorporate the characteristics of a given task domain, quality and composition of a dataset that represents a domain, the decision-making environment, the human factors, and potential interaction among them. Figure 1 is a simple framework that incorporates these ideas. Papers in the Special Section IT IS CLEAR THAT DATA MINING IS STILL IN ITS INFANCY and therefore offers great research opportunities. It is a multidisciplinary field, using inputs from statisticians who deal with data, computer scientists and operations researchers creating new algorithms, and information systems people looking at how to cope with the systemic and human limitations that exist. The three papers in this Special Section present results that address some of the current limitations of data mining. The first paper describes a conceptual development and an implementation for exploring hypothesis space in data mining. The problem faced by data miners is that the information obtained is very difficult to understand and hence to represent because of high dimensionality. Steven O. Kimbrough and his colleagues present a clever way of creating simple visualizations that make this task manageable. William E. Spangler, Jerrold H. May, and Luis G. Vargas discuss the effects of errors, data representation, and assessment approach in data mining. Data-mining techniques designed for classification problems usually assume that each observation is a member of only one category. The authors extend these methods to the case in which observations may be full members of multiple categories. They evaluate three of the popular methods (decision tree induction, linear discriminant analysis, and neural networks) and explore representational and performance measurement perspectives. Tae Kyung Sung, Namsik Chang, and Gunhee Lee apply data mining to predicting bankruptcy. They show that different parameters for forecasting bankruptcy are obtained when economic conditions are normal and when countries are operating in crisis mode, as has been the case recently in parts of Asia. Consideration of the influence of exogenous factors on the performance of a data-mining model is noteworthy in this paper. It is clear from these papers, and from the many that were submitted, that much still needs to be done. Data mining is a rich research field that deserves the attention of the information systems research community. NOTE 1. Data mining is also known as knowledge discovery in databases (KDD). The term data mining is usually applied to the operational procedure for obtaining new insights, whereas KDD is used by the research community developing new techniques. We use the terms interchangeably Key words and phrases :

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1986)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2004)
With e-business (an IBM-initiated synonym for e-commerce) entering a stage of early maturity, the value of specific business initiatives in this domain is being properly questioned. Although some of the established methods of assessing the value of information technology (IT) investments carry over into the new context, the Internet-enabled organizational environment requires that we revisit how the payoff is estimated. The Special Section on Measuring Business Value of Information Technology in E-Business Environments, which opens this issue, contains four papers that expand our broadly understood capabilities to assess this value. The Section’s guest editors, M. Adam Mahmood, Rajiv Kohli, and Sarv Devaraj, introduce to you the contribution of the papers. The subject matter will be continued in the Special Issue of the International Journal of Electronic Commerce, to appear as the fall 2004 issue, under the same guest editorship. The investments in e-procurement have been a particularly weighty segment of business-to-business e-commerce. Surprisingly to many, e-procurement has not resulted in a wholesale shift to the open Web-based platform. The first paper in the general section of the issue develops a theoretical basis for removing the surprise. Extending the established transaction-cost perspective with the consideration of risks, Robert J. Kauffman and Hamid Mohtadi show that the coexistence of the open and proprietary platforms is indeed economically justified. Moreover, explicit tradeoffs and hybrid solutions are available to the firms in selecting such platforms and controlling the risks. Ironically, the options to control the risks with a greater certainty are generally available to the firms that are in a better position to assume these risks. The firm-level analysis of the value of e-commerce capability is continued by Kevin Zhu. Adopting the resource-based approach, Zhu shows that the combination of e-commerce capability with established IT infrastructure creates complementarities leading to a superior performance of a firm. The implications for the strategic direction of corporate IT resources are derived. The resource-based approach taken in this work creates complementarities of its own with the transaction-cost perspective of the preceding paper. “Analysis paralysis” is a well-known phenomenon in the development and adaptation of information systems. Knowing when to stop—and why—is crucial to performance during the system requirements elicitation. Mitzi G. Pitts and Glenn J. Browne investigate the stopping rules used by practicing systems analysts. The authors categorize these rules and empirically determine which of them are more effective in closing in on a complete set of system requirements. In addition to the theoretical contribution of the work, its practical use is readily apparent. William J. Doll and his colleagues present and validate a parsimonious instrument for the measurement of the end-user computing satisfaction. The 12-item instrument has been broadly tested and found invariant with respect to the user’s position, application type, hardware platform, and development mode. The availability of this instrument is an important step in our ability to gauge the success of an information system. The implementation of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems is a well-known source of spectacular—and very costly—failures. Since extensive (and extended in time) customization of such a system is a part of the implementation process, a proper relationship needs to be developed between the customizing firm and the owner company. David Gefen argues here that a significant component in developing a successful relationship is the establishment of trust between the customizer and the users in the client firm. Deploying a well-known model of trust, the author finds that, once created, the trusting relationship produces benefits extending to the perceived usefulness of the ERP system itself. As JMIS enters the third decade of publication, I would like to express my gratitude to our authors, our readers, the Editorial Board, and the technical editors of the Journal. The very special thanks go, as always, to our referees—the primary guarantors of quality. Here are the reviewers of the Journal of Management Information Systems: Niv Ahituv Pervaiz Alam Paul Alpar Murugan Anandarajan Hayward P. Andres Dorine Andrews Solomon Antony Yoris Au Sulin Ba Barbro Back P.R. Balasubramanian Dirk Baldwin Donald P. Ballou Reza Barkhi Henri Barki Stuart J. Barnes Dinesh Batra Irma Becerra-Fernandez Salvatore Belardo Skip Benamati Michael Benaroch François Bergeron Anol Bhattacherjee Sudip Bhattacherjee M. Brian Blake Indranil Bose Carol V. Brown 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 Debabroto Chatterjee Patrick Chau Ramnath K. Chellappa Andrew N.K. Chen 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 Theodore H. Clark Roger Clarke Randolph Cooper Qizhi Dai Ronald Dattero Donald L. Davis 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 Kirk Fiedler Edmond P. Fitzgerald Jerry Fjermestad Steven W. Floyd Chiara Francalanci Dennis Galletta 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 Alok Gupta Jungpil Hahn Barbara Haley Ingoo Han Bill C. Hardgrave 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 Tomas Isakowitz Bharat A. Jain James J. Jiang Linda Ellis Johnson Robert A. Josefek, Jr. Kailash Joshi Boris Jukic Nenad Jukic Charles Kacmar Surinder Kahai Timo Kakola Ajit Kambil P.K. Kannan Jahangir Karimi Michael Kattan Timothy Kayworth Mark Keil Chris Kemerer 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 Katherine N. Lemon Mary Jane Lenard Hugo Levecq Ting-Peng Liang 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 James R. Marsden 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 David J. Pauleen Paul A. Pavlou Kenneth Peffers Norman Pendegraft Mark Pendergast Robin Pennington Roger A. Pick Leo L. Pipino 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 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 Naveed Saleem G. Lawrence Sanders Radhika Santhanam Carol Saunders 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 William E. Spangler Rajendra P. Srivastava Thomas F. Stafford 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 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 Angsana A. Techatassanasoontorn 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 Leon van der Torre Jonathan K. Trower Duane Truex Gregory E. Truman Ilkka Tuomi Brad Tuttle Tuure Tuunanen N.S. Umanath Rustam Vahidov Yaniv Vakrat Vasja Vehovar Viswanath Venkatesh Michael Wade Steven Walczak Bin Wang Michael S. Wang Shouhong Wang Y. Richard Wang Carol Watson Mary Beth Watson-Manheim Bruce W. Weber Thomas Weber Chih-Ping Wei Charles E. Wells Larry West J. Christopher Westland Seungjin Whang Michael E. Whitman George Widmeyer Fons Wijnhoven Charles Willow Barbara Wixom Charles A. Wood Hans Wortmann D.J. Wu Mu Xia Christopher Yang Byungjoon Yoo Han Zhang Ping Zhang J. Leon Zhao Lina Zhou Kevin Zhu Ilze Zigurs Moshe Zviran Wishing you—and JMIS—a good decade, Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Special Issue: Neuroscience in Information Systems Research - Liang, Ting-Peng; vom Brocke, Jan (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2014)
TING-PENG LIANG is a National Chair Professor of MIS and a research fellow at the Research Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning at the National Chengchi University, Taiwan. He is on leave from National Sun Yat-sen University, where he is director of the Electronic Commerce Research Center. His research interests include decision support/intelligence systems, electronic commerce, knowledge management, and NeuroIS. He has published more than 80 articles in academic journals, including Management Science, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Decision Support Systems, among others. Dr. Liang is a fellow of the Association for Information Systems, editor-in-chief of the Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems, area editor of Decision Support Systems, co chief editor of the Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, associate editor of the Journal of Association for Information Systems, and serves on the editorial boards of many other journals. JAN VOM BROCKE is professor of information systems, the Hilti Chair of Business Process Management, and director of the Institute of Information Systems at the University of Liechtenstein. His research interests include business process management, design- oriented IS research, Green IS, and NeuroIS. He has contributed to the fundamentals of NeuroIS that have been published in MIS Quarterly, Journal of Computer Information Systems, and Communications of the Association for Information Systems, among others. Dr. vom Brocke is president of the Liechtenstein chapter of the Association for Information Systems, an associate editor of Business & Information Systems Engineering, a member of the editorial review board for the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and a co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application. He has been serving on the organizing committee of the annual Gmunden Retreat on NeuroIS since 2010. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE PROVIDES A NEW LENS through which to study issues related to the design, use, and impact of information systems (IS). This new line of research, called NeuroIS, allows some behavioral constructs in IS to be investigated at the brain's functional and subconscious levels. Apart from brain imaging, other neurobiological measurements applied in NeuroIS include galvanic skin response, heart rate, eye and facial movement, and hormone release. A major value of NeuroIS is that certain latent variables may be observed directly from body signals to validate and challenge findings from previous behavior studies and to improve information technology artifact design in design-oriented studies. However, designing NeuroIS research and interpreting the findings require neuro¬biological knowledge, and NeuroIS research is also confined by the capability of neuroscience instruments. Because of its significant difference from existing methodologies in IS, the value and the research quality of NeuroIS papers are sometimes difficult to measure, and additional research is needed to capitalize on the field's potential. Given the potential and the constraints of this new line of research, the main purpose of this Special Issue is to demonstrate the state of the art in NeuroIS research and to provide a platform for communication among authors, reviewers, and readers of NeuroIS papers in the IS community. The papers published in this Special Issue have gone through three rounds of rigorous review. Initially, the Special Issue received 30 submissions, some of which the authors presented at the 2012 Gmunden Retreat on NeuroIS in order to receive feedback. After an initial screening, 21 papers were sent out for full review by at least one IS scholar, who assessed the relevance of the research issue, and one cognitive neuroscience scholar, who evaluated the rigor of the methodology. In some cases, additional reviewers were consulted to ensure the quality of the papers. Five guidelines, presented further in this Special Issue by vom Brocke and Liang, were used to evaluate the papers' topical relevance and methodological rigor-that is, their ability to (1) advance IS research, (2) apply the research to standards of neuroscience, (3) justify the choice of a neuroscience strategy of inquiry, (4) map IS concepts to bio-data, and (5) relate the experimental setting to authentic IS situations. In the end, we chose seven papers for this Special Issue, each of which demonstrates the state of the art in NeuroIS research and serves as a keystone for future development of the area. Table 1 shows the IS and neuroscience relevance of the papers. Shirley Gregor, Aleck C.H. Lin, Tom Gedeon, Amir Riaz, and Dingyun Zhu investigate the role of emotions in IS research and propose and test a 3 emotion system nomological network. The experimental task was online travel service Web sites, which are highly relevant to electronic commerce. Both self-reported and electroencephalography (EEG) data were measured to evaluate the proposed theoretical framework. Randall K. Minas, Robert F. Potter, Alan R. Dennis, Valerie Bartelt, and Soyoung Bae study information-processing biases in virtual teams-that is, how individual team members process information in virtual settings compared to face-to-face settings. The authors use a combination of three neuroscience instruments-EEG, electrodermal activity (EDA), and facial electromyography (EMG)-to evaluate their hypotheses. Their results show neurological evidence for the confirmation bias in information processing in online team discussions. René Riedl, Peter N.C. Mohr, Peter H. Kenning, Fred D. Davis, and Hauke R. Heekeren use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the neurological differences between interacting with humans versus computerized avatars. They find that people are better at predicting the trustworthiness of humans than the trustworthiness of avatars, but that the learning rate concerning trustworthiness is similar whether the interaction is with humans or avatars. Mengxiang Li, Qiqi Jiang, Chuan-Hoo Tan, and Kwok-Kee Wei study the issue of user-software engagement in mobile gaming using two constructs, game complexity and game familiarity, in their theoretical framework. To test their hypotheses, the authors conduct two studies, one that uses self-reported and EEG data and one that uses qualitative interviews. The experiment that uses self-reported and EEG data reveals that complexity and familiarity both have a significant effect on engagement, contributing to improving game design, a field of growing importance in information systems research. Kevin K.Y. Kuan, Yingqin Zhong, and Patrick Y.K. Chau investigate the social influence of two types of recommendation information on attitude and purchase intention: the number of people who have bought a deal ("buy" information) and Facebook "like" information. An EEG experiment reveals that positive and negative "buy" information has an asymmetric influence on attitude and intention, whereas "like" information has a positive influence on intention. The presence of "buy" information tends to generate negative emotion, while the presence of "like" information tends to generate positive emotion. Ana Ortiz de Guinea, Ryad Titah, and Pierre-Majorique Léger investigate the determinants of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) and report neurophysiological data to show their nonlinear effects on behavioral beliefs. Two implicit constructs, memory load and distraction, and two explicit constructs, engagement and frustration, are hypothesized as potential determinants. The study's EEG experimental findings indicate that these determinants interact (i.e., have interaction effects). For example, when engagement is high, distraction does not affect PU, but when engagement is low, neurophysiological distraction has a significant negative effect on PU. Vom Brocke and Liang provide a methodological paper for conducting NeuroIS research. This paper is the result of the collective intelligence of all papers submitted to this Special Issue and the reviewers who provided comments during the review process. It outlines six phases and five guidelines for conducting a sound NeuroIS study and assessing the quality of NeuroIS research. The paper provides an IS view on NeuroIS studies, assisting researchers, editors, and readers to capitalize on the potential of neuroscience as a strategy of inquiry in IS research. It was both challenging and rewarding to have the opportunity to access many top-quality research papers and to interact with a group of top-tier scholars in our capacity as guest editors of this Special Issue in NeuroIS. Unfortunately, due to space and time limitations, we had to reject many papers with very good potential. We hope that the publication of this Special Issue will motivate more research in the important field of NeuroIS and that it will help to bring the scope of IS research to a new level. The Special Issue would not have been possible without the strong support and help of the following advisory board and editorial review board members: Special Issue Advisory Board Izak Benbasat (University of British Columbia, Management Information Systems Division) Angelika Dimoka (Temple University, Center for Neural Decision Making) Alok Gupta (University of Minnesota, Information and Decision Sciences) Aleck Lin (National Dong-Hwa University, Department of Arts and Creative Industries) René Riedl (University of Linz, Institute of Information Engineering) Vallabh Sambamurthy (Michigan State University, Department of Accounting and Information Systems) Carol Saunders (University of Central Florida, Department of Management) Detmar Straub (Georgia State University, Department of Computer Information Systems) Nai-Shing Yen (National Chengchi University, Research Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning) Special Issue Editorial Review Board Anja Achtziger (Zeppelin University, Chair of Social and Economic Psychology)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2010)
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (IS) CONTINUE TO PLAY A VITAL ROLE in the strategic positioning of many firms, and information technology (IT) is the foundation of numerous companies that define the leading edge of economic development across the world. Our field continues to make a contribution to the understanding and, we hope, action in this theater. The four papers of the Special Section on Competitive Strategy, Economics, and Information Systems offer the empirics and analyses of the nodal issues at the intersection of the captioned domains. The authors investigate the organizational capabilities that impact business process outsourcing and offshoring, bring economic analysis of digital business into the legal domain with implications for the future development of e?commerce, and analyze pricing strategies in digital telecommunications and in online search. This work is expected to help us understand the effectiveness of and foresee the evolution of key digital business models. It is also generative in stimulating the continuing research on IT-based strategies. The Guest Editors, Eric K. Clemons, Robert J. Kauffman, and Thomas A. Weber, will further introduce the papers to you. The first paper of the general section investigates empirically the rather underresearched area of IS consulting. Gregory S. Dawson, Richard T. Watson, and Marie-Claude Boudreau analyze the limitations and mutual contradictions of the agency theory and the theory of principal--professional relationships, where information/knowledge asymmetry can lead to an opportunistic behavior on both sides. From this point of departure, the authors proceed to develop and test a theoretical model of relationship constraints in consulting engagements. Induced from the empirics are the contextualized constraint mechanisms on the opportunistic behavior by either party. As pointed out by the authors, this theory has broader applicability in business relationships that are ever more intensively based on the inherently asymmetric endowment in information and knowledge. The divergence of motives is also at the core of the study of the relationships in the open source software (OSS) projects studied analytically and empirically by Param Vir Singh and Yong Tan. In such projects, the networks of communications among the participants emerge as the project progresses, and the asymmetries of information/knowledge among the developers make the emergent social networks differ in their stability and efficiency. The authors evolve the concept of and the conditions for network stability through a game- theoretic analysis and proceed to validate these results on the data from real-life projects. The results gained here are of importance as we build the theory of social networks in co?creation contexts, such as OSS development. They also surface practical recommendations for diagnosing stable structures and guiding them to efficiency. The vast majority of OSS projects have proven unsustainable; the results presented here could help in this, as well as in other co?creation contexts. The authors of the next paper shift our attention to the communication networks and relationships in the more formal, organizational contexts. Yunjie (Calvin) Xu, Hee?Woong Kim, and Atreyi Kankanhalli study empirically information-seeking behavior through the lens of relational communications. As we know, the information-seeking networks in firms tell us a lot about the actors, their interrelationships, and ultimately about the effectiveness of their functioning together. By dichotomizing the motivations for the choice of the information source into the informational and relational ones, and further conditioning the choice on the type of information sought, the authors help us understand how IT-supported organizational information-seeking social networks take shape. With online auction sites that attract immense bidder traffic, we have acquired laboratories for the study of auction behavior. Behavioral economics and behavioral finance, as well as mechanism design, are the beneficiaries of these studies. Here, Robert F. Easley, Charles A. Wood, and Sharad Barkataki present their study of how bidders limit their offers in order to avoid winner’s curse as related to the level of competition in an auction and to the bidder’s experience. In possession of an extensive data set, the authors are able to obtain fine-grained results regarding the strategies adopted by bidder cohorts and the economic outcomes of these strategies. The protection of a country’s cultural space from the invasion of Internet-based cultural artifacts has been undertaken by a number of governments, and not always the usual suspects and not always with a malign intent. Digital protectionism has joined the more traditional domains of protectionism. Economic or quasi-economic tools, such as tariffs, subsidies, and quotas, are among the means at the disposal of governments. What about their effectiveness? In the next paper, Hsing Kenneth Cheng, Juan Feng, Gary J. Koehler, and Sean Marston present a formal analysis of this issue. Internet-based digital technologies offer vast opportunities for leakage around any adopted policies and mechanisms. In view of this, the three categories of protectionist means indeed differ in their effectiveness, with quotas, while seemingly easy to implement, being the least effective. Continuing their studies of technostress, Monideepa Tarafdar, Qiang Tu, and T.S. Ragu-Nathan present their empirically grounded analysis of the impact of this ever more common type of stress on end users. Specifically, the authors investigate the impact of technostress on users’ satisfaction with IT, as well as on their IT-supported performance. Helpfully, in the pragmatic sense, the researchers study the impact of the factors that diminish the effects of technostress, such as user involvement, with the concomitant learning, sense of control, and more meaningful technology appropriation. It is this aspect of this work that makes it particularly important for our understanding and further study of technostress---and for the organizational practice. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Special Section: Competitive Strategy, Economics, and the Internet - Chircu, Alina M; Kauffman, Robert J (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2002)
ALINA M. CHIRCU is an Assistant Professor of Management Science and Information Systems in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a Ph.D. in Management Information Systems, and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science. Her research interests lie in the area of implementation, adoption, and value assessment of information technology applications in organizations, with special emphasis on e-business applications. Her recent projects have explored Internet- based corporate travel reservation systems, limits to value of IT investments, intermediation strategies in e- commerce, and factors influencing e-commerce adoption. She has published in the Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Electronic Markets, and has presented papers at the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE), the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS), the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), the INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST), and INFORMS meetings. ROBERT J. KAUFFMAN is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Information and Decision Sciences and Co-Director of the MIS Research Center at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His degrees are from the University of Colorado, Boulder (B.A.), Cornell University (M.A.), and Carnegie Mellon University (M.S., Ph.D.). Dr. Kauffman has held faculty positions at New York University and the University of Rochester, visited the Research Department at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, and earlier worked in international banking on Wall Street. His current research interests center on senior management issues in information systems, organizational strategy and technology, electronic commerce, and information technology investments in various services industry contexts. His articles on these and other issues have appeared in leading academic journals, including MIS Quarterly, Organization Science, Communications of the ACM, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Information Systems Research, and Decision Sciences, among others. His e-commerce research was recognized three times recently with best-of-conference awards (WITS 1999, AMCIS 2000, and ICIS 2000), and was nominated twice for best-of-conference (HICSS 2001 and HICSS 2002). He also recently received a reviewer-of-the-year award from the new journal, Information Systems Frontiers. His research on consumer-to-consumer electronic auctions was noted in articles in the Economist magazine and the New York Times in November 2001, and elsewhere. He also recently guest-edited special issues of the Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Electronic Markets, and the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, and serves on the editorial boards of a number of leading journals. THE PAPERS INCLUDED IN THIS SPECIAL SECTION of the Journal of Management Information Systems were initially reviewed for two mini-tracks at the 2002 Hawaii International Conference on Information Systems (HICSS): “Economics and Electronic Commerce” and “Information Technology and Competitive Strategy.” They continue to reflect the interest that information systems (IS) and marketing researchers have in blending the theoretical and methodological perspectives from economics to some of the leading strategy and information technology (IT)-related research problems of our time. However, the fundamentals of the marketplaces and the economy in which e-commerce firms now compete are dramatically different than those that researchers examined just two years ago. The down market for technology stocks, the reduced availability of venture capture funding for Internet-related start-ups and the new climate of investor caution following the accounting problems of firms such as Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossing have slowed the pace of innovation for e-commerce business activities. Yet, even in this climate, more careful experimentation and further refinement of e-commerce business models continues. Once again, this year we invite JMIS readers to sample some of the research that we have shaped in the workshop-like atmosphere of our mini-tracks at the HICSS Conference, and through the subsequent journal review process. In the first paper, Eric Clemons of the University of Pennsylvania, Bin Gu of the University of Texas at Austin, and Karl Reiner Lang of the City University of New York explore issues related to information products using the theories of resource-based competitive advantage and newly vulnerable markets. In their paper, “Newly Vulnerable Markets in an Age of Pure Information Products: An Analysis of Online Music and Online News,” they discuss the music recording and newspaper industries, where the basis for competition has changed dramatically with the advent of the Internet. New Internet technologies have created the capability for music artists to become their own producers and distributors of their music recordings, leading to the potential for record label disintermediation. In addition, the demand for online person-to-person exchange of MP3 music has grown beyond most observers’ expectations, creating the impetus for other new technological innovations and lawsuits that are aimed at controlling third-party distribution and protecting copyright holders. The newspaper industry, in contrast, has had fewer problems with defending the value of its core products—news and information—in the marketplace. The strategic vulnerability of the firms in the newspaper industry has not materialized where observers thought that it would: with the information goods themselves. Instead, newspapers face the loss of a key source of advertising revenues, as the Internet creates pressure for the unbundling of news and advertising. The authors model and simulate the range of outcomes that are possible when self-promotion and defection from a record label are possible for artists, and when piracy and different defensive strategies are possible as well. The authors note the contrasts with the newspaper industry, whose information goods are rarely the product of “rock star” editors and writers, though such participants in the news business are indispensable because of their role as auditors and guarantors of the reliability of news products. In the second paper, “Pricing Strategies of Neutral B2B Intermediaries with Two-Sided Network Effects,” Byungjoon Yoo of Carnegie Mellon University, Vidyanand Choudhary of the University of California–Irvine, and Tridas Mukhopadhyay of Carnegie Mellon University propose a new way of analyzing electronic B2B intermediaries’ strategies based on the interdependence of positive and negative externalities that accrue for such middlemen. In their analytical model, buyers benefit from having more suppliers trading through the intermediary, whereas suppliers benefit from interacting with more buyers, but are hurt when more suppliers compete for the same buyers. The authors show how the optimal pricing of the intermediary’s services, as well as the number of parties using the intermediary, are intrinsically related to these network externalities, as well as to switching costs to the online B2B intermediary. The authors point out that this result holds true for buyers and suppliers alike. This interdependence leads to a number of interesting and rather counterintuitive results that illustrate the complexity of an electronic intermediary’s pricing decisions and may help shed some light on the unusual number of failed electronic marketplaces. A key managerial recommendation offered by the authors points out the need for B2B e-intermediaries to consider all these interacting effects in order to design viable and profitable marketplace structures. The next two papers investigate the decisions facing online content providers in including online advertisements on their Web sites. In “Market Segmentation and Information Development Costs in a Two- Tiered Fee-Based and Sponsorship-Based Web Site,” Frederick J. Riggins of the University of Minnesota investigates the cannibalization problem facing information Web sites offering both free and fee-based content. Cannibalization, which occurs when high-type consumers purchase products targeted to low-type consumers, is a phenomenon not restricted to physical goods, as first analyzed by Moorthy and Png in their 1992 Management Science article. Information products, Riggins shows, are also subject to cannibalization. Low-type consumers put up with the discomfort of viewing banner ads in order to access the free, albeit lower quality, Web site content. High-type consumers have the option of paying a fee to access higher quality content, but they may choose to access the free portion of the Web site instead if the lower content quality is still valuable for them. Web site managers need to carefully choose the quality, price, and advertising levels for the two versions of the Web site in order to avoid cannibalization and maximize profits. The optimal quality level for the fee-based content, the high quality product, depends on the expected size of the market. This is a departure from the results of the cannibalization model in the physical goods case. This result has important implications for managers considering the development of high quality information goods, as the huge investments required by the high quality levels may not be justified if the market potential is not large enough. The model also yields a number of very interesting insights related to the impact of advertising provided on the free and fee-based Web sites on prices, quality levels, and ad targeting. The model predictions are confirmed by the recent developments in the online advertising arena, where ad revenue from free Web sites is declining and fee-based Web sites are gaining strength. Rajiv Dewan, Marshall Freimer, and Jie Zhang of the University of Rochester probe these ideas further in “Management and Valuation of Advertisement-Supported Web Sites.” They investigate the optimal combination of content and advertising in the case of free Web sites. Their approach, which combines analytical models and statistical analysis in an innovative way, shows how Web site managers can manipulate the amount of content and the advertisements they include on their Web sites in order to maximize their profits. In the short term, the optimal strategy is to invest more in content (which is attractive to users) and include less advertising (which is unattractive due to increased delay costs incurred while downloading Web pages with ads). Such a strategy makes the Web site especially attractive for new users, who start visiting the Web site. However, as the number of Web site visitors increases, the Web site manager needs to alter the balance between content and advertisements in favor of more ads, which will bring in the sought-after revenues. By treating advertisements as a price for content provision, managers can establish a successful strategy that will increase the number of visitors and raise the market capitalization of the firm. In the final article, “Evolution of Prices in Electronic Markets Under Diffusion of Price-Comparison Shopping,” Cenk Kocas of Michigan State University considers the emergent application of price search technologies on the Internet, and the ways in which the dynamics of interfirm competition are affected as these technologies further diffuse in the marketplace. The author models and simulates the interplay between price-driven consumer and loyalty-driven consumer choice in a set of stylized settings involving firm-to-firm price competition. The diffusion of price-searching technological innovations has the impact of converting loyal customers into switchers, who tend to exhibit heterogeneous instead of homogeneous brand preferences. Heterogeneous brand preferences allow for consumers to exhibit different degrees of brand loyalty. The modeling simulation results center on how firms’ optimal pricing choices are affected as the proportion of price search engine users in the markets goes toward 100 percent. The author finds that even with price search engines present in the marketplace, there are still opportunities for firms that emphasize loyalty approaches. The author characterizes the higher optimal prices that can be profitably chosen as being a result of the negative externality created by uninformed consumers who do not adopt the price search engines. Wrapping up another Special Section makes us think of all the people who unselfishly support our efforts. First in line for our thanks are the authors. We appreciated their willingness to share their work with us at HICSS and for permitting it to be given further consideration in this Special Section of JMIS. We also thank the editor, Vladimir Zwass, whose continued support of this enables us to bring new theoretical and methodological perspectives on interesting research problems to the attention of the IS research community in a timely way. Annually, we receive on the order of 25 to 30 papers and presentation proposals for our mini-tracks at HICSS. Our reviewers do an excellent job to provide useful feedback to the authors for further development of their work for the conference. They deserve our most sincere thanks. Combined with the additional focused feedback that conference presentation offers and further care that reviewers give to the authors’ journal submissions, our review processes encourage the authors to make significant improvements to the quality of their research contributions. It also ensures that the papers are different from what has been published at the HICSS Conference. Rob Kauffman also offers thanks to Eric Clemons of the University of Pennsylvania and Rajiv Dewan of the University of Rochester, for all they do in our work together to make the e-commerce economics and strategy mini-tracks at HICSS one of the premier research presentation opportunities each year for people who pursue research in IS that involves strategy and e-commerce themes. This has been a great partnership and we intend to continue. Finally, these acknowledgments would be incomplete without special recognition for the efforts of Bin Wang, a fourth-year doctoral student in IS at the University of Minnesota. For the last couple of years, Bin has been very effective in her work as the “managing editor” for the HICSS mini-tracks. We offer her hearty thanks for a job well done.

Special Issue: Decision Support Systems for Teams, Groups, and Organizations - Nunamaker Jr, Jay F (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1991)
An introduction to several articles about decision support systems published in the December 1991 issue of the "Journal of Management Information Systems" is presented. Articles discussed include "Using Computing in Quality Team Meetings: Initial Observations from the IRS-Minnesota Project," By G. DeSanctis, M.S. Poole, H. Lewis, and G. Desharnais, "Exploring the Impact of Face-to-Face Collaborative Technology on Group Writing," by M. Horton, P.S. Rogers, L. Austin, and M. McCormick, and "The Architecture of an Information System for the Support of Alternative Generation,: by K. MacCrimmon and C. Wagner.

Applied Science Research in Information Systems: The Last Research Mile - Briggs, Robert O; Nunamaker Jr, Jay F; Sprague Jr, Ralph H (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2011)
Special Section Applied Science Research in Information Systems: The Last Research Mile Robert O. Briggs, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., and Ralph Sprague, Guest Editors Robert O. Briggs is director of academic affairs for the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Center for Collaboration Science and an associate professor of management in its College of Business Administration. He earned his Ph.D. in management and information systems from the University of Arizona in 1994. He researches the cognitive and social foundations of collaboration and applies his findings to the design and deployment of new collaborative techniques, work practices, and technologies. He has published scholarly works on theoretical, empirical, and applied aspects of collaboration science. Jay F. Nunamaker Jr. is Regents and Soldwedel Professor of MIS, Computer Science, and Communication and director of the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He received his Ph.D. in operations research and systems engineering from Case Institute of Technology, an M.S. and B.S. in engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University. He received his professional engineer’s license in 1965. In a 2005 journal article in Communications of the AIS, he was recognized as the fourth to the sixth most productive researcher for the period 1991-2003. Dr. Nunamaker received the LEO Award from the Association for Information Systems (AIS) at the International Conference on Information Systems in Barcelona, Spain, December 2002, and was elected as a fellow of the AIS in 2000. Ralph Sprague is a professor of information technology management in the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawaii. He has over 40 years of experience in teaching, research, and consulting in the use of computers and information technologies in organizations. His fields of expertise are decision support systems, strategic systems planning, management of information systems, and electronic document management. He has published widely in these areas. In 2006, he was elected Fellow of the Association for Information Systems. He has served as chairman or co-chairman of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences for the past 33 years. On any given day, an experienced information systems (IS) researcher can map out a new 25-year research stream in under an hour. Little academic credit is therefore warranted for conceiving an idea and writing it up. Full marks are due, however, for shepherding a technical innovation through the last research mile from inspiration to implementation in the workplace. The last research mile means using academic knowledge to solve real problems for real people with a real stake in the outcome. This is the definition of applied science/engineering. The last research mile is where academia creates value for society. It leads through rich country that can yield exciting exploratory, theoretical, experimental, and technical contributions. The goal of IS research is to provide optimally relevant, timely, accurate, and complete information to decision makers at minimal cost. Cost, in this context, signifies more than just money. People ascribe value along a number of dimensions, among them economic, political, social, cognitive, emotional, and physical. IS solutions must therefore be not only technically feasible but also economically, politically, socially, cognitively, emotionally, and physically acceptable to stakeholders. These aspects of feasibility and value interact in complex ways. Moving a technological innovation from conception to adoption is therefore a task of such complexity that it is not possible to anticipate from the desk chair how a technology will have to be realized so it can diffuse into common use. Because of this complexity, there may be many more ways to implement a technically sound solution than to implement an acceptable solution. To discover and address these issues, we must travel the last research mile. The last research mile begins when a research team finds real people with a real problem in a real organization. They explore the problem, learn about stakeholder goals, and seek to discover drivers and constraints in the problem environment. They propose possible solutions to stakeholders and listen carefully to their responses. Eventually, they build a proof of concept prototype that may not be scalable, and may not be full featured, but is sufficiently robust that stakeholders can try it out with sample tasks so both the researchers and the stakeholders can learn more about the challenges they face. A proof of concept prototype demonstrates that a solution may be technically possible. Proof of concept researchers begin to stumble upon nuggets of knowledge that give them a better sense of the issues at hand. However, proof of concept is the beginning, not the end, of the last research mile. Research that ends with proof of concept is impoverished compared to that which carries forward to the second step---proof of value. In the proof of value step, researchers design a prototype with sufficient robustness and functionality to solve at least one important real-world problem. They take the proof of value prototype into the lab and out to the field so stakeholders can try to use it for real work, with the support of the research team if necessary. The pace of academic discovery accelerates as political, social, cognitive, and emotional factors surrounding the problem and the solution interact in unexpected ways. Unexamined assumptions surface and unanticipated requirements emerge as the research team gains technical and domain expertise while trying to determine whether the solution achieves its design objectives and creates value for its users. New phenomena are discovered, described, and classified. Deeper understandings of the problem space may be synthesized into correlative grounded models. Theoretical insights may be derived to explain effects that only emerge when people try to do real work. If proof of value studies show the new technology to be superior to prior solutions, then the technology itself may become a contribution to applied science. There is still much more to be learned, however, in the third and final step of the last research mile---proof of use. In the proof of use step, a research team creates a full-featured, robust proof of use prototype than can be deployed to user environments to address not just one specific problem, but a class of problems. Researchers turn the technology over to stakeholders to see whether it is possible to create a self-sustaining and growing community of users around the solution. The lack of a thriving user community is prima facie evidence that the positive findings from proof of value studies are being overwhelmed by other, previously unsuspected issues. Further exploratory, experimental, and theoretical research may be required to discover and explain these issues. Nuggets of knowledge from earlier work may integrate into a unified understanding of the problem domain. Further applied research may draw on these new understandings to produce a system that delivers the potential value of the technology in a form that users can accept and use. This Special Section includes three papers pertaining to the last research mile. The paper ‘Embodied Conversational Agent-Based Kiosk for Automated Interviewing,’ by Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., Douglas C. Derrick, Aaron C. Elkins, Judee K. Burgoon, and Mark W. Patton, presents work that is entering the proof of value stage. The team has created an automated kiosk that uses an embodied intelligent agent---an animated human face backed by biometric sensors and intelligent agents---to interview people at national borders and to detect changes in arousal, behavior, and cognitive effort that may signal deception or malevolent intent. The paper reports three studies that evaluate separate aspects of the system and explains how findings were used as foundational research for the development of the automated kiosk that can be tested in the field. In their paper, ‘A Global Model of Technological Utilization Based on Governmental, Business-Investment, Social, and Economic Factors,’ James B. Pick and Rasool Azari use inductive logic to derive a conceptual model of the factors of governmental support and openness, business and technology investment, and socioeconomic levels that are posited to influence technological utilization. This model is of particular interest to researchers working on proof of use challenges. They use the model to guide an exploratory test of the model on a large sample of country data from the World Bank and World Economic Forum. Based on their findings, the authors propose policy steps for the governments of developed and developing countries. Finally, Stefan Werner Knoll and Graham Horton address specific proof of use challenges in the arena of collaboration engineering in their paper, ‘Changing the Perspective: Using a Cognitive Model to Improve thinkLets for Ideation.’ The collaboration engineering research community has been working to codify collaboration expertise in a form that nonexperts can reuse without extensive training, and so derive benefits from collaboration technology that were previously only available to those supported by a professional facilitator. This paper focuses on making improvements to idea generation and sharing techniques. It uses a cognitive model to analyze 101 idea generation techniques with regard to the underlying mental principles that stimulate the ideation process. The authors identify three changes of perspective based on these principles and demonstrate how these principles can be used to improve the applicability of information technology to group processes. An earlier version of each of the papers in the Special Section earned a best paper award at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Each represents a challenging and interesting perspective. We commend them to your reading.

Special Section: Enterprise Resource Planning - Ragowsky, Arik; Somers, Toni M (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2002)
OVER THE LAST DECADE, companies have abandoned legacy systems in favor of a new class of comprehensive packaged application software designed to integrate the core corporate activities of an organization. Variously called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, enterprise-wide systems, or enterprise systems, ERP systems are the software tools used to manage all the enterprise's data, and to provide information to those who need it when they need it. These systems help organizations deal with their supply chain: receiving, inventory management, customer order management, production planning and managing, shipping, accounting, human resource management, and all other activities that take place in a modern business [4, 13]. The benefits of a properly selected and implemented ERP system can be significant. On average, inventory costs can be reduced by 25 to 30 percent; raw material costs can be reduced by about 15 percent. Lead-time for customers, production time, and production costs can be reduced as well [5, 6, 11]. However, the cost of implementing these software packages can be quite high. Software, incremental hardware, training, and implementation support may cost $200,000 for a smaller company with approximately $10 million annual sales, $600,000 to $800,000 for midsized companies with approximately $40 million to $70 million annual sales, and up to several million dollars for larger companies. It has been suggested that approximately $300 billion has been invested in ERP worldwide in the last decade, and the enterprise applications market is projected to reach $79 billion by 2004 [3]. Despite these high expectations and huge investments, ERP implementations often fail. The New York Times printed an article, "Software That Can Make a Grown Company Cry" [5], describing problems with ERP implementations. Allied Waste Industries purchased an ERP software package from SAP America, a major ERP software vendor, but discontinued its use after finding it too complicated, too expensive, and a poor value in terms of added functionality [2]. By doing so the firm lost over $40 million. Hershey Foods Corporation installed an ERP application early in 1999. By mid-September of that year, the candy-making giant was having trouble pushing orders through the new system, resulting in shipment delays and incomplete orders during the busy Halloween season. One reason for these failures is that the implemented ERP systems did not fit organizational needs. In spite of the fact that some ERP vendors argue that their software can suit most organizations [2], not all information systems (IS) are equal, nor are all ERP packages used equally. Several studies [8, 9, 10] suggest that the benefit an organization derives from using information technology (IT) is dependent on the characteristics of the organization. Therefore, not all companies will gain the same benefit from using the same ERP applications, and different ERP software packages will better suit different organizations. In addition, other issues (such as, implementation, linkage to customers) affect the success of ERP. The three papers in this special section present contemporary and rapidly evolving research focusing on ERP systems. The value for academic researchers lies with the findings presented and with the opportunity to use these papers as avenues for future research. Practitioners will be able to use the findings of these studies to better plan and use ERP systems, especially as they encounter three problem areas: the change that ERP brings to an organization, the use of ERP as a platform for other applications, and measuring the effect of ERP on firm performance. A key implication of ERP is that it involves sweeping changes to a company's organization, business practices, and core competencies. Few companies begin the project with the required organizational dynamics and business practices in place. The method of introducing the systems into companies might well make the crucial difference between successful organizational transformation and an abandoned project. Many of the issues involved in implementation are not so much technical as they are people-related and culture-related. The first paper, "Learning to Implement Enterprise Systems: An Exploratory Study of the Dialectics of Change," by Daniel Robey, Jeanne W. Ross, and Marie-Claude Boudreau, attempts to help organizations understand ERP system implementation. The authors adopt a process theory perspective with a focus on the dialectics of organizational learning that generates change in a comparative case study of 13 industrial firms. Demands associated with change require substantial organizational learning. It was observed that firms have identified various mechanisms for overcoming configuration and assimilation knowledge barriers associated with the implementation. The paper concludes by identifying the implications of their research for the theory and practice of systems implementation. An important role of ERP is to serve as a platform for other applications, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The vision for ERP extends beyond the organization, providing support for enhancements cutting across whole industries. Despite the size of the CRM market, which is said to have grown 70 percent in 1999, and is expected to become worth over $12 billion by 2004 [12], limited information exists on the progress of diffusion of the CRM innovation. The second article, "Implementation Team Responsiveness and User Evaluation of Customer Relationship Management: A Quasi-Experimental Design Study of Social Exchange Theory," by David Gefen and Catherine M. Ridings, deals with user-level issues, which, according to industry reports, account for a large proportion of the estimated 65 percent of CRM implementation failures. This study examines the social exchange aspects of CRM implementation by using a quasi-experimental design. Gefen and Ridings describe some of the complexity of CRM implementation and the relationship between users and the implementation team. The findings suggest that the nature of the social exchange during implementation of a CRM influences user assessments about the CRM and ultimately user willingness to adopt it. Moreover, the effect of actual and perceived responsiveness on user willingness to adopt the new system is mediated through user beliefs about the correctness of the configuration. Measuring the benefits from an enterprise system is a difficult task, particularly when the benefits of these systems are strategic in nature. Understanding the value of an ERP system entails examining the amount of duplicated effort that the ERP system eliminates and the increased efficiency that results from having an ERP solution in place. Savings can be derived from a reduction in staff numbers and productivity improvement. ERP helps companies control their purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, finance, and human resource activities by centralizing information collected from dispersed geographical sites. A year after implementing ERP, Par Industries in Moline, Illinois, reduced lead-time, increased on-time delivery performance, decreased work-in-progress inventory, and the life of a shop floor order went from weeks to hours [1]. Despite successes like this, many organizations are not certain that they will realize positive returns. Even worse, many fail to see immediate benefits from moving to ERP or experience adverse effects, such as missed sales and profit targets [7]. The final article, "Investment in Enterprise Resource Planning: Business Impact and Productivity Measures," by Lorin M. Hitt, D.J. Wu, and Xiaoge Zhou, is an empirical study dealing with the research question, What theoretical understanding do we really have about the relationship between adopting ERP systems and firm performance? The authors were able to collect and analyze a set of responses from firms that have purchased licenses for the SAP R/3 system from which they confirm some important conjectures about the business value of ERP implementations. Besides explaining the business impact of ERP implementation on a wide variety of performance measures, the authors empirically test for the productivity and business performance effects of ERP on firms that adopted ERP versus those that did not, and on firms before, during, and after implementation to assess performance over time. They determined that ERP adopters are consistently higher than non-adopters in performance across a wide variety of measures. Most of the gains occur during the implementation period, although they find some evidence of a decline in business performance and productivity shortly after completion of the implementation. Likewise, adopters had higher market valuations both during and after adoption. In closing, we offer special thanks to a number of people who supported our work on this Special Section. First, the Editor-in-Chief, Vladimir Zwass, was open to the idea of this special section and supportive from the beginning of the process. Next, we are grateful to Robert J. Kauffman from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, who helped us as an Associate Editor with the review process and provided valuable guidance. We also want to thank all the reviewers who provided instructive comments to the authors. Finally, our graduate assistants, Michele Harrison and Karen MacDonald, deserve thanks for dealing with a multitude of administrative tasks. REFERENCES 1. Appleton, E.L. How to survive ERP. Datamation, 43, 3 (1997), 50-53. Available at www.datamation.com/entap/03erp.html. 2. Bailey, J. Trash haulers are taking fancy software to the dump. Wall Street Journal, June 9, 1999, B4. 3. Carlino, J.; Nelson, S.; and Smith, N. AMR research predicts enterprise applications market will reach $78 billion by 2004. AMR Research, Boston, 2000. 4. Davenport, T.H. Putting the enterprise into the enterprise system. Harvard Business Review, 16, 4 (1998), 121-131. 5. Deutsch, C.H. Software that can make a grown company cry. New York Times, November 8, 1998, 13. 6. Main, J. Computers of the world, unite! Fortune, 122, 1 (September 24, 1990), 117-122. 7. Martin, M.H. An electronic firm will save big money by replacing six people with one and lose all this paperwork, using enterprise resource planning software. But not every company has been so lucky. Fortune, 137, 2 (1998), 149-151. 8. Johansen, J.; Karmarker, U.; Nanda, D.; and Seidmann, A. Business experience with computer integrated manufacturing. In M.A. Langton, Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. New York: Gordon and Breach, January 1995, pp. 970-979. 9. Ragowsky, A.; Ahituv, N.; and Neumann, S. Identifying the value and the importance of an information system application. Information & Management, 31, 2 (November 1996), 89-102. 10. Ragowsky, A.; Stern, M.; and Adams, D. Relating benefits from using IS to an organization's operating characteristics: Interpreting results from two countries. Journal of Management Information Systems, 16, 4 (Spring 2000), 175-194. 11. Schlack, M. IS has a new job in manufacturing. Datamation, 38, 2 (1992), 38-40. 12. Wardley, M., and Shiang, D. Customer relationship management market forecast and analysis, 2000-2004. International Data Corporation (IDC), Framingham, MA, June 2000. 13. Watson, E.E., and Schneider, H. Using ERP systems in education. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 1, 9 February 1999. Key words and phrases : ,

Change Management in Interorganizational Systems for the Public - Sutanto, Juliana; Kankanhalli, Atreyi; Tay, Junyun; Raman, K S; Tan, Bernard C Y (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2008)
It is recognized that change management is necessary for information technology implementation success. While there are a growing number of interorganizational systems (IOS) designed for the public, there is little study of and lack of clear guidelines on managing change related to their implementation. This research explores the phenomenon through the case study of a country-wide farecard system implemented in Singapore's public transportation system that involved several organizations and the public. Through the case analysis, we identified critical success factors (CSFs) for change management in IOS for the public and interrelated them using a causal loop diagram (CLD). These factors included refinements of existing CSFs identified from the literature as well as new CSFs from our case study. Our case analysis showed that communication through senior management and cooperation of affected organizations in the system implementation was able to overcome resistance to change in these organizations. We also found that while comprehensive publicity could initiate change in the public, a critical mass had to be built up for managing public change by coopting public opinion leaders as well. By interrelating CSFs identified in the case via a CLD, this study provides a preliminary theoretical framework for studying change management in IOS for the public and aims to guide practitioners in implementing such systems.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2006)
The editorial policy of the Journal of Management Information Systems since its inception has been that of inclusiveness and of representing the field of information systems in its entirety. The papers published in the Journal are expected to significantly influence our understanding of how systems can be organized effectively to include people and information technology artifacts in order to provide process information and information products within an organizational setting. The Special Issue on Crossing Boundaries in Information Systems Research, guest edited by Robert O. Briggs, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., and Ralph H. Sprague Jr., furthers this objective. The Guest Editors introduce the papers and their significance to you. The issue vividly illustrates the extent of the contribution our field is making to the family of disciplines—and to the world we live in. In the first paper in the general section of the Journal, Wonseok Oh, Michael J. Gallivan, and Joung W. Kim use the event studies method to drill in on the equities market response to the transactional risks arising from information systems outsourcing. The authors identify five kinds of transactional risks attendant on outsourcing and focus on the potential negative marketplace responses to the outsourcing announcements. The significance of this contribution is in taking a close and well-executed look at the dark side of outsourcing, which has not been illuminated so far by such research. Starting with the perspective on the potential negative outcomes, the authors are able to offer specific and meaningful recommendations not only for the conduct of outsourcing but also for the conduct of announcements. With cheap information technology and ubiquitous Internet-Web connectivity, we can expect further explosive growth of corporate databases and of the need to integrate them across individual organizations, merging enterprises, or partnering firms. A number of methods have been developed for the integration of heterogeneous databases. Detecting the correspondences among the attributes of these databases is a crucial and highly computation-intensive step in the integration process. Here, Huimin Zhao and Ehsan S. Soofi propose and evaluate empirically an approach to identifying the attribute correspondences across such databases, grounded in information theory. The method is of both theoretical and practical interest. The research on business-to-business e-commerce tends to concentrate on the design of transactional marketplaces with a variety of ownership and of governance rules. However, much business among firms is done by negotiation, and this is where lasting relationships are forged (or forgone). Kun-Chang Lee and Soon-Jae Kwon propose and test an information system supported negotiation framework that allows the parties to include secondary negotiation terms (say, resource availability) along with the primary ones (such as price). The authors combine the use of cognitive maps with case-based reasoning to build up a memory of negotiation cases and use practical scenarios to test their framework. Multimodal electronic marketplaces that combine spot and forward transactions with negotiations support will benefit from this work. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1999)
BUSINESS GLOBALIZATION IS A PHENOMENON BOTH WIDELY observed and widely analyzed, widely decried and widely praised to boot. Information technology and systems are a vehicle of globalization, which in turn shapes the MIS of a company that plies the global (or, at any rate, international) waters. International information systems have not escaped the attention of our researchers, and a number of excellent analytical pieces have been published over time. Yet, broadly encompassing and empirically based models are still missing. In the first paper of this issue, William R. King and Vikram Sethi attempt to fill this gap by addressing information systems of multinational corporations (the authors choose to call the information systems of all companies that cross national boundaries transnational, thus departing from the Bartlett and Ghoshal [1] use of the term). The authors offer a new classification of multinational corporations, a taxonomy that is based on five essential dimensions and that lends itself to the capture of the role of information systems. Based on the existing theory, King and Sethi in turn develop a set of hypotheses regarding four types of multinationals that they identify and test on larger multinationals. Although the test may be classified as exploratory, the results clearly point to the validity of the MNC classification offered here and invite further pursuit of this broadly conceived work. The organizational level of information systems analysis is maintained in the next paper, by Jae-Nam Lee and Young-Gul Kim, who discuss and empirically evaluate IS outsourcing. These authors argue that the quality of the partnership between a firm and the service provider is a key predictor of outsourcing success. They go on to develop and validate a model that relates the success of outsourcing to the factors that determine partnership quality. It should not, of course, escape our attention that some of the relationships between the parties to an outsourcing contract are of such low quality, with opportunism substituting for shared goals, that these relationships hardly qualify as partnership and bode no success to outsourcing. The present work should have both theoretical and practical resonance in seeking true outsourcing partnerships of quality. Some 20 percent of MIS projects that are undertaken are eventually canceled, and 50 percent of those carried to completion result in systems that fail in one of many possible ways [2]. In the course of many of these projects, resources were continually allocated, even though the project was being seen as not leading to success--the phenomenon known as the escalation of commitment to a failing course of action. Mark Keil and Daniel Robey are looking here at the optimistic side of the issue: They seek the factors that can lead to the deescalation of such a commitment. Based on the literature, Keil and Robey identify a set of factors and, through field interviews, develop a model of project deescalation. The nodal points here are the willingness of organizational actors to bear bad tidings to the senior managers willing to act on them. Three subsequent papers in the issue deal with various aspects of computer-supported group work. In the first of these, Shaila M. Miranda and Robert P. Bostrom evaluate the facilitation of task-based meetings. They compare the effects of the process and content facilitation in both traditional environments and in those relying on group support systems (GSS). The authors determine empirically that process facilitation positively affects the meeting process (while content facilitation affects it negatively), which in turn leads to greater participant satisfaction. One of the implications of this work is the need to train the facilitators carefully, as the distinction between the two types of facilitation is often subtle. Alan R. Dennis, Glenda S. Hayes, and Robert M. Daniels, Jr., investigate the use of GSS for business-process modeling to be carried out during systems analysis. In a work of clear practical importance, the authors perform and analyze a series of field studies of groups using a well-known structured analysis technique. The results indicate a highly impressive reduction of time needed for modeling with using the GSS as compared with the the widely used Joint Application Design (JAD) technique--while the models produced are of comparable quality. Yet another aspect of GSS use--support of creativity--is explored by John W. Satzinger, Monica J. Garfield, and Murli Nagasundaram. They conducted an experiment to investigate the influence of the group memory contained in the GSS on the type of ideas generated by a brainstorming group. It turns out, indeed, that the degree to which the ideas generated will be a radical departure from the prior thinking can be influenced by the type of ideas stored in the group memory and displayed during the idea-generation session. A word to the manager: Seed the group memory with "small" ideas and the group will generate ideas for incremental improvement. Only remember that a "seeded" group memory is not a true component of an organizational memory information system. As organizational information systems are becoming ever more embedded in the outside world and as they permeate the functioning of the firms ever more intensively, the investigation of what the organizations actually do about IS security gains weight. Moshe Zviran and William J. Haga offer an empirical study of password usage, based on a framework they have developed. Depending on your predisposition, you will find the results reported here disturbing or expected. In either case, the situation calls for far greater attention by IS managers to this first line of IS defense. An encompassing model of IS adoption in small businesses is offered by James Y.L. Thong. The model is generally very well supported by the empirical results obtained by the author. More so than in a large firm, adoption here depends on the person at the very top. Limited resources also call for a far closer look at the benefits, and at the existing systems and practices into which the innovation will need to be integrated. Beyond that, several factors will lead to the success of the adopted system. This thorough work, well grounded in the innovation literature, is an important step forward in the small-business research stream. CASE tools enjoy an excellent reputation, with the notable exception of that for actually being used. Yet the idea of IS developers actually using advanced computer assistance in engineering software is manifestly a good one (although this is less manifest than the need for a shoemaker's children to be shod, to which it is at times compared). It behooves us, then, to see which attributes of CASE tools are valued by those developers who actually use them--and then build on that. Gerald Post, Albert Kagan, and Robert T. Keim report on the empirical work they performed and then use an interesting statistical technique to discover these attributes. Results indicate that the developers look for the features directly supporting the hard core of the work--analysis and prototyping. Of interest to managers, as well as to tool developers and marketers, is the fact that the organizations of differing size differ with respect to their use of the front-end versus back-end CASE tools. VLADIMIR ZWASS 1. Bartlett, C.A., and Ghoshal, S. Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1989. 2. Harris, K. Worst practices. Executive Edge (December 1998), 20-26. Key words and phrases : ,

Special Issue: Decision Support and Knowledge-Based Systems - Konsynski, Benn R (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1988)
The article comments on decision support systems (DSS) and knowledge-based systems (KBS). In the author's view neither has yet to fulfill its promise. DSS, he believes, has been marked by both literature of a self-congratulatory nature, and systems that do little to address practical problems. Similar could be said for KBS. Going forward, however, he believes both can be valuable and mutually sustaining avenues of inquiry. He sees the two as complementary, with KBS informed and given direction by DSS.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2011)
Two papers that open this issue of JMIS present theoretical argumentation for and empirical validation of intricate dependencies between the deployment of information technology (IT) and organizational performance. In the first, Paul P. Tallon shows that the alignment between the overall business strategy and IT in the performance of an organizational process spills over into the performance levels of downstream processes. In other words, the business value of projected information systems (IS) should be assessed holistically, with the consideration of effects on downstream processes. Conversely, an underperformance of a business process may have its source in the misalignment between business strategy and IS in an upstream process. The research surfaces the particular importance of properly instrumenting the upstream processes with IT---which affect the entire length of the value chain downstream. Organizational IT capability, that is, a firm’s durable and dynamic ability to deploy flexibly and rapidly its IT-based resources, has been asserted to be a differentiator that can underlie sustainable competitive advantage. The authors of the next paper empirically prove this assertion. Jee-Hae Lim, Theophanis C. Stratopoulos, and Tony S. Wirjanto frame this proof by showing lasting path dependence of this capability bundle and thus showing that it leads to lasting differentiation and competitive advantage. The work is another refutation of the "IT doesn’t matter" cant. The empirics indicate that some firms are able to achieve lasting strategic lead owing to the capabilities and resources grounded in IT. The methodology of this research is an important contribution as well. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has rapidly become a competitive way of provisioning organizational IT needs. Based on its advantages and progress, all indications are that SaaS use will grow apace. However, that conclusion is predicated on the high quality of service provided. Metrics are then necessary to assess this quality. Here, Alexander Benlian, Marios Koufaris, and Thomas Hess present and validate a theoretically grounded instrument for such assessment. The inclusiveness and specificity of the instrument’s dimensions is its advantage. Beyond that, the authors examine the role of the instrument in the users’ intention to continue the use of SaaS, thus contributing to the research stream on IS continuance. As the transnational model of corporate governance spreads centers of knowledgebased competencies around the world, there arises a need to manage the delivery of knowledge-intensive IT-based services in a disciplined fashion. The authors of the next paper, Su Dong, Monica S. Johar, and Ram L. Kumar, conceptualize these aggregates as knowledge-intensive service delivery networks (KISDNs). They present and test a formal model that captures the influence of the combination of information flows, and workflow and knowledge management decisions on the KISDN performance. Serving as a benchmarking tool, the model can help managers to assess and control the various aspects of these networks in order to deliver business value. This work is a contribution to service science in our field. Information integration is generally considered a good thing in many contexts. However, in the context of supply-chain management (SCM), this integration can lead to costs, delays, and exposures. In the next paper in the issue, Christina W.Y. Wong, Kee?hung Lai, and T.C.E. Cheng ask: Under what circumstances does such integration in SCM lead to a better performance? The authors develop and validate a comprehensive contingency model that comprises business-environment as well product characteristics to determine the circumstances where greater SCM information integration is beneficial. Managerial, as well as theoretical, implications follow clearly. The next paper, by Christophe Elie-Dit-Cosaque, Jessie Pallud, and Michel Kalika, takes us to the individual level of analysis. Grounding themselves in the field and demand-control theories, the researchers develop the model of behavioral control perceived by end users with respect to IT. The model of perceived behavioral control for the IT context offered here includes internal and external forces. Empirical validation is presented. The validated model is of both theoretical interest, consequent to the integration of two prominent streams, as well as of pragmatic importance in guiding the effective adoption of and adaptation to IT. A richer conception of user emerges from this work than seen in prior adoption models. The following papers of this JMIS issue study several aspects of e-commerce. Online auctions have attracted extensive attention of MIS researchers. In this vein, Jesse Bockstedt and Kim Huat Goh contribute an empirical study of seller differentiation. As we know, seller feedback scores are largely high and subject to manipulation that lowers their effectiveness. Therefore, sellers apply a variety of other techniques to enhance their visibility and signal their quality. Based on the real-life lab of eBay, the authors find that these actions are effective, both in terms of view counts and bids. The authors also identify the perceived seller attributes that lead to higher financial outcomes. The work is a contribution to our knowledge of maturing auction marketplaces, where the feedback scores are no longer a sufficient differentiator for the sellers---and, ultimately, also for the marketplace that uses them as a barrier to entry against its own potential competitors. The immersive virtual worlds of the metaverse kind, such as Second Life, are a notable achievement of e-commerce where more and more business is transacted, from selling improved "real" estate and virtual goods to running innovation jams. The antecedents of success here are, therefore, of interest to our field. Usability is a key such prerequisite, and Younghwa Lee and Andrew N.K. Chen offer a theory-based empirical study of usability design in such virtual environments. Much of the insight comes from the theory of psychological ownership, which is particularly salient in the immersive environments. This paper offers a comprehensive model and a strong foundation for the design of usable virtual worlds---and for further study of it. Sangmi Chai, Sanjukta Das, and H. Raghav Rao empirically examine blogs from the vantage point of knowledge and information sharing. Rooted in the theories of social capital and social role, the work studies the factors influencing the sharing behavior and the moderating role of gender in the effect of these factors. The paper convincingly shows that there are significant gender differences in this domain. The results can serve as guidance to site organizers, who should learn, for example, that women are more sensitive to trust issues related to privacy and more concerned about reciprocity in sharing. The concluding paper of the issue unpacks music piracy on the Internet into unauthorized obtaining and unauthorized sharing with others. The authors, Jingguo Wang, Zhiyong Yang, and Sudip Bhattacharjee, posit and establish empirically that these two aspects have different motives. Using, and contributing to, social learning theory, the authors give us a detailed and nuanced understanding of the often reciprocal aspects of piracy. The results will help in setting up piracy prevention programs. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2005)
As the capabilities of information systems (IS) grow and multiply, the systems are contributing to the handling of higher orders of complexity and enabling us to embed them in the ever richer contexts to salutary effects. Digital archives can be moved architecturally toward permanence; Web search and knowledge discovery can be made more effective with genetic algorithms, Web mining, and visualization techniques; novel data mining techniques can be exploited to assign patients or insurance prospects to risk groups; virtual communities can be created and maintained; and large-scale negotiations, with multiple actors in complex environment of high uncertainty, can be supported. Indeed, our field can make significant contributions in all of these—and many other—domains. This is illustrated very well by the Special Issue on Context-Driven Information Access and Deployment, guest-edited by Robert O. Briggs, Gert-Jan de Vreede, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., and Ralph H. Sprague Jr., who will further introduce the included papers to you. In the first paper of the general section, Sulin Ba, Jan Stallaert, Andrew B. Whinston, and Han Zhang study the sustainable choice patterns of the electronic versus conventional market channels. The authors determine analytically the lasting patterns of coexistence between the two principal transaction channels, with the channel choice conditioned by the nature of the product. They also forecast analytically a technologically based tipping point, when going to the electronic market through a trusted intermediary would become the preferred method of acquisition. The use of evolutionary game theory is a notable contribution to the toolbox of our discipline. The user-acceptance models in common currency in our field do not accord its proper place to quality as a fundamental antecedent of user satisfaction. Indeed, very few database textbooks address the issue of data quality! Here, R. Ryan Nelson, Peter A. Todd, and Barbara H. Wixom present a model of the determinants of both information quality and IS quality. The authors validate the model in the apt context of data warehousing. It is hoped that this work, when combined with the increased attention devoted to information quality in other recent research [1], will focus our field on the quality of our products and processes. The resource-based theory, focusing on the firm’s resources as the source of the firm’s competitiveness, waxes and wanes. At this time, a consensus has emerged that the complementarities of appropriate (inter alia, appropriable) resources, including the well-targeted IS, can lead to a heightened firm performance in the marketplace. Here, T. Ravichandran and Chalermsak Lertwongsatien move forward the development of this theory by offering and validating a model that relates the IS and information technology antecedents to the resulting IS capabilities, and further to the support for the firm’s core competencies, and then on to the performance of individual firms. The empirical evidence that the core IS resources are at the source of superior (or not) performance of a firm is of an obvious value to the decision-makers. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief Reference 1. Wang, R.Y.; Madnick, S.E.; Pierce, E.M.; and Fisher, C.W. (eds.). Information Quality. Advances in Management Information Systems. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005.

Special Issue: Information Systems Success - Briggs, Robert O; De Vreede, Gert-Jan; Nunamaker Jr, Jay F; Sprague Jr, Ralph H (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2003)
ROBERT O. BRIGGS is Research Coordinator at the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona and Associate Professor of Collaboration Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He is also Director of Research and Development for GroupSystems.com. As a researcher, he has published more than 60 scholarly works on the theoretical foundations collaboration, and he applies his findings to the development and deployment of collaborative technology to enhance team productivity, team creativity, and team satisfaction. His work on organizational transition to collaborative technology led to new insights about how to conceive of and deploy group support systems so as to create self-sustaining and growing communities of users. He received his Ph.D. from University of Arizona in 1994. GERT-JAN DE VREEDE is a Professor at the Department of Information Systems & Quantitative Analysis at the University of Nebraska at Omaha where he is director of the Peter Kiewit Institute’s Program on E-Collaboration. He is also affiliated with the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, from where he received his Ph.D. His research focuses on the application, adoption, and diffusion of collaboration technology in organizations, the development of repeatable collaborative processes, facilitation of group meetings, and the application of collaboration technology in different sociocultural environments. His articles have appeared in various journals, including the Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Decision Systems, Communications of the ACM, Journal of Creativity and Innovation Management, DataBase, Group Decision and Negotiation, and Journal of Simulation Practice and Theory. JAY F. NUNAMAKER JR. is Regents and Soldwedel Professor of MIS, Computer Science and Communication and Director of the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He has over 40 years of experience in examining, analyzing, designing, testing, evaluating, and developing information systems. He has served as a test engineer at the Shippingport Atomic Power facility, as a member of the ISDOS team at the University of Michigan, and as a member of the faculty at Purdue University, prior to joining the faculty at the University of Arizona in 1974. His research on group support systems addresses behavioral as well as engineering issues and focuses on theory as well as implementation. Dr. Nunamaker received his Ph.D. in systems engineering and operations research from Case Institute of Technology, an M.S. and B.S. in engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been a registered professional engineer since 1965. RALPH H. SPRAGUE JR. is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Information Technology Management in the College of Business Administration at the University of Hawaii. He has over 30 years of experience in teaching, research, and consulting in the use of computers and information technologies in organizations. His specialties are Decision Support Systems, Strategic Systems Planning, the Management of Information Systems, and Electronic Document Management. He has served as Chairman or Cochairman of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences for the past 25 years. AN INFORMATION SYSTEM (IS) HAS MANY STAKEHOLDERS, each with a different definition of system success. From a developer’s perspective, a successful IS may be one that is completed on time and under budget, with a complete set of features that are consistent with specifications and that function correctly. From an innovator’s perspective, a successful system is one that attracts a large, loyal, and growing community of users. From a management perspective, a successful system may be one that reduces uncertainty of outcomes and thus lowers risks, and leverages scarce resources. From the end user’s perspective, a successful system may be one that improves the user’s job performance without inflicting undue annoyance. The success of an IS is by no means assured from any perspective. In a study of 8,000 projects in 352 companies, the Standish Group found that more than half of software projects undertaken in the United States fail, which wastes billions of dollars per year. Thus, IS success must be a topic of deep interest to IS researchers and of vital importance to organizations and society. This special issue presents eight papers that focus on IS success from a variety of perspectives. All the papers in this issue build on earlier works that received best paper nominations at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Two of them won Best Paper honors—one by Bruce A. Reinig in 2002, and one by Robert O. Briggs, Gert-Jan de Vreede, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr. in 2001. Leading off this issue is a paper by William H. DeLone and Ephraim R. McLean, “The DeLone and McLean Model of Information Systems Success: A Ten-Year Update,” which presents a ten-year retrospective on research efforts that apply, validate, challenge, and propose enhancements to the original model. The analysis shows which propositions of the model received the most robust empirical support. The paper proposes an updated model that incorporates minor refinements suggested by the findings, and suggests how the updated model can be used to measure e-commerce system success. It also proposes thoughtful recommendations regarding current and future measurement of IS success. Robert O. Briggs, Gert-Jan de Vreede, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., in their paper “Collaboration Engineering with ThinkLets to Pursue Sustained Success with Group Support Systems,” draw on the Technology Transition Model to argue a deployment strategy that increases the long-term success of group support systems (GSS) facilities. The paper introduces the discipline of collaboration engineering, and argues that packaged collaboration activities called thinkLets are a means of achieving predictable, repeatable patterns of collaboration. The paper posits thinkLets as the building blocks of repeatable processes for achieving mission- critical tasks, and argues that these thinkLet-based processes should significantly reduce existing barriers to, and increase the probability of, successful diffusion of GSS technology. In his paper “Toward an Understanding of Satisfaction with the Process and Outcomes of Teamwork,” Bruce A. Reinig, as others have done before, argues that satisfaction is a key to system success. This paper offers a causal theory of satisfaction among people making joint efforts toward a goal. It reports on an experiment that provides robust empirical support for the model. The paper illustrates that the model can explain earlier, apparently conflicting results in the team satisfaction literature. IS can be intensely complex combinations of people, hardware, software, data, and procedures. The success of a development project for such a system depends on an organization’s ability to address this complexity. The team of Maarten Sierhuis, William J. Clancey, Chin Seah, Jay P. Trimble, and Michael H. Sims report on Brahms, a multiagent modeling and simulation environment for designing complex interactions in human–machine systems. Their paper, “Modeling and Simulation for Mission Operations Work System Design,” first presents the results of a team that worked to design mission operations for a hypothetical discovery mission to the Moon. It then presents results of an actual project, the Mars Exploration Rover, and argues convincingly that the approach is relevant and transferable to other types of business processes in other types of organizations. The Internet is, from all these perspectives, perhaps the most successful IS since the advent of the written word. As management information systems ushered in flatter organizational structures, so the Internet ushers in globally distributed organizations and online commerce. The Aberdeen group projects that online business-to-business commerce alone will top $7 trillion by 2004. Using the tag line “It’s the process, stupid,” Aberdeen posits that an organization’s biggest barrier to success in this arena is a lack of well-defined processes for the human component of business transactions. Two of the papers in this issue investigate the success of global work teams, enabled by the Internet. The paper “Because Time Matters: Temporal Coordination in Global Virtual Project Teams,” by Anne P. Massey, Mitzi M. Montoya-Weiss, and Yu-Ting “Caisy” Hung, explores the role of temporal coordination among people spread across multiple time zones who used asynchronous communication channels. The paper examines the performance of 35 teams and reports intriguing correlations between temporal coordination mechanisms and team success. J. Alberto Espinosa, Jonathon N. Cummings, Jeanne M. Wilson, and Brandi M. Pearce explore a different aspect of success for global teams in their paper, “Team Boundary Issues Across Multiple Global Firms.” The paper examines the new challenges occasioned by the emergence of work teams whose members report to different organizations, at different geographic sites, in different time zones, with different stakes in the outcome. The paper discusses the issues that arise when teams span boundaries, how the ways boundaries can be measured, and the impact of boundary-spanning on team outcomes. In order to succeed, managers need information so they can decide. They must decide so they can control. They must control so the organization can survive. A successful IS, therefore, must deliver timely, accurate, and complete information to decision-makers with a minimum of mental and economic cost. Conventional management information systems tend to focus on numbers and on transactions. However, the birth of the Internet, the advent of knowledge management systems, and the growth of digital libraries make available vast quantities of unstructured text-based information. Two of the papers in this issue explore ways to incorporate this unconventional information into an organization’s intellectual capital. Scott Spangler, Jeffrey T. Kreulen, and Justin Lesser, in their paper “Generating and Browsing Multiple Taxonomies Over a Document Collection,” describe a new document retrieval technology for automatically categorizing and retrieving online documents. The reported system combines a variety of previously disparate technologies to produce better results than any of the technologies achieves alone. Finally, in their paper “A Methodology for Analyzing Web-Based Qualitative Data,” Nicholas C. Romano Jr., Christina Donovan, Hsinchun Chen, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., present an early prototype of an intriguing semiautomated approach to analyzing, codifying, and quantifying unstructured textual marketing feedback collected over the Internet. Although data in the accompanying study are limited, in early field trials, the system did provide an accurate predictive measure of the relative magnitude of first week box office sales for a set of films based on qualitative feedback to film trailers posted on the Web. Success has many dimensions, and each of the papers in this issue makes a unique contribution to the understanding of one or more dimensions of IS success. We commend them to your reading.

Special Section: Assuring Information Quality - Ballou, Donald; Madnick, Stuart E; Wang, Richard (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2003)
ASSURING THE QUALITY OF INFORMATION is both important and difficult. But achieving high-quality information is a battle that is never really won, in part because what constitutes victory is not clear, as different parties have differing views as to the definition of success. Yet all concerned agree that striving to achieve or acquire high-quality information needs to be a high priority, as the consequences of not having it can be devastating. The very existence of the organization can be threatened by poor information quality (IQ). The issue of IQ is not new, as, throughout history, people have benefited by, and suffered from, the quality of information made available to them. An obvious example is information made available to military commanders during battles. What is new in the past several decades is the explosion in the quantity of information and the increasing reliance of most segments of society on that information. An information economy is clearly dependent upon the quality of one of its primary building blocks. Of necessity, industry has, from the beginning of the computer age, had to address the issue of the quality of data. When systems were primarily accounting- and financial-driven, the emphasis tended to be on the assurance of the data’s accuracy. In the past dozen or so years, the increasing use of information as a strategic resource has highlighted the multifaceted nature of IQ and has increased the complexity in attempting to assure IQ. The very concept of IQ is somewhat nebulous, but an effective, widely used definition for IQ is “fitness for use.” “Perfect” IQ, whatever that means, is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, but neither is it necessary. If users of the data feel that its quality, which can be described by such attributes as accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and consistency, is sufficient for their needs, then, from their perspective, at least, the quality of the information available to them is fine. Most research, whether conceptual or field-oriented, has used as its starting point this concept that the focus of assuring IQ should be to achieve a level of quality that is sufficient from the perspective of its users. IQ research, in the information systems world at least, by its very nature is an applied discipline. Because IQ is such an important issue to practitioners, research regarding it should be grounded in the need, broadly defined, of organizations to assure IQ and in the difficulties encountered in attempting to do so. This does not mean that IQ researchers do not engage in work of a more fundamental, conceptual nature. One IQ research stream has been the study of exactly what IQ is. Work in this area has been both conceptual and field- oriented, with one reinforcing the other, and, as a result, there is now general agreement in both academia and industry as to the context for discussing IQ. As in most research areas, both conceptual and field studies are critical. Conceptual works provide insights that guide field studies, whereas the latter provide ideas for research topics and constitute validation for conceptual frameworks. This special section contains four papers that illustrate some of the issues of concern to IQ researchers as well as various approaches and methodologies for addressing them. All have conceptual components that are tested and explored in actual organizational settings. Leading off this issue is a paper by Yang W. Lee and Diane M. Strong entitled “Knowing-Why About Data Processes and Data Quality.” This paper analyzes the role of various parties in the data production process and offers insights into how different modes of knowledge affect data quality. For example, the authors find that data collectors with why-knowledge about the data production process contribute to a greater degree than might be anticipated to the production of better quality data. Such insights are gleaned from an extensive field study, which in turn was motivated and guided by a synthesis of various research streams. The second paper, “The Design and Implementation of a Corporate Householding Knowledge Processor to Improve Data Quality,” coauthored by Stuart Madnick, Richard Wang, and Xiang Xian, addresses an important category of data quality problems caused by data misinterpretation. For example, even a simple question, such as “How much did MIT buy from IBM this year?” has multiple answers that might be right or wrong—depending on the context. This paper outlines a technical approach to a corporate householding knowledge processor (CHKP) to solve a particularly important type of corporate householding problem, entity aggregation, and illustrates the operation of the CHKP by using a motivational example in account consolidation. The CHKP design and implementation uses and expands on the context interchange technology, developed at MIT, to manage and process corporate householding knowledge. The next paper, “Time-Related Factors of Data Quality in Multichannel Information Systems,” by Cinzia Cappiello, Chiara Francalanci, and Barbara Pernici is an excellent example of the use of modeling in the area of IQ. The authors develop expressions for the currency and completeness of data in the context of multiple channels, each supporting multiple functions within an organization. Their model allows for varying levels of integration of the organization’s databases, and it can be used to study the impact of various refresh periods for online data. A validation is performed via a simulation in the context of empirical data regarding various categories of financial institutions. The fourth paper, by Yang W. Lee, “Crafting Rules: Context-Reflective Data Quality Problem Solving,” offers refreshing insights into an emerging practice, data quality problem solving and provides a novel way of understanding how practitioners reflect-in-action. It analyzes how data problems are framed, analyzed, and resolved throughout the entire information discourse. It also explains how rules on data quality practice revise the actionable dominant logic embedded in organizational work routines. For example, the author finds that the , discourse on contexts of data connects otherwise separately managed data processes, that is, collection, storage, and use. These insights are gleaned from an extensive five-year longitudinal study of data quality practice in five organizations.

Special Section: Social Influence and Networked Business Interaction - Kauffman, Robert J; Weber, Thomas A (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2019)
ROBERT J. KAUFFMAN is a Professor of Information Systems at the School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University (SMU). He is now the Danske Bank Chair at Copenhagen Business School. He holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. He previously was Associate Dean (Faculty) and Associate Dean (Research) at SMU. He was awarded the Otto Monsted Visiting Faculty Fellowship for a sabbatical visit to the Copenhagen School of Business in 2018. His earlier faculty appointments have been at Arizona State, University of Minnesota, and New York University, and he visited the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the University of Rochester. He had held distinguished visiting faculty appointments a number of institutions. Dr. Kauffman’s research focuses on technology and strategy, the economics of IT, financial services and technology, managerial decision-making, environmental sustainability, and empirical research methods. His work has appeared in Energy Policy; Management Science; Information Systems Research; Journal of Management Information Systems; MIS Quarterly; Review of Economics and Statistics; and many other journals. THOMAS A. WEBER (thomas.weber@epfl.ch) holds the chair of Operations, Economics and Strategy at the Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where he also directs the Doctoral Program in Management of Technology. Earlier he was a faculty member at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He was visiting faculty in economics at Cambridge University and in mathematics at Moscow State University. He was previously with the Boston Consulting Group. His research interests include the economics of information and uncertainty, the design of contracts, and strategy. His articles have appeared in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Economic Theory, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Management Science, Operations Research, and many other journals. He is the author of Optimal Control Theory with Applications in Economics (MIT Press, 2011). Relationships between consumers and firms can no longer be analyzed in isolation. It has long been recognized that they are subject to important network externalities. Users care about the presence and opinions of other users, and similarly, firms interact strategically with other firms—be they competitors or complementors. Yet, due to the presence of intermediaries or public planners there are additional effects, beyond mere externalities, related to incentives, reputation, and network topology. For example, in sharing markets, there is a need for somebody to own the assets to be shared. And the incentives to own can be provided by the market price or explicit encouragement to participate by a self-interested(!) intermediary, at least in the short run. In the medical domain, where the true quality of a service is often difficult if not impossible to assess, a regulator—using mandatory disclosure protocols—can help provide informational feedback to consumers, which in turn should modulate their assessment of the service providers. The efficiency of such a publicly mandated closed information loop naturally depends on its implementation. Finally, consumers themselves may have intrinsic incentives to invest their time and effort to produce informational content, moderated by a platform such as Twitter. In this they interact, each subject to his or her field of vision, which depends on the (endogenous) topology of the underlying social network, discriminating between the participants’ respective network size and connectedness. The three articles included in this special section deal with the observation of these new effects of influence across networks, whether in two-sided markets, in terms of a social information feedback for the assessment of physicians, or in terms of the mutual influence of endogenous information release in a social network. These are mere facets of a larger phenomenon of multilateral influence that, in the presence of large amounts of data on interactions, we are only beginning to comprehend. “Platform Competition in the Sharing Economy: Understanding How Ride-Hailing Services Influence New Car Purchases,” by Yue Guo, Xiaotong Li, and Xiaohua Zeng, examines the effect of sharing platforms on markets for ownership. The authors find that the demand-side of sharing platforms tends to withhold new car purchases based on the expectation of a sharing platform entering the market for local transportation. This substitution effect is offset, at least partially, by platforms’ offering incentives to the supply-side of the sharing platforms, which may lead to a rebounding increase in new car purchases. In the latter case, the cars become production factors that provide transportation services across many consumers. The associated empirical study is based on car-registration data from 100 prefecture-level cities in China between 2013 and 2015. To tease out the corresponding (possibly transitory) observations, the authors use a fairly recent staggered difference-in-differences analysis, paired with a synthetic control method to estimate counterfactual outcomes based on the construction of “synthetic counterpart” as a weighted average of untreated units so as to resemble treated units before their respective treatments. “Adherence to Clinical Guidelines, Electronic Health Record Use, and Online Reviews,” by Danish H. Saifee, Indranil R. Bardhan, Atanu Lahiri, and Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng, highlights the fact that online reputation, especially in markets for credence goods such as healthcare, might be quite disassociated from measurable practices. Specifically, the authors use multiple datasets from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as online physician reviews to study the correlation of web-based reputation and physicians’ adherence to medical guidelines in a U.S. metropolitan area. Although data from the Physician Quality Reporting System, which includes pertinent guideline-adherence information, is technically public, the lack of correlation with online reputation illustrates that care is needed by public authorities to feed the available social information back to the public. This is to avoid the informational cascades that may render efficient information aggregation from observational learning impossible. “Diffusion on Social Media Platforms: A Point Process Model for Interaction among Similar Content” by Eunae Yoo, Bin Gu, and Elliot Rabinovich, employs the theory of mutually exciting point processes to track the influence of user-generated content on other user-generated content using Twitter data. The authors identify a size-dependent herding effect where content from users belonging to larger networks experience an amplification leading to retweeting clusters of content in parallel cascades. Users with smaller networks tend to experience an inhibiting effect of being “crowded out” by similar content from other users. The authors conclude that users with smaller networks of followers should focus their energy on generating novel and non-repetitive content which cannot easily be substituted by other parties. What unites these contributions on social influence on the methodological side is that in each case new tools were necessary to equip and sharpen the observer’s eye for a meaningful observation of the new types of interactions. To perceive the general-equilibrium effect of increased investment in production assets as a result of increased intermediation of users on (both sides of) the car-sharing market, the authors had to appeal to new econometric methods that hitherto have not been used in the IS literature. To convince their readers that indeed the reported physician care quality (in terms of guideline-adherence) does not have a strong association with online feedback, the authors had to zoom into a particular context (one metropolitan area) and combine various data sources. Finally, to identify the complementary and substitutional nature of individuals’ information production in a social network, the authors resorted to the estimation of mutually exciting Hawkes processes, which is again a novelty in the information systems literature. More generally, as we are adapting the toolsets to capture the more integrative nature of socio-economic interactions, there is a hope that we can preserve the notion of causality despite the complexity of choice and reason in modern networked societies. Acknowledgments We are grateful to Prof. Emmy Hoang (RMIT Asia in Vietnam) who provided outstanding editorial assistance in the process of putting together this special section. In addition, we thank the many authors who have submitted their research to our longstanding mini-track on Strategy, Information, Technology, Economics, and Society (SITES) at the annual Hawaiian Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), which featured early versions of the full-length papers presented here.

Special Issue: Strategic Value of Big Data and Business Analytics - Chiang, Roger HL; Grover, Varun; Liang, Ting-Peng; Zhang, Dongsong (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2018)
ROGER CHIANG (roger.chiang@uc.edu) is a professor of information systems (IS) at the University of Cincinnati. He received his Ph.D. in computers and information systems from the University of Rochester. His research interests are in business intelligence and analytics, data and knowledge management, and intelligent systems. He has served as the senior or associate editor of numerous IS journals. He has published over fifty refereed articles in journals and conference proceedings including ACM Transactions on Database Systems, ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Journal of Management Information Systems, Marketing Science, MIS Quarterly, and others. VARUN GROVER (vgrover@uark.edu) is the David D. Glass Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Systems at the Walton School of Business, University of Arkansas. His work focuses on the impacts of digitalization on individuals and organizations. He has published extensively in the information systems (IS) field, with over 400 publications, 220 of which are in major refereed journals. He was recognized as one of 100 Highly Cited Scholars in Business by Thompson Reuters (2013). He has been a senior or associate editor of several major IS journals, a recipient of numerous awards for his research and teaching, and is a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems. He has been invited to give numerous keynote addresses and talks at various institutions and forums around the world. TING-PENG LIANG (tpliang@mail.nsysu.edu.tw; corresponding author) is a Life-time National Chair Professor at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan and Fellow, Leo Awardee and president-elect of the Association for Information Systems. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and has taught at the University of Illinois, Purdue University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include electronic commerce, intelligent decision support systems, and strategic applications of information technologies. He has published extensively in Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Operations Research, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and others. He is the editor in chief of the Pacific Asia Journal of AIS and has served on the editorial board of many other journals. DONGSONG ZHANG (zhangd@umbc.edu) is a professor in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and guest chair professor at the International Business School, Jinan University, China. He received his Ph.D. in management information systems from the University of Arizona. His research interests include social computing, mobile human–computer interaction, data analytics, health information technologies, and online communities. He has published over 140 papers in journals and conference proceedings, including Journal of Management Information Systems, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, and MIS Quarterly. His research has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Education, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Google, Inc. The rapid accumulation of data in diverse forms and from various sources has been driving an increasing interest in big data and business analytics. Applications of a variety of analytical techniques have gained much attention in recent years. Businesses are exploring the new possibility of uncovering hidden knowledge, improving decision making, and supporting strategic planning from big data. Although substantial resources have been invested in big data and analytics (BDA) and anecdotal evidence of both success and failure have been reported, there has been little substantial research on the strategic contributions of BDA. The lingering question is whether BDA is a fad that will disappear in five years. In addition to the four V’s (volume, velocity, variety, and veracity) characterization of big data, value has been considered the fifth key dimension in BDA. Analysis of data without generating value offers no contribution to an organization, regardless of whether data are big or small. The success of BDA projects requires not only infrastructure, data analysts, and knowledge and tools for dealing with big data, but also an understanding of how BDA translates to competitive advantages and strategic value. The challenges in deploying advanced data analytics to outperform competitors are real and exist in every aspect of analytics, including capturing, collecting, storing, processing, and managing big data, as well as drawing valuable insights from it. This Special Issue, therefore, invited information systems (IS) research that examined how BDA creates strategic value for organizations. We received 47 submissions of extended abstract. The studies published in this issue are the result of initial screening and three rounds of review. The articles examine issues ranging from the value creation mechanism to the impact of BDA on organizations. The first paper, “Creating Strategic Business Value from Big Data Analytics: A Research Framework,” defines strategic business values to include functional and symbolic value. A framework for strategic value creation is proposed, which includes capability building and capability realization processes. Illustrative cases, five theoretical lenses for strategic value creation and potential research issues are discussed. This framing is complemented with a more pragmatic problem-oriented approach to BDA that raises a set of important research questions that need to be studied to advance this area. The other five studies are mapped onto the value creation framework presented in the first article (see Table 1).10.1080/07421222.2018.1451950-T0001Table 1.The Relevance of the Studies TitleBig data and analytics capabilitiesValue creation mechanismsValue targetsImpactHow Big Data Analytics Enables Service Innovation: Materiality, Affordance, and the Individualization of ServiceFour case studies of big data vision and BDA technologiesCustomization and service innovationConsumer experience and market enhancementFunctional/symbolic valueLeveraging Financial Social Media Data for Corporate Fraud DetectionSocial media text analyticsTransparency and accessLearning and crowdsourcingOrganizational performanceBusiness process improvementFunctional/symbolic valueThe Effect of Big Data and Analytics on Firm Performance: An Econometric Analysis Considering Industry CharacteristicsData mining, machine learning, text mining, visualization, and so onTransparency and access (presumed)Firm productivityFunctional valueMeasuring Customer Agility from Online Reviews Using Big Data Text AnalyticsTextual social media analyticsLearning and crowdsourcingContinuous monitoring and proactive adaptationInnovation and product performanceFunctional valueAdvanced Customer Analytics: Strategic Value Through Integration of Relationship-Oriented Big DataBig data integration and kernel-based machine learningDiscovery and predictionBusiness process improvement and customer experienceFunctional value The second paper, “How Big Data Analytics Enables Service Innovation: Materiality, Affordance, and the Individualization of Service,” develops a theoretical model from four case studies to explain how the flexible and reprogrammable nature of BDA technologies provides features of sourcing, storage, event recognition and prediction, behavior recognition and prediction, rule-based actions, and visualization. The model highlights how material agency (in the case of service automation) and the interplay of human and material agencies (in the case of human-material service practices) enable service individualization, as organizations draw on a service-dominant logic. The third paper, “Leveraging Financial Social Media Data for Corporate Fraud Detection,” proposes an analytic framework that taps into unstructured data from financial social media platforms to assess the risk of corporate fraud. The framework is evaluated by 64 fraudulent firms and a matched sample of 64 nonfraudulent firms, as well as the social media data prior to the firm’s alleged fraud violation in Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs). Their findings demonstrate the value of financial social media data complement traditional fraud detection methods. The fourth paper, “The Effect of Big Data and Analytics on Firm Performance: An Econometric Analysis Considering Industry Characteristics,” presents an econometric study that analyzes the relationship between BDA and firm performance based on the Cobb–Douglas production function framework and objective measurements of BDA assets. The authors used a panel data set that contained detailed information about BDA solutions of 814 companies and their financial performance. The BDA assets included three categories of analytics— foundational database technologies, data mining and machine learning solutions, and data visualization and presentation tools. They found that live BDA assets were associated with an average of 3–7 percent improvement in firm productivity. In addition, the results show that different industries vary in returns from BDA—firms in information technology–intensive or highly competitive industries seem more able to gain value from BDA assets than other investigated industries. The fifth paper, “Measuring Customer Agility from Online Reviews Using Big Data Text Analytics,” adopts a big data analytical approach to investigate the impact of online customer reviews on customer agility and product performance. The authors developed a semantic keyword similarity method bsed on singular vector decomposition (SVD) to quantify customer agility by measuring the semantic similarity between aggregated customer review texts and product release notes. They evaluated the relationship between customer agility and review volume by using over 3 million online reviews of mobile apps collected from the U.S. Apple App store. The results show that review volume has a curvilinear relationship with customer agility, which in turn has a curvilinear relationship with product performance. A firm’s number of sibling products and the variance of product ratings moderate the review volume–customer agility relationship. The sixth paper, “Advanced Customer Analytics: Strategic Value Through Integration of Relationship-Oriented Big Data,” examines how firms can achieve agility by combining rich data sources and deploying analytics that sense and respond to customers in a dynamic environment. A key challenge in achieving this agility lies in the identification, collection, and integration of data across functional silos both within and outside the organization. The authors propose a framework for identifying and evaluating various sources of big data to create a value-justified data infrastructure that enables focused and agile deployment of advanced customer analytics. Such analytics move beyond siloed transactional customer analytics approaches of the past and incorporate a variety of rich, relationship-oriented constructs to provide actionable and valuable insights. Acknowledgments The guest editors would like to thank Vladimir Zwass, editor in chief of the Journal of Management Information Systems for his support, and the following reviewers (in alphabetical order) for their invaluable help in reviewing submissions and providing constructive comments to the authors: Michelle Carter, Cecil Eng Huang Chau, Michael Chau, Xiao Fang, Yulin Fang, S.C. Jack Hsu, Yan Huang, San-Yih Hwang, Dan Kim, Rajiv Kohli, Raymond Y.K. Lau, Xin Li, Stephen Liao, Kai Lim, Kevin P. Scheibe, Ning Su, Heshan Sun, Yongqiang Sun, Sharon Swee-Lin Tan, Jiliang Tang, Eric T.G. Wang, Chih-Ping Wei, Jennifer Xu, Bin Zhang, Yilu Zhou, and others.

Special Section: Competitive Strategy, Economics, and Information Systems - Clemons, Eric K; Kauffman, Robert J; Weber, Thomas A (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2010)
ERIC K. CLEMONS is a professor of operations and information management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His education includes an S.B. in physics from MIT and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in operations research from Cornell University. He has been a pioneer in the systematic study of the transformational effects of information on the strategy and practice of business. His research and teaching interests include strategic uses of IS, the changes that IT enables in the competitive balance between new entrants and established industry participants, transformation of distribution channels, the structure and governance of the IT functional area, and the impact of IT on the risks and benefits of outsourcing and strategic alliances. Industries of focus include international securities markets and financial services firms, consumer packaged goods retailing, and travel. He specializes in assessing the competitive implications of IT and in managing the risks of large-scale implementation efforts. Dr. Clemons is the founder and project director for the Wharton School’s Sponsored Research Project on Information: Strategy and Economics Within the Program for Global Strategy and Knowledge Intensive Organizations. He participated in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in February 2009. He is currently a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Management Information Systems and the International Journal of Electronic Commerce. Dr. Clemons has 35 years of experience on the faculties of Wharton, Cornell, and Harvard and consulting experience in the private and public sectors both domestically and abroad. ROBERT J. KAUFFMAN is the W.P. Carey Chair in Information Systems at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. His degrees are from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Cornell University, and Carnegie Mellon. He has served on the faculties of New York University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Rochester and has worked in international banking and finance in New York City. His research interests span the economics of IS, market transparency and pricing on the Internet, competitive strategy and technology adoption, and theory development, modeling, and empirical methods for IS research---all in contexts that emphasize senior management issues. THOMAS A. WEBER is an assistant professor in the Management Science and Engineering Department of Stanford University, where he is conducting research on optimal control of nonlinear systems, economics of information and uncertainty, analysis of complex systems, and corporate strategy and public policy. He holds undergraduate diplomas in industrial and electrical engineering from Ecole Centrale Paris and the Technical University Aachen, as well as S.M. degrees in technology and policy and in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. He also received an M.A. in operations and information management and a Ph.D. in managerial science and applied economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. During 2008, he was a visiting faculty member at the University of Cambridge. He was previously a senior consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. He was recently the recipient of the David T. Morgenthaler II Faculty Scholarship at Stanford. His research interests involve the economics of information and uncertainty and how social systems can be modeled, designed, and controlled in the presence of uncertainty. He has been developing new theoretical models and methods that have the potential to change the way in which we approach social systems and integrate different levels of analysis. His published papers have appeared in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Information Systems Research, Decision Support Systems, Economics Letters, Economic Theory, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Operations Research, Optimal Control Applications and Methods, and Theory & Decision. THIS SPECIAL SECTION ON COMPETITIVE STRATEGY, economics, and information systems (IS) focuses on important current themes in this area of the discipline. The papers, whose initial versions were presented in and selected from the Competitive Strategy, Economics, and Information Systems Mini-Track of the 2010 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, address a broad range of topics, including bundle pricing, price dispersion, business process outsourcing, and the intersection of economics, strategy, and antitrust law. The first paper is an empirical study by Jonathan Whitaker, Sunil Mithas, and M.S. Krishnan titled "Organizational Learning and Capabilities for Onshore and Offshore Business Process Outsourcing." Information technology (IT) and business processing outsourcing (BPO) have been the subject of much debate in the U.S. business and public policy community and continue to be of interest in IS research. IS researchers have found it difficult to assemble high-quality data sets for the study of outsourcing, especially data on performance at the level of the individual firm. In this research, the authors explore data collected by the 2004 InformationWeek 500 Benchmarking Survey. It provides coverage of the opinions of top management respondents from large firms, and it also supplies data on their IT departments and IT operations and on their firms’ major IT initiatives. They supplemented their data with additional information from Compustat and Dun & Bradstreet. They explore a number of issues in a cross-sectional empirical research design, including whether firms that (1) are engaged in onshore IT outsourcing (ITO) are more likely to also do offshore outsourcing; (2) coordinate international vendors, suppliers, and employees are more likely to do offshore BPO; (3) have systems capabilities related to IT coordination applications are more likely to engage in onshore or offshore BPO; (4) have process capabilities related to business codification will be more likely to engage in onshore and offshore BPO; and (5) are engaged in outsourcing experience mediating effects of IT coordination applications and business process codification on onshore and offshore BPO. The authors report that firms with experience in ITO and coordination activities are more likely to become involved in BPO, as are firms that have offshore ITO and other forms of internationalization activities. They also show evidence for the proposed mediation effects. "Regulation of Digital Businesses with Natural Monopolies or Third-Party Payment Business Models: Antitrust Lessons from the Analysis of Google," by Eric K. Clemons and Nehal Madhani, explores issues at the intersection of technology, economics, business strategy, and the law. Technology affects economic forces, which in turn affect business strategy. The new technology of telecommunications, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, created the first opportunities for true participation benefits and positive network externalities. Social policy suggested that the United States would be best served if all telephone subscribers could talk to one another, which with the technology of the day, argued for a single network service provider. And yet the United States wanted to be protected from the potential harm of a monopoly provider of such an important service. The solution was the 1913 Kingsbury Commitment, which allowed AT&T to continue to operate as the world’s first private but regulated national monopoly service provider, outside the rules established by the earlier Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The authors argue that modern business models and Internet technology may interact to create new forms of winner-take-all business models. Just as important, they suggest that third-party business models, like the one in which Google provides its services free to individual consumers but charges a third party for participation in keyword auctions, may decouple Google’s services from the price discipline of the marketplace. They do not argue that Google should or will face antitrust litigation, and they do not suggest that Google would lose such litigation were it brought. They highlight the areas in which litigators will need to reconcile mismatches between the law as it was originally applied and the business models that it may need to regulate. In particular, the authors highlight issues such as the definition of relevant market for electronic search providers, demonstration of contestability, market preemption through cross-subsidies, and the essential facilities doctrine, where litigators will face their greatest challenges. Atanu Lahiri, Rajiv M. Dewan, and Marshall Freimer, in "The Disruptive Effect of Open Platforms on Markets for Wireless Services," examine a model of price discrimination in telecommunications services, exploiting the concept of mixed bundling. The authors focus on application-based pricing in telecommunications, where wireless carriers commonly charge consumers different per-bit prices for the transmission of voice, Internet, and text messaging; these per-bit prices can differ by several orders of magnitude. Open platforms that undermine such differential pricing may therefore disrupt an existing business model that is based on extreme and somewhat artificial differential pricing, because in the end, all carriers are transmitting nothing but bits. Extending the standard second-degree price discrimination framework to allow for quasi-bundles, the authors show that open platforms may choose to serve certain consumers at a lower service level or not at all. Consequently, it may be that open platforms can decrease both the consumer surplus and the social surplus. Firms will capture this reduction in surplus and under some conditions may be expected to prefer open platforms, at least for some segments of the market. While a change to open platforms undermines the very idea of their current pricing models, under some conditions this change to open platforms, counterintuitively, may increase producer surplus while decreasing total social welfare. This research serves as a starting point for examining what happens when open and discriminatory business models interact competitively in the presence of extreme customer heterogeneity, which is consistent with current market trends. In the final paper of the Special Section, "Oligopolistic Pricing with Online Search," Lizhen Xu, Jianqing Chen, and Andrew Whinston revisit the foundations of online search environments. Recognizing that different positioning on a search page can generate different search costs for users, the authors first examine firms’ pricing strategies when consumers are searching for them in a predetermined order, provided that adjusting the order is infeasible or sufficiently expensive. In the resulting mixed-strategy pricing equilibrium, each firm is competing only against the prices of adjacent firms. This "local competition" feature of the equilibrium remains present---in a somewhat simpler three-firm model---when the authors allow consumers to adjust the search order, as long as the costs for inspecting different positions on the search page are heterogeneous. The insights from this paper establish a link between the inspection cost heterogeneity on a given search page and the price dispersion in an intermediated search market. We thank Juliana Tsai, who acted as the editorial assistant for this Special Section.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2017)
Since the founding of the Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS) thirty-four years ago, the journal has been committed to methodological pluralism, to seeking and widening new paths to understanding in the belief that doing otherwise would limit our contribution to the store of knowledge and constrain the flow of scholarly pursuits. We have equally been committed to the wide horizons and inclusiveness that bring significant novel content to our discipline. The Special Issue on Action Research in Information Systems that you will read here is an expression of our commitment to foster a broad array of methodologies in seeking new knowledge. Action research (AR) consists in reflective problem-solving practice in continuing combination with data-based analysis of the underlying causes of the observed phenomena, to enable generalization and prediction. AR is generally iterative and involves a collaboration of researchers and practitioners with a diversity of perspectives that contribute to the richness of the results. It is therefore a vital component of an effort to keep our field close to and, we hope, ahead of practice. All that having been said, not enough (or actually little) AR is done. The reasons are many and various, some of them stemming from perceived or misperceived pragmatics, others from the path dependence of this research domain. The Special Issue is expected to change this in a positive direction. The articles presented by the guest editors, Ned Kock, David Avison, and Julien Malaurent, showcase the application of AR in several organizational settings. The authors of the studies are very much aware of their mission of presenting the capabilities of AR along with their core research objectives. Beyond introducing these works to readers, the guest editors also supply a methodological study that shows, in particular, how to combine AR with a positivist approach to knowledge seeking. The first article in the general section contributes an empirical investigation to an important issue that has been with us since the emergence of the web. When using the web as a medium, are we trying to isolate ourselves by communing with people “like us,” or are we communicating with them and the “others”? In scholarly terms, do social network service (SNS) platforms show or foster homophily—a marked preference of their users for associating with similar others? Hyeokkoo Eric Kwon, Wonseok Oh, and Taekyung Kim offer an interesting and nuanced answer. The authors base their research on the communications conducted on Facebook as a symmetrical SNS (reciprocal communications) and Twitter as an asymmetrical one (with one-way communications possible). They find that, although homophily is a marked tendency in these contexts, heterophily can result as well if the users adopt some of the communication channels as opposed to others. This is an important result in the context of social policy, or even just good business. Carol Saunders, Martin Wiener, Sabrina Klett, and Sebastian Sprenger investigate the sources of the emotional and cognitive overload that can result from the use of computer and communication technology (ICT) and, specifically, of mobile phones. The problem will not be unfamiliar to readers. The authors claim that the overload results not simply from the amount of information delivered (the well-known “information overload”). Adopting a deeper cognitive perspective on the issue, the researchers show that the culturally embedded mental representations as well demographic factors play a significant role in the onset of such overload. Once we know the true sources of this quite prevalent phenomenon in ICT use, we might begin to address them. Online product recommendations produced by individuals or recommendation agents are receiving unwavering attention from consumers as well as researchers. The authors of the next article in the issue consider these recommendations as only the first stage in a two-stage model of generating product advice. David Jingjun Xu, Izak Benbasat, and Ronald T. Cenfetelli present and empirically assess a two-stage recommendation process, during which the first-stage recommendation can be refined and improved upon at the second stage, generally in interaction with a user. The authors thus study the recommendation-improvement functionality of the overall recommendation system. Beyond that, they introduce the complementarity principle that shows the mutual influence of the two recommendation stages. As the state of the art in the recommendation-system design progresses with massive use, we may see these results influence the design of two-stage, or crowdsourced, recommenders. Cyberbullying has become a highly unwelcome epiphenomenon of social media use. Behind a number of well-publicized incidents with egregious consequences, there are myriad everyday occurrences. What can be done? The legal system is hardly effective in prevention. Obviously, it is far better to prevent cyberbullying by design—if we know how to do that. Paul Benjamin Lowry, Gregory D. Moody, and Sutirtha Chatterjee offer a theory-based contribution that should help. They attribute cyberbullying to the control imbalance perceived in the use of social media: individuals who perceive they are being controlled by others might engage in this revenge behavior. The authors deploy established theories in seeking accountability and preventing deindividuation through the features of the information systems. Their empirics support the model, which gives us a handle on brightening one of the dark sides of information technolocy use. In the concluding article, Brent Furneaux and Michael Wade offer an integrated model of information systems (IS) discontinuance, that is, of the obstacles to IS replacement. We all know that the systems kindly termed as “legacy” often constrain organizational performance and are the address for good money sent after bad money. And yet they are not being replaced. The authors present a model, validated through a survey of senior IS managers, that reveals the principal causes of the inaction. A coherent initiative of removing these causes will help managers in setting out an IS replacement strategy when the time comes. It is my pleasure and privilege to welcome the new members of the JMIS Editorial Board: Ravi Aron (Johns Hopkins University), Alan Dennis (Indiana University), Kai-Lung Hui (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), and Karthik Kannan (Purdue University). My thanks for their contribution and best wishes go to the outgoing members of the board, Jacob Akoka, Izak Benbasat, and Iris Vessey. They have served the journal and our scholarly community long and well.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2001)
IN A RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP, information systems and the environments in which they operate are becoming ever more complex. Consequently, software projects are not getting easier to control. The use of packaged software alleviates some of the problems. Yet anyone familiar with the implementation of an enterprise resource planning system knows that software projects remain high-risk propositions. Two papers that open the present issue of the Journal address the management of software project risks in a comprehensive manner. The two works form a logical sequence. In a rigorous multinational study, Roy Schmidt, Kalle Lyytinen, Mark Keil, and Paul Cule identify a ranked list of common risk factors. Based on the experience of seasoned project managers, the categorized list of risk factors and the analyses of their sources offer important guidance to the project managers and invite research on countermeasures. Relying on the experience of project managers and end users, and adopting the perspective of fit between the nature of the project risk and the risk management profile, Henri Barki, Suzanne Rivard, and Jean Talbot offer an integrative model of managing these risks. The performance objective of the project has been identified as the primary criterion for the selection of a risk management approach. Taken together, the two works move our understanding of this vital area to a new level. Does the development of telecommunication infrastructure lead to a heightened economic activity of a country? Such broad-and very important-questions are difficult to answer conclusively. By applying in a novel fashion a sophisticated econometric technique, Amitava Dutta offers empirical evidence that the question should indeed be answered in the affirmative. Also using longitudinal data, Kar Yan Tam and Kai Lung Hui are able to infer those characteristics of computer vendors that increase the chances of adoption of their products by MIS managers. The authors bring to light the dominant roles of a broad product line and strong brand. Taken together, the two papers showcase the contributions that econometric methods can make to the knowledge in our field. In many cases, superior customer service separates successful firms from their less successful competitors. How can information technology contribute to success along this dimension? The deployment of customer relationship management systems is a quick-but not necessarily correct-answer. Jahangir Karimi, Toni M. Somers, and Yash P. Gupta seek out empirically the information technology (IT) management practices that lead to better customer service and higher customer satisfaction. Based on the strategic grid construct, the authors offer a classification that helps them identify the category of firms whose IT deployment gives them a customer service advantage. Another factor of corporate success in the advanced information society is the IT competence of business managers. Genevieve Bassellier, Blaize Horner Reich, and Izak Benbasat define and operationalize this construct. The authors describe the components of the explicit and tacit knowledge that underlie the competence, and present a research model that traces the paths from this knowledge-and-skill set to the behavioral outcomes. How do IT professionals cope with rapid technological change? Sixteen years ago, James Cash and Poppy McLeod identified in this Journal the emerging technologies (ET) group as a vital coping mechanism. Here, John Benamati and Albert L. Lederer empirically establish a broader set of coping means and find that the organizations that rely on the ET group generally fail to receive the expected benefits. Indeed, an observation of such groups at work does lead one to conclude that while this work is often interesting and rewarding to the group members, this reward does not extend beyond the group boundaries. Within the broader context of their objective, the present authors offer a number of suggestions for improving this state of affairs. Neural networks are an established tool in such applications as financial forecasting and data mining. Here, Steven Walczak shows that reducing the training set of these networks in forecasting currency exchange rates can lead to improved performance. Since reducing the size of the training sample also leads to time and cost economies, this result is of value to both researchers and practitioners. It also begs for an investigation in other arenas. Poor analysis of information system requirements leads to poor systems, which take a great outlay to correct or will be abandoned altogether. The elicitation of user requirements is the crucial factor in the analysis-and is fraught with noncommunication and miscommunication. The users and the analysts generally operate in different problem spaces. This is one of the statements in the extensive study by Glenn J. Browne and Michael B. Rogich, who empirically compare the effectiveness of three techniques used to elicit the requirements, including a novel prompting technique devised by the authors. The rich new technique includes, along with substantive prompts, also the procedural ones that help the interviewees to adopt an active, performative posture and thus to avoid many preconceptions arising from their present environment. The broad analysis of the requirements elicitation process and the empirical results presented in the paper amply qualify it for the last-but-certainly-not-least description. VLADIMIR ZWASS Editor-in-Chief

Special Issue: Crossing Boundaries in Information Systems Research - Briggs, Robert O; Nunamaker Jr, Jay F; Sprague Jr, Ralph H (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2006)
Robert O. Briggs is a Visiting Research Professor at the Center for Distance Education in the College of Rural and Community Development at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and an Associate Professor of Systems Engineering at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. In 1994, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in Management and Information Systems with a minor in Communication. He researches the cognitive foundations of collaboration and learning, and applies his findings to the development and deployment of collaborative processes and technologies in the workplace. He is coinventor of the thinkLets process and cofounder of the discipline of Collaboration Engineering. As Director of Research and Development for GroupSystems.com, he created the conceptual designs for and helped oversee the development of a new generation of collaboration technology based on the principles of collaboration engineering. He has published more than 90 refereed scholarly works on theoretical, experimental, and applied research on collaboration and learning. He and his coauthors have advanced theories of group productivity, satisfaction, technology transition, creativity, and ideation. Jay F. Nunamaker Jr. is Regents and Soldwedel Professor of MIS, Computer Science, and Communication, and Director of the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He received his Ph.D. in Systems Engineering and Operations Research from Case Institute of Technology, an M.S. and B.S. in Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Nunamaker received the LEO Award from the Association of Information Systems at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Barcelona, Spain, December 2002. This award is given for a lifetime of exceptional achievement in information systems. He was elected as a fellow of the Association of Information Systems in 2000. He has over 40 years of experience in examining, analyzing, designing, testing, evaluating, and developing information systems. He has served as a test engineer at the Shippingport Atomic Power facility, as a member of the ISDOS team at the University of Michigan, and as a member of the faculty at Purdue University, prior to joining the faculty at the University of Arizona in 1974. His research on group support systems addresses behavioral as well as engineering issues and focuses on theory as well as implementation. He has been a licensed professional engineer since 1965. Ralph H. Sprague Jr. is a Professor, former Chairman, and Founder of the Department of Information Technology Management in the College of Business Administration at the University of Hawaii. He has over 30 years of experience in teaching, research, and consulting in the use of computer and information technologies in organizations. His specialties are decision support systems, strategic systems planning, the management of information systems, and electronic document management. He has served as Chairman or Cochairman of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences for the past 26 years. The history of information systems (IS) began with isolation. Stand-alone machines in glass boxes cranked out numbers meaningful only to an exclusive few. Only the punch cards and the printouts crossed the glass boundary. When users first crossed the boundary with TTY and CRT terminals, technological isolation still reigned. Each kind of machine had its own operating system. Programs on the same machine did not share data stores or messages. Information did not travel from machine to machine except on magnetic tape via the sneaker-net or from person to person except through the mail. On December 9, 1968, Douglas Engelbart and a team of 15 researchers from the Augmentation Research Center gave a historic 90-minute demonstration that set a new course for information technology (IT). Beyond the mice, windows, and active cursors, which were demonstrated there, the presentation established a vision for crossing boundaries with IT. Text and graphics capabilities operated seamlessly on the same information; data streamed long distances by wire, people worked in collaboration at a distance to create and maintain shared digital objects. Since that vision was established, the IS/IT community has wrestled with and advanced the effort to break down barriers and span boundaries of many kinds—technical, social, cognitive, organizational, and societal—but much work remains to be done on all these fronts. This special issue of JMIS seeks to advance that work. The papers for this special issue were drawn from the best-paper nominees at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Each paper addresses a different aspect of crossing boundaries with IS/IT. In keeping with the traditions of JMIS, the papers present diversity of methodological and epistemological approaches. They span the continuum from social to technical treatments. Crossing Organizational Boundaries Natalia Levina and Emmanuelle Vaast, in their paper, “Turning a Community into a Market: A Practice Perspective on Information Technology Use in Boundary Spanning,” use an ethnographic approach to examine how IT can transform relations across fields of practice within and among organizations. Drawing on Bourdieu’s practice theory, they focus on the concepts of embodiment and objectification. The paper makes a distinction between “market-like” and “community-like” boundary-spanning practices. In their paper, “Field Experiences with eXtreme Programming: Developing an Emergency Response System,” Ann Fruhling and Gert-Jan de Vreede report a field study of the relatively new eXtreme Programming (XP) system development methodology in the context of a team developing a multiorganizational emergency response system. The paper provides an excellent overview of agile development methodologies in general and reports critical incidents and draws inferences from them with respect to the strengths and limitations of the XP approach. Crossing System Boundaries Khalil Khoumbati, Marinos Themistocleous, and Zahir Irani work toward bridging technical boundaries in their paper, “Evaluating the Adoption of Enterprise Application Integration in Health-Care Organizations.” Enterprise application integration (EAI) technology addresses the need to integrate heterogeneous IS in order to enhance quality of organizational services and reduce costs. The paper uses fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) techniques to identify causal interrelationships among factors that influence EAI adoption in a particular sector where it has been slow to transition—the health-care industry. The paper, “An Information Systems Security Risk Assessment Model Under the Dempster–Shafer Theory of Belief Functions,” by Lili Sun, Rajendra P. Srivastava, and Theodore J. Mock, presents a methodology for analyzing the security risk of IS that cross departmental and organizational boundaries. The paper takes a structured evidential reasoning approach based on the Dempster–Shafer theory of belief functions to identify relevant information systems security (ISS) risk factors and related countermeasures, estimating the risks and the plausibility of ISS failures. The approach incorporates cost–benefit analyses to help promote efficient ISS risk management. The method is illustrated with hypothetical real-world examples from the perspective of external assurance providers. Crossing Boundaries of Space and Time David L. Paul, in his paper, “Collaborative Activities in Virtual Settings: A Knowledge Management Perspective of Telemedicine,” addresses challenges facing people using technology to work together at a distance, with a particular focus on their knowledge management issues. He explores three aspects—knowledge transfer, knowledge discovery, and knowledge creation in the context of telemedicine projects—and discusses how these elements play out with respect to project process and perceptions of the results. Social Boundaries and the Digital Divide Jolie C.Y. Lam and Matthew K.O. Lee, in their paper, “Digital Inclusiveness—Longitudinal Study of Internet Adoption by Older Adults,” address both the generation gap and the digital divide. They argue that training programs and access to computer facilities are not sufficient to bring socially disadvantaged groups into the worldwide digital discourse. The paper reports a three-part longitudinal study of voluntary adoption of Internet technologies by almost 1,000 older adults (age 55 and above), focusing specifically on self-efficacy and outcome expectations. The study included surveys, laboratory experiments, and cognitive knowledge assessments over a one-year period to illuminate the antecedents of self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and adoption. Crossing Methodological Boundaries Jinwei Cao, Janna M. Crews, Ming Lin, Amit Deokar, Judee K. Burgoon, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr. report on efforts to span the boundaries between research paradigms to improve IS research in their paper, “Interactions between System Evaluation and Theory Testing: A Demonstration of the Power of a Multifaceted Approach to Information Systems Research.” They summarize a series of studies conducted throughout a multiyear development project for a computer-based training system, demonstrate how each research approach informed the advancement of technology in a different and useful way, and propose an integrated research framework for IS. Human/Machine Boundaries In their paper, “Discovering Cues to Error Detection in Speech Recognition Output: A User-Centered Approach,” Lina Zhou, Yongmei Shi, Dongsong Zhang, and Andrew Sears seek to cross the boundaries between humans and computers with a new approach to speech recognition technology. The new approach seeks to detect and correct recognition errors by combining extant data-driven approaches with heuristics from human users. The paper reports the details of the new approach and reports empirical findings that suggest the new approach can improve speech recognition output and aid user error detection, which may break the barrier for mainstream adoption of speech technology in a variety of IS and applications. Conclusion In the IS/IT world, we still face many complex challenges of boundaries and isolation. It is interesting to note the degree to which the surface characteristics of today’s desktop experience were defined by Douglas Engelbart’s 1968 demonstration—it set the stage for word processing, slide show presentations, e-mail, chat, desktop video, and other elements that are common today. At the time of this writing, one can browse the World Wide Web to locate sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html and view the filmed record of that event. It is well worth the time because, below the surface, the demonstration embodies tantalizing concepts of boundary spanning that are still not part of the conventional way of thinking about computers. In our world, for example, applications and people now have many ways to share and exchange data—a great step forward from the early days of glass-box isolation. In Englebart’s world, though, neither data nor computer capabilities are contained by the boundaries of an application. The data simply appear, and the user calls free-range capabilities as if they were genies to transform the data on command. There is inspiration yet to be found in Englebart’s early work, but it is also important to note that some of the challenges addressed by the papers in this Special Issue were not conceived in 1968. Each of these papers extends our understanding of spanning boundaries with IS in a different direction and in a unique way. We commend each of them to your reading.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2016)
Well-posed great research questions have significant value to a scholarly discipline or field. They focus and stimulate thinking, tacitly or explicitly coordinate research programs, attract the best minds, and set high goalposts that, however movable in the future, are the pointers to that future. The exemplar set of twenty-three problems posed by David Hilbert at the dawn of the twentieth century strongly influenced the century’s work in mathematics. With all due modesty in invoking this analogy, it is important for our field of information systems to set such goalposts and to keep orienting ourselves toward them and resetting them. Our field is uniquely positioned to combine the technological and behavioral approaches. Indeed, this differentiates us from our sister discipline, computer science. The understanding of information technology (IT) in a reciprocal relationship with our lives, our organizations, and our societies is what our discipline brings to the world of scholarship and practice. This also makes our goalposts movable by necessity: new information technologies emerge, and in fastpaced research, entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship they continue pointing toward entirely new possibilities. But even in the precise and circumscribed world of mathematics, some of Hilbert’s problems needed interpretation and redefinition. And new sets of great problems in mathematics have been setting new goalposts. The Special Issue that opens this issue of Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS), guest edited by Justin Scott Giboney, Robert O. Briggs, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., is titled “Designing Tools to Answer Great Information Systems Research Questions.” The title and content of the Special Issue point to a broad path we as a discipline are breaking out to the goalposts: We can design the IT-based tools that help us answer great questions within the realm of the “sciences of the artificial” [3]. It is remarkable that 25 years ago this broad research program, later defined as design science, was articulated in a JMIS study whose lead author is a well-known guest editor of the present Special Issue [2]. The first article in the general section of the journal addresses the very timely issue of the problematic use of social networking sites (SNS). The authors, Ofir Turel and Hamed Qahri-Saremi, take an interesting perspective in their empirical analysis, namely, Daniel Kahneman’s theory of “thinking, fast and slow” [1]. This dual systems theory proposes that our thinking can be channeled into the more facile and fast intuitive and emotional mode (System 1) or the more effortful, deliberate, and analytical one (System 2). The authors implicate an improper balance between these two modes of thinking in the improper use of SNS (with Facebook as the exemplar), which, in turn, leads to the negative outcome of poor academic performance. The model the authors propose finds empirical confirmation, and two significant outcomes result. First, the work is generative, in that future research can broaden the consequences analyzed here. Second, we have gained an important analytical lens. Trust has increasingly been seen as a foundational societal good, associated, among other beneficial outcomes, with the accumulation of social capital and stronger economic performance. Our field has contributed meaningfully to the understanding of this construct as the antecedent of success in electronically mediated business relationships. Consumer trust is needed for the successful operation of consumer-oriented e-commerce, such as B2C (business to consumer) and C2C (consumer to consumer) relationships and transactions. In different countries, different levels and sources of trust have emerged. Here, a multiauthored article reflects the broad international scope of the authors’ work, in presenting an empirically based analysis of differences among the factors leading to online trust in four different national marketplaces: China, Germany, Singapore, and the United States, Eric K. Clemons, Josh Wilson, Christian Matt, Thomas Hess, Fei Ren, Fujie Jin, and Noi Sian Koh show that trust-based consumer attitudes toward online shopping vary, sometimes in surprising ways, among these countries. Aside from the implications for the national markets, weighty conclusions can be drawn for the still nascent—after more than two decades—international consumer-oriented e-commerce. The ever greater number of companies adopts comprehensive environmentally conscious IT practices. What drives these firms to such commitments? The next study presents a comprehensive hierarchical view of the key drivers of green IT practices and the effects of these drivers on the adopting firms. Paul Jen-Hwa Hu, Han-fen Hu, Chih-Ping Wei, and Pei-Fang Hsu consider factors that fall into three groups: the general business environment, the industry context, and the firm. The results of their model tests point to the importance of contextual factors extant in the business environment. The authors offer theoretically based and empirically validated recommendations for firms that intend to enhance their green IT practices. We hope this includes all firms. The next article presents a novel theoretical lens and pragmatic model for IT governance in the public sector. Authored by Gregory S. Dawson, James S. Denford, Clay K. Williams, David Preston, and Kevin C. Desouza, the work extends the application of agency theory—beyond private companies that are overseen by boards of directors—to public sector organizations, where the IT steering committee and the office of the chief information officer can play comparable roles. The work extends our understanding of the legal agency theory and shows how certain private sector practices can be beneficially deployed in the public sector. It is well-known that the infusion of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems has been rife with minefields and vast cost and time overruns—and this when adoption attempts did not fail altogether. Most of what we know about these processes comes from Western countries. There is much to be learned from the analysis of ERP implementation and infusion in the setting of a different major IT marketplace and ERP adopter—China. Here, Vincent Siuking Lai, Fujun Lai, and Paul Benjamin Lowry present such an analysis in the context of industrial processes prevalent in this globally leading manufacturing center. The context is roughly that of traditional imitation practices that come under multisourced pressures to innovate. Much can be learned here for application in other contexts.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1997)
BUSINESS REENGINEERING, AND BUSINESS PROCESS REDESIGN AND IMPROVEMENT are, respectively, more or less radical elements of business process change enabled by information technology. Two years ago, Varun Grover and William Kettinger guest-edited a Special Section of this Journal, investigating the theory of business process change. Fittingly, they now present a Special Section of five papers that analyze the actual impact of the change as experienced by the changing organizations. I will not try to preempt here the Guest Editors and the authors in presenting to you the many lessons they will help you learn. In the first paper of the general section, Alan R. Dennis, Craig K. Tyran, Douglas R. Vogel, and Jay F. Nunamaker, Jr., examine the application of a widely used group support system (GSS) to strategic planning, based on the first-use experience by thirty firms. The authors study the impact of four GSS dimensions, two of them task-related and two process-related, on the three sets of capabilities germane to the success of strategic planning. The authors report the success factors in the use of GSS for strategic planning, which will serve the many firms that will no doubt pursue such use in the future. They also outline the emerging research issues, notably stemming from the mutual influences between the evolving managerial processes and the evolution of information technology that supports communications and organizational memory. The next paper addresses strategic planning issues as well. Thompson S.H. Teo and William R. King study the characteristics of the four types of integration between business planning and information systems planning. The model the authors propose and investigate demonstrates an evolution through these types as the stages on the road to full integration. The authors also identify the contingency factors of the progress, with the business savvy of the top MIS executive heading the list. Two subsequent papers concentrate on information technology. Data modeling, or logical design, with existing methods (such as entity-relationship diagramming) presents difficulties to less experienced designers. Dinesh Batra offers a method for data modeling based on the set of the application's user views, readily available from its inputs (e.g., forms) and outputs (e.g., reports). A theoretical foundation for the relatively simple yet rigorous method is offered, showing that it leads to a normalized solution. Information systems would appear to be ideally suited to assist an organization during a crisis, when a prompt and informed response is of the utmost importance and when the entire organization needs to speak in a single voice. Yet such systems are not available. Joanne Hale, in the final paper in this issue, offers a layered architecture for a distributed crisis-response information system. The system makes it possible to bring to bear the organizational memory of previous relevant experiences and enables the appropriate group processes within the firm. As we enter the fourteenth year of this Journal's publication, I once again thank the Editorial Board, authors, readers, and the entire MIS community for their contributions and support. As always, it is a special privilege and pleasure to thank the Journal's reviewers, the primary guarantors of its quality. These are the reviewers of the Journal of Management Information Systems: Tarek K. Abdel-Hamid Mark Ackerman Ritu Agarwal Rakesh Agrawal Pervaiz Alam Donald L. Amoroso Joon An Urton Anderson Lynda M. Applegate Gad Ariav Yiorgos D. Athanassatos Paul Attewell Barbro Back Yannis Bakos P.R. Balasubramanian Dirk Baldwin Rajiv D. Banker A. James Baroody, Jr. Dinesh Batra Salvatore Belardo Michael Benaroch Francois Bergeron David Bodoff Bijoy Bordoloi Bruce E. Breeding Carol V. Brown Robert M. Brown Terry A. Byrd Anthony G. Cahill Edward G. Cale, Jr. John V. Carlis Judith Carlisle Erran Carmel Houston H. Carr William J. Carroll Robert P. Cerveny Patrick Chau Hong-Mei Chen Minder Chen Ye-Sho Chen Hsing Kenneth Cheng Robert T.H. Chi Roger Chiang William C. Chismar Jong-min Choe Joobin Choobineh Danial Clapper Jon D. Clark Roger Clarke Sue Conger Timothy P. Cronan David C. Croson Paul Cule Robert M. Daniels, Jr. Ronald Dattero Prabu Davamanirajan Donald L. Davis Sandra Dewitz Ali Dogramaci Brian L. Dos Santos Peter Duchessi Kathie Duliba Omar A. El Sawy Gregg Elofson Hyun B. Eom Mary Helen Fagan Jesus Favela Steven Feiner Frederick Ferront Kirk Fiedler Michael Flam Steven W. Floyd Peter Foltz Edward Fox Nelson Fraiman Richard Furuta Michael J. Gallivan Edward J. Garrity Amy W. Gatian Bezalel Gavish Erol Gelenbe Mark Ginsburg Bonnie Glassberg Janis L. Gogan David K. Goldstein Jerry Golub Martin D. Goslar Michael Goul Paul Gray Gary I. Green Saul Greenberg Robert K. Griffin Michael D. Grigoriades Varun Grover Tor Guimaraes Jatinder N.D. Gupta Gary Hackbarth Joanne E. Hale Jacob Hagouel Il-Horn Hann Warren Harrison Glenda Hayes Stephen Hayne Krishna Hegde James O. Hicks, Jr. Lorin Hitt Richard Hoffman Tony Holden Cary T. Hughes E. Gerald Hurst Tomasz Imielinski Gretchen I. Irwin Thomas Isakowitz Bharat A. Jain Marius A. Janson Matthias Jarke Per V. Jenster Hardeep Johar Linda Ellis Johnson Stef Joosten Kailash Joshi Charles Kacmar Ajit Kambil Jahangir Karimi Michael Kattan Robert J. Kauffman Mark Keil Robert T. Keim Chris Kemerer Julie E. Kendall Omar E.M. Khalil Melody Y. Kiang Gary Klein Henry Kon Kenneth A. Kozar Uday Kulkarni Rachna Kumar Ram Kumar Mary C. Lacity Laura Lally Gwynne Larsen Tor J. Larsen Steven M. Lathrop Hon-Shiang Lau Ho Geun Lee Jungwoo Lee Ronald M. Lee Dorothy Leidner Richard Leifer Mary Jane Lenard Hugo Levecq Ting-Peng Liang Paul S. Licker Jack M. Ligon Yihwa Irene Liou Astrid Lipp Geoffrey Liu Gary A. Lombardo Henry Lucas William McCarthy Roy McKelvey Ephraim R. McLean Poppy L. McLeod R. Madhavan Simha R. Magal Radha K. Mahapatra Mo A. Mahmood David Maier Michael Mannino Ji-Ye Mao Salvatore T. March Anne P. Massey Charles H. Mawhinney Roberto J. Mejias Robert Minch Shaila Miranda Rajesh Mirani William H. Money Ali R. Montazemi Ajay S. Mookerjee Scott Moore Kathleen Mykytyn Peter P. Mykytyn, Jr. Barin N. Nag Murli Nagasundaram R. Ryan Nelson Sarma Nidumolu Rosalie Ocker Lorne Olfman James Oliver Levent Orman Richard Orwig Lee Papayanopoulos Diane Parente Kenneth Peffers Norman Pendegraft Mark Pendergast Roger A. Pick Alain Pinsonneault Leo L. Pipino Steven Poltrock Gerald Post Jayesh Prasad G. Premkumar Sandeep Purao S. Raghunathan T.S. Raghunathan Arik Ragowsky Arun Rai Rex Kelly Rainer, Jr. Sudha Ram K.S. Raman B. Ramesh Richard G. Ramirez Renu Ramnarayanan H.R. Rao R. Ravichandran Sury Ravindran Louis Raymond Paul Resnick William B. Richmond Frederick Riggins Daniel Robey Michael C. Row David Rozenshtein David L. Russell Young U. Ryu Timo Saarinen Rajiv Sabherwal Sharon Salveter G. Lawrence Sanders Radhika Santhanam John Satzinger Carol Saunders Naveed Saleem George Schell Irmtraud S. Seeborg Arie Segev Arun Sen Kenneth C. Sevcik Dennis G. Severance Theresa M. Shaft Barry Shane Ben Shao Steven Sheetz Jim Sheffield Olivia Sheng Michael Shields J.P. Shim Chris Shull Mark S. Silver Atish P. Sinha Peggy C. Smith Charles A. Snyder Eric W. Stein John M. Stevens Veda Storey Ashok Subramanian Girish Subramanian Ramesh Subramanian Ephraim Sudit Robert T. Sumichrast Shankar Sunarajan Julius Surkis Edward J. Szewczak Kar Yan Tam Bernard C.Y. Tan Mohan R. Tanniru David P. Tegarden James T.C. Teng Hock-Hai Teo Thompson Teo Matthew Thatcher Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong John Tillquist Leon van der Torre Jonathan K. Trower Duane Truex Jon A. Turner Brad Tuttle N.S. Umanath Ari Vepsalainen Boris S. Veroy Iris Vessey Ajay Vinze Eric Wang Jason Wang Michael S. Wang Y. Richard Wang Yu-ming Wang Carol Watson Richard Watson Aaron Watters Bruce Weber Peter Weill Jay-Louise Weldon Charles E. Wells Larry West J. Christopher Westland Seungjin Whang Michael E. Whitman George Widmeyer Uffe Wiil Kristoff K. Wolyniec Bill Wooldridge Hans Wortmann Hao Xialong Surya B. Yadav Beck Yang Chee Sing Yap Evangelos Yfantis Ilze Zigurs Moshe Zviran VLADIMIR ZWASS Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2007)
It is a vital objective of our scholarly field, both in the epistemological and in the pragmatic sense, to evolve an understanding of how to develop successful IT artifacts. We need to know--in a sense of justified true belief--how to develop information systems (IS), to put it plainly. Research centering on systems-development methodologies is a part of our brief. This is not to take away from the positivist or interpretive approaches that have been established in our field. It is to add to them. It is also to blend them into the study of IT artifacts. The types of artifacts whose development we study differ from those studied in computer science, as we deal with the system levels that touch the users and affect more directly organizational performance. It is also our disciplinary duty to study systems in use and to assess their effects in action. The role of system development in IS research was articulated in a scholarly manner almost two decades ago [1]. And yet this research stream has not flowed abundantly. More recently, this type of research has been framed as design science and a variety of guidelines have been offered toward its successful application. The next paper in the present issue offers a methodology for design science research in IS and demonstrates its use. The authors, Ken Peffers, Tuure Tuunanen, Marcus A. Rothenberger, and Samir Chatterjee, evaluate the application of their proposed methodology in several contexts (and, recursively, demonstrate it in the context of its development). It is important that the methodology includes as one of its final steps not only its evaluation to thus lead to double-loop learning but also a scholarly communication step, to help us bring to a higher level our design research itself. Several papers that follow are devoted to the study of online marketplaces. The first two of them analyze different aspects of the pricing of digital goods. Ming-Hui Huang, Eric T.G. Wang, and Abraham Seidmann address an increasingly important aspect of our economy--knowledge pricing in an open market. The authors identify an important inconsistency in the users’ approach to knowledge markets, an inconsistency that creates inefficiencies in the markets for important categories of knowledge goods, those in knowledge repositories. The researchers then bring to bear the theoretical perspectives that allow them to show empirically how to devise prices in order to create more efficient markets for knowledge. Moutaz Khouja and Sungjune Park employ formal modeling to study the markets for digital experience goods subject to piracy--music or movies, say. The authors show how the producer of these digital goods can incorporate the assumption of piracy by certain consuming segments into the pricing policy. Under the segmentation policies and corresponding pricing practices revealed here, the producer’s profit, the creator’s royalty, and the consumer’s surplus are all increased. Online media are clearly gaining ground. During the recent years, online advertising has become a major force. The question emerges: Should advertising on media sites largely pay for the delivery of the content to consumers? Ming Fan, Subodha Kumar, and Andrew B. Whinston study analytically the trade-offs between selling and advertising as revenue sources for the media industries. The work surfaces a textured set of strategic recommendations for the mix of selling and providing ad venues, depending on a variety of factors, as well as for differentiated pricing levels. Explicit recommendations to media companies are offered on the effective bundles of selling and advertising prices. Versioning digital goods is an established strategy in addressing the marketplace, where the provision of such vertical differentiation is not expensive. The next question is, naturally: How many versions should be offered? This issue has not been addressed in the literature in a general, theory-based manner. Here, Wendy Hui, Byungjoon Yoo, and Kar Yan Tam provide an analytical model that incorporates menu costs of managing different price offerings, as well as the consumer’s cognitive costs (the potential customer’s confusion when facing a larger set of offering bundles). As in the preceding paper, the results gained are translated by the authors into recommendations for the vendors of digital goods. Online personalization takes place at the expense of the private information previously held by consumers without disclosure. Personalization, when used properly, brings benefits to consumers. The disclosure of information about themselves bears them the cost of eroding privacy. With the advent of m commerce, where time constraints and small screens call for downright consumer intimacy, this trade-off is placed into even sharper relief. Ramnath K. Chellappa and Shivendu Shivendu apply economic modeling and the property rights approach to evaluate four choices of regimes for the allocation of property rights to personal information. Based on this analysis, the authors offer recommendations both to the regulatory agencies and to the firms using personal information. The alignment of a firm’s IS strategy with its business strategy is a well-known prerequisite for success of corporate IS. However, this macro-level perspective fails to take in much that needs to happen in the organizational practice to align a firm’s IS with its actual informational needs. Paul P. Tallon brings the alignment discourse and empirics down to the process level of corporate operations, an important sharpening of focus and granularity. Further, this research addresses the type of fit that is achieved between the essential corporate processes and IS that serve them. The fine-grained results advance both our knowledge about the strategic use of IS and the advice we can offer to managers. Querying electronic knowledge repositories is hampered by the word mismatch phenomenon: a user’s query often refers to the items searched for in different terms than those stored in the electronic corpora. The oft-used information retrieval technique in such cases is query expansion. How to expand is the question. In their contribution, Chih-Ping Wei, Paul Jen-Hwa Hu, Chia-Hung Tai, Chun-Neng Huang, and Chin-Sheng Yang propose a topic-based approach to this expansion. Thus, the global analysis of the entire source corpus that produces the top-ranked terms coinciding with those in the query is augmented with the thesauri for various topic clusters. Both sets of terms are used to expand the user’s query, after additional processing. The authors demonstrate the superior performance of their approach. J. Christopher Zimmer, Raymond M. Henry, and Brian S. Butler ask a fundamental question: Where do the individuals in an organization turn to when seeking information or knowledge? The authors dichotomize the sources into relational (direct interpersonal contact) and nonrelational. Using the survey method, the authors then study the factors that lead the individuals to use these respective sources. While source accessibility is a good predictor of use, it is notable that the nonrelational sources, such as the Web corpora, are considered less accessible than the relational ones. The results ought to impact the design of IS supporting employee information seeking. It also emerges that there is a need for organizational initiatives expanding employee horizons with respect to their information- and knowledge-seeking behavior. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief Reference 1. Nunamaker, J.F., Jr.; Chen, M.; and Purdin, T.D. Systems development in information systems research. Journal of Management Information Systems, 7, 3 (Winter 1990-91), 89-106.

Special Section: The Impacts of Business Process Change on Organizational Performance - Grover, Varun; Kettinger, William J (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1997)
HINDSIGHT is 20/20. NOW, WITH A CRITICAL MASS of business process change (BPC) projects concluded, it is appropriate to take a retrospective look at the implications, prescriptions, or lessons we can extract from these collective experiences. Assimilated in these experiences is the realization that reengineering's operative word is not "radical" but "process," with the directive to create end-to-end value for the customer. In doing so, the "obliterate and rebuild" mentality of earlier years is giving way to more sober, deliberate, and often moderate approaches to BPC and process management. More recently, there have been attempts to study the contingent nature of BPC and factors leading to its success. Paramount among the emerging themes is the importance of change management, as contrasted with earlier emphasis on technology management. Other lessons include strong top management sponsorship, strategic alignment with corporate goals, sound methodology, and line ownership. Most of these factors are not new and have been examined in prior studies of technology implementation, organizational change, and innovation. What is new is the relevance and interaction of these among themselves and their influence on the nature of BPC outcomes. To extract individual variables with generalizability across diverse contexts and examine them in the positivist tradition of research is extremely challenging. However, to ignore the rich repository of real-world experiences would be foolish. This Special Section makes a significant attempt at leveraging organizational experiences with BPC and translates them into actionable guides. It is evident that, while we are making progress, our tools are still blunt and our conclusions are not as definitive as we would like. However. each paper included here focuses on aspects of BPC that are critical and yet understudied. As such, they add to the collective wisdom of the "how," "when," "what," and "why" of BPC. The papers included in this Special Section were selected from a large number of submissions from around the world and epitomize the study of global phenomenon in a global world. Five aspects of BPC and its impact on organizational performance are examined: 1. The virtualization of the physical; 2. The reinvention of organizational control; 3. The efficacy of empowerment and teams; 4. The harmonization of change; and 5. The facilitators of and inhibitors to major change initiatives. In the first article, Akemi Takeoka Chatfield and Niels Bjorn-Andersen use a generic framework of BPC to describe the successful transformation of Japanese Airlines (JAL) from a physical to a virtual value chain. The impact of the interorganizational system on key business processes resulted in positive business outcomes including growth, competitiveness, response time, and cycle time of joint product innovation. What is particularly interesting is the ability of JAL to exploit the interaction between business processes and technology. The authors conclude that the traditional keiretsu-based organizational form with the focal point of the firm at the center, which has been a source of competitive advantage for Japanese industries, is not sufficient for today's time-based competition. Instead, keiretsu-based interfirm collaboration has to be augmented with interorganizational systems (IOS)-enabled virtual value chains to facilitate flexible, nonhierarchical communication across network members. In the next paper, Brian D. Janz, James C. Wetherbe, Gordon B. Davis, and Raymond A. Noe assess the effects of empowered teams on BPC outcomes through an empirical assessment of 231 IS professionals from 27 IS professionals from 27 IS development projects. Using Kettinger and Grover's model of business process change management as an overarching framework, these authors examine the extent to which reengineered ISD organizations using autonomous teamwork, is organizations with higher capacities for learning and higher levels of cultural readiness, result in greater improvements in process outcomes and Quality of Work Life (QWL). Like the findings in Guha et al. (also in this issue), these findings reinforce the importance of double-loop learning and of creating a "learning organization." It would be prudent for management to consider the multidimensional. nature of BPR and stress the importance of, and provide ample opportunity for, cooperative learning while teams address their work objectives. Siew Kien Sia and Boon Siong Neo focus on a topic that has received little research attention-- organizational control in the context of major BPC. They argue that a lack of focus on control issues can expose reengineered systems to excessive risks and long-term failure. The paper conceptualizes organizational control and reports on an intensive case study of successful reengineering at the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS). In addition to well-documented outcomes of this initiative, the IRAS's commissioner was presented the Meritorious Service Medal, one of Singapore's highest honors, for his role in leading reengineering. Of particular interest are the four stage so of evolution of control systems in IRAS ranging from "automated" control to "humanistic" control. The challenge is one of implementing proper controls within the traditional control culture. The authors suggest a risk-management approach for the assessment of control systems. The notion of "fit" is very popular, particularly in strategic management studies. Ard Huizing, Esther Koster, and Wim Bouman examine the fit among breadth, depth, planning, planning and coordination of business reengineering efforts in thirty-three firms. They define three archetypes or ideal patterns of change based on their level of ambition. Successful organizations are hypothesized to have fewer "misfits" within the archetype. Their results indicate that organizations that achieved a fit generally outperformed those that changed in an unbalanced way. They suggest that achieving fit is a fragile process that needs to be managed explicitly and constantly. Finally, Subo Guha, Varun Grover, William J. Kettinger, and James T.C. Teng present a multicase comparison of three BPC efforts ranging in success from high to low. A BPC management model was applied to compare and contrast "facilitators" and "inhibitors" of the outcome. The successful project consistently showed positive facilitators in all of the BPC management framework's dimensions. At the other extreme, the least successful project had the greatest clustering of inhibitors in the areas of cultural readiness and change management. Also, the often-stated position that IS should not drive major BPC projects, and that change management requires effective consideration of balance, continuos learning, and consideration of interdependencies, was reaffirmed. The broad conclusions from these studies are that successful BPC requires explicit consideration of virtualization of physical processes, careful redesign of organization control to manage the changed context, creation of "learning-friendly" environments, a balance between aspirations and the conduct of change, and recognition that change is complex, interdependent, and should not be promoted by a group with parochial interests.

Erratum (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2018)
Article Title: Special Issue: Financial Information Systems and the Fintech Revolution Authors: Peter Gomber, Robert J. Kauffman, Chris Parker, and Bruce W. Weber Journal: Journal of Management Information Systems Bibliometrics: Volume 35, Number 1, pages 12–18 DOI: 10.1080/07421222.2018.1440778 The second sentence in the fourth paragraph should read: “We received more than 60 submissions in total, of which 75 percent dealt with issues that were well-connected to the phenomena and research innovations that we hoped to bring to JMIS readers’ attention.” The publisher apologizes for this error.

About This Issue - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1984)

Special Section: Managing Virtual Workplaces and Teleworking with Information Technology - Igbaria, Magid (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1998)
THE RECENT RAPID AND ONGOING ADVENT OF INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE and superhighways in many nations is prompting fast transformation of organizations toward the virtual workplace. As the growth in the virtual workplace and teleworking accelerate, organizations face new challenges to cope with their new organizational structure. Some of these new challenges include understanding the emergent work environment, the changing social work order, and the dynamic requirements of the knowledge worker. Indeed, it is challenging for organizations to manage the complexity of the new social and work structures, which is exacerbated by the increasing mobility of the new type of office worker. To meet these challenges effectively, management needs to develop strategies to support what is called "moving work to where people are, rather than people to where the work is." Thus, in order to maintain its status quo and also to be comparatively competitive, management must not only understand the new structure but also take innovative steps to adopt new organizational forms and arrangements to accommodate the increasingly diverse workplace. Companies no longer talk about "work at home" programs. Rather, they are speaking about "working anywhere, anytime, and with anyone." The concept is fast becoming a reality where the use of information technologies makes connectivity, collaborations, and communication easy. Does it matter whether that critical voice-mail or message comes from the home office, the client's office, the airport, or the middle of a traffic jam? The workplace environment is changing. These changes may have minimal effects on some people, yet, for others, they may bring about radical changes in their workspace, and in their life-styles and habits. This Special Section discusses how individuals and groups function in the new environment. We are very grateful to the authors who submitted their work and to the many reviewers who have provided constructive comments and suggestions. In the first paper, Mary Beth Watson Fritz, Sridhar Narasimhan, and Hyeun-Suk Rhee examine the relationships between organizational factors and individual satisfaction with office communication among telecommuters and traditional office workers. Their study was conducted through a survey of telecommuters and a comparison group of non-telecommuters in nine firms with telecommuting programs. The authors found that telecommuters report higher satisfaction with office communication than do non-telecommuters. However, organizational factors such as task predictability, IT support, and electronic coordination are found to have similar influences on satisfaction with communication for both groups. The authors conclude that managers should develop strategies for managing a network of distributed workers (i.e., workers in a variety of different geographic locations) and suggest a number of different managerial actions. In addition, they suggest a number of areas for future research. Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa, Kathleen Knoll, and Dorothy E. Leidner explore the antecedents of trust in a global virtual team setting, using seventy-five teams in different countries. They argue that trust can be predicted by perceptions of other team members' ability, integrity, benevolence, and propensity to trust. The relative importance of these predictors may vary by time and phases of teamwork. The authors found that, in the early phases of teamwork, team trust was predicted more strongly by integrity and benevolence. The salience of perceived ability on trust diminished over time. They found that the members' own propensity to trust had a significant, although unchanged, effect on trust. The authors also report that high-trust teams exhibit "swift trust." Finally, the authors provide several suggestion to reinforce trust and eventually improve team process outcome. In the final paper of the Special Section, Alan R. Dennis, Sridar K. Pootheri, and Vijaya L. Natarajan address the development of a Web-groupware system in building virtual communities. They discuss the analysis, design, and implementation of the system and the results of series of interviews with users. They found that Web-based groupware can improve communication among the participants and help to build virtual communities. However, organizations should be aware that technology alone cannot build virtual communities. They report that Web-groupware is a pull technology that requires users deliberately to access the system. In cases where users did not find a compelling need or desire to interact, the system did not help to build a virtual community.

Special Section: Cognitive Perspectives on Information Systems - Briggs, Robert O (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2015)
Robert O. Briggs, a Professor of Information Systems at San Diego State University, researches the cognitive foundations of collaboration and uses his findings to design new collaborative work practices and technologies. He is a co-founder of the Collaboration Engineering field and co-inventor of the ThinkLets design pattern language for collaborative work processes. He has made exploratory, theoretical, experimental, and technological contributions to the areas of team productivity, technology-supported learning, ideation, creativity, consensus, satisfaction, willingness to change, and technology transition. He has designed collaboration systems and collaborative workspaces for industry, academia, government, and the military. He co-chairs the Collaboration Systems and Technology track for the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. He lectures worldwide on collaboration theory and practice, and on the philosophy of science. He earned his doctorate in management information systems at the University of Arizona in 1994. The unique and enduring purpose of information systems (IS) as an academic field is, “to understand and improve the ways people create value with information” [1, p. 20:2]. An information system is, a way to create value with information; a designed way; an effective, efficient way; a repeatable way. High-tech information technologies (IT), or as they are sometimes called, “IT artifacts,” are frequently at the core of information systems, but IT does not define our field or its boundaries. IT alone, apart from an information system, creates no value. It is therefore important that our research community should seek to improve understandings of all the elements of an information system in the contexts of the systems they compose. Among the major elements of an information system—people, procedures, hardware, software, and data—people are the most expensive [2], and the most difficult to replace. People design, develop, and maintain systems, participate in systems, and derive value from the systems. It is therefore fitting that we should seek to better understand the human element of information systems. That is the focus of this special section on Cognitive Perspectives on Information Systems. Each paper in this special issue considers aspects of human cognition as it relates to core IS research concerns. The special section opens with two papers about cognitive aspects of information security. Qing Hu, Robert West, and Laura Smarandescu take a cognitive neuroscience approach to the protection of information assets in their paper, “The Role of Self-Control in Information Security Violations: Insights from a Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective.” Using scenario-based laboratory experiments, they examine the association between individual differences in self-control and event-related potentials elicited while individuals deliberate over violations of information security policies. Data show that, when contemplating a security policy violation, people with low self-control had different patterns of brain activity than did people with high self-control, and that the brain activity of people contemplating an information security violation differed from that of people contemplating an ethically neutral scenario. The study reveals new details about which specific parts of the brain are involved in the decision to violate an information security policy. The paper, “The Behavioral Roots of Information Systems Security: Exploring Key Factors Related to Unethical IT Use,” by Sutirtha Chatterjee, Suprateek Sarker, and Joseph S. Valacich, explores multiple factors associated with unethical IT use. They find it to be strongly related to certain ethical beliefs, along with economic (e.g., punishment severity), social (e.g., subjective norms), and technological (e.g., lack of traceability) considerations. These findings suggest that no single intervention will be sufficient for information security; solutions may require multiple facets to combat the growth of unethical IT use, including not only technological advances but also interventions that address the attitudes, beliefs and values of individuals, and the norms of groups and organizations. In their paper, “Chasing Lemmings: Modeling IT-Induced Misperceptions About the Strategic Situation as a Reason for Flash Crashes,” Tobias Brandt and Dirk Neumann employ hypergame theory to examine the vulnerability of IT-based stock trading to sharp drops in market prices that rebound shortly afterward. They posit that the use of information technology for high-speed trading does more than provide a competitive advantage in a known game; it creates a new game. They argue that flash crashes result as a consequence of rational decisions and actions by traders who misperceive the true game. They develop arguments that suggest flash crashes may be an unavoidable systemic problem in modern financial markets. In their paper, “Enhancing Predictive Analytics for Anti-Phishing by Exploiting Website Genre Information,” Ahmed Abbasi, Fatemeh “Mariam” Zahedi, Daniel Zeng, Yan Chen, Hsinchun Chen, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr. report two studies about phishing websites that exploit user vulnerabilities. They propose a novel method for distinguishing phishing websites from benign websites, using Genre Theory to identify fraud cues that are associated with differences in purpose between legitimate and phishing websites. They evaluate the solution with a testbed encompassing thousands of legitimate and phishing websites. Results show that the proposed method provides significantly better detection capabilities than do other state-of-the-art anti-phishing methods. An additional experiment demonstrates the effectiveness of the new approach in user settings; users utilizing the method were able to better identify and avoid phishing websites, and were consequently less likely to transact with them. Given the extensive monetary and social ramifications associated with phishing, the results have implications for future anti-phishing strategies. Finally, Kelly J. Fadel, Thomas O. Meservy, and Matthew L. Jensen, in their paper, “Exploring Knowledge Filtering Processes in Electronic Networks of Practice,” examine processes by which individuals filter out bad information and accept good information that they find among collections of geographically separated individuals who share common interests but are only loosely affiliated through online channels. Drawing on dual-channel models of information evaluation, they hypothesize about how eye-gaze patterns should differ depending on whether subjects use heuristic or semantic processing to evaluate the quality of the information they find. Eye-tracking technology revealed that hypothesized differences of eye-gaze patterns did emerge, and that people who used compensatory search strategies had a higher filtering accuracy than did people who used noncompensatory strategies. Each of the papers in this special section gives rigorous scholarly consideration to challenging cognitive issues of significant relevance to information systems in the twenty-first century. The papers were selected from the best papers presented at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences and have undergone cycles of referee reviews and revisions for publication here. We commend them to your reading. References 1.Nunamaker Jr., J.F., and Briggs, R.O. Toward a broader vision for Information Systems. ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, 2, 4 (2011), Article 20. 2.Potter, K.; Smith, M.; Guevara, J.K.; Hall, L.; and Stegman, E. IT Metrics: IT Spending and Staffing Report 2011. G00210146, Gartner Inc. (2011).

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2011)
The Special Section on Applied Science Research in Information Systems that opens this issue of the Journal reminds us, very usefully, that our field is expected to inform the decision makers who solve problems and run teams, organizations, and, indeed, countries. The knowledge we produce and elaborate is the ever-higher foundation for the never-ending quest---and it also needs to be the source of practical insights. Each of the papers in the Special Section tackles a real problem and demonstrates how our field contributes to its solution, while also accumulating models, techniques, and insights to solve future problems and generate new theories. The Guest Editors of the Special Section, Robert O. Briggs, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., and Ralph Sprague, will introduce these papers to you, helping you see them through their  lens of ‘the last’ mile in information systems (IS) research. Having dispensed with the productivity paradox, if there ever was one, we now see more profound effects of information technology (IT), and we see them in a more textured way. Kunsoo Han, Young Bong Chang, and Jungpil Hahn empirically demonstrate here significant spillovers from IT investments by supplier industries to those downstream in the supply chains. The more competitive and IT-intense downstream industries benefit more, and as seen before in other IT productivity studies, there is a learning period. This study is important in demonstrating another, and weighty, category of value rendered by the proper deployment of IT. In a study that ranges over wide swaths of our cultural heritage, Fatemeh ‘Mariam’ Zahedi and Gaurav Bansal investigate the cultural content of Web site images. Using the research methodology of grounded theory, the authors develop a theory of Web-image signifiers classified into five categories, which they proceed to test in a quantitative study, rooted in the Hofstede cultural attributes. Echoing the theme of the Special Section, the results of the study are immediately useful in Web site design, particularly as cross-cultural audiences are addressed, we hope, with increased frequency. Beyond that, the extensive study forms a foundation for further research into cultural signification on the Web and elsewhere. IS move into the ever-expanding domains of our lives. Automated decision aids are used to assess the credibility of statements made in a variety of contexts that include negotiation and auditing. The credibility of the automated credibility assessments is, of course, in question. Here, Matthew L. Jensen, Paul Benjamin Lowry, and Jeffrey L. Jenkins present a theory-based design of a decision aid based on both automated linguistic analysis and on the elicitation and analysis of perceptual cues. Fine-grained conclusions are reached with respect to the contribution of each of the analyses to the accuracy of the assessment and to the acceptance of the aid’s recommendations, adding to our knowledge in the detection of deception. The contemporary IS environment is frequently characterized by constant software modifications, as agile IS are aimed at new business opportunities. Agile systems development methods include a broad range of methodologies and techniques that result in frequent system releases and a user environment of permanent change. These methods have been extensively studied from the developers’ point of view. It behooves our discipline to study their effects from the users’ vantage point. This is what the authors of the next paper in the issue, Weiyin Hong, James Y.L. Thong, Lewis C. Chasalow, and Gurpreet Dhillon, have done. Utilizing several theories of acceptance, use, and continuance, they investigate the users’ intentions to continue using the new systems, as well as to use the newly released features as a proxy for the systems’ success. The authors develop and validate a model of agile systems’ acceptance that takes into account the cognitive, behavioral, and affective dimensions of users’ attitudes. Based on this, the researchers also offer specific advice to the developers and organizational implementers of agile systems, which have become the not-so-new normal in many environments. The issue concludes on a strong note by an emergent special section on virtual teams (VTs). VTs have become integral to the functioning of many organizations, and we have seen a flowering of research aiming to learn about them. In the first of three papers, Saonee Sarker, Manju Ahuja, Suprateek Sarker, and Sarah Kirkeby investigate how communication and trust influence the outcomes in the operation of a VT. Notably, the authors use social network analysis to compare competing models that can explain the interrelationships among the constructs conditioning the performance of individuals in such teams. The result that emerges to inform both theory and practice is trust as the sine qua non of the VTs’ performance outcomes. Ananth Chiravuri, Derek Nazareth, and K. (Ram) Ramamurthy study the process of knowledge capture in the context of global VTs of experts. The authors focus on the management of conflict and the generation of consensus. Cognitive, task-based conflict is unavoidable if a team is to generate creative solutions. This conflict is also more difficult to manage in the absence of continuing face-to-face communications. In an extensive field experiment, the authors compare two well-known cognitive consensus-generation techniques, Delphi and repertory grid. Although the better-known Delphi is found to perform better in the short run, the use of repertory grid produced more and higher-quality knowledge in the long run. The result is of obvious importance to practice. The compass of the last paper transcends the VT focus, as it ranges over the influence of different levels of IT mediation on social networks in organizations. VTs emerge here as one of the possible configurations in virtual work design. Ayoung Suh, Kyung‑shik Shin, Manju Ahuja, and Min Soo Kim unpack the group-level virtuality attributes into geographic dispersion, temporal dispersion, and technological support and empirically study them in conjunction with the use of personal and communal IT in individual-level virtuality. The prism of social network formation helps the authors to arrive at conclusions and recommendations that can lead to higher effectiveness of VTs, and of technology-mediated work in general. As we start the new JMIS volume, it is my duty and it brings me great pleasure to acknowledge the contribution of our referees, the primary guarantors of the Journal’s quality. On behalf of our Editorial Board, thanks go to: Niv Ahituv Hyung Jun Ahn Pervaiz Alam Muhammad Aljukhadar Gove Allen Omar Alnuaimi Paul Alpar Kemal Altinkemer Naveen Amblee Hayward P. Andres Corey Angst Ofer Arazy Kursad Asdemir Norman Au Yoris Au Benoit A. Aubert Peter van Baalen Barbro Back Akhilesh Bajaj Dirk Baldwin Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay Gaurav Bansal Ravi Bapna Indranil R. Bardhan Reza Barkhi Henri Barki Stuart J. Barnes Anitesh Barua Richard Baskerville Dinesh Batra Skip Benamati Michel Benaroch Raquel Benbunan-Fich François Bergeron Ganesh Bhatt Anol Bhattacherjee Jesse Bockstedt Wai Fong Boh Indranil Bose Nicola Breugst Glenn J. Browne Sebastian Bruque Scott Buffett Judee Burgoon Andrew Burton-Jones Ashley Bush Terry A. Byrd Jinwei Cao Sven Carlsson Erran Carmel Susy Chan Yolande E. Chan Hsin-Lu Chang Jerry Cha-Jan Chang Mohamed Hédi Charki Patrick Chau Daniel Chen Hong-Mei Chen Hsinchun Chen Jianqing Chen Jin Chen Kay-Yut Chen Kuan Chen Li Chen Yuanyuan Chen Hsing Kenneth Cheng Lei Chi Robert T.H. Chi Roger Chiang Benjamin Chiao Ananth Chiravuri Alina M. Chircu Jong-min Choe H. Michael Chung Wingyan Chung Theodore H. Clark Randolph Cooper Kevin Crowston Dianne Cyr Qizhi Dai Ronald Dattero Gregory Dawson Sergio De Cesare Jason Dedrick Chrysanthos Dellarocas Didem Demirhan Sarv Devaraj Rajiv M. Dewan Debabrata Dey Soussan Djamasbi Wenjing Duan Peter Duchessi Deborah E. Dunkle Alexandra Durcikova Kaushik Dutta Robert Easley Christophe Elie-Dit-Cosaque Omar A. El Sawy Mike Eom Sean B. Eom Tae-In Eom J. Alberto Espinosa Ming Fan Patrick Fan Xiaofen Fang Yulin Fang Steven Feiner Jane Feng Daniel R. Fesenmaier Eliezer M. Fich Edmond P. Fitzgerald Jerry Fjermestad Chris Forman Chiara Francalanci Mark Fuller Brent Furneaux John Gallaugher Dale Ganley Gordon Gao Edward J. Garrity Judith Gebauer Michiel van Genuchten Joey George Anindya Ghose Janis L. Gogan Kim Huat Goh Thomas Goh Jahyun Goo Dale Goodhue Anand Gopal Ram D. Gopal Nelson Granados Dawn G. Gregg Ulrike Gretzel Robert K. Griffin Michael D. Grigoriades Bin Gu Kemal Guler Zhiling Guo Saurabh Gupta Nicole Haggerty Jungpil Hahn Ingoo Han Kunsoo Han Paul Hart Matthias Häsel Khaled Hassenein Jun He Raymond Henry Traci Hess Alan R. Hevner Starr Roxanne Hiltz Richard Hoffman Weiyin Hong John A. Hoxmeier Pei-fang Hsu Jeffrey Hu Nan Hu Paul Hu Qing Hu Ming-Hui Huang Wayne Huang Kai Lung Hui Wendy Hui Ard Huizing Yujong Hwang Ghiyong Im Gretchen I. Irwin Varghese Jacob Bharat A. Jain Radhika Jain Jeevan Jaisingh Matthew Jensen Bao-Jun Jiang James J. Jiang Zhengrui Jiang Alice Johnson Eric Johnson Emmanuel Josserand Surinder Kahai Ajit Kambil Arnold Kamis Gerald Kane Keumseok Kang Atreyi Kankanhalli Karthik Kannan P.K. Kannan Jahangir Karimi Evangelos Katsamakas Michael Kattan Timothy Kayworth Weiling Ke William J. Kettinger Moutaz Khouja Melody Y. Kiang Sia Siew Kien Byung Cho Kim Dan J. Kim Dongmin Kim Young-Gul Kim Ruth King Rajiv Kishore Gary Klein Richard Klein Cenk Kocas Chang Koh Rajiv Kohli Tobias Kollman Sherrie Komiak Praveen K. Kopalle Marios Koufaris Kenneth A. Kozar Ramayya Krishnan Gillian Ku Uday Kulkarni Akhil Kumar Ram Kumar Jason Kuruzovich Atanu Lahiri Karim Lakhani Simon S.K. Lam Guido Lang Karl R. Lang Nancy Lankton Kai R. Larsen Tor J. Larsen Gwanhoo Lee Heeseok Lee Ho Geun Lee Jungwoo Lee Matthew Lee Thomas Lee Yang Lee Yen-Hsien Lee Christine Legner Jan Marco Leimeister Natalia Levina Chen Li Dahui Li Jiexun Li Na Li Ting Li Xiaotong Li Xin Li XinXin Li Ting-Peng Liang Paul Licker John Lim Fu-ren Lin Lihui Lin Ming Lin Yihwa Irene Liou Jacqueline Lipton Ying Liu Yipeng Liu Alexandre Lopes Paul B. Lowry Henry C. Lucas Jr. Mark Lycett Jane M. Mackay Simha R. Magal Pruthikrai Mahatanankoon M. Adam Mahmood Bin Mai Yogesh Malhotra Arti Mann Michael V. Mannino Ji-Ye Mao Salvatore T. March Kent Marett Likoebe M. Maruping Jerrold H. May William McCarthy Roy McKelvey Harrison McKnight Ephraim R. McLean Nirup Menon Shaila Miranda Dinesh Mirchandani Abhay Nath Mishra Sunil Mithas Prasenjit Mitra William Money Ali R. Montazemi Ramiro Montealegre Jolene Morrison Benjamin Mueller Michael D. Myers Peter P. Mykytyn Jr. Barin N. Nag Fiona Nah Derek Nazareth Matthew Nelson R. Ryan Nelson Boon Siong Neo Derrick Neufeld Michael Newman Ralitza Nikolaeva Mark Nissen Dmitri Nizovtsev Oded Nov Lih-Bin Oh Wonseok Oh Bob O’Keefe Lorne Olfman James Oliver Benoit Otjacques Peter Otto Yasin Ozcelik Zafer D. Ozdemir Carl Pacini Raymond R. Panko Gautam Pant Manoj Parameswaran Michael Parent Insu Park Sungjune Park Craig Parker Bhavik K. Pathak Ravi Patnayakuni Souren Paul David J. Pauleen Paul A. Pavlou Kenneth Peffers Robin Pennington Roger A. Pick Selwyn Piramuthu Huseyin Polat Jean-Charles Pomerol Jaana Porra Gerald Post John H. Prager David Preston Sandeep Purao Wen Guang Qu Arik Ragowsky T.S. Ragu-Nathan Arun Rai Rex Kelly Rainer Jr. Vandana Ramachandran K. Ramamurthy Arkalgud Ramaprasad B. Ramesh Richard G. Ramirez H.R. Rao R. Ravichandran Gautam Ray Louis Raymond Blaize Horner Reich Bruce Reinig Yuqing Ren Paul Resnick Hyuen-Suk Rhee William B. Richmond Christoph Riedl Lionel Robert Daniel Robey Michael Rogich Nicholas C. Romano Jr. Sherry D. Ryan Young U. Ryu Khawaja Saeed Otavio Sanchez G. Lawrence Sanders Radhika Santhanam Pallab Sanyal Suprateek Sarker Surendra Sarnikar Carol Saunders Gregory Schechtman George Schell Petra Schubert Judy Scott Ravi Sen Sylvain Sénécal Nainika Seth Vikram Sethi Theresa M. Shaft Michael Shaw Jim Sheffield Hong Sheng Morgan M. Shepherd Michael Shields Choon Ling Sia Siew Kien Sia Keng Siau Mark Silver Param Vir Singh Atish P. Sinha Sumit Sircar H. Jeff Smith Toni M. Somers Jai-Yeol Son Jaeki Song Ryan Sougstad Scott Spangler William E. Spangler Rajendra P. Srivastava Thomas F. Stafford Stephen Standifird Sandy Staples Eric W. Stein Dick Stenmark Diane M. Strong Besiki Stvilia Mani Subramani Arun Sundararajan Shankar Sundaresan Tae Kyung Sung Ali Tafti Paul P. Tallon Vaughn Tan Yao-Hua Tan Xinlin Tang Mohan R. Tanniru Monideepa Tarafdar Nolan Taylor Gary F. Templeton Hock Hai Teo Thompson Teo Jason B. Thatcher Matthew Thatcher Dominic Thomas Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong Amrit Tiwana Leon van der Torre Gregory E. Truman Yanbin Tu Ilkka Tuomi Ofir Turel Tuure Tuunanen N.S. Umanath Andrew Urbaczewski Rustam Vahidov Anthony Vance Viswanath Venkatesh Goetz Viering Padmal Vitharana Douglas Vogel Roumen Vragov Steven Walczak Zhiping Walter Bin Wang Eric T.G. Wang Jingguo Wang Michael S. Wang Qiu-Hong Wang Shouhong Wang Sophia Wang Weiquan Wang Yinglei Wang Y. Richard Wang Molly Wasko Mary Beth Watson-Manheim Sunil Wattal Thomas Weber Chih-Ping Wei Charles E. Wells John Wells Larry West J. Christopher Westland Jonathan Whitaker Michael E. Whitman Jeffrey L. Whitten George Widmeyer Rolf Wigand Fons Wijnhoven Christopher Wolfe Charles A. Wood Hans Wortmann Ryan Wright Dazhong Wu Mu Xia Weidong Xia Mingdi Xin Heng Xu Hongjiang Xu Lizhen Xu Peng Xu Christopher Yang Oliver Yao Ulku Yaylacicegi Byungjoon Yoo Yufei Yuan Fatemeh Zahedi Dongsong Zhang Han Zhang Jennifer Zhang John Zhang Michael Zhang Ping Zhang Zuopeng Zhang Huimin Zhao Kexin Zhao J. Leon Zhao Dmitry Zhdanov Lina Zhou Yilu Zhou Zhongyun Zhou Hongwei Zhu Youlong Zhuang J. Christopher Zimmer Moshe Zviran Let us now turn our attention to the papers. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2001)
THE THREE PAPERS THAT OPEN THIS ISSUE of the Journal of Management Information Systems investigate different aspects of the individual and team performance in the environment enabled by information systems or engaged in their development. Timothy R. Kayworth and Dorothy E. Leidner study the effectiveness of leadership in global virtual teams, whose work is supported by computer-mediated communication systems. A relatively new operational mode, its existence is predicated by information technology. These teams are a phenomenon of increasing business globalization. Multiple challenges of diverse cultural backgrounds and of difficult collaboration logistics complicate the leadership tasks. Having created thirteen virtual teams spanning Europe, Mexico, and the United States, the authors have established that the effective leaders display greater behavioral complexity, being able to act in multiple roles simultaneously, combining relational considerations with the task-oriented ones. The work offers support and reconciles three theories of leadership invoked by its authors. Hayward P. Andres and Robert W. Zmud investigate the effective coordination of software development projects by adopting the perspective of fit between the information-processing capacity of the coordination strategy and the team's information-processing needs stemming from the task at hand. Among many finer-grained results obtained, organic coordination, such as self-management, emerges as the preferred approach. Michael R. Wade and Michael Parent contrast job-content analysis of Webmaster positions with the surveyed relationship between these skills and performance as perceived by the Webmasters themselves. The researchers find the organizational skills, as opposed to the technical ones, to be the critical factor when deficiencies emerge in the performance on the job. Although a balance between technical and organizational skills is the ideal profile, it is indeed the deficiencies in the latter skill set that are generally not discovered during the recruitment process. Two subsequent papers deal with the acceptance and assimilation of information technologies. Weiyin Hong, James Y.L. Thong, Wai-Man Wong, and Kar-Yan Tam seek to determine the factors that lead to the acceptance by users of digital libraries. Based on their work with the users of an award-winning digital library, the authors find strong support for the technology acceptance model in predicting the use, with relevance being the strongest predictor of perceived usefulness. In the assimilation of object-oriented (OO) technologies, Ihlsoon Cho and Young-Gul Kim find that, rather surprisingly at first blush, the perceived technology complexity has a positive relationship with assimilation. The authors explain this, as well as their other findings, which should help facilitate the introduction of the OO technologies in organizations. As configured, our present workflow management systems (WMS) are quite inflexible in the way they distribute work in organizations. Akhil Kumar, Wil M.P. van der Aalst, and Eric M.W. Verbeek present and validate a novel approach to distributing work with WMS in the presence of additional constraints that emerge in the real-world applications, such as deadlines and unavailability of workers. The approach is both of theoretical interest and offers practical help in using such WMS as Staffware. The distribution of objects in OO business information systems across computer networks is the subject of the work by Sandeep Purao, Hemant K. Jain, and Derek L. Nazareth. The authors offer a comprehensive approach, based on a formal model, for this distribution in order to minimize inter-site traffic over a net. The two final papers of this issue address group support. Alan R. Dennis and Barbara H. Wixom synthesize, with the use of meta-analysis, the broad body of research concerning the influence of five crucial moderating factors on the performance of the group using a group support system (GSS). The motivation for the work is to tease out consistency among the mixed-research findings through focusing on manageable aspects of GSS use. Based on their analysis, the authors are in a position to offer advice on how to support given tasks with GSS, depending on the nature of the task and the group, the nature of the tool, and the presence or absence of facilitation. Decision-making is a principal task category supported by GSS. Indeed, group decision support systems (GDSS) were the origins of the broader GSS rubric. Reza Barkhi studies the influence of the use of the GDSS with a problem-modeling component on the quality of the solution found and on the efficiency of the solution-seeking process. Among other research-based recommendations, the author stresses the importance of equipping GDSS with these tools, for the use of virtual teams, echoing the subject matter of the opening paper of the issue. VLADIMIR ZWASS Editor-in-Chief

Special Issue: Decision Support and Knowledge-Based Systems - Blanning, Robert W; King, David R (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1989)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2008)
In this briefest of the editorial introductions I have written, I commend to your attention the issue devoted to the economic approaches to the nodal aspects of information systems (IS). Considering the role the Journal has played in fostering this domain in our field, it is apposite for such an issue to appear as the second of the JMIS jubilee twenty-fifth year. The Special Issue, titled "Impact of Information Systems on Market Structure and Function: Developing and Testing Theories," is indeed devoted to theory building and theory testing in the broad swath of the continually expanding and evolving IS influence. Theories are being proposed and tested by papers that probe the effects of IS on both marketplaces and supply chains, and that engage a variety of experimental and analytical methodologies. The Guest Editors of the Special Issue, Eric K. Clemons, Robert J. Kauffman, and Rajiv M. Dewan, add to their prodigious effort also that of introducing the papers to you. The theme of the economics of IS security, taken up by two of the papers in the Special Issue, is continued by the two further papers in the Journal. Ram L. Kumar, Sungjune Park, and Chandrasekar Subramaniam apply the portfolio approach to the IS security countermeasures. As the functioning of organizations becomes ever more organically dependent on IS, security issues claim the attention of the C-level management and, in the cases of strategically dependent companies, corporate boards. A systematic value-based approach to mounting up corporate IS security countermeasures is necessary. The present authors integrate several theoretical perspectives on the valuation of the security portfolio in the light of security threats, and develop and exercise a simulation model that serves as a tool to include the complex interactions among the various countermeasures. In another effort to assess the value of IS security investments, Huseyin Cavusoglu, Srinivasan Raghunathan, and Wei T. Yue argue that the series of countermeasures applied consecutively by the firms and the potential attackers calls for a game-theoretic approach. The researchers’ comparison of this approach with the traditional decision-theoretic one shows both the promise and the need to further refine their model by relaxing some of the assumptions they have adopted. It is my privilege and distinct pleasure to welcome the new members of the JMIS Editorial Board. They are Hemant K. Bhargava (University of California, Davis), David Gefen (Drexel University), Arun Rai (Georgia State University), Timo Saarinen (Helsinki School of Economics), Katherine Stewart (University of Maryland), Kar Yan Tam (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), Alfred Taudes (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration), and Fatemeh "Mariam" Zahedi (University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee). I fully expect that their Board membership will benefit our field. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Special Section: The Digital Transformation of Vertical Organizational Relationships - Kauffman, Robert J; Weber, Thomas A (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2018)
ROBERT J. KAUFFMAN (rkauffman@smu.edu.sg; corresponding author) is Professor of Information Systems at the School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University. He recently served as Associate Dean (Faculty). He holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Kauffman was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and served on the faculty at business schools of New York University, the University of Rochester, the University of Minnesota, and Arizona State University, where he held the W.P. Carey Chair in Information Systems. His interdisciplinary research spans strategy, information, IT, economics, marketing and consumer behavior, fintech, environmental sustainability, and computational social science and data analytics. His papers have appeared in Management Science, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Organization Science, and the Review of Economics and Statistics, among others. THOMAS A. WEBER (thomas.weber@epfl.ch) holds the chair of Operations, Economics and Strategy at the Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Earlier, he was a faculty member at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. from the Wharton School. He was visiting faculty in economics at Cambridge University and in mathematics at Moscow State University. Dr. Weber was previously with the Boston Consulting Group. His research interests include the economics of information and uncertainty, the design of contracts, and strategy. His papers have appeared in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Economic Theory, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Management Science, and other journals. He is the author of Optimal Control Theory with Applications in Economics (MIT Press, 2011). In many industries, ranging from academia to industrial and consumer goods, one can observe—all along the various value chains—a “digital transformation.” Firms’ inputs and outputs are imbued with an increasing portion of information, thus reducing the relative importance of the physical aspect for a broad variety of goods. As an example, downstream outputs (finished goods), such as cars, electronic devices, or media are more and more infused with and complemented by information, which may be used to update, enhance, or—in the case of media—replace the physical product altogether. Similarly, firms rely on increasingly information-based inputs to solve problems, innovate, and improve their operations. Each of the two papers selected for this special section addresses the mounting digital aspect of vertical relationships, and together they address two pertinent examples, relating to firms’ inputs and outputs, respectively. Antino Kim’s contribution on the apparently “Doubly-Bound Relationship between Publisher and Retailer: The Curious Mix of Wholesale and Agency Models” examines the tension in the book market between the physical and digital versions of the same content. At the center of his discussion is Amazon, a worldwide player in both markets, which sells both versions side-by-side across their respective channels—using the same platform. The author observes that the shift (against Amazon’s initial will) from the traditional wholesale pricing model for e-books to an agency model with revenue sharing, where publishers control retail prices, has prompted a price increase and a concomitant drop in demand for the digital products, quite possibly against a casual observer’s intuition and expectation. One of the main takeaways from this article is that the coexistence of digital and print versions, with different modes of vertical contracting, has led to a misalignment of incentives between upstream and downstream parties who—as the author shows in Proposition 5 of his article—are quite fundamentally unable to agree on one of the two vertical contracting options. Zooming out to the broader context, as well as shifting the perspective from end products to firm inputs, Jing Gong, Yili Hong, and Alejandro Zentner provide insights on “Role of Monetary Incentives in the Digital and Physical Inter-Border Data Flows.” Using secondary data, they compare fluctuations of physical and digital labor flows in response to exchange-rate shocks between the United States and various foreign countries. While physical labor flows have proven to be fairly unresponsive to such monetary shocks, short-term digital labor flows do react, and all the more the higher developed the information and communications technologies (ICTs) are in the worker-originating countries. The study illustrates that there are few restrictions for firms to seek help globally when labor input can be provided digitally. They can thus turn to countries with the currently least elastic labor supply, at least for short-term engagements. The authors also point to the flipside, namely the importance for countries to increase the quality of ICTs to become a more attractive exporter of digital labor. While these two contributions may at first glance appear to be studies or snapshots of particular developments relating to particular industries and particular inputs or outputs (labor and books), we are keen to suggest several more comprehensive implications. First, misalignments of incentives caused by the digital transformation of supply chains are likely to be only temporary and therefore ultimately present opportunities for competitive advantage by overcoming difficulties early. For example, the apparent conflict over contracting modes in the book industry, discussed in the first article, sends a clear message that new modes of contracting are necessary to restore supply-chain coordination, to achieve efficient outcomes for the supply chains, akin to the historical problem of having to overcome double marginalization by revenue-sharing contracts. Second, the shift in emphasis from the physical to the informational components of inputs and outputs allows for new linkages among supply-chain partners, as well as to and from consumers and workers. Depending on the strategies employed on either side of the equation, this may lead to a marked increase in substitutability of supply-chain partners, as long as the information content remains fungible, in line with the conclusions of the second article. Finally, if we indulge the possibility of light at the end of “the digital-transformation tunnel,” there may appear a world where digital protocols and smart contracts enable sufficiently high levels of trust and ease of matching between strangers on open platforms so that intermediaries and aggregators of inputs or outputs (e.g., Monster or Amazon) lose at least some of their market power. This will not only increase the surplus of individuals, with their gains from trade untaxed, but augment aggregate social welfare as well, through broader participation and decreased deadweight losses. Acknowledgments We would like to thank our assistants, Emmy Hoang (Singapore) and Ilona Ball (Lausanne), for their invaluable help with this special section. We are also grateful to our long-time colleagues and friends, Eric Clemons and Rajiv Dewan, who have passed the baton on to us to continue organizing our longstanding minitrack on Strategy, Information, Technology, Economics, and Society at the annual Hawaii Conference on System Sciences, which featured early versions of the full-length papers presented here. We are happy to note that in January of 2018 Antino Kim earned a HICSS Best-Paper Award for the short conference version of his manuscript in the Organizational Systems and Technology Track.

Special Issue: Designing Tools to Answer Great Information Systems Research Questions - Giboney, Justin Scott; Briggs, Robert O; Nunamaker, Jay F (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2016)
JUSTIN SCOTT GIBONEY (jgiboney@albany.edu) is an assistant professor in Information Security and Digital Forensics at the University at Albany. He received his Ph.D. in management information systems from the University of Arizona. His research focuses on behavioral information security, deception detection, expert systems, and meta-analytic processes. He emphasizes design science research and system building to solve real-world problems with technology. He has published in International Journal of Human–Computer Studies, Communications of the AIS and Decision Support Systems, as well as in cybersecurity, management, and psychology journals. ROBERT O. BRIGGS (rbriggs@mail.sdsu.edu; corresponding author) is a professor of information systems at San Diego State University. He earned his doctorate in management information systems at the University of Arizona. He researches the cognitive foundations of collaboration and uses his findings to design new collaborative work practices and technologies. He is a cofounder of the collaboration engineering field and coinventor of the ThinkLets design pattern language for collaborative work processes. He has designed collaboration systems and collaborative workspaces for industry, academia, government, and the military. He has published more than 200 scholarly works on collaboration systems and technology, addressing issues of team productivity, technology-supported learning, creativity, satisfaction, and technology transition. JAY F. NUNAMAKER JR. (jnunamaker@cmi.arizona.edu) is Regents and Soldwedel Professor of MIS, Computer Science and Communication and director of the Center for the Management of Information and the National Center for Border Security and Immigration at the University of Arizona. He received his Ph.D. in operations research and systems engineering from Case Institute of Technology. He has held a professional engineer’s license since 1965. He was inducted into the Design Science Hall of Fame and received the LEO Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Information Systems. He was featured in the July 1997 issue of Forbes Magazine on technology as one of eight key innovators in information technology. He specializes in the fields of system analysis and design, collaboration technology, and deception detection. The commercial product GroupSystems ThinkTank, based on his research, is often referred to as the gold standard for structured collaboration systems. He founded the MIS Department at the University of Arizona in 1974 and served as department head for 18 years. The designing of artifacts is at the core of the information systems discipline [4]. In this way, the discipline can tackle great research questions. A great research question has five elements: it is a substantial benefit to someone, it affects a broad and diverse population, it has no obvious path forward, all its easy solutions have failed, and it is targeted to a certain goal (see Figure 1) [2]. First, a great research question must produce a tangible and noticeable change for people when answered. Without a change in society, the research to answer the question offers little value to those that fund the research. Second, a great research question must affect as many people as possible. Such questions may make great societal changes even if the individual effect is small. Third, a great research question will not have an obvious answer. The contribution of an obvious answer is much smaller than one that has no such answer. Fourth, a great research question will be one that people have tried and failed to answer with simple solutions. This element of a research question allows the research to succeed where others have failed and to provide a desired answer. Lastly, a great research question is targeted to a specific goal with a specific intended effect. This allows the value of the research to be quantified.10.1080/07421222.2016.1267512-F0001Figure 1.Elements of a Great Research Problem This special issue contains five studies that contribute to some of the great research questions by employing design elements [1, 3] in their research via building tangible systems to answer their research questions. Specifically, these studies contribute to answering the questions:How can people use technology to overcome organizational-interpersonal issues? How can people use technology to better understand online social exchanges? The first article, “Understanding Information Systems Integration Deficiencies in Mergers and Acquisitions: A Configurational Perspective,” by Stefan Henningsson and William J. Kettinger, explains the sources of six deficiencies resulting from information systems (IS) integration when two companies merge: business inefficiencies, business disruption, unrealized potential, staff reaction, delay, and overspending. The article makes use of 37 published case studies to demonstrate nine configurations that cause these deficiencies: information-technology (IT)-based capability destruction, cultural imposition, growing pains, untapping potential, asymmetric standardization, emulsion, paralysis, death march, and rebounder. Each of these configurations may be caused by one of four integration strategies: IS absorption, IS coexistence, IS best of breed, and IS renewal. Understanding the causal mechanisms of IS integration deficiencies will help practitioners take necessary precautions to avert problematic mergers. The second study, “Trust Development in Globally Distributed Collaboration: A Case of U.S. and Chinese Mixed Teams,” by Xusen Cheng, Shixuan Fu, and Douglas Druckenmiller, discusses trust development in online collaboration. Using a design science approach, this article studies teams of U.S. and Chinese students working together in an online collaborative environment. The study shows that process-guided collaborative teams report decreased risk, increased benefits, and increased trust compared to non–process-guided collaborative teams. Specifically, the article indicates that the use of timed thinkLet modules weakens the influence of time zone differences and other communication barriers. Managers and facilitators of globally distributive teams can use collaboration processes to help organize more efficient meetings and reach more satisfying outcomes. The third article, “A Friend Like Me: Modeling Network Formation in a Location-Based Social Network,” by Gene Moo Lee, Liangfei Qiu, and Andrew B. Whinston, combines physical, social, and technical elements to study the network formation of location-based social networks. As people are increasingly using social media to report their location data, the authors study the homophily effect in friendship creation based on that use. This work builds four user similarity measures using unstructured biographical text, geographic data, activity check-ins, and short messages (e.g., tweets). By combining the four measures, the study develops an algorithm to calculate user proximity. The contributions of this article can be used by managers and data analysts to discover similarities of customers and potential customers to create better services and fulfill their needs. In the fourth article, “Targeted Twitter Sentiment Analysis for Brands Using Supervised Feature Engineering and the Dynamic Architecture for Artificial Neural Networks,” Manoochehr Ghiassi, David Zimbra, and Sean Lee propose, build, and test a novel method of extracting sentiments of short messages (e.g., tweets). It is difficult for current sentiment analysis methods to determine the sentiment of short messages, and this study contributes an algorithm to decrease the dimensionality of tweet features and problem complexity. The algorithm increases the number of sentiment classes from three to five, to increase the accuracy of sentiment analysis. The study tests the algorithm using tweets about a popular beverage company and a popular government official. This algorithm consistently outperforms alternative algorithms. The last article in the Special Issue, “Identifying and Profiling Key Sellers in the Cyber Carding Community: AZSecure Text Mining System,” by Weifeng Li, Hsinchun Chen, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., develops a system to identify and profile key sellers in online underground marketplaces. The system uses sentiment analysis, customer reviews, and advertisements to analyze eight international underground economy forums. By scraping underground forums, the study identifies key words and extract features to review sentiment and build seller characteristic models. The article proposes an algorithm for each step and for identifying top sellers. This work can be especially useful to law enforcement agencies in combating cybercrime. Using this tool, law enforcement agencies can identify tops sellers to inhibit their criminal activity. These articles were developed in a refereed process from the initial versions presented at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences in Koloa from 2016 and previous years. Each of these works develops a system that increases our understanding of how people can use technology to improve their interactions and pursuits. Specifically, these studies allow managers, analysts, and law enforcement to identify attributes of people engaging in online interactions and to develop processes to enrich these interactions. References 1.Hevner, A.R.; March, S.T.; Park, J.; and Ram, S. Design science in information systems research. MIS Quarterly, 28, 1 (2004), 75–105. 2.Nunamaker Jr., J.F.; Twyman, N.W.; Giboney, J.S.; and Briggs, R.O. Creating high-value real-world impact through systematic programs of research. MIS Quarterly, Forthcoming. 3.Nunamaker Jr., J.F., and Briggs, R.O. Toward a broader vision for information systems. ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, 2, 4 (2011), 1–20. 4.Zwass, V. Editorial Introduction. Journal of Management Information Systems, 32, 3 (2015), 1–2.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2016)
The three papers that open this issue of the Journal of Management Information Systems—its thirty-third volume—focus on the role of information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) these systems are built around creativity and innovation. A new division of labor is emerging between people and machines, and we need to develop new effective ways for individuals to use IT in creative decision making, problem solving, and product development, and in fostering organizational futures. In parallel, we need to learn how to develop information systems that combine the comparative strengths of people and machines. In the first of the papers, Niek Althuizen and Astrid Reichel empirically investigate the effectiveness of IT-enabled cognitive stimulation tools in enhancing individual ideation and creative problem solving. The three types of software tools the authors examine are stimuli providers, process guides, and mind mappers (which cause individuals to lay out in a map their cognitive associations with the problem to be solved). Following the model of a dual pathway to creativity, the authors dichotomize the stimulation into deeper versus broader exploration of problem solutions. The results offer well-defined guidance for the deployment of creativity support systems and thus contribute to creativity theories as well. In the next work, Nicholas Roberts, Damon E. Campbell, and Leo R. Vijayasarathy examine at the individual level of analysis managers’ use of IS in sensing opportunities for innovation. The well-defined innovative use of IS is seen as a dynamic capability crucial to organizational learning and to exploration in the rapidly changing environment in which contemporary firms operate. The researchers find that the innovative use of IS is related to the higher volume and greater diversity of the generated ideas than routine IS deployment. The authors also surface the organizational factors that moderate the beneficial effects of innovative IS use. In other words, it is vital for the organization to create the climate, training, and environment in which people use technology innovatively. Social Q&A sites are an important factor in value co-creation and open innovation. Online communities can be involved in sponsored co-creation or in the internal setting to benefit organizations by supporting their products and building their brands. They can also be deployed in autonomous co-creation, where community members organize themselves around interests, brands, lifestyles, and various other passions, enthusiasms, and concerns. Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are operative in stimulating contributions. What makes community members share their knowledge in online communities? Extrinsic motivators have been known—in general terms—to crowd out intrinsic ones. Here, Li Zhao, Brian Detlor, and Catherine E. Connelly refine our thinking about the unintended consequences of extrinsic motivators. The authors use a large data set to study how virtual organizational rewards (such as points, stars, etc.) on the one hand and the sense of reciprocity on the other affect knowledge-sharing behavior. Practical advice to community organizers follows, along with a contribution to motivation theory. In an organizational setting, where the extrinsic motivators prevail, it becomes the task of management to foster a sense of community and peer influence to make the most of such a site. As a method of distribution of risks and rewards in the shaping of organizational information service, IT outsourcing has attracted close attention for a couple of decades now. A sophisticated understanding of the issues involved and solutions that can evolve is reflected in the next paper, by Amrit Tiwana and Stephen K. Kim. In concurrent sourcing, firms combine in-house provision of some IT services with the outsourcing of others. Things change in IT sourcing as companies seek new capabilities and competences with IT. As cars become the delivery vehicles for software-based services (and not only for the passengers and cargo) and as software-controlled cars are controlled or driven by tens of millions of lines of code, car manufacturers find themselves in the software business and increasingly insource large swaths of IT services. And this is only one example of an industry that gets into the IT business as its core competence. Clearly, things are far more complex than it sounds in combining insourcing and outsourcing of IT. When and how does concurrent IT sourcing enhance the client firm’s IT performance? The authors answer this question via their econometric study of the performance of 233 firms, informed by organizational theory. With organizations rebalancing their IT sourcing, the results provided here will be helpful. The research into social networks and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) continues to bring new insights. Anjana Susarla, Jeong-Ha Oh, and Yong Tan study the propagation of eWOM in social networks, using YouTube video discovery and sharing as their source. What leads to a cascade of popularity? In other words, what are the antecedents of social influence? The authors rely on the extensive literature of social contagion to make a novel contribution to it by uncovering the mechanisms by which early stage popularity of content leads to such contagion. As the (by now) more traditional promotion methods in social media encounter weak response, the results offered here will be of both theoretical and practical interest. Another online promotion mechanism, group-buying deals, has been encountering headwinds, in part owing to the perception that offering such deals lowers the online reputation of the participating local merchants. Here, Xitong Li shows theoretically and empirically that the volume and valence of online reviews prior to the deal offering has a strong influence and can prevent such a deterioration of reputation. The finding can certainly influence group-deal decision making. Along with the user reviews, the corpus of articulations available online includes professional reviews by experts and critics. The interplay between the two has not been studied to a significant extent, and the two review streams have been treated as independent. Here, Wenqi Zhou and Wenjing Duan show that the interaction between the two streams is indeed significant. The researchers show that professional reviews have a large effect on user choice decision online, both directly and indirectly, by affecting the volume of user reviews. Taking these results together with those of the two preceding papers, we see a multifaceted contribution to our understanding of eWOM and to the ability to use online media for effective promotion. Zhenhui (Jack) Jiang, Weiquan Wang, Bernard C.Y. Tan, and Jie Yu present a comprehensive model of the role of website aesthetics in a user’s first interaction with the site. As we know, first impressions are often decisive—but how are they formed? The authors propose a five-element model of website quality as perceived by a user and show its worth in testing users’ interactions with websites. Interestingly, the authors’ empirics show that in users’ initial interactions with a website, perceived aesthetics has a larger impact than perceived utility. The website design canon proposed here should be further expanded into design specifics. The freemium pricing model has achieved wide popularity online, in particular in the software industry, including mobile apps. A producer can proceed in two ways: It can offer the core content product for free and charge for the complementary value-added services, or it can bundle the services with the product and charge a single price. Zan Zhang, Guofang Nan, Minqiang Li, and Yong Tan present a game-theoretic study of this question in a duopolistic competitive setting in the presence of stronger or weaker network effects. Based on this analysis, nuanced guidelines are offered on pricing strategy. The last paper in the issue addresses one of the key issues of cybersecurity today: the dynamics of malware propagation. Hong Guo, Hsing Kenneth Cheng, and Ken Kelley present a structural risk model of this propagation, based on a growth curve whose four parameters are determined by the properties of the social and technological network in which the propagation is occurring. The authors provide empirical evidence for the explanatory power of their model, based on data from a large organization. The key contribution is the demonstration via simulation of the superiority of the proposed model in applying common malware-defense strategies and thus its relative effectiveness in gauging the risk of a social and technological network configuration. As we begin the thirty-third annual volume of the Journal of Management Information Systems, it is my distinct privilege to offer thanks to our referees, the primary guarantors of the quality of the papers we publish. Here are the names of our reviewers: Marc Adam Ashish Agarwal Hyung Jun Ahn Oliver Alexy Muhammad Aljukhadar Naveen Amblee Ofer Arazy Kursad Asdemir Norman Au Yoris Au Benoit A. Aubert Peter van Baalen Hyunmi Baek Akhilesh Bajaj Hillol Bala Dirk Baldwin Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay Youngsok Bang Gaurav Bansal Reza Barkhi Henri Barki Stuart J. Barnes Richard Baskerville Dinesh Batra Daniel Beimborn Skip Benamati Michel Benaroch Alexander Benlian François Bergeron Ganesh Bhatt Sudip Bhattacharjee Ivo Blohm Jesse Bockstedt Riccardo Bonazzi Antal van den Bosch Indranil Bose Imed Boughzala Randy Bradley Tobias Brandt Nicola Breugst Glenn J. Browne Sebastian Bruque Scott Buffett Judee Burgoon Andrew Burton-Jones Ashley Bush Brian Butler Terry A. Byrd Jinwei Cao Lan Cao Erran Carmel Hasan Cavusoglu Hsin-Lu Chang Young Bong Chang Mohamed-Hédi Charki Sutirtha Chatterjee Michael Chau Patrick Chau Aihui Chen Andrew Chen Daniel Chen Guoqing Chen Hong-Mei Chen Hsinchun Chen Jianqing Chen Jin Chen Kay-Yut Chen Kuan Chen Li Chen Liwei Chen Yan Chen Hsing Kenneth Cheng Mike Cheung Robert T.H. Chi Robert Chiang Roger Chiang Benjamin Chiao Ananth Chiravuri Alina M. Chircu Chaochang Chiu Jong-min Choe H. Michael Chung Wingyan Chung Theodore H. Clark Isabelle Comyn-Wattiau Randolph Cooper Kevin Crowston Dianne Cyr Qizhi Dai Yan Dang John D’Arcy Ronald Dattero Gregory Dawson Jason Dedrick Chrysanthos Dellarocas Haluk Demirkan Xuefei Deng Sarv Devaraj Debabrata Dey Jens Dibbern Soussan Djamasbi Su Dong Line Dubé Peter Duchessi Alina Dulipovici Deborah E. Dunkle Kaushik Dutta Robert Easley Dana Edberg Christophe Elie-Dit-Cosaque Omar A. El Sawy Mike Eom Sean B. Eom J. Alberto Espinosa Andrea Everard Kelly Fadel Ming Fan Patrick Fan Xiaofen Fang Yu-Hui Fang Yulin Fang Rei Fen Jane Feng Daniel R. Fesenmaier Thomas A. Fischer Jerry Fjermestad Chris Forman Chiara Francalanci Johann Füller Brent Furneaux John Gallaugher Dale Ganley Gordon Gao Hong Gao Monica Garfield Ina Garnefeld Edward J. Garrity Michiel van Genuchten Abhijeet Ghoshal Janis L. Gogan Kim Huat Goh Thomas Goh Sigi Goode Dale Goodhue Anand Gopal Ram D. Gopal Nelson Granados Dawn G. Gregg Shirley Gregor Ulrike Gretzel Robert K. Griffin Michael D. Grigoriades Bin Gu Ken Guo Xunhua Guo Zhiling Guo Saurabh Gupta Nicole Haggerty Jungpil Hahn Ingoo Han Kunsoo Han Shu Han Il-Horn Hann Matthew Hashim Jun He Cheng-Suang Heng Raymond Henry Hemantha Herath Tejaswini Herath Thomas Hess Traci Hess Alan R. Hevner Oliver Hinz Susanna Ho Richard Hoffman Christian P. Hoffmann Jason Hong Weiyin Hong John A. Hoxmeier Jeffrey Hu Nan Hu Paul Hu Petra Hu Qing Hu Chun-Yao Huang Ming-Hui Huang Shiu-Li Huang Wayne Huang Xiaowen Huang Thomas Huber Kai Lung Hui Wendy Hui Ard Huizing Ghiyong Im Gretchen I. Irwin Anja Ischebeck Varghese Jacob Bharat A. Jain Hemant Jain Jeevan Jaisingh Dietmar Jannach Matthew Jensen James J. Jiang Qiqi Jiang Zhengrui Jiang Zhenhui Jiang Monica Johar Alice Johnson Eric Johnson Emmanuel Josserand Surinder Kahai Arnold Kamis Atreyi Kankanhalli Karthik Kannan P.K. Kannan Maurits Kaptein Jahangir Karimi Michael Kattan Timothy Kayworth Weiling Ke Mark Keith Peter Kenning William J. Kettinger Lara Khansa Moutaz Khouja Melody Y. Kiang Byung Cho Kim Dan J. Kim Dongmin Kim Hee-Woong Kim Keongtae Kim Kihoon Kim Seung Hyun Kim Young-Gul Kim Ruth King Rajiv Kishore Gary Klein Richard Klein Sven Kleinknecht Stefan Knoll Cenk Kocas Chang Koh Rajiv Kohli Gwendolyn Kolfschoten Tobias Kollman Praveen K. Kopalle Marios Koufaris Kenneth A. Kozar Ramayya Krishnan Uday Kulkarni Akhil Kumar Ram Kumar Subodha Kumar Jason Kuruzovich Juhee Kwon Atanu Lahiri Simon S.K. Lam Guido Lang Karl R. Lang Kai R. Larsen Benjiang Lee ByungJoon Lee Byungtae Lee Dong-Joo Lee Gwanhoo Lee Heeseok Lee Ho Geun Lee Jong Seok Lee Jungwoo Lee Thomas Lee Yang Lee Young-Jin Lee Pierre-Majorique Léger Jan Marco Leimeister Natalia Levina Chen Li Dahui Li Jiexun Li Jingjing Li Seth Li Ting Li Xiaotong Li Xin Li XinXin Li Yan Li Huigang Liang Ting-Peng Liang Paul Licker John Lim Shi Ying Lim Aleck Lin Fu-ren Lin Mei Lin Charles Zhechao Liu Ying Liu Yipeng Liu Alexandre Lopes Paul B. Lowry Jingdu Lu Henry C. Lucas Jr. Xueming Luo Christoph Lutz Mark Lycett Jane M. Mackay Kristina McElheran Roy McKelvey Ephraim R. McLean Dan Ma Xiao Ma Massimo Magni Pruthikrai Mahatanankoon M. Adam Mahmood Rolf Mahnke Bin Mai Yogesh Malhotra Deepa Mani Ravi Mantena Salvatore T. March Kent Marett Panos Markopoulos Likoebe M. Maruping Sabine Matook Kurt Matzler Jerrold H. May Nigel Melville Nirup Menon Thomas Meservy Randy Minas Shaila Miranda Dinesh Mirchandani Abhay Nath Mishra Stephanie Missonier Sunil Mithas Prasenjit Mitra Kannan Mohan Peter N.C. Mohr William Money Ali R. Montazemi Ramiro Montealegre Alan Montgomery Greg Moody Jolene Morrison Michael D. Myers Peter P. Mykytyn Jr. Barin N. Nag Fiona Nah Ravi Narayanaswamy Derek Nazareth Matthew Nelson R. Ryan Nelson Boon Siong Neo Derrick Neufeld Dirk Neumann Dorit Nevo Michael Newman Tingting Nian Mark Nissen Dmitri Nizovtsev Oded Nov Lih-Bin Oh Onook Oh Wonseok Oh Bob O’Keefe Lorne Olfman James Oliver Ana Ortiz de Guinea Benoit Otjacques Bob Otondo Peter Otto Eric Overby Zafer D. Ozdemir Raymond R. Panko Gautam Pant Manoj Parameswaran Michael Parent Insu Park SungJune Park Craig Parker Bhavik K. Pathak Praveen Pathak Ravi Patnayakuni Souren Paul David J. Pauleen Kenneth Peffers Robin Pennington Christoph Peters Chee-Wei Phang Roger A. Pick Selwyn Piramuthu Huseyin Polat Jean-Charles Pomerol Jaana Porra Constance Porter Clay Posey John H. Prager David Preston Sandeep Purao Jessica Pye Liangfei Qiu Lingyun Qiu Wen Guang Qu Xin Xue Qu Arik Ragowsky Rex Kelly Rainer Jr. Balaraman Rajan Vandana Ramachandran Arkalgud Ramaprasad Bala Ramesh H.R. Rao R. Ravichandran Gautam Ray Louis Raymond Blaize Horner Reich Bruce Reinig Yuqing Ren Paul Resnick Hyuen-Suk Rhee Amir Riaz William B. Richmond Christoph Riedl René Riedl Lionel Robert Nicholas Roberts Daniel Robey Michael Rogich Huaxia Rui Sherry D. Ryan Young U. Ryu Khawaja Saeed Rajib Saha Otavio Sanchez G. Lawrence Sanders Radhika Santhanam Pallab Sanyal Saonee Sarker Surendra Sarnikar Carol Saunders Kevin Scheibe George Schell Hans J. Scholl Petra Schubert Judy Scott Eric See-To Ravi Sen Sagnika Sen Sylvain Sénécal Alexander Serenko Nainika Seth Vikram Sethi Theresa M. Shaft Tushar Shanker Michael Shaw Jim Sheffield Hong Sheng Zhan Shi Hung-Pin Shih Choon Ling Sia Siew Kien Sia Keng Siau Mark Silver Harpreet Singh Param Vir Singh Atish P. Sinha Sumit Sircar Bernd Skiera Stefan Smolnik Jaeki Song Ryan Sougstad Scott Spangler William E. Spangler Rajendra P. Srivastava Shirish C. Srivastava Thomas F. Stafford Eric W. Stein Dick Stenmark Stefan Stieglitz Theofanis C. Stratopoulos Diane M. Strong Mani Subramani Chandra Subramaniam Ramanath Subramanyam Eung-Kyo Suh Daewon Sun Heshan Sun Arun Sundararajan Shankar Sundaresan Juliana Sutanto Paul P. Tallon Chuan-Hoo Tan Yao-Hua Tan Qian Tang Xinlin Tang Mohan R. Tanniru Monideepa Tarafdar Nolan Taylor Orkun Temizkan Gary F. Templeton Hock Hai Teo Thompson Teo Matthew Thatcher Dominic Thomas Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong Ryad Titah Yanbin Tu Ofir Turel Tuure Tuunanen Doug Twitchell Nathan W. Twyman Rustam Vahidov Ganesan Vaidyanathan Anthony Vance Goetz Viering Padmal Vitharana Radu Vlas Douglas Vogel Sebastian Voigt Jan vom Brocke Heinz-Theo Wagner Steven Walczak Eric Walden Joseph Walls Zhiping Walter Bin Wang Eric T.G. Wang Jingguo Wang Michael S. Wang Qiu-Hong Wang Shouhong Wang Sophia Wang Weiquan Wang Yinglei Wang Y. Richard Wang Sidne Ward Mary Beth Watson-Manheim Sunil Wattal Thomas Weber Chih-Ping Wei Markus Weinmann Tim Weitzel John Wells Robert West J. Christopher Westland Jonathan Whitaker Michael E. Whitman Jeffrey L. Whitten George Widmeyer Rolf Wigand Fons Wijnhoven Robert Winter Christopher Wolfe Christina Wong Charles A. Wood Hans Wortmann Ryan Wright Dazhong Wu Weidong Xia Mingdi Xin Heng Xu Hongjiang Xu Lizhen Xu Peng Xu Yunjie (Calvin) Xu Ling Xue Lucy Yan Yinping Yang Zhiyong Yang Oliver Yao Cheng Yi Denny Yin Zhitao Yin Byungjoon Yoo Yufei Yuan Wei T. Yue Fatemeh (Mariam) Zahedi Chun Zeng Dongsong Zhang Han Zhang Jennifer Zhang John Zhang Ping Zhang Xiaoquan Zhang Yulei Zhang Zhu Zhang Huimin Zhao J. Leon Zhao Kexin Zhao Xia Zhao Dmitry Zhdanov Lina Zhou Yilu Zhou Zhongyun Zhou Hongwei Zhu Youlong Zhuang Moshe Zviran Let us now proceed to the papers.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2017)
It has been said, not infrequently, that our field has a tendency to overlook the real issues facing our society, our organizations, and all of us as individuals and social actors, while focusing on topics that lend themselves more readily to academic research. The special issue on Creating Social Value with Information that you will read here gainsays that. Guest-edited by Justin Scott Giboney, Robert O. Briggs, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., the special issue demonstrates how our research methodologies and our research tradition can produce actionable results—and cumulate knowledge while doing so. Automated risk assessment based on the nuances of facial expressions, automatic approaches to the prevention (rather than postmortems of occurrences) of cyber attacks, data mining to identify risk factors in safety management systems, collaborative brainstorming, the improved deployment of renewable energy resources, and privacy protection while sharing information—all these are the subjects of research work presented in the special issue. The guest editors will further introduce the articles. In the first work in the general section, Chaitanya Sambhara, Arun Rai, Mark Keil, and Vijay Kasi investigate the risks attendant on the reverse auctions used most commonly in B2B procurement. Reverse auctions are an important complement to the relationship-based maintenance of steady supply chains. They can also damage buyer–supplier relationships, if not used judiciously, with appropriate management and risk controls. What these appropriate controls are is surfaced in the article via a Delphi study combining the perspectives of buyers (prone to overuse such auctions) and suppliers (prone to resist their use). Grounding themselves in several theoretical perspectives, the authors classify the risks and identify the effective controls. As computer-based guidance expands in scope and depth, the partitioning of work among people and machines moves to the center of policymaking attention. Much research has been devoted to the computer-based systems that help to overcome human information-processing limitations and cognitive biases, and to the humans compensating for the narrowness and brittleness of computer-based systems. In the next article, Andrew Hardin, Clayton A. Looney, and Gregory D. Moody investigate the effects of suggestive guidance by decision support systems, the guidance that proposes a solution, rather than simply informing users. This guidance is often combined with credibility indicators for the suggested course of action. The authors show how more or less aggressive guidance combines with the credibility indicators to push users toward more or less risky decisions. Online reviews have been a subject of extensive research, insofar as in many cases they are able to sway the public toward a product or away from it. In the case examined in the next article, early success and continuing receipts from of a theater-based movie release can be significantly affected by online opinions—but the authors show that these effects will differ depending on the type of online review platform. The authors, Jianxiong Huang, Wai Fong Boh, and Kim Huat Goh, offer highly nuanced results. These results are based on a very comprehensive data set and grounded in information-processing theory. They provide guidance for future researchers—and those offering all experience goods. Philip Menard, Gregory J. Bott, and Robert E. Crossler study user motivation in engaging in secure behaviors in the information systems (IS) context. The authors empirically compare the effectiveness of two motivation theories that serve to elicit these secure behaviors. When stripped to the core, it is fear versus an intrinsic desire to behave in a secure manner. The authors show that the effects of the two approaches differ significantly. Based on their analysis and the empirics, the authors offer and demonstrate the effectiveness of an approach that integrates both theories of secure user behavior. Considering the key importance of the human element in IS security, the work is very much of the moment.

Special Issue: On the Contributions of Applied Science/Engineering Research to Information Systems - Briggs, Robert O; Nunamaker, Jay F; Giboney, Justin S (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2015)
JAY F. NUNAMAKER, JR. is Regents and Soldwedel Professor of MIS, Computer Science, and Communication, and director of the Center for the Management of Information and the National Center for Border Security at the University of Arizona. He received his Ph.D. in operations research and systems engineering from Case Institute of Technology, an M.S. and B.S. in engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University. He received his professional engineer’s license in 1965. He was inducted into the Design Science Hall of Fame in May 2008. He received the LEO Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Information Systems (AIS) and was elected a Fellow of the AIS. He was featured in the July 1997 issue of Forbes magazine on technology as one of the eight key innovators in information technology. He is widely published, with an h-index of 60. He specializes is in system analysis and design, collaboration technology, and deception detection. The commercial product, GroupSystems’ ThinkTank, based on his research, is often referred to as the gold standard for structured collaboration systems. He founded the MIS Department at the University of Arizona in 1974 and served as department head for eighteen years. ROBERT O. BRIGGS (corresponding author: rbriggs@mail.sdsu.edu) is a professor of information systems at San Diego State University. He earned his doctorate in management information systems at the University of Arizona. He researches the cognitive foundations of collaboration and uses his findings to design new collaborative work practices and technologies. He is a cofounder of the collaboration engineering field and co-inventor of the ThinkLets design pattern language for collaborative work processes. He has designed collaboration systems and collaborative workspaces for industry, academia, government, and the military. He co-chairs the Collaboration Systems and Technology track for the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. He has published more than two hundred scholarly works on collaboration systems and technology, addressing issues of team productivity, technology-supported learning, creativity, satisfaction, and technology transition. JUSTIN S. GIBONEY is an assistant professor of information technology management at the University at Albany. His research focuses on behavioral information security, deception detection, expert systems, and meta-analytic processes. He emphasizes design science research and system building to solve real-world problems with technology. He has received several grants and has published journal and conference papers. This Special Issue focuses on the unique contributions of applied science/engineering research (AS/E) to the information systems (IS) literature.1 Scientific method comprises four modes of inquiry: exploratory, theoretical, experimental, and AS/E research. Each mode has different research goals, so each creates different classes of scholarly knowledge and consequently has different research products. Each must therefore use a different logic for demarcating what is known from what is only conjectured, believed, hoped, or feared. Each consequently has different standards of rigor. There are clear boundaries between the four modes of inquiry, but they compose an elegant, integrated whole that moves humanity from cruder to more sophisticated understandings of reality. To clarify the role of AS/E research and its place in IS as a discipline, consider first a brief reprise of the other three modes. One who is familiar with the philosophy of science might be tempted to skip the next three paragraphs but, in so doing, might miss the delight of discovering outrageous, wrongheaded assertions that offend one’s scholarly sensibilities, or of having one’s convictions affirmed, or possibly both, so consider reading on. The goal of exploratory research is to discover and describe phenomena, their correlates, and the conditions and contexts under which they manifest. A phenomenon is an observed variation in the value of the property of an entity in the universe [6]. The products of exploratory research are several, among them: detailed descriptions of phenomena and the conditions under which they appear; classification schemes and taxonomies, process models, and when regular patterns of correlation have been observed across a wide range of conditions, models of observed correlations (called grounded theories by Stebbins [5], although other authors apply that label to other concepts). Two important standards of rigor for exploratory research are: first, that reports of the contexts and conditions under which phenomena and their correlates are observed should be reported in rich detail; and second, that authors should be scrupulous to avoid any imputations of causality to their observations. The disciplines of exploratory research offer no logic by which to assert causality. Causal words such as “affects, determines, impacts, triggers, influences, interferes with, or impedes” insert fatal flaws into exploratory findings, rendering them indefensible. To contribute value, exploratory research must be conveyed in the language of relationships, for example, “We discovered a strong association between A and B; C is related to D; E correlates with F,” and in cases where unequivocal empirical evidence shows a stable relationship across many conditions, “G predicts H.” There is more to exploratory research, for example, that it is validated by concatenation rather than by replication, so if your curiosity persists, we commend you to the thoughts of Stebbins [5]. Let us leave this topic, though, with a final thought: but for exploratory research, there would be nothing about which theorists could theorize, and thus no theories for experimentalist to test, and thus no scientific knowledge for the AS/E researcher to bring to bear. Exploratory research is the foundation upon which all other science builds. The goal of theoretical research is to predict and explain discovered phenomena and correlations. Theoretical research produces only one kind of model, called by Gregor [2] theories that predict and explain, also known as general and covering laws, received theory, formal theory, among other labels. We will call them simply, “causal theories.”2 Science is replete with other kinds of useful models that also bear the label “theory.” These are not products of theoretical research, but of exploratory and AS/E research. A causal theory is a collection of two kinds of statements, which we will call axioms and propositions, even as we acknowledge that other authors label them differently, and still others use the terms “axiom” and “proposition” to label other concepts. In this context, axioms state assumptions about causal mechanisms in the universe that could account for observed phenomena. Propositions are functional statements of cause and effect that posit a causal relationship between a causal construct and a consequent construct that represents the phenomenon of interest. It Is beyond the scope of this introduction to articulate the logic of causal theory development, but for an example of such logic, see [2]. Among the several standards of rigor for theoretical research are (a) that the constructs in the proposition must be defined with sufficient specificity that they can be distinguished from other closely related constructs [1]; (b) that theoretical propositions must be derived by internally consistent deductive logic from the axioms; and (c) that the resulting theoretical model must be falsifiable [3]. The goal of experimental research is to test the degree to which a theoretical proposition is consistent with reality. The experimenter tries to imagine evidence that could break a theoretical proposition in as efficient and compelling manner as possible, and expresses the approach as a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a comparative statement that contrasts the value of a dependent variable that measures the consequent construct across at least two treatments that manipulate the value of an independent variable that represents the causal construct of the proposition to be tested. The first standard of rigor for experimental research is that hypotheses must be derived by rigorous deductive logic from the theoretical propositions they are meant to test. If, as often happens in IS research, hypotheses are advanced without supporting logic, or are derived by inductive reasoning from prior reports of observed correlations, then these studies are not instances of experimental research. They are instead instances of exploratory research using experimental techniques, and so would have to be reported with exploratory rigor, including rich detail about the conditions under which phenomena were observed, and excluding causal language. The research products of experimental work are many, but chief among them are reports of experimental studies. The standards of rigor for experimental research are numerous and unforgiving, because experimental research offers the only logic in scientific method by which causality may be asserted. The standards for establishing the rigor of experimental research pertaining to, for example, construct validity, internal validity, and external validity are well articulated elsewhere (e.g., [4]) so we will not belabor them here. It is accepted that experimental research does not prove the theories it tests; at best it only fails to break them. Theories are therefore not advanced as truth, but rather as useful models, approximate representations of reality, to be held only until they can be broken. Breaking a theory creates new knowledge, and paves the way for developing new theories that model reality more closely than did their predecessors. If science were to end with experimental research, then it would bring no benefit to society beyond its entertainment value. However, there is more science to be done. This brings us to AS/E research. In the field of medicine, AS/E is called “translational research.” Various other disciplines have focused on certain aspects of AS/E and localized them to address their needs. In information systems, for example, design science research prescribes a high-level process for conducting AS/E research streams centered on the designed artifacts that compose information systems. The goals of AS/E research are:To discover and describe important classes of unsolved problems in the field To derive generalizable requirements for solutions to classes of unsolved problems To design generalizable solutions for classes of unsolved problems To develop exemplar instances of generalizable solutions To test the degree to which exemplar instances solve the classes of unsolved problems To create design theories—bodies of knowledge that practitioners can use to develop their own instances of a generalizable solution The contributions unique to AS/E flow from its goals: problem descriptions, generalizable requirements for solutions, generalizable solutions, exemplar instances of solutions, empirical validations of solution efficacy and generalizability, and toward the end of a successful AS/E research stream, design theories. The standards of rigor for AS/E contributions also flow from the goals. Researchers must address not a single local problem but a class of problems. The researchers must argue the importance of the class of problems and must demonstrate that the problem remains unsolved. Requirements must be generalizable, which means that no matter what solution emerges, it has to meet those requirements in order to solve the problem. Proposed solutions must be generalizable, which means they can be adapted to solving the class of problems across a wide range of contexts where it manifests. Exemplar instances of the solution must be sufficiently complete and robust that its efficacy can be demonstrated. Tests of the solution must make it logically possible to determine the degree to which the solution improves outcomes of interest. Design theories must be sufficiently complete that practitioners can use them successfully to implement their own instances of the generalizable solution, and sufficiently parsimonious to minimize cognitive load. Given the definition of AS/E as “the use of scientific knowledge and methods to solve practical problems,” one might object, “But then it’s not really science, is it? Because it doesn’t create new knowledge. It just scoops up knowledge created by the real scientists and finds some mundane but practical use for it.” Au contraire. To conduct sound AS/E, a researcher must be the master of all four modes of inquiry and must practice them vigorously and rigorously to excel. As a consequence, AS/E research tends to spin off numerous contributions to exploratory, theoretical, and experimental research even as it contributes its own unique classes of knowledge. Discovering and describing important classes of unsolved problems in the field is an instance of discovering and describing phenomena, their correlates, and the conditions under which they manifest, because problems are defined in terms of unacceptable values for phenomena of interest. To make even the first AS/E contribution, therefore, researchers must use the disciplines of exploratory research. Sometimes, the literature does not yet contain theoretical models to explain the variations in the outcomes-of-interest, but such models could be useful to explain unacceptable current conditions, to suggest counterintuitive solutions, and to predict the effects of design choices toward improving outcomes. The AS/E researcher may therefore need to conduct theoretical research to derive a useful theory. If derived with scientific rigor, such a theory could be generally useful even to basic researchers with no interest in the problem space. Thus, an academic field driven by AS/E research can become a reference discipline for basic research in another field, so AS/E makes contributions to theoretical research. When an AS/E researcher tests a solution informed by a rigorously derived theory, if that test conforms to the disciplines of experimental research, then the study simultaneously evaluates a solution and tests a theoretical proposition. The study contributes to both experimental and AS/E research. Thus, AS/E is not a pseudoscience, sweeping up the leavings of the “real scientists.” It is the rich and rigorous practice of all science in service of practical goals. And that, in the end, is the point of science—to increase the likelihood that people will survive and thrive. In information systems, AS/E brings all of science to bear on the unique and defining purpose of our field: to understand and improve the ways people create value with information. The first paper in this special issue, “The Last Research Mile: Achieving Both Rigor and Relevance in Information Systems Research,” by Jay F. Nunamaker, Jr., Robert O. Briggs, Douglas C. Derrick, and Gerhard Schwabe, builds the case that researchers who shepherd their scholarly insights about information systems through the last research mile, that is, from conception through successful transition to the workplace, have the potential to produce more scholarly knowledge in all four modes of inquiry than do those who do not traverse the last mile. They elaborate the last research mile as three stages: proof-of-concept research to demonstrate the functional feasibility of a solution; proof-of-value research to investigate whether a solution can create value across a variety of conditions; and proof-of-use research to address complex issues of operational feasibility. They explain why last-mile researchers need exploratory, theoretical, and experimental research to attain their AS/E goals. They also argue that going the last research mile negates the assumption that one must trade off rigor and relevance in IS research, showing it to be a false dilemma. They demonstrate their positions with examples from IS research spanning more than forty years. The balance of the papers in the special issue are recent instances of AS/E research. Shi Ying Lim, Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa, and Holly J. Lanham, in their paper “Barriers to Interorganizational Knowledge Transfer in Post-Hospital Care Transitions: Review and Directions for Information Systems Research,” focus on systems to create physical value with information—health and well-being. The study winnowed an initial pool of 3,781 papers down to 70 that gave detailed qualitative reports of high-risk transitions from hospital care to care by community providers to better understand barriers to knowledge transfer in these interorganizational collaborations. The analysis showed that time pressure tends to inhibit multilateral knowledge transfers, accommodation of fluctuating absorptive capacities, and reconciliation of knowledge and goal conflicts. Having discovered and reported an important class of unsolved problems in the field, they propose an agenda for health information technology capabilities to address these barriers. A related paper, “Anatomy of Successful Business Models for Complex Services: Insights from the Telemedicine Field,” by Christoph Peters, Ivo Blohm, and Jan Marco Leimeister, identifies a variety of factors that make it difficult to develop sustainable business models for widespread provision of telemedicine services. Using a design research approach, the authors work with practitioners in the field to develop a generalizable framework for classification and assessment of business models in all domains of complex services, the identification of white spots for future business opportunities, and the identification of patterns for successful business models. They contribute a specific business model framework for the telemedicine industry, and present an approach for systematically designing business models for complex services. They illustrate how such business model frameworks can be enriched by considering competition and the role of IS in the business models. In their paper, “It Is Not Just About Competition with ‘Free’: Differences Between Content Formats in Consumer Preferences and Willingness to Pay,” Benedikt Berger, Christian Matt, Dennis M. Steininger, and Thomas Hess address another pervasive monetization struggle, to wit, the many providers who struggle to monetize the provision of online content. The authors argue that the widespread availability of free content online cannot fully account for low willingness to pay, and report that customers for many kinds of content are willing to pay for it, but that they find the offline delivery formats preferable to the online formats for the same content, while other potential customers find some online formats preferable to other online formats, but do not own the devices that could provide them the format they prefer. Among their several discoveries, they found that the smaller the screen on a consumer’s device, the less the consumer was willing to pay for given content. They discuss the implications of their findings for the revenue models of content providers and propose a broader research agenda for monetizing content. Finally, in “Evaluating Team Collaboration Quality: The Development and Field Application of a Collaboration Maturity Model,” Imed Boughzala and Gert-Jan de Vreede argue that collaboration quality directly affects an organization’s performance. The authors conduct an AS/E study to address an important unsolved problem in the field: measuring the quality of collaboration with and across organizational boundaries. They present a generalizable solution to the problem based on a new collaboration maturity model for assessing the maturity of an organization’s teamwork processes. They developed the model in the field with professional business unit managers, then assessed its utility in a proof-of-value study within a large automobile manufacturing enterprise. The paper makes theoretical and practical contributions to collaboration science and collaboration engineering. Each of the AS/E studies in this issue identifies an important class of unsolved problems in the field, and each of them brings scientific knowledge and methods to bear in designing generalizable solutions to those problems, developing exemplar instances of those solutions, and testing their efficacy. Each contributes new knowledge to the IS literature. These papers were developed based on the initial versions presented at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. We commend them to your reading. Notes 1.Like most concepts in the philosophy of science, AS/E appears under many labels. In some parts of the world applied science is highly regarded, whereas engineering research is regarded as little more than vocational training. In other parts of the world, the reverse is true. We accommodate the linguistic richness of science by using both labels, then abbreviating both of them so that the labels cease to distract from the concept. 2.Some postmodern philosophers object, arguing that causality is an obsolete concept that may not even exist in reality. We bypass that concern by asserting causality as a property of the model rather than as a property of reality. The universe is infinitely complex and our minds are not. A useful theory is a simplification of reality that humans can understand, that is nonetheless sufficiently consistent with reality that its logic can be used to predict and explain phenomena. If assuming causality increases understanding of reality, even imperfectly, then it is useful. REFERENCES 1.Bacharach, S. Organizational theories: Some criteria for evaluation. Academy of Management Review, 14, 4 (1989), 496–515. 2.Gregor, S. The nature of theory in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 30, 3 (2006), 611–642. 3.Popper, K.R. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books, 1959. 4.Shadish, W.R., Cook, T.D., and Campbell, D.T., Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 2002. 5.Stebbins, R. Exploratory Research in the Social Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001. 6.Weber, R. Evaluating and developing theories in the information systems discipline. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 13, 1 (2012), 1–30.

Special Issue: Trust in Online Environments - Benbasat, Izak; Gefen, David; Pavlou, Paul A (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2008)
David Gefen is an Associate Professor of MIS at Drexel University. He received his Ph.D. in CIS from Georgia State University and a Master of Sciences in MIS from Tel-Aviv University. His research focuses on psychological and rational processes involved in enterprise resource planning, computer-mediated communication, and e-commerce implementation management. Dr. Gefen’s wide interests in IT adoption stem from his 12 years of experience in developing and managing large information systems. His research findings have been published in Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Engineering Management, DATABASE, Omega, Journal of the AIS, and others. He sits on the editorial boards of MIS Quarterly, DATABASE, and International Journal of e-Collaboration. Paul A. Pavlou is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the University of California at Riverside. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 2004. His research focuses on trust, online marketplaces, e-commerce, and information systems strategy. His research has appeared in Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Journal of the AIS, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Communications of the ACM, Decision Sciences, and others. His work has been cited over 400 times according to the Institute of Scientific Information and over 1,300 times according to Google Scholar. Dr. Pavlou won many Best Paper awards for his research, including the Information Systems Research Best Paper award in 2007, the 2006 IS Publication of the Year award, the Top 5 Papers award in Decision Sciences in 2006, the Runner-Up to the Best Paper award of the 2005 Academy of Management Conference, the Best Doctoral Dissertation award of the 2004 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), the Best Interactive Paper award of the 2002 Academy of Management Conference, and the Best Student Paper award of the 2001 Academy of Management Conference (OCIS Division). He also won several Best Reviewer awards, including the 2003 MIS Quarterly Reviewer of the Year award and the Best Reviewer award of the 2005 Academy of Management Conference. He sits on the editorial boards of MIS Quarterly, Journal of the AIS, International Journal of Economic Commerce, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, and DATABASE. Over the past decade, there have been significant advances in understanding the antecedents and consequences of online trust in electronic commerce and online marketplaces. Building on this research stream, this Special Issue of the Journal of Management Information Systems attracted state-of-the-art research that extends the limits of knowledge in understanding the nature, antecedents, and consequences of trust in online environments. A key criterion in the review process was contribution to theory, because, as we explain in more detail in our paper on the research agenda in the domain, the study of trust in online environments requires a strong theoretical basis. Expanding the frontiers of science on this topic at this stage requires more than adding a few new constructs to existing models, considering research has already established the structure of online trust (e.g., [14]) and its relationship to information technology (IT) adoption [9]. The 10 papers in this Special Issue were selected after a three-cycle "review and revise" process from among the 57 papers originally submitted. These papers successfully expanded trust theory in the context of online environments into the realms of culture and gender, justice, desocialization and trust, branding alliances, regulations on privacy, trust building over time, recommendation agents, and system characteristics. These 10 papers apply a wide array of research methods, including surveys, experimental designs, interviews, analytical modeling, and longitudinal experimental scenarios. The papers deal with many topics of importance to current and emerging online environments, including e-commerce, infomediaries, and mobile commerce. In this collection of papers, we also included "A Research Agenda for Trust in Online Environments," which describes our views on the direction that research on trust in online environments should take. Trust and Culture The first three papers in this Special Issue deal with culture. Trust and culture are closely related [4], and probably one cannot be properly understood without the other [11]. Expanding trust research, in general, in this direction is important because most trust research has been conducted in the United States, and the United States is, to some extent, a stand-alone culture with its exceptionally high degree of individualism and low degrees of uncertainty avoidance. Indeed, research in other realms has questioned whether findings from the United States can be readily generalized to other cultures [2]. This is particularly important in the context of trust, which is at the heart of culture. Empirically highlighting this need, the little research that did previously examine culture and online trust across cultures came up with mixed results: showing consistent relationships among the United States, Israel, and Australia [12], all quite similar culturally, or suggesting the need to include culture in the model because trust, and its antecedents, changed across cultures [6, 10, 13, 16, 23]. None of this research has made its way into the top journals, and so we are happy to introduce this crucial aspect of trust in this Special Issue. All papers on trust and culture highlight the need to include culture in the study of e-commerce based on aspects of the cultural dimensions introduced by Hofstede [11]. The culture papers start with a paper by Dan J. Kim. In a paper titled "Self-Perception-Based Versus Transference-Based Trust Determinants in Computer-Mediated Transactions: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Study," he compares the Korean and U.S. consumers, as exemplars of collective, strong uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and high-context culture in Korea, on one hand, and individualistic, low uncertainty avoidance, short-term orientation, and low-context culture in the United States, on the other. The comparison of these two samples is supportive of the need to include culture in the study of trust in e-commerce, especially as transference-based antecedents of trust were significant in the Korean sample but not in the U.S. sample, and privacy concerns of more importance in the United States. The second culture paper is by Dianne Cyr. In a paper titled "Modeling Web Site Design Across Cultures: Relationships to Trust, Satisfaction, and E-Loyalty," she compares samples from Canada, Germany, and China. The trust antecedents here deal with information design, navigation design, and visual design. The comparison of these samples is also supportive of the need to include culture in the study of trust in e-commerce. Again, consistently across cultures, trust had approximately the same effect on the outcome variable, but the relative importance of the Web site design characteristics—that is, the trust antecedents in this study—differed across cultures. Expanding the study of culture beyond e-commerce, Anthony Vance, Christophe Elie-dit-cosaque, and Detmar W. Straub study online trust in the context of mobile commerce in their paper titled "Examining Trust in Information Technology Artifacts: The Effects of System Quality and Culture." They investigate if two system quality constructs—navigational structure and visual appeal—would influence trust in mobile commerce technologies. They also consider the effect of culture, individually and in conjunction with the two system quality constructs, by comparing the trust placed by French and American potential users in m-commerce technologies. Both of the system quality variables, culture, as well as the interaction of trust and navigational structure, influenced users’ trust in IT artifacts. This study is novel in that it contributes to the "trust in IT" literature by extending it beyond the commonly studied context of recommendation agents in e-commerce [25, 26] into mobile commerce technologies. In sum, these three papers conclude that although the importance of trust may not vary significantly across cultures, its antecedents do. Among the cultural dimensions, collectivism and uncertainty avoidance are the key elements of culture that affect trust antecedents in all of these studies, and support the theoretical propositions by Doney et al. [4] and the empirical conclusion by Gefen and Heart [6]. Trust and Gender Related to this sequence on culture, Neveen F. Awad and Arik Ragowsky examine whether gender affects trust and e-commerce based on an expansion of sociolinguistic theory in a paper titled "Establishing Trust in Electronic Commerce Through Online Word of Mouth: An Examination Across Genders." Sociolinguistics holds that communicating across genders is sometimes reminiscent of communicating across cultures, because men and women communicate and understand communication differently, each sex applying and seeking different social messages through communication. Men seek to establish social hierarchy, women to create inclusion [24]. With a unique sample of over 1,500 survey respondents drawn from the population at large, Awad and Ragowsky expand these previous sociolinguistic gender studies about IT adoption [5, 8] and virtual communities [7] to show that gender also affects the trust and technology acceptance model [9] as well as some specific trust antecedents in word-of-mouth systems on retailer Web sites. The authors show that women are more affected by trust than men, and, in accordance with sociolinguistic-predicted behavior in other settings, that while men value their ability to post more than women, women value the responsiveness of others more. Trust and Justice Expanding the theory of trust in a new direction, Ofir Turel, Yufei Yuan, and Catherine E. Connelly, in their paper titled "In Justice We Trust: Predicting User Acceptance of E-Customer Services," develop a model that incorporates trust and perceived justice. Using an experimental design, this study makes a unique contribution by showing the validity of integrating justice theory into trust theory. Justice theory discusses four types of justice—procedural, distributive, interpersonal, and informational—as antecedents of behavioral intentions [3]. As the authors show, trust fully mediated the effects of all these justice beliefs except for informational justice. Considering procedural justice and distributive justice are the main types discussed in the literature, this study confirms the central role of trust as conceived in previous research as an enabler in e-commerce by casting it as the reason why the fairness of the interaction affects behavioral intentions. Combined with other studies where trust mediated such antecedents [18], these conclusions support the conclusion that trust is the main driver in e-commerce [21]. Considering the importance of culture’s influence on trust, and considering the differences in the perception of fairness across cultures and probably between the sexes, adding a culture and gender dimension to further studies of justice and trust sounds a promising avenue. Trust and Privacy The topic of trust, privacy, and institutional governmental guarantees also receives attention in a paper titled "Gaining Trust Through Online Privacy Protection: Self-Regulation, Mandatory Standards, or Caveat Emptor," by Zhulei Tang, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, and Michael D. Smith. This paper focuses on whether, how, and to what degree of effectiveness online privacy protection can be enhanced by consumers’ trust in firms and by governmental regulation. Using analytical modeling, this paper shows that credible and unambiguous signals can build consumers’ trust in firms, and thus enhance social welfare. Because consumers often find it difficult to precontractually identify and select firms that have the ability and willingness to protect consumer privacy [20], trust helps overcome online privacy concerns. Interestingly, even though governmental regulation also builds consumers’ trust and facilitates online privacy protection, it is not optimal in most online environments due to lower profit margins and higher prices for consumers compared to trust building. This paper adds to the trust literature (e.g., [15, 18]) that has argued that trust acts as a lubricant for consumer–firm relationships, and that institutional guarantees may not be as cost-effective as relationship trust building. Trust and Auctions Related to the study of trust and online auctions, Mohamed Hédi Charki and Emmanuel Josserand examine the role of online reverse auctions on interorganizational trust among buyers and suppliers in the retail industry in their paper titled "Online Reverse Auctions and the Dynamics of Trust." Building on the notion of the spirit of the technology and the organizing vision, and using qualitative methodology with 70 field interviews from buyers and suppliers in the French retail industry, the authors show that desocialization associated with the introduction of online reverse auctions leads to distrust. The authors also show the destructive role of technical problems and rumors on the formation of both trust and distrust, which is posited as a distinct construct. This paper relates to the extensive literature that relates to trust and online auctions (e.g., [1]), but it extends the literature by going beyond trust to examine the formation of distrust. It also relates to the literature on psychological contract violation in online auctions (e.g., [19]) in the sense that negative incidents and unethical perceptions—similar to psychological contract violations—lead to the reduction of trust and the formation of distrust. Trust and Web Site Quality Paul Benjamin Lowry, Anthony Vance, Greg Moody, Bryan Beckman, and Aaron Read examine how unfamiliar Web sites use branding alliances and Web site features to improve their brand image and increase consumers’ trust in their paper titled "Explaining and Predicting the Impact of Branding Alliances and Web Site Quality on Initial Consumer Trust of E-Commerce Web Sites." Building on the literature on third-party trust transference (e.g., [18, 22]) and using an experimental study, the authors show that branding alliances help transfer positive impressions to unknown Web sites and increase initial trust formation. The paper’s interesting finding is that Web site quality and branding alliances are important constructs in building trust in unknown Web sites, while Web site quality affects brand image. Therefore, while trust transference from third parties is important, Web site characteristics also affect brand image, thus contributing to the information systems (IS) and marketing literature in terms of how brand image is enhanced. It also contributes to the e-commerce literature (e.g., [17]) that examines how Web site characteristics lead to the success of commercial Web sites. Trust and Infomediaries Fatemeh "Mariam" Zahedi and Jaeki Song examine trust building over time in their paper titled "Dynamics of Trust Revision: Using Health Infomediaries." Using a longitudinal laboratory experimental scenario, this study shows that the structure of trust changes over time. Information quality becomes the most important predictor of trust in infomediaries and satisfaction plays an important role in building trust. The interesting insight of this paper is that it goes beyond initial trust formation to longitudinally examine the dynamics of trust evolution and show that the structure of trust changes over time. Specifically, the results show that information quality is the single most influential predictor of trust building in infomediaries over time, while satisfaction substantially changes customers’ trust beliefs. Trust and Recommendation Agents Weiquan Wang and Izak Benbasat examine trust in decision support technologies for e-commerce (recommendation agents) in their paper titled "Attributions of Trust in Decision Support Technologies: A Study of Recommendation Agents for E-Commerce." The authors investigate the reasons why consumers trust or do not trust decision support technologies in their early stages of trust formation. Using an experimental study that includes a multimethod approach for collecting quantitative and qualitative data (content analysis), the study respondents were asked to explain the reasons for trusting (or not) recommendation agents. Most interestingly, the study identifies the positive and negative reasons for increasing or decreasing trust, respectively, resulting in a comprehensive list of factors that positively and negatively influence trust in decision support technologies for e-commerce. References 1. Ba, S., and Pavlou, P.A. Evidence of the effect of trust building technology in electronic markets: Price premium and buyer behavior. MIS Quarterly, 26, 3 (2002), 243–268. 2. Bagozzi, R.P.; Wong, N.; Abe, S.; and Bergami, M. Cultural and situational contingencies and the theory of reasoned action: Application to fast food restaurant consumption. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 9, 2 (2000), 97–106. 3. Colquitt, J.A.; Conlon, D.E.; Wesson, M.J.; Porter, C.; and Ng, K.Y. Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 3 (2001), 425–445. 4. Doney, P.M.; Cannon, J.P.; and Mullen, M.R. Understanding the influence of national culture on the development of trust. Academy of Management Review, 23, 3 (1998), 601–620. 5. Gefen, D. Tutorial assessing unidimensionality through LISREL: An explanation and example. Communications of the AIS, 12, 2 (2003), 1–26. 6. Gefen, D., and Heart, T. On the need to include national culture as a central issue in e-commerce trust beliefs. Journal of Global Information Systems, 14, 4 (2006), 1–30. 7. Gefen, D., and Ridings, C. If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do: A sociolinguistics perspective of gender differences in virtual communities. DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems, 36, 2 (2005), 78–92. 8. Gefen, D., and Straub, D.W. Gender differences in perception and adoption of e-mail: An extension to the technology acceptance model. MIS Quarterly, 21, 4 (1997), 389–400. 9. Gefen, D.; Karahanna, E.; and Straub, D.W. Trust and TAM in online shopping: An integrated model. MIS Quarterly, 27, 1 (2003), 51–90. 10. Gefen, D.; Rose, G.M.; Warkentin, M.; and Pavlou, P.A. Cultural diversity and trust in IT adoption: A comparison of USA and South African e-voters. Journal of Global Information Systems, 13, 1 (2004), 54–78. 11. Hofstede, G. Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. London: Sage, 1980. 12. Jarvenpaa, S.L., and Tractinsky, N. Consumer trust in an Internet store: A cross-cultural validation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 5, 2 (1999), 1–35. 13. Lim, K.H.; Leung, K.; Sia, C.L.; and Lee, M.K. Is e-commerce boundary-less? Effects of individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance on Internet shopping. Journal of International Business Studies, 35, 6 (2004), 545–559. 14. McKnight, D.H.; Choudhury, V.; and Kacmar, C. Developing and validating trust measures for e-commerce: An integrative typology. Information Systems Research, 13, 3 (2002), 334–359. 15. Pavlou, P.A. Institution-based trust in interorganizational exchange relationships: The role of online B2B marketplaces on trust formation. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 11, 5–6 (2002), 215–243. 16. Pavlou, P.A., and Chai, L. What drives electronic commerce across cultures? A cross-cultural empirical investigation of the theory of planned behavior. Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 3, 4 (2002), 240–253. 17. Pavlou, P.A., and Fygenson, M. Understanding and predicting electronic commerce adoption: An extension of the theory of planned behavior. MIS Quarterly, 30, 1 (2006), 115–143. 18. Pavlou, P., and Gefen, D. Building effective online marketplaces with institution-based trust. Information Systems Research, 15, 1 (2004), 37–59. 19. Pavlou, P.A., and Gefen, D. Psychological contract violation in online marketplaces: Antecedents, consequences, and moderating role. Information Systems Research, 16, 4 (2005), 273–299. 20. Pavlou, P.A.; Liang, H.; and Xue, Y. Understanding and mitigating uncertainty in online environments: An agency theory perspective. MIS Quarterly, 31, 1 (2007), 105–136. 21. Reichheld, F.F., and Schefter, P. E-loyalty: Your secret weapon on the Web. Harvard Business Review, 78, 4 (2000), 105–113. 22. Stewart, K.J. Trust transfer on the World Wide Web. Organization Science, 14, 1 (2003), 5–17. 23. Strong, K., and Weber, J. The myth of the trusting culture. Business & Society, 37, 2 (1998), 157–183. 24. Tannen, D. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994. 25. Wang, W., and Benbasat, I. Integrating TAM with trust to explain online recommendation agent adoption. 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Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2009)
Editorial Introduction After several decades of developing information systems (IS), we are still learning and we still have a lot to learn about the product and the process of development. The 2009 Standish Group’s CHAOS report showed that, on the annual basis, only 32 percent of IS projects fully succeeded by having delivered on time, within the budget, and with the required functions and features, while 24 percent of the projects were failures--canceled, or with products delivered and not used [1]. Project governance and management have a lot do with these outcomes. The need to control the projects under a great diversity of sources for system provisioning, from outsourcing to the assimilation of open source software, is a complicating factor. In the first paper of the issue, Amrit Tiwana and Mark Keil present the results of their empirical investigation of the project control used in internal versus outsourced projects and relate these controls to project outcomes. The authors are able to offer a highly nuanced view of control effectiveness, quite remote from that of "control is good" or "autonomy is best" slogans. Grounded theoretically, the work gathers several strands in IS project-control literature into a coherent picture of such control and outlines the directions for further refinement. Two following contributions to the issue study empirically the phenomena arising from the active participation of consumers in e‑E-E-E-commerce. Called collectively co‑production, these activities are opening the boundaries of contemporary organizations and changing their internal operation and corporate innovation. Crowdsourcing is in, but its methods have to be adapted to corporate needs and truly brought in to enhance corporate processes. In the first of the papers, Li Chen, Paulo Goes, James R. Marsden, and Zhongju Zhang investigate the deployment of internal preference markets for new product development. They use a field experiment in a major company as their research method. The authors focus on the effectiveness of--quite modest--incentives in obtaining superior results through such means as identifying promising emerging technologies for a given corporate context. The authors’ findings contribute both to our understanding of market operations and to the pragmatics of the deployment of this innovative technique for corporate innovation. With the Internet-Web compound as a powerful means of communication and collaboration, consumers are being drawn into the corporate processes of creating new products. We are just beginning to generalize and theorize from this recent and evolving experience. Johann Füller, Hans Mühlbacher, Kurt Matzler, and Gregor Jawecki base their work on an extensive data set on consumers who have participated in virtual co-creation. The authors build a model of perceived consumer enjoyment and empowerment, perceptions that should lead consumers to participate in future co-creation projects. As an emerging mode of production, co‑production will certainly evolve as it is supported by ever new approaches, incentives, and tools. If not properly supported and channeled, it may also wither away. This work, and the future research the present authors outline, is important in preventing such an outcome--and in gaining enhanced understanding of active consumption. In our knowledge society, intellectual property--such as software patents--is a weighty contributor to the capital portfolio of many firms and a potential source of information technology (IT)-based competitive advantage. Software-patent policy is also controversial, with its very raison d’être questioned from its very origins. Further evolution of this policy should serve the society at large, while fostering innovation. In a formal economic analysis within a duopolistic setting, Matt E. Thatcher and David E. Pingry arrive at the socially optimal policy for patent duration, along with the requirements for obtaining a patent, and the scope of pattern protection. The authors are able to determine the pragmatic advantages of such a policy, while also identifying its drawbacks for research investments. This is a broad foundation for the interpretation of the empirics and for further research. E‑E-E-E-commerce development, and the consumer intimacy required for effective location-based and contextual m‑E-E-E-commerce in particular, continues to challenge our expectations of privacy. With its essential property of universal cheap access and the anywhere added to the anytime, m‑E-E-E-commerce is now rapidly becoming the driver of e‑E-E-E-commerce. There are three essential ways to approach the privacy of users/consumers: government regulation, self-regulation by industry, and compensation for surrendering some privacy rights (in the countries where such a surrender is legal). Here, Heng Xu, Hock‑Hai Teo, Bernard C.Y. Tan, and Ritu Agarwal use a quasi-experiment to study individuals’ privacy calculus in their intention to disclose private information under the two essential information delivery mechanisms--push and pull. Grounded in the procedural and distributive justice theories, the results help us--the researchers and the practitioners--to discriminate among the efficacy of the three privacy intervention methods. Practitioners, in particular, will gain by learning the results regarding the compensation for location-based E-E-E-commerce in the push mode. E‑E-E-E-commerce has brought trust into the realm of central concerns of IS research. This journal has published a special issue devoted to trust in online environments, and we continue to receive numerous submissions on the subject. In the present issue, Dongmin Kim and Izak Benbasat deploy a rich theoretical perspective to contribute to the emerging theory of trust in e‑E-E-E-commerce. In an empirical study, the researchers investigate the impact of trust-assuring arguments provided on an electronic storefront as moderated by the price level of the product. Dichotomized in both source and content, the arguments fall into one of four possible categories, and the effect of price is nuanced, with some of the theoretically based expectations gainsaid. The practical significance of the results is clear, as is the contribution by our field to the general trust research. Two further papers in the issue apply formal methods of economics to nodal questions of the present IS environment. "Free" is a mantra of Internet-based E-E-E-commerce in the domain of digital products, underwritten by the negligible variable costs. "Free" is clearly not a complete business model. It is a means of marketing paid-for products by the supplier or by a third party. Here, Zhengrui Jiang and Sumit Sarkar study how an offer of a fully functional software product influences software diffusion. The authors’ findings show that under certain circumstances such an offer can significantly accelerate the diffusion process and is preferable to the alternative marketing means under the conditions the authors determine. The authors offer suggestions for the implementation of such a stimulation of diffusion, with the subsequent monetization. Formal economic modeling and analysis have been used extensively to study investments in IS security. Here, Marco Cremonini and Dmitri Nizovtsev provide a game-theoretic analysis in a setting of the interaction between the attackers and the defenders of the system. The authors endogenize the level of attack effort, as well as the information flows between the two parties. Indeed, signaling high security levels is a principal method of defense. The results are general within a broad scope of application. The work opens a new line of research on deterrence based on a strategic control of information disclosure to the attackers. The methods of information disclosure and signaling will certainly be researched in the future. Auction theory, like trust theory, has seen both extensive use and contributions by our field since the advent of e‑E-E-E-commerce. In the concluding paper of the issue, Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay and Seema Bandyopadhyay use multiple methods of inquiry to study speed prediction in online bidding. Using theoretically motivated formal modeling, with a confirmatory simulation experiment, the researchers obtain a parameterized predictive model that allows us to estimate the time needed to reach various price levels in an online auction. This is clearly of value to the auction companies, particularly as they are at present in need to enhance their business models. Price evolution in auction settings is an important area of study in its own right. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief Reference 1. New CHAOS numbers show startling results. Standish Group, Boston, April 23, 2009 (available at http://www1.standishgroup.com/newsroom/chaos_2009.php).

Corrigendum (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2018)
Article Title: “A Video-Based Screening System for Automated Risk Assessment Using Nuanced Facial Features” Authors: Steven J. Pentland, Nathan W. Twyman, Judee K. Burgoon, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., and Christopher B. R. Diller Journal: Journal of Management Information Systems Bibliometrics: Volume 34, Issue 4, pages 970–993 DOI: 10.1080/07421222.2017.1393304 On page 989, the first sentence of the first full paragraph was incorrect: “A multivariate regression model was specified with face measure as the independent variable and Guilt and Target Stimulus as dependent variables.” The designation of independent and dependent variables was incorrect. The sentence is corrected as follows: “A multivariate regression model was specified with face measure variance as the dependent variable and Guilt and Target Stimulus as independent variables.”

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2018)
The titles of the two special sections that open this issue of JMIS refer to the digital transformation that can be accomplished by the deployment of information technologies. There is no exaggeration in this. Cloud computing, the subject of the first of these two sections, has enabled new levels of organizational performance, inexpensive and fast startups owing to lower entry barriers, new effective business models, and the rapid creation of ecosystems on ever-new platforms. The new ways IT-enabled organizational ecosystems are able to function is the subject of the second special section that addresses vertical organizational relationships based on the supply-chain arrangements between and among firms. In the Special Section on The Transformative Value of Cloud Computing, the Guest Editors, Alexander Benlian, William J. Kettinger, Ali Sunyaev, and Till J. Winkler, present three papers. They deal, respectively, with the strategic value appropriation derived from moving to the cloud, key affordances of the platform-as-a-service in cloud computing, and the allocation of the benefits of cloud computing among potential beneficiaries in the consideration of social welfare. The Guest Editors introduce the problematic of transformation occasioned by cloud computing and present individual papers regarding the theoretical foundation, which they develop in their extensive introduction. The Special Section on The Digital Transformation of Vertical Organizational Relationships is guest-edited by Robert J. Kauffman and Thomas A. Weber. The papers presented analyze, respectively, the inter-border labor flows as transformed by the Internet-enabled IT and the transformed relationships between e-book publishers and retailers as a notable exemplar of the transformation of content markets. The Guest Editors provide detail in the introduction regarding the significance of these papers. Online user-innovation communities are an important aspect of sponsored co-creation, through which firms involve the users of their products along with their employees in product innovation. In their empirical work presented here, Jie (Kevin) Yan, Dorothy E. Leidner, and Hind Benbya focus their analysis on the effects of interaction with users on the innovation by firm’s employees, as the ideas are presented and built upon within the online communities. The researchers find marked effects of the user–employee interaction on the idea generation by employees and the influence of the employees’ promotion behaviors on the fate of the ideas offered by the users. Furthermore, the diversity of the ideas and the codification of their content significantly affect the generation and promotion of ideas. These results not only amplify the awareness that these communities are a garden that needs tending, they also tell you what to tend. Digital piracy has been with us for decades, as its objects are intangible and nonexcludable goods and as the Internet facilitates ubiquitous access to them. These goods are also nonrival in nature, which makes it easy to rationalize theft or breach of ethics as a victimless crime or transgression. Matthew J. Hashim, Karthik N. Kannan, and Duane T. Wegener use this insight to study the individuals’ perception of moral obligations with respect to digital property rights, the ability of this perception to be influenced in the direction of ethical behavior, and the effectiveness of an antipiracy message as an incentive for such behavior. The paper provides another avenue toward piracy mitigation. In the presence of the widely accessible Internet, the disintermediation of publishers of digital content is a distinct, and often enacted, opportunity. The creators can, at a low cost and the potential gain of the almost entire revenue stream, self-publish. However, as with the Internet disintermediation in general, things are not as simple and predetermined as they first appear. Ho Cheung Brian Lee and Xinxin Li present a formal economic model to prescriptively analyze the role of electronic word-of-mouth (eWoM) in the decision to self-publish or to use a publisher after the initial reputation is established by the vox populi. Counterintuitively, the model shows that positive eWoM may lead some types of creators to use publishers, which is another example of reintermediation that we see in various areas of e-commerce.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1990)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1985)
This article presents an introduction by the author to this issue, which focuses mainly on end-user computing.

From the Editor-in-Chief - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1987)

Special Issue: Information Systems Design--Theory and Methodology - Briggs, Robert O; Nunamaker Jr, Jay F; Sprague Jr, Ralph H (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2004)
ORGANIZATIONS EXIST TO CREATE VALUE for their stakeholders that the stakeholders could not create for themselves as individuals. Information systems (IS) exist so organizations can better create value using their intellectual capital. The goal of an IS designer is to present timely, accurate, and complete information to decision- makers and knowledge workers while minimizing cognitive and economic costs. As such, IS is a broad, eclectic field that must address issues touching on hardware and software, politics, economics, psychology, engineering, and aesthetics. Designers and design methodologies for IS must embrace and address all of these dimensions. The papers in this special issue of JMIS all focus on topics of importance to IS designers and methodologists. The first and second papers in this issue address meta-methodological issues. One discusses the integration of quality assurance activities into all phases of design methodologies; the other integrates theoretical and methodological issues into a design approach for computer-supported learning. The third and fourth papers present field-tested design methodologies, one for requirements elicitation and one for collaborative business process reengineering. The fifth and sixth papers present theoretical arguments about phenomena that are mirror images of one another: trust and deception detection during online interactions. The importance of these topics grows with the rise of e-commerce. The seventh paper argues a cognitive model for creative problem solving that has implication both for the design of IS and for the design of design methodologies. The eighth and final paper describes a technical approach to designing IS to support simultaneous access to data across an extreme diversity of platforms, a design issue whose importance grows with the rise of ubiquitous mobile computing. This special issue on Information Systems Design was derived from the best paper competition at the 2003 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). There were 897 papers submitted to HICSS last year, and 517 papers were accepted. Of those, 65 papers were nominated for the best paper competition in all of the tracks exclusive of the software track. A team of five reviewers evaluated the 65 best paper nominees and selected 32 papers for consideration in this special issue. These 32 papers were sent out for review and 15 of the 32 papers were then invited to submit a revised, journal-quality paper to the special issue on Information Systems Design. After another round of reviews, the eight papers in this issue were accepted for publication. One of the accepted papers, entitled “A Comparison of Classification Methods for Predicting Deception in Computer-Mediated Communication,” by Zhou, Burgoon, Twitchell, Qin, and Nunamaker was the Best Paper Award winner for the Collaboration Systems and Technology Track. This issue, like the conference, brings together a wide diversity of perspectives, all of which address the subject of Information Systems Design. In their paper “Integrating Collaborative Processes and Quality Assurance Techniques: Experiences from Requirements Negotiation,” Grünbacher, Halling, Biffl, Kitapci, and Boehm integrate current methods for requirements negotiation with new repeatable collaborative techniques for quality assurance (QA). The approach described in the paper includes QA techniques to be used before requirements negotiation begins, techniques to be used during requirements negotiation, and post-negotiation inspection techniques. The techniques are designed to reduce complexity and to mitigate risks stemming from defects in requirements. The paper reports qualitative data about user experiences with the techniques presented in the paper. The paper by Sharda, Romano, Lucca, Weiser, Scheets, Chung, and Sleezer, “Foundation for the Study of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Requiring Immersive Presence,” provides a framework for the integration of technologies for distance learning. This framework provides guidelines for system development, empirical testing, and research that will aid in the understanding of distance learning. The authors discuss research strategies to improve distance learning in three learning domains: the cognitive domain, which focuses on intellectual content and problem solving; the affective domain, which focuses on learning emotions and values; and the psychomotor domain, which focuses on learning the characteristics of physical movement. In the paper “A Unified Model of Requirements Elicitation,” Hickey and Davis extend the requirements elicitation model proposed by Loucopoulos and Karakostas by adding a process for selecting among requirements elicitation techniques based on situational specifics, and by incorporating the role of knowledge throughout the requirements process. The paper goes on to demonstrate that the unified model it proposes can be used to analyze the assumptions, strengths, and weaknesses of existing requirements elicitation models to represent existing requirements negotiation methodologies, and to develop or tailor new methodologies for specific situations. In their paper “Collaborative Business Engineering: A Decade of Lessons from the Field,” den Hengst and de Vreede analyze nine business process reengineering (BPR) projects conducted over a 10-year span and identify 87 potential points of failure. They organize those points of failure into 12 best-practice categories, and then formalize collaborative business engineering, a BPR methodology that addresses the critical issues they discovered working with BPR teams in the field. They then report their field experience with the methodology they developed. Brown, Poole, and Rodgers, in their paper “Interpersonal Traits, Complementarity, and Trust in Virtual Collaboration,” offer the interpersonal circumplex model (ICM) as a theoretical foundation for understanding the role of personal traits in collaboration in a virtual context. The model posits that individual tendencies can be understood in terms of the dimensions of power and affiliation. It posits that these factors influence trust, perceived trustworthiness, and communication, which in turn affect willingness to collaborate, and the sustainability and productivity of collaboration. This theory suggests an explanatory foundation for concepts in other theories of trust used in the IS literature. The paper “A Comparison of Classification Methods for Predicting Deception in Computer-Mediated Communication,” by Zhou, Burgoon, Twitchell, Qin, and Nunamaker, discusses the theoretical foundations of deception and deception detection, and then compares four strategies for using technology to automatically detect deception in computer-mediated communication. The results of this study suggest that each of the tested automatic deception detection methods offers some value, and that an approach based on neural networks seems particularly promising. This research is particularly timely given the quick growth of e-commerce, e-mail, and other forms of online interaction. The paper “Causal Relationships in Creative Problem Solving: Comparing Facilitation Interventions for Ideation,” by Santanen, Briggs, and de Vreede, surveys 100 years of creativity research, and then argues the cognitive network model (CNM), a causal model suggesting cognitive mechanisms that may give rise to creative ideas in the human mind. The paper reports an experiment to test the model. The experiment compares the creative output of people using for different ideation protocols. The results offer support for the model. The paper concludes with discussions of the implications of the model for research and practice. Krebs, Dorohonceanu, and Marsic present a middleware approach to the growing requirement to access the same data set with an extreme diversity of hardware, operating system, and network environments in their paper entitled “Supporting Collaboration in Heterogeneous Environments.” The challenge addressed by this paper is driven by the rapidly rising use of wireless networks, and the convergence of handheld computing devices, wireless telecommunication, and mobile computing. This paper presents conceptual and technical details about the approach, and describes the development, deployment, and evaluation of an exemplar system. Each of the papers in this issue makes a unique contribution to the understanding of one or more dimensions of IS design. We recommend them to you and trust that you will find the papers enjoyable to read and thought provoking.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2014)
Over recent decades, information technology (it) has enabled, empowered, or prompted profound societal transformations. These processes are still very much in train and we are still merely at the beginning of understanding them and their impact on our lives. It behooves our field to contribute significantly to this understanding. The Special Section, “IT-Enabled Social and Economic Transitions,” comprises two papers that investigate two economy segments that deeply affect our lives. The first of them, healthcare, is well established, if not necessarily well run—and the proper adoption of IT, we hope, will pave the road to major improvements. The second, sharing economy, emerged recently as a result of the adoption of person-to-person e-commerce in the ever-new contexts and on the platforms created by entrepreneurial companies. The guest editors of the Special Section, Eric K. Clemons, Robert J. Kauffman, and Thomas A. Weber, will introduce the papers to you. Business process outsourcing (BPO) has become a common avenue to firms shedding the functions in which they cannot deploy their resources and capabilities to the greatest advantage. Considering that the firms often become strategically dependent on the continuing success of these information-rich relationships, their governance is of the moment. Anitesh Barua and Deepa Mani develop and validate an encompassing model of governance choice that goes beyond the transaction-cost approach to combine it with the information-processing view of the firm. This approach enables the authors to recommend an appropriate mode of BPO governance in conjunction with the information requirements for ongoing coordination and collaboration in the outsourcing relationship. Autonomous scientifically controlled screening systems (ASCSSs) are a new category of information systems proposed in the next paper. The objective of an ASCSS is to detect the information an individual attempts to hide, such as knowledge of concealed weapons or an intent to defraud. Nathan W. Twyman, Paul Benjamin Lowry, Judee K. Burgoon, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr. outline the application domain and the requirements for this class of systems and build and exercise a prototype. The paper constitutes a proof of concept couched within design science for a novel type of system that extends our knowledge about deception detection. With the growing complexity of our global society, and with the ever-new threats, reapportioning of tasks between people and machines is continually moving toward machines, and this is another step in this direction. Clearly, further work will be needed to delimit the effective and ethical use of such systems, along with developing their functionality. Christian Pieter Hoffmann, Christoph Lutz, and Miriam Meckel study empirically the effects of user characteristics on the user’s trust in online transactions. They characterize three user groups according to the level of their “nativity” online and deploy cognitive social theory to surface the distinctive cognitive schemata these groups rely on to assess the cues from the websites they access. Such cues include, for example, brand reputation, third-party endorsements, and offline presence, among others. Beyond the contribution to the online trust theory, the work provides guidance to the site designers who need to signal the targeted user groups. Deliberative policy development has been a great promise of Web use in the public domain. It has largely remained a promise. If we consider the enthusiastic take-up of co-creation in a great variety of individual pursuits where “cognitive surplus” is effectively deployed, this is rather surprising. Here, Chee Wei Phang, Atreyi Kankanhalli, and Lihua Huang investigate the drivers (resources and motivators) of quantity and quality of participation in the government-sponsored online policy deliberation forums (OPDFs). The model is comprehensive and will help in connecting the various levels of government with the citizenry. Yet, OPDFs are, notably, a form of sponsored, rather than autonomous, co-creation [1]. In furthering this line of research, it will be interesting in the future to see what tool sets may effectively assist the public in developing their own deliberation forums. Another aspect of online behavior is the use of social networking sites (SNSs), where no dearth of participation exists. However, the levels of activity and contribution are of great interest here as well: in their absence, sites wither. Aihui Chen, Yaobin Lu, Patrick Y.K. Chau, and Sumeet Gupta develop and validate a theory-grounded and comprehensive model of active behaviors in SNS environments. Aside from the value of the classification itself, the results should be helpful to SNS operators in stimulating higher activity levels of participants. The availability of the classes and methods of provision of fast Internet services renders some of the heated controversy about Net neutrality moot. The fast lanes, such as content delivery network services, are here and being used for video streaming, for example. This complicates, of course, the contracting for services and their pricing. In the next paper, I. Robert Chiang and Jhih-Hua Jhang-Li offer a formal game-theoretic model that allows them to analyze these issues in the presence of various classes and providers of content delivery services and offer recommendations to these providers. The code accessible over the Internet tempts programmers to dispense with the niceties of ethics in favor of expediency and systems-development speed. Code reuse is, of course, a well-known programming virtue—so long as there exists a right to do so. The inappropriate reuse of Internet-accessible code is an ethics violation (and, in many circumstances, illegal) whose drivers are studied here by Manuel Sojer, Oliver Alexy, Sven Kleinknecht, and Joachim Henkel. The authors construct a model of a programmer’s decision-making process, grounded in both teleological and deontological approaches to ethics, which they combine with the theory of planned behavior. Having validated their model, the authors are able to offer recommendations to the firms that wish to motivate programmers to avoid unethical code reuse—as well as to the programmers themselves. The freemium revenue model has established itself firmly in Internet entrepreneurship and is a common component of the business model of mobile app developers. How well does it work as compared to the alternatives? Charles Zhechao Liu, Yoris A. Au, and Hoon Seok Choi investigate empirically the effectiveness of the freemium approach in the context of the Google Play app publishing portal. The authors tease out the positive influence of offering a free high-quality app version on the app’s success. They also contribute to the more general theory of sampling effects. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Special Issue: Information Systems in Services - Bardhan, Indranil R; Demirkan, Haluk; Kannan, P K; Kauffman, Robert J (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2010)
Journal of Management Information Systems Indranil R. Bardhan is an Associate Professor of Management Information Systems and Accounting and Information Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research interests are in the areas of information technology valuation, business impact of information systems on supply chain and firm performance, and health care informatics. His research has been published in leading journals, including Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research, Annals of Operations Research, Journal of Productivity Analysis, and Journal of the Operations Research Society of Japan. He has ten years of management consulting experience and has advised Fortune 500 executives on information technology strategy and systems implementation. Haluk Demirkan is a Clinical Associate Professor of Information Systems and a Research Faculty member of the Center for Services Leadership at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. He has a Ph.D. in Information Systems and Operations Management from the University of Florida. His research in service science and service-oriented management and technology solutions has included recent industry-sponsored research projects with American Express, Intel, IBM, MicroStrategy, and Teradata. His research appears in a number of journals, including Journal of the AIS, European Journal of Operational Research, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Information Systems Frontiers, Communications of the ACM, Information Systems and E‑Business Management, International Journal of Services Science, and other leading journals. He has 15 years of consulting experience in the areas of service-oriented solutions, information supply chain, business intelligence, and strategic business engineering with Fortune 100 companies. He is the recent recipient of the IBM Faculty Award for a research project titled "Design Science for Self-Service Systems." P.K. Kannan is a Professor of Marketing in the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He is the Director for the Center of Excellence in Service. His research focuses on new product/service development, design and pricing of digital products and product lines, marketing and product development on the Internet, e‑service, and customer loyalty. He has received several grants from the National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Science Applications International Corporation, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. His work has been published in Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Communications of the ACM. His research won the John Little Best Paper Award (2008) and the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science Practice Prize Award (2007). He serves on the editorial boards of Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Journal of Service Research. Robert J. Kauffmanis the W.P. Carey Chair in IS at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, where he holds appointments in IS, Finance, Supply Chain, and the School of Computing and Informatics. He has served on the faculty at New York University, University of Minnesota, and University of Rochester. His research interests span the economics of IS, competitive strategy and technology, IT value, pricing, supply chain management, and theory development and empirical methods. He has published in many leading journals and won outstanding research awards from the IEEE, Association for Information Systems, INFORMS, International Conference on Electronic Commerce, and Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences in the past five years. This special issue explores the high-level theme of "information systems (IS) in services." This theme considers the effects of the new information technology (IT)--enabled service orientation on individuals and customers, organizational structures and modern enterprises, and markets and industries. It also represents an effort to formulate some of the basic tenets of a new managerial discipline---service science---from the perspective of the IS academic discipline, in collaboration with colleagues from marketing and supply chain management, and with input from organization and behavioral approaches and economics and management science approaches to research. It further provides a basis for evaluating relevant technical and managerial approaches to service-oriented architecture (SOA) and infrastructure, business processes and organizational workflows, and firm strategy and tactics. The deployment of IS and technology by firms increasingly determines their competitiveness in the service economy. In this milieu, there is a corresponding need to apply robust research findings in the appropriate managerial and organizational contexts on services innovation, quality, architecture, and design and delivery, as well as the customer satisfaction and business value that results. Services innovations affect people in their multiple roles as providers, co-producers, intermediaries, and consumers of services. IT-based services delivery systems span multiple business functions, enterprises, and geographies, resulting in new levels of complexity. They are difficult to evaluate, implement, and manage successfully. Managers, meanwhile, are faced with developing effective service-sourcing strategies. The complexities and brittleness of current organizational information architectures and infrastructures provide a new impetus for the emerging services-oriented paradigm. The commoditization of hardware and processes and on-demand and utility computing characterize today’s economy. Matched with the convergence of IT innovations and the move to global e‑commerce, these developments prompt senior managers and academic researchers to rethink how IT can change organizational capabilities in competitive markets based on some of the new technical, organizational, market, and economic vantage points. This special issue opens with "An Interdisciplinary Perspective on IT Services Management and Service Science," by Indranil Bardhan, Haluk Demirkan, P.K. Kannan, Robert J. Kauffman, and Ryan Sougstad. The authors contribute a stakeholder framework for analysis and offer a comprehensive survey of the growing body of literature in five different areas where different perspectives, theories, and methods for service sciences are especially salient. Those areas include IS and computer science, economics, finance, marketing, and operations and supply chain management. The authors assess the current state of knowledge as a basis for their argument that many of the issues that are treated are appropriate for further research within the IS discipline. Their unique insight is to recognize that the business and technical problems that appear to be the most important can be conceptualized in terms of the stakeholders that are most affected, including producing and consuming firms, business intermediaries, and monitoring organizations. The authors also offer a set of suggested research directions related to the interdisciplinary areas that they explore and rich discussions of their high relevance for IS researchers. The papers that follow this survey successfully contribute to the IS in services domain of knowledge in several important respects. These include IT services, IT services outsourcing, software-as-a-service (SaaS), services operations, and marketing services in cross-functional business activities. The papers we have selected apply a wide array of research methods, including analytical modeling, surveys, interviews, simulation, and design science. Let’s now consider the papers themselves. The authors of the second paper of this special issue, Mitzi M. Montoya, Anne P. Massey, and Vijay Khatri, contribute new ideas and findings on the importance that an IT services provider needs to place on building trust between employees and customers in the services delivery chain. The paper, "Connecting IT Services Operations to Services Marketing Practices," is primarily a work of theoretical and empirical analysis. The authors focus on several key mechanisms in the operational environment of IT services delivery. They relate to the training of employees and customers who participate in trial programs for IT services and to the social influence effects that important participants have in IT services implementation projects in engendering the trust of others associated with the project. The authors report on an empirical case study of a bank holding company’s banking units’ implementation of a large-scale system that was supported by its captive internal IS organization. This is an interesting context for research---the acquisition of IT services from within an organization---that permits the authors to effectively demonstrate the important role that trust in the service provider plays in the postimplementation success of IT services. The third paper is "Multitask Agency, Modular Architecture, and Task Disaggregation in SaaS," by Anjana Susarla, Anitesh Barua, and Andrew B. Whinston. Over the past five years, SaaS has emerged as a leading trend that is transforming the marketscape for IT services in the U.S. economy. In the 1990s, Andy Whinston posited that there was a coming baseline change in approaches to software development. In particular, he argued that we should be on the lookout for an emerging market for modular "software objects" that would ease the costs and improve the quality of software support for organizational business processes. History now shows this prediction was both prescient and on target. In this context, the derivative issue of contracts for IT services---and not just the capabilities to deliver software objects in the form of SaaS---is now of paramount importance. Susarla, Barua, and Whinston empirically analyze the tie-in between value-maximizing service design with task disaggregation and the choice of SaaS contract performance incentives in the presence of the agency problem of costly verifiability. They further note the importance of the presence of knowledge interdependencies between the SaaS vendor and the SaaS service user. In many contract settings, verifiability of vendor effort comes only at an unacceptable level of costs, and so it is imperative that effective contract design be considered up front in the process. This will help to ensure that the ensuing benefits can be properly incentivized and the economic value can be fully appropriated by the contract participants. An interesting observation in this research by the authors is that modularity in the interfaces of the SaaS vendor, along with vendor--client knowledge interdependence, increases the motivation for a client to prefer contracts in which the vendor’s incentives are not all fixed. The authors’ research suggests that the design of the infrastructure that supports IT services is as important a consideration as the details of the contracts themselves in determining how to structure value-maximizing SaaS relationships. The fourth paper, titled "Coordination Strategies in an SaaS Supply Chain," by Haluk Demirkan, Hsing Kenneth Cheng, and Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay, is the second paper on the important topic of SaaS. The authors investigate the coordination complexity between an application service provider (ASP) that provides SaaS capabilities and an application infrastructure provider (AIP) that offers the hardware capabilities of the SaaS infrastructure. This coordination creates a setup that is typical of the distributed supply chains of logistics networks. The authors examine performance under four different coordination strategies involving information sharing between the ASP and the AIP. Their analysis results indicate that coordination between the ASP and the AIP can result in an outcome with the same overall surplus as can be achieved by a social planner. The realities of the market often result in tension between an ASP and an AIP though: realistically, only one of them is likely to have significant market power. The authors’ analytical and simulation results indicate that the firm that is in a more advantageous position to coordinate the IT-driven supply chain also will have the incentive to do so. The results suggest that it is possible to create the right incentives so that the economically efficient outcome is also a Nash equilibrium. These findings have implications for the coordination strategies of providers that deliver software services over the Internet. Our expectation is that they will be instructive for producers of more complex cloud computing--based services, too. The fifth paper of this special issue is "Understanding the Economic Potential of Service-Oriented Architecture," by Benjamin Mueller, Goetz Viering, Christine Legner, and Gerold Riempp. The authors examine a question that is beginning to feel like one that we have been searching for answers to for a long time: What is the business value of SOA? Much of the literature that we have read to date on this subject has been primarily situated in computer science, and not the IS literature. The computer scientists argue that the benefits and potential economic value are there for the taking, if only organizations would focus greater effort on learning about how to properly implement them. The authors anchor their perspective on the business value of SOA in the literature on individual and organization value, including the technology acceptance model, the resource-based view, and process-level impact assessment, among others. They propose five dimensions for SOA value: operational, managerial, strategic, IT infrastructure, and organizational. To obtain insights on the validity of this proposed set of value dimensions, the authors collected archival case study data on 164 instances of SOA implementations, involving 141 organizations and 32 different industries. The authors confirm through their archival case study data that organizations find that SOA has the capacity to create benefits as a style of IT architecture, as well as through improvements to operational processes and interorganizational systems with business partners, but that other critical factors need to be in place before such potential value can be appropriated by organizations. Indeed, the performance of IT services in organizations is a major issue for senior managers who agree to commit their firms, as well as for the people who are involved in managing the relationships. Vandana Ramachandran and Anandasivam Gopal, the authors of "Managers’ Judgments of Performance in IT Services Outsourcing," discuss why there may be perceptual biases and systematic misuse of information that is often used to form opinions about the performance of outsourced projects. This is a critical area for investigation, since perceptions about the performance of one project often provide the basis for how senior management approaches other project opportunities in the firm. The authors’ work involves an empirical test using a rich data set of 85 projects and responses from knowledgeable project managers. For these projects, the authors distinguished between "diagnostic inputs," which are the typical quantitative and financial measures, and "nondiagnostic inputs," which deal with perceptions of risk and delivery, to assess software development performance. Input bias, according to the findings of the authors, is affected by what managers perceive about the nondiagnostic inputs, as well as the types of IT services contracts that are involved. This creates the possibility that such subjective evaluations may swamp more objective quantitative evaluations in their views of project success. The seventh paper of the special issue is titled "A Service Science Perspective on Strategic Choice, IT, and Performance in U.S. Banking" and is authored by Paul P. Tallon. Consumer intimacy strategies pursued by large corporations are increasingly essential to their effectiveness in market competition. In this research, Tallon assesses the differences between large and small financial institutions in terms of their use of IT in their business operations, customer service, and relationship management activities between 2003 and 2007. He reports that small banks focus more on customer service orientation, while large banks tend to stress operational excellence overall to a greater extent. He also notes that there is a gradual strategy transition under way in the banking industry. This trend emphasizes consumer intimacy in financial services, but at the cost of lack of full alignment with spending on IT for operations. Empirical research of this sort provides a vision for leadership in service science that will help financial services firms---large and small---to make the most of their investments in IT. The next paper, by Jae Choi, Derek L. Nazareth, and Hemant K. Jain, is "Implementing Service-Oriented Architecture in Organizations." The research develops a new type of decision support tool to help organizations to make strategic decisions on the adoption and implementation of SOA solutions. The authors use system dynamics modeling to capture industry-level SOA diffusion, as well as the firm-level effects of SOA implementation on strategic agility. The authors’ model captures the complexities, dynamics, and range of decision-making options, which include organization and industry readiness and SOA implementation effectiveness. The proposed model also gives managers the ability to explore various decision options. The authors further report that in a stable environment traditional IT architecture performs relatively well. As a result, under these conditions at least, the advantages of SOA-based infrastructure are not nearly as prominent as the claims of industry vendors would have us think. In more volatile business environments, the same is not true though. The authors report that the necessity of undertaking substantial modifications of existing IS applications point to the cost-saving advantages of SOA in volatile environments. Moreover, there is an "agility gap" that exists between business processes and the systems that are supposed to support them. SOA-based infrastructure seems to do more to minimize that gap and ensure the agility of the firm. The authors provide a unique decision-making model to showcase the results of a series of simulations that explore different industry and organizational conditions that illustrate the role of SOA implementation and its effectiveness in helping firms to realize business value from their investments. IT services pricing and the sharing of relevant information between service vendors and their clients is another issue that falls in the domain of IS and services. Sagnika Sen, T.S. Raghu, and Ajay Vinze explore these issues in "Demand Information Sharing in Heterogeneous IT Services Environments." The paper emphasizes the issue of demand variations that affect perceptions of the value of an IT services agreement. In this research, the authors develop a simulation model that supports the evaluation of whether the sharing of demand volatility information between the client and the IT services vendor is valuable. A key insight of the research is that when exchanges of demand information occur, the nature of the relationship between the vendor and the client will change, much like we have seen in buyer--supplier relationships in supply chain management in the operations management literature. One effect, for example, is that information sharing may influence how the vendor will choose to allocate its resources in support of IT service-level agreements. A second effect, and one that is the focal point of the new contribution to service science knowledge in this work, is that the vendor’s pricing strategy will need to change to support the highest level of economic welfare to accrue to the parties to the contract. The simulation work in this research comes around variations in the levels of information granularity and information accuracy related to demand volatility. On the basis of their findings, the authors point out the importance of incentivizing vendor--client collaboration as a means to release the full business value that can lead to gains in such interfirm IT services relationships. The final paper of this special issue examines the issue of how service-level agreement contracts should be designed to appropriately compensate IT services providers for the risk they must bear when they make agreements with clients to permit them to flexibly withdraw from the service relationship at an unspecified future date. It is entitled "Should We Go Our Own Way? Backsourcing Flexibility in IT Services Contracts" and is written by Michel Benaroch, Qizhi Dai, and Robert J. Kauffman. The authors utilize the theory of real options and implement a model involving contingent claims analysis to show how to build value-optimal contracting arrangements that balance the interests of the services vendor, who risks a loss from unutilized services capacity, and the services client. The client’s primary concern is the prospect of continuing to pay for IT services that are no longer necessary, or whose contracted price is too high in a market where service providers’ costs are drifting downward over time. The emphasis of this theory-building analytical modeling research is to understand situations for IT services contracting that are subject to client-side demand volatility for the services supplied. The primary results of the research show how managers should think conceptually about IS services contracts with provisions for backsourcing. It emphasizes that managers need to recognize that there are embedded put and call options whose value trajectories and optimal exercise timing can be determined based on the available real-world data. The authors propose the concept of a "demand trigger value" for the IT services client that will help to determine when to backsource, based on observed historical demand volatility and the structure of the contract’s fees for IT services usage. Similar to the research presented by Susarla, Barua, and Whinston in this special issue, we also see here that there is reason to believe that long-term, fixed-price contracts will probably not be value maximizing for any of the contract participants, given the complexity and dynamic nature of the real-world setting in which the services are executed. This special issue of the Journal of Management Information Systems attracted state-of-the-art research submissions that investigate new design and management ideas related to IT services and the service-oriented paradigm. A key criterion in the review process was a recognizable contribution to theory. We also stressed the importance of managerial relevance and the implications of the research. This is because the service-oriented paradigm already offers strong perspectives, theories, and methods. So to bring this scholarly discourse into the IS discipline more fully, we needed to ensure that the selected papers meet the recognized standards for scholarly research and make contributions to management practice. The final versions of the papers that are published in this special issue were selected from among 116 original submissions after a rigorous, four-round review process. Additional research and new submissions on the topics that these papers have discussed are welcome for review and publication at the Journal of Management Information Systems. With this special issue we have attempted to drive new stakes in the ground to give our readers some guidance about appropriate topics and issues, theories and perspectives, and methods and approaches to research on IS in services. From the growth of interest that we are seeing across the issues and disciplines that these papers represent, our expectation is that future research has the potential to deliver even more insightful and managerially relevant work. We expect that it will demonstrate the engaged scholarship of university researchers in collaboration with industry practitioners on business problems in service science that are of the highest priority to the multiple stakeholders that are involved. We extend our thanks to the anonymous reviewers of these papers, as well as our advisory board for their support of this special issue on a fertile and emerging research area. They put in a lot of time and effort to help us shape the research for publication, and their ideas, suggestions, and critiques are central to the success of the final products. We thank the Editor-in-Chief, Vladimir Zwass, for his encouragement and guidance on this special issue project. We further acknowledge the commitment that the authors of the papers in this special issue made to produce high-quality work on an expedited schedule for development. Their cooperation and willingness to cheerfully accept and implement the review teams’ suggestions were warmly welcomed by us, and made it possible for our work together to be successful. Finally, we hope that the published contents of the special issue will encourage the authors whose papers did not make it into the special issue to continue their research and to find even greater impetus for making new contributions to knowledge in service science through some of the examples of the research that they find here.

Special Section: Exploring the Outlands of the MIS Discipline - Briggs, Robert O; Nunamaker Jr, Jay F; Sprague Jr, Ralph H (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1999)
Management information systems is by its very nature an eclectic discipline. It is the study of providing information to people who must make choices about the disposition of valuable resources in a timely, accurate, and complete manner at a minimum of cognitive and economic cost for acquisition, processing, storage, and retrieval. It therefore sits at the crossroads of many other disciplines-psychology, economics, computer science, business, communication, engineering, aesthetics, and the list goes on. When MIS was young, the holy grail at the heart of our discipline was: "How do we develop information systems that deliver value to the user, on time, and under budget?" Thirty years later this question is still at the core of our craft. Is MIS a failed discipline? Have we gone on for almost three decades without making progress? Far from it. Applications that pushed the limits of human ability in 1974 may now be purchased off the shelf for less than a factory worker's daily wage. As IS research advanced, so did user expectations. The problems we tackled became increasingly complex. At the very core of MIS is also the question of how individuals, organizations, and societies can and do change in order to leverage the value information technology can deliver. From the centralization-decentralization debates of the early 1970s to the ethical explorations of information haves and have-nots in the 1990s, our research deals with people's needs, wants, and desires for information. The core of our discipline continues to produce knowledge that increases the likelihood that people will survive and thrive. From time to time, though, it is useful for researchers in the mainstream of IS to look outward from the center of our domain to examine concepts near the borders of our referent disciplines. In this winter's Special Section of JMIS we have done just that. We have selected five papers that were judged to be among the best at the 1999 Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences. Each of these papers might at first glance seem to be an outlier in some way, somewhat distant from the bright, hot center of our universe. Yet each of them deals with issues that may have profound significance for dealing with the central questions of MIS. E-commerce over the World Wide Web is growing at an astronomical pace. Many of the top e-commerce sites report revenue growth exceeding 100 percent per year. Nicholas Negroponte estimates that e-commerce may account for more than one trillion dollars by 2002. With the rise of e-commerce has come a rise in cyberfraud. A 1998 study suggested that 85 percent of consumers were reluctant to enter their credit card numbers into a Web site. Their concerns are not unfounded. Reports abound of clever Web scams and cons that bilk consumers out of millions of dollars. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants proposed WebTrust Assurance services to allay those fears, but until the publication of the first paper in this issue, "Evidential Reasoning for WebTrust Assurance Services" by Rajendra P. Srivastava and Theodore J. Mock, the rigorous theoretical logic required to implement WebTrust technology was not available. This groundbreaking paper has two main objectives. The first is to develop a conceptual framework for evidential reasoning for the WebTrust assurance, which involves "assuring that Web sites that offer electronic commerce meet standards of consumer information protection, transaction integrity, and sound business practice." The second objective is to develop a decision-theoretic model for determining the optimal level of assurance on important dimensions of the WebTrust assurance service. This may enable the assurance provider to obtain a sufficient competent evidential matter to achieve an acceptable level of assurance based on a cost-benefit analysis. Many universities are now either offering or considering offering degrees in e-commerce. Many IS researchers are deeply involved in various aspects of e-commerce implementation and in analyzing the role it plays and will play in society. This paper contributes to the foundation upon which much of the future of e-commerce may build. Communication researchers have for many years explored how verbal and nonverbal communication patterns affect a host of phenomena ranging from persuasion to productivity. As the global economy and online communities collide, more and more organizations have come to depend on collaborative technology to support distributed teamwork. The communication literature is rich with well-tested, empirically supported models of human communication. In their paper, "Testing the Interactivity Model: Communication Processes, Partner Assessments, and the Quality of Collaborative Work," Judee K. Burgoon, Joseph A. Bonito, Bjorn Bengtsson, Artemio Ramirez, Jr., Norah E. Dunbar, and Nathan Miczo apply communication theory in a very practical way to the design of interfaces for collaborative technology. They report the results of two experiments that demonstrate, among other things, that interfaces that promote higher mutuality and involvement tend to promote more favorable perceptions of partners' credibility and attraction, and those perceptions are systematically related to higher-quality decisions and more influence. Discussion focuses on the relation between user perceptions, design features, and task outcomes in human-computer interaction and computer-mediated communication. The implications of this research for IS researchers who explore virtual teams goes well beyond the findings of this particular study. This paper demonstrates clearly how the theoretical foundations of our referent disciplines can inform high-quality IS research. Information has value to the degree that it is timely (available when choices must be made), accurate (models the actual state of the world), and complete (leaves no doubt about the probable consequences of choosing one course of action over another). However, the value of information is offset by the cognitive and economic costs of acquiring, processing, storing, and retrieving it. In its March-April 1997 issue, Reuters Magazine reported that during the last thirty years humankind has produced more information than in the previous five thousand. It was also reported there that the daily New York Times now contains more information than the average seventeenth-century man or woman would have encountered in a lifetime. A 1998 University of Dublin study found that 43 percent of managers think that important decisions are delayed and the ability to make decisions affected as a result of having too much information, and that 44 percent believe that the cost of collecting information exceeds its value to business. The next paper, "Verifying the Proximity and Size Hypothesis for Self-Organizing Maps," by Chienting Lin, Hsinchun Chen, and Jay F. Nunamaker, Jr., squarely addresses the cost side of the information-value equation. For some years, researchers have explored the use of Kohonen neural networks to automatically organize vast unstructured stores of text and images, such as online medical journal databases or the World Wide Web. These neural networks would then create visual maps to make it easy for people to find what they needed in these information stores. Each area on the map bore an automatically generated concept label, and each was a hyperlink to some set of texts relating to that label. Items that were closer together on the map were believed to be more closely related than items farther apart on the map. Larger areas on the map were believed to link to larger numbers of texts than did smaller areas. However, until this paper, these two beliefs had not been empirically validated. This study found robust support for both hypotheses. This suggests that neural networks may help reduce the stress and the cost borne by the information explosion. There are now more than 600 million pages on the World Wide Web, and that number is growing rapidly. About 70 percent of those pages are written in English, but 30 percent are not. Thus, the content of roughly 180 million Web pages is not available to English speakers. Automated online translation services for many languages are now available, but one must know the language of the text in order to know which translator should be used. Many millions of digital documents exist with no explicit language tag. John Prager, in his paper, "Linguini: Language Identification for Multilingual Documents," reveals the workings of an ingenious method for automatically determining the language in which a document has been written. He reports the results of a study demonstrating that this very efficient approach can identify the language of documents as short as 5-10 percent of the size of average Web documents with 100 percent accuracy. Combining this technology with automated translation capability and the neural network technology reported in the previous paper could provide more complete access to information in other languages without substantially increasing the cognitive cost of acquiring it. The final paper in the Special Section, "Data Is More Than Knowledge: Implications of the Reversed Knowledge Hierarchy for Knowledge Management and Organizational Memory," by Ilkka Tuomi, is one of the most provocative we have seen in years. In a very readable and convincing argument, the author challenges one of the pillars of our discipline-the knowledge hierarchy. Consider how entrenched the accepted knowledge hierarchy is in our thinking. It would only be a small stretch to express it like this: In the beginning were the data, and the data were without meaning. And MIS built a system to process the data, and the data became information. And the decision makers did interpret the information in the light of their intelligence guided by experience, and they did assign it meaning, and did make choices based on the information, and the information became knowledge, and it was good. The author of this paper begins with an interpretivist philosophy and argues that knowledge needs must precede information, and that data can only be derived from information. He then argues that vast sums of money are wasted on knowledge management systems because the developers understand the knowledge hierarchy backward. As you read this paper, consider the possibility that, despite the fact that they seem to be mutually exclusive, both the standard hierarchy and the reverse hierarchy may be correct. Perhaps, as Tuomi asserts, people do first perceive the world as knowledge, then codify and formalize that knowledge, and then with more effort parse it into data structures that exactly define its meaning. Only then, he asserts, can it be manipulated by computers. However, it may also be that once data are in a computer, they require processing to be reassembled into information that can then be interpreted by decision makers and converted once again to knowledge. You may agree or disagree with the author, but either way you will find his paper highly engaging. We find that it has already broadened the way we think about issues ranging from systems analysis to Third Normal Forms. We commend this paper and the others in the Special Section to your reading. From the Editor-in-Chief: We are delighted to welcome to the Editorial Board Alan Dennis of the University of Georgia and Varun Grover of the University of South Carolina. Wishing all of you a good millennium, Vladimir Zwass Key words and phrases : ,

Special Section: Strategic and Competitive Information Systems - Clemons, Eric K; Row, Michael C (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1992)
An introduction to several articles published within the issue is presented. Articles discussed include "Message Management Systems: Concepts, Motivations, and Strategic Effects," by Steven O. Kimbrough and Scott A. Moore, "Modeling the Profitability of Customer Relationships: Development and Impact of Barclays de Zoete Wedd's BEATRICE," by Nicolas Stuchfield and Bruce W. Weber, and "Information Technology and Industrial Cooperation: The Changing Economics of Coordination and Ownership," by Eric K. Clemons and Michael C. Row.

Special Issue: GSS Insights: A Look Back at the Lab, A Look Forward from the Field - Briggs, Robert O; Nunamaker Jr, Jay F; Sprague Jr, Ralph H (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1998)
LAST YEAR AT THIS TIME WE FOCUSED YOUR ATTENTION on the many unanswered research questions surrounding group support systems (GSS). We posed more than 250 research questions and invited you to find 1001 on your own. In this issue we invite you to reflect on some of what is already known about GSS. We challenge you to reflect on it, expecting that doing so will inspire meanings not yet understood and questions not yet asked, much less answered. In past years most of the papers presented here have been quantitative investigations. Last year we presented nine studies of GSS based on a variety of empirical research methods. This year we are privileged to present you with an opus magnum, the most exhaustive compendium of published GSS experimental research ever compiled. We also offer you two independently conducted but closely related qualitative field investigations of GSS acceptance. All three of these papers were finalists in the best-paper competition at the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science. The bulk of this issue is devoted to a single paper, "An Assessment of Group Support Systems Experimental Research: Methodology and Results," by Jerry Fjermestad and Starr Roxanne Hiltz. This landmark paper summarizes the methods and results of the whole corpus of experimental GSS studies published in the English language in refereed academic journals. This paper specifically excludes case studies from the field, focusing instead on analyzing experimental results. So far as the authors, the editors, the reviewers, and many GSS researchers around the world have been able to determine, the list covered by this paper was exhaustive at press time. This paper is the product of eight years' work. When the authors began it, MS-DOS was king of the desktop, while UNIX ruled the text-based Internet, and fewer than twenty GSS experiments had been published in refereed journals. There are now 200 such experiments in the GSS literature, and that number is climbing even as we go to press. Should you know of any experiments not included in this analysis, please contact the authors, who hope to publish periodic updates. Fjermestad and Hiltz offer a classification scheme for the dependent and independent variables in these experiments, examining which are initial causes, which are intervening variables, and which are outcome variables. Besides their exhaustive bibliography, they offer clear, readable tables summarizing each experiment, and detailing research methods, hypotheses, and results for all 200 experiments. The paper takes a first pass at making sense of the GSS literature. For example, it analyzes the percentages of experiments wherein GSS teams perform better than, the same as, or worse than face-to-face teams. However, it is beyond the scope of the paper to delve into why these patterns occurred. Under what circumstances were GSS experiments successful? Under what circumstances did they fail? To what extent were the experimental results of our literature artifacts of experimental designs, of facilitation techniques, or of genuine technological utility? Under what circumstances do GSS serve well, and under what circumstances do they serve poorly? We believe this paper will be a foundation for metaanalyses, experiments, and field investigations through the next decade and beyond. We invite researchers to submit future papers that leverage its contribution. We believe this paper will also serve as an outstanding pedagogical resource for courses in MIS research and research methodologies. In the spirit of learning through discovery, the student can be presented with a number of papers to critique and analyze, and can be challenged to improve on what has been presented. An instructor can use this paper to quickly find exemplars of any methods, a vast array of hypotheses, a variety of results. Studying the Fjermestad and Hiltz paper may also help the student perceive how individual works fit into an academic whole. Over the years a number of GSS experiments did not yield results. This was in part because of the constraints imposed by the laboratory. This is why it is important for GSS researchers to take their work into the field. The other two papers in this issue do just that. Both use largely qualitative methods to investigate and model the underpinnings of GSS acceptance in the rich context of real organizational life. The first of them, "A Technology Transition Model Derived from Qualitative Field Investigation of GSS Use Aboard the U.S.S. CORONADO," by Briggs, Adkins, Mittleman, Kruse, Miller, and Nunamaker, recounts an intensive thirty-two-month action research effort to introduce GSS into the U.S. Navy's Commander, Third Fleet staff aboard the U.S. Navy's most advanced command ship. The investigation begins with Davis's TAM as a foundation for developing interventions designed to create sufficient acceptance for GSS among the staff to create a self-sustaining and growing community of users. TAM was created to predict individual technology use after the first hour of exposure, so the team did not expect it fully to explain and guide a complex multiyear transition. As the investigation proceeded, the researchers adapted and extended the model to explain phenomena that emerged. The paper presents the resulting model, dubbed the Technology Transition Model (TTM), and describes the critical incidents that gave rise to it. The model frames acceptance as a multiplicative function of the magnitude and frequency of the perceived net value of a proposed change, moderated by the perceived net value associated with the transition period itself. TTM frames net value as having a number of dimensions, including cognitive, economic, political, social, affective, and physical. It posits that cognitive net value derives from at least three sources: changes in access, technical, and conceptual attention loads. TTM appears to explain the differences that emerged in the Navy community. GSS transition proceeded at different speeds in different segments of the Third Fleet; the intelligence and battle staffs became self-sustaining within weeks, while others are still not self-sustaining. TTM may prove useful for increasing the speed and reducing the risk of technology transition projects in the future. This investigation also helped provide a foundation for the operating principles of the Navy's new Sea Based Battle Lab (SBBL). The SBBL now provides a venue for many researchers to stress-test cutting-edge mission-critical technologies at sea under simulated crisis conditions. During the investigation it became clear that it would be important to have a shore-based staging site for pilot testing and robustly packaging new technologies before they were taken aboard the SBBL. Therefore the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) established its Advanced Concepts Site (ACS). Its mission is to seek new technologies from laboratories around the world and to facilitate their transition to the warfighter. The ACS and the SBBL now coordinate their efforts to streamline the process of moving technology from the laboratory to the field. These sites have created a unique synergy among academics, technologists, and warfighters. SBBL and ACS will continue to be important catalysts for future technology-based field research. As often happens with field research, the paper "Exploring the Application and Acceptance of Group Support Systems in Africa," by DeVreede, Jones, and Mgaya contributes on more than one level. Like the previous paper, this uses TAM as a starting point for action research. Unlike the previous paper, which examines the cognitive foundations of acceptance, this paper seeks to specify some of the external variables that influence acceptance. The paper recounts the introduction of GSS to nineteen sites in two East African countries. At the end of the paper the authors offer a grounded conceptual model of the external factors that influenced acceptance. Along the way, the authors take care to compare their observations from Africa with observations made in Europe and the United States. The authors also provide rich descriptions of the problem context for which they deployed GSS: capacity building in developing nations. Capacity building refers to the development of both physical infrastructure and human ability so as to improve the economic and social conditions of a country. Thus, this paper makes contributions on three fronts simultaneously: technology acceptance, cross-cultural GSS use, and GSS techniques for enhancing capacity building. We commend these papers to your reading and trust that they will be thought provoking. We hope they stimulate further academic inquiry. Key words and phrases : ,

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2019)
The Special Issue on Immersive Systems is introduced to you by the Guest Editors, Huseyin Cavusoglu, Alan R. Dennis, and Jeffrey Parsons. The Issue focuses on an increasingly technologically and economically feasible, as well as increasingly valuable, component of information systems (IS). Immersive systems are deployed to change the user’s perception of reality, and in our discipline we study this capability with the objective of reaching organizational goals. A virtual reality system may afford a superior capability to plan surgeries or market real estate; an augmented reality component of a plane maintenance IS may help to bring knowledge to the technicians at the point and time of application; a serious game may instruct employees in a newly appealing and effective way. Technologically demanding in their most attractive versions, immersive systems will spread more widely and to a greater effect with the cumulative deployment of prominent new technological advances. Thus, 5G telecommunications can carry the benefits of these systems to remote locations at an economically justified cost, often bringing the benefits of advanced technology to underserved populations. In reciprocity, the greater utilization of immersive technologies can lead to the spread of 5G cellular technology. The works included in the Special Issue bring diverse methodologies to the analysis of the role and the possibilities of technological immersion as another aspect of the organizational use of IS. The first paper of the general section compares analytically the benefits that can be garnered from information technology (IT) by the foreign versus the local firms in the emerging economies, notably in the BRIC countries (Brasil, Russia, India, China). The authors, Jiban Khuntia, Abhishek Kathuria, Terence J.V. Saldanha, and Benn R. Konsynski, focus on the comparative effects of the flexibilities borne by IT, specifically the flexibilities in customer and partner services, using India as the focal country. The authors find that complementing the foreign firms’ inherent capabilities with the use of IT faces much greater challenges on the customer side than on the partnering one. The findings for the local firms present the mirror image of this. While these results have their own weight theoretically and pragmatically, they also open an avenue to a future broadening of the scope to other capabilities and to other country categories. Two subsequent papers offer together a Janusian view of social media, with a bright-side analysis followed by a study on the dark side. The first of the papers, by Yuheng Hu, Anbang Xu, Yili Hong, David Gal, Vibha Sinha, and Rama Akkiraju, presents a predictive model of brand personality, that is, the totality of association the brand evokes. The authors show how the brand personality can be extracted from the accumulation of the textual data contributed to the online media by consumers, employees, and firms. The elaborate model includes five dimensions (such as sophistication or excitement, for example), each with numerous traits (e.g., charming or imaginative). The model’s predictions match the ground truth of perceived brand personality with high accuracy. This deployment of the multifaceted archival data derived from social media also helps the authors to arrive at valuable insights regarding the relationships among people as consumers and employees, brands, and firms. Fake news on social media have become highly disruptive to our social relationships and our governance on all levels. This is another proof of the dictum that as the potency of IT grows, so does the threat associated with it. Some remedies against mis- and disinformation have been already deployed by the offerors of social networks; yet, any observer of the scene knows that they are vastly insufficient. Here, our field is well equipped to help. In the next paper, Antino Kim, Patricia L. Moravec, and Alan R. Dennis examine how to fight the fake news at the source, so to say, by users and experts rating the reputation of the source of the online articulations in one of the three different ways. Using two different experimental designs, the authors arrive at robust findings: Yes, presenting the reputation of the source along with the “news” works; yes, the absence of ratings alongside articulations with rated sources works, too – to cause disbelief in the “news.” As algorithmic verification of posts has been found partly wanting, the findings here support the idea of human ratings by deploying expertise and crowdsourcing. Of course, the human ratings can complement the algorithmic ones. Electronic word of mouth (eWoM) is on the other side of the coin when we assess the effects of the active participation of the users in generating online content, a part of user co-creation of value online. User reviews, discussions, blogs, and other articulations may drive the potential customers to a good or service, or drive them away. What does the adoption of an eWoM message by others depend upon? This question has been answered in many, often conflicting, ways by numerous researchers. The time is ripe for a methodologically reliable synthesis via meta-analysis. You will find it in the next paper, by Hamed Qahri-Saremi and Ali Reza Montazemi. Drawing on 87 independent empirical studies, the authors come up with a parsimonious model that the future researchers in the domain can build on. Moreover, the authors offer specific suggestions how the actual eWoM service providers can improve their offerings. Two-sided online platforms are, among other applications, a common way of connecting content sellers with content buyers. They are also a common venue for content piracy and thus for the content protection from piracy. The protection has a positive effect of impeding piracy and increasing the (paid for) demand from the buyers, and the negative effect by making the platforms more costly and more inconvenient to use by the buyers. What is then the optimal level of protection? Guofang Nan, Lina Yao, Yi-Chun (Chad) Ho, Zhiyong Li, and Minqiang Li present a stylized economic model that allows them to recommend the optimal protection level in various circumstances. This can help in structuring a platform business model either under the content-selling strategy or under the advertising agency strategy when the content is offered free or as a freemium attraction. This work will no doubt be extended by the relaxation of some of the current assumptions and by generalization of the results.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2007)
This issue of JMIS is opened by the Special Section on Applying Information Economics to Corporate Strategy. The Special Section, guest edited by Eric K. Clemons, Rajiv M. Dewan, and Robert J. Kauffman, once again reinforces the understanding that in the digital economy, skillful deployment of information systems (IS) and of their products is a key to corporate success. The organizations failing to learn this lesson will do that at their peril. Yet, as IS have been used in organizations for over half a century, equally perilous is any notion of information technology (IT) implementations bearing low-hanging fruit. The authors of the papers in the Special Section apply economic approaches leavened with the appreciation of the potential of the contemporary IT to their studies of digital marketplaces, the organizational distribution of IT services and decisions on major IT investments, and information products. They apply the tools of information economics to the privacy of personal information and to the information transparency on the corporate Web sites. We are indeed learning to deploy IT strategically in the ever changing environments, with this technology enabling, or driving, the change. The guest editors offer you a far more thorough introduction to the papers they have prepared for publication here. Time and again, massive investments in IT bear failure in their trail owing to the lack of proper implementation processes. A recent, and tragic, example is the failure of the massive IS deployed across 70 hospitals of the U.S. Department of Defense to track medical records of injured soldiers [1]. Complex processes need to be planned and enacted to bring complex IS into good currency. Far more needs to be learned about the many, and varied, aspects of complex IS implementations--and we are the people to study them. Here, Jahangir Karimi, Toni M. Somers, and Anol Bhattacherjee seek to explain empirically how enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can be implemented to complement the firm’s IS resources, leading to beneficial process-level outcomes. The authors take the resource-based view of the firm and classify the IS resources into three categories: knowledge, relationships, and infrastructure, with the first category playing the crucial role according to their findings. Properly enacted collective knowledge processes are increasingly perceived as vital to organizational well-being. Software project teams have been used for decades to leverage the capabilities of their individual members. Jun He, Brian S. Butler, and William R. King empirically study the formation and evolution of team cognition in database development teams. The researchers find that certain forms of membership diversity and of intrateam communication strongly influence the dynamic aspects of team cognition throughout projects and, in turn, lead to the dispersion of performance across teams. The final paper of the issue also addresses software development--on the process level. Peng Xu and Balasubramaniam Ramesh study software process tailoring: the adjustment of a software development process that follows a development methodology to the realities of a given context. Using the grounded theory approach, the authors surface the environmental factors and tailoring strategies, and identify their mutual influences. Taken together with the preceding paper, the two works give us a finer-grained understanding of software development than available heretofore. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief Reference 1. Urbina, I., and Nixon, R. Disuse of system is cited in gaps in soldiers’ care. New York Times (March 30, 2007), A1, A17.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1989)

Special Section: Customer-Centric Information Systems - Ting-Peng, Liang; Tanniru, Mohan R (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2006)
Ting-Peng Liang is National Chair Professor in Information Systems and Director of the Electronic Commerce Research Center of National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining his current university in 1993, he taught at the University of Illinois and Purdue University. At National Sun Yat-sen University, he has served as the Dean of the College of Management (1994–97) and University Provost (1999–2002). His research has been published in Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Operations Research, Decision Support Systems, Information and Management, and many other academic journals. Professor Liang’s primary research interests include electronic commerce, knowledge management, intelligent systems, and strategic applications of information systems. He has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including Decision Support Systems, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Industrial Management and Data Systems, and Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, among others. He is a fellow of the AIS and a member of ACM, INFORMS, and IEEE Computer Society. Mohan Tanniru is Salter Distinguished Professor of Management and Technology and the MIS Department Head in the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. He received his Ph.D. in MIS from Northwestern University in 1978. He taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Syracuse University, and Oakland University before joining the University of Arizona in 2003. He has published over 75 articles in various journals, books, and conference proceedings. His research articles have appeared in Communications of the ACM, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Decision Sciences, Information Systems Research, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, International Journal of Human–Machine Interaction, Expert Systems with Applications, and Australian Journal of Information Systems. He has coordinated over 400 projects with 45 companies such as GM, DaimlerChrysler, EDS, Lear, Comerica, Compuware, Carrier-UTC, MONY, and Bristol Myers Squibb in areas related to IT management in a global arena, business process reengineering, learning organization, object-oriented development, computer-aided software engineering, expert systems, IS benchmarking, sales force automation, and decision modeling. He was a consultant to Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, Carrier-UTC, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Tata Consultancy Services of India and Tata Infotech. He is a member of ACM and AIS. Need for New Generation Information Systems The rapid proliferation of the Internet has drastically changed the nature of business information systems (ISs). The World Wide Web has become the new paradigm for information capture and delivery. In addition, it has started to revolutionize many aspects of IS development and utilization. For example, wikipedia.com has generated eight times more information content than the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This would not have been possible without a system development philosophy and flexible architecture that are customer-centric. Obviously, such a customer-centric approach to meet the dynamic customer-driven information capture and dissemination puts enormous pressure on both the demand and supply side of the systems development equation, and this has not been studied adequately by academia. On the on-demand side of development, customers are asking for a rapid response to their changing information needs during the purchase of a product or service or a resolution of a problem after sale. Because satisfying these informational needs, often in the form of customized products or services, requires interaction across intra- as well as interorganizational boundaries, organizations are forced to build agility into their process and technical infrastructure. Ultimately, the agility with which on-demand information has to meet the needs of a customer using an organization’s internal process and technology architecture places an enormous challenge before those who develop IS (i.e., the supply side). The development of IS, for the most part, has focused on the operational efficiency of business processes, while indirectly meeting on-demand customer needs. More recently, customer relationship management (CRM) systems have been used to gather frequently changing customer preference information, and service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are being developed to provide certain architectural flexibility. While CRMs help capture customer needs on the demand side and SOAs support agility on the supply side, many of these efforts remain somewhat disconnected. The wave of customization and personalization, however, requires a new way of thinking. At the same time, IS development has to take an integrated view of linking various components of the customer-driven value chain; that is, customer needs, customized products/services that serve these needs, business processes that produced these products/services, and technology that enables these processes. In other words, while current enterprise-wide process-oriented IS development is looking out to support customer needs, the new customer-centric systems development has to be looking in to configure the value-chain components appropriately to meet changing customer needs. Customer-Centricity Defined Reflecting on the history of IS development, the first-generation systems have often focused on technology utilization. For example, evolution of modeling tools has made designers develop decision support systems and advances in multimedia technologies that enhance users’ interfaces. These systems were usually proprietary and targeted to meet the needs of a specific application while meeting the internal requirements of an organization (e.g., cost reduction, productivity improvement, etc.). The second-generation systems were process-oriented (e.g., SAP’s enterprise resource planning [ERP] system) and they were built to support a set of general-purpose processes for adaptation through configuration and reusability. They forced successful decomposition of large-scale enterprise systems into modules, thus simplifying system development and deployment. Yet their primary focus is still internal to a business (e.g., productivity) and organization specific (e.g., cost reduction), albeit these demands for improvement were customer driven (i.e., faster response time to customer order or inquiry). The customer-centric ISs, we believe, are of the third generation, where the business driver is customer value (and business competitiveness), and the focus of system development is to configure various components of the customer driven value chain to meet the ever-changing customer value proposition. A customer-centric IS is designed with customer preference and needs in mind, which makes the system development a dynamic process. Again, wikipedia.com provides an architectural platform on which customers work together to determine the final product, and the organizational processes are set up to support the development of such a product. Here, customers are an integral and critical component of the IS development and their involvement and satisfaction enables the system to derive its value. Another example is the category of the increasingly popular online recommender systems (e.g., book recommendations at Amazon.com and news recommendations at Google news), where customer engagement and architectural flexibility allow the system to react quickly to discovered customer preferences. Framework for Customer-Centric Information Systems A customer-centric IS can be viewed as one that is able to configure four major components—customer, process, technology, and product/service—to satisfy a customer need. The customer is the kernel and the driving force behind the system. Customer profiles are analyzed to identify their needs and develop information requirements (often through customized products or services). These customized products or services then determine the manner in which business processes are configured (i.e., designed, assembled, or adapted). Finally, flexible information technology and system architecture are used to support process configuration in product/service delivery. Note that this is a variation of the process, people, and technology model traditionally used in IS development. Here, the three organizational components (process, technology, and product/service) are intended to serve a fourth component—the customer. Note that such a customer-centric view also makes the systems development “value driven” as opposed to cost driven, an important ingredient in making IS development business-centric or supportive of competitive strategy. Figure 1 illustrates the relationships of these components. While customer needs typically drive the nature of the products/services produced, which in turn influences the process and technology architecture, the reality is that all four factors influence each other. For example, advanced technologies can create opportunities to make processes service enabled (e.g., SOA), which can enhance the bundling of products and services and provide competitive value in customer offerings. Innovative process improvements (e.g., collaborative product design and global supply-chain processes) can speed up the development of new products/services to satisfy customer needs as well as influence the development of new technologies. Similarly, new customer products/services (e.g., enabling a customer to track orders online) may drive process and technology innovation using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. Because of such interplay, the components are shown to be interdependent on each other, all ultimately driven by a customer need. Major Components of a Customer-Centric Information System Customers In a customer-centric IS, the role of customers can be either active or passive. Active customers are involved in the operation of a system and are an integral part of its development. Both wikipedia.com and blogs are examples of customer-centric ISs in which customers influence the way the system is conceived, developed, and disseminated. The critical issue in such systems is the effectiveness with which customers are integrated into the evolution of the system [4]. The passive role of customers is more traditional. Customers use a system to accomplish their goals and leave certain clues for the system to capture their implicit preferences and needs. The system can then tailor its internal processes to meet these evolving customer needs. A key issue here is the effectiveness with which one can develop customer profiles and use them to adapt the system. Research in this area includes information filtering, customer profiling, personalization, and recommendation systems [1, 5]. Processes In order to meet customers’ changing needs, the processes in the organization, embedded within the IS or outside the system, must be flexible enough for easy configuration. The critical issue here is one of developing architectures that can support on-demand configuration. The internal process architectures have to be service enabled(akin to SOA), so they can be configured and integrated on demand flexibly across the value chain. Products and Services Especially critical in the case of passive customers is a customer-centric IS with process configurability that can provide customized or personalized products and services. Customization and personalization are similar and yet distinct. Customization often relies on customer segmentation based on customer preference information. Personalization is a special case, or the ultimate goal of, customization, where products and services are customized for each individual customer. The critical issues here are the extraction of customer profiles that can be used to develop products/services and satisfy customer needs as well as increase their loyalty and retention [1, 2]. Technologies In order to use process configuration to develop customized or personalized products/services, innovative information-gathering and -processing technologies are essential. For example, SOA technology allows various processes to be implemented as Web services and can be integrated at the run-time to meet changing needs. User profiling technologies are essential to collect usage behavior of customers over time to predict their future behavior. Technologies such as content-based filtering and collaborative filtering enable many online bookstores and movie rentals to support internal processing of dynamic information [1, 2]. Another powerful technology is the Web 2.0 framework [3]. This technology enables integration of many factors in the customer-centric value chain through user participation, decentralized control, and collective intelligence [4]. Dimensions of Customer-Centricity as Presented in the Special Section We have selected four papers to represent various dimensions of customer-centricity in IS development in this Special Section. The paper by Christian Wagner and Ann Majchrzak compares three applications of the wiki technology for peer production of Web content. Their study indicates that the customer-centric technology that works well on wikipedia.com may not work in other domains such as editorial comments. They suggest a model of six characteristics that affect customer engagement—community custodianship, goal alignment among contributors, value-adding processes, emerging layers of participation, critical mass of management, and monitoring activities. Ting-Peng Liang, Hung-Jen Lai, and Yi-Cheng Ku’s paper studies the relationship between personalized content services and user satisfaction. They review theories related to personalized information services to build an integrated framework and then use it to study online news. Two experiments were designed to examine whether personalized content services could accurately predict user profiles and the relationship between personalized services and user satisfaction. They find that personalized services can indeed provide accurate news recommendation and increase user satisfaction. User satisfaction is affected more by the accuracy of recommendation and the items shown to the user. User motivation has a moderating effect on recommendation accuracy and user satisfaction. The paper by Jie “Jennifer” Zhang, Xiao Fang, and Olivia R. Liu Sheng investigates the issue of depth of customer search. They build a theoretical model and use clickstream data from 26 music retailer Web sites, 24 computer hardware Web sites, and 29 air travel Web sites to analyze consumers’ search depth. The model suggests that search cost is inversely correlated with search depth, while consumers’ quality preference is positively correlated with search depth. Implications for Web site design to meet customer needs are discussed. Sunil Mithas, Narayan Ramasubbu, M.S. Krishnan, and Claes Fornell study the issue of how Web sites can be designed to increase customer loyalty. Based on more than 12,000 online customer surveys for 43 Web sites, their research reveals that Web site domain and features can affect customer loyalty. The relationship between Web site features and customer loyalty is stronger for transaction Web sites than for information Web sites. Concluding Remarks As research trends evolve with technology and application innovation, this paper has outlined a customer-centric framework for future IS development. Customer profiles should be the key component of IS. The papers included in this Special Section have investigated several aspects of customer-centric IS and can be good pointers to future research in this direction. References 1. Liang, T.-P.; Lai, H.-J.; and Ku, Y.-C. Personalized content recommendation and user satisfaction: Theoretical synthesis and empirical findings. Journal of Management Information Systems, 23, 3 (Winter 2006–7), 45–70. 2. Mithas, S.; Ramasubbu, N.; Krishnan, M.S.; and Fornell, C. Designing Web sites for customer loyalty across business domains: A multilevel analysis. Journal of Management Information Systems, 23, 3 (Winter 2006–7), 97–128. 3. O’Reilly, T. What Is Web 2.0? Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol, CA, September 30, 2005 (available at www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web- 20.html). 4. Wagner, C., and Majchrzak, A. Enabling customer-centricity using wikis and the wiki way. Journal of Management Information Systems, 23, 3 (Winter 2006–7), 17–44. 5. Zhang, J.; Fang, X.; and Sheng, O.R.L. Online customer search depth: Theories and new findings. Journal of Management Information Systems, 23, 3 (Winter 2006–7), 71–95.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2012)
THE PERFORMANCE OF TEAMS AND PROJECTS is the key to organizational performance. Three papers that open this new volume of JMIS present the investigations conducted at that level. In the first, Amrit Tiwana studies the effects of peripheral knowledge by the information technology (IT) and business units on the performance of systems development projects. The first question being asked is: Under what circumstances do the knowledge of the business domain by the IT unit and the knowledge of IT by the business unit, both costly to maintain, return the value during projects? The second principal research question is: Through what mechanism does this value return occur? This theoretically rich work offers nuanced insights into both questions. The escalation of software projects is, regrettably, not uncommon. Various means are sought to fight the phenomenon. Here, Jong Seok Lee, Mark Keil, and Vijay Kasi present a study of the effects of the initial budget and schedule on project escalation. The work is rooted in the goal-setting theory and in the sunk-cost and mental budgeting perspectives, and makes a contribution to these. Both the difficulty and the specificity of the set out budget and schedule are found to have a significant impact on the ultimate project escalation. Pragmatic takeaways follow from the well-defined theoretical contribution. Likoebe M. Maruping and Massimo Magni turn to the user side of work units, to investigate the role of the learning and empowerment climates in the technology exploration by team members. The authors also pursue an investigation of the gender role in this exploration. Rather surprisingly, the empirics presented by the authors show that the two types of team climate in their study have opposite effects. The work clearly opens a new research avenue, as the operative mechanisms and the influence on the team performance need to be further investigated. Offshore outsourcing of information systems development is well established both as a common practice and as a research area. And yet these projects still endemically suffer from underperformance. Improved contracting and project control are therefore sought. To do that, we need to understand better where this improvement may lie. In the next paper of the issue, Shirish C. Srivastava and Thomson S.H. Teo offer a theoretically grounded and discriminating study of a large part of the issue. These authors show empirically the joint importance of contract specificity and the application of an appropriate control governance mechanisms, with both relational and mechanistic governance being effective under appropriate circumstances. Occasioned by the events of the recent years, risk studies have gained in stature. A new perspective on the value of IT investment is gained by taking up this lens. Conducting an event study, Samual Otim, Kevin Dow, Varun Grover, and Jeffrey A. Wong find an association between the reduction of a firm’s downside risk and its announcement of a strategic IT investment. Guided by the resource-based view and real options perspectives, the authors develop a typology of strategic IT investments, and hypothesize their differential effects primarily on the competitive risk. This important new direction in the IT value studies deserves further and extensive elaboration. Three further papers in the issue take up e-commerce, using different research methodologies. In the first of these, Mei Lin, Xuqing Ke, and Andrew B. Whinston apply game-theoretic analysis to determine the role of alternative advertising revenue models in the firms’ business models. The authors show how the ad-based support of a lower, or zero, price can serve to successfully differentiate a business model. Moreover, the impressions-based revenue models are found to have a stronger effect than the click-based ones. Aside from their contribution to theory, the findings have direct implications for the firms seeking to monetize their online offerings. Co-creation of value by consumers in e-commerce often takes the form of product reviews. Their effects on the transactions and loyalty of consumers are studied intensely. On the Web, these reviews coexist with the recommendations and representations made by the vendors. What are the comparative effects of these two sources of recommendations on the purchase intentions? This research question is addressed by Alexander Benlian, Ryad Titah, and Thomas Hess, who use a survey-based methodology. The authors find that the effects of the two types of reviews are different---and largely complementary. They affect the consumers’ decisions to buy through different factors, and their coexistence thus intensifies the impressive inroads of e-tail. Online virtual worlds, or metaverses, are another emblematic example of co-creation. Their success lies in their continuing use by the participants. The factors in the intention to continue the use of such a service are therefore worthy of close scrutiny. They receive such an examination from Zhongyun Zhou, Yulin Fang, Doug Vogel, Xiao-Ling Jin, and Xi Zhang in the context of the prime examplar, Second Life. These authors find that the intention to continue is based on the combination of affective commitment, as the participants enjoy the play and the company of other avatars, and of the lock-in effect, as the participants are loath to leave the avatars of others and the world they live in, as well as their own personalization investment. We may find it pleasing that the present authors find the former factor to be more dispositive. Zeying Wan, Deborah Compeau, and Nicole Haggerty study empirically the factors that lead to the various positive outcomes of e- learning in organizations. The authors propose a novel dichotomization of self-regulated learning processes and proceed to develop the measurement scales. In their analysis of the empirics, the researchers show that various factors condition differently the acquisition of declarative knowledge versus skill development, and the learner satisfaction. Aside from a clear practical value of the results obtained here, the work contributes to the theory of self-regulation. The analytic components of customer relationship management (CRM) are an important application of decision support systems (DSS). The effectiveness of these CRM subsystems in addressing the marketplace rests in the classification of potential customers into the categories worth addressing with marketing messages. The effectiveness and efficiency combined rest on doing so cost-effectively. In particular, the customers of high potential lifetime value are to be preferred.The customers likely to reject the offer are to be undersampled. In the concluding paper of the issue, Geng Cui, Man Leung Wong, and Xiang Wan present a learning algorithm for the DSS that offers these properties. The authors compare its performance with the other currently available solutions and find it superior.The cost-sensitive learning algorithm proposed here has the potential to be useful in other contexts as well. As we start this twenty-ninth JMIS volume, it is my duty and privilege to acknowledge the contribution of our referees, the primary guarantors of Journal ’s quality. On behalf of our Editorial Board, the thanks go to: Hyung Jun Ahn Manju Ahuja Pervaiz Alam Muhammad Aljukhadar Gove Allen Omar Alnuaimi Paul Alpar Kemal Altinkemer Naveen Amblee Hayward P. Andres Corey Angst Ofer Arazy Kursad Asdemir Norman Au Yoris Au Benoit A. Aubert Peter van Baalen Barbro Back Akhilesh Bajaj Dirk Baldwin Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay Gaurav Bansal Ravi Bapna Indranil R. Bardhan Reza Barkhi Henri Barki Stuart J. Barnes Richard Baskerville Dinesh Batra Skip Benamati Michel Benaroch Raquel Benbunan-Fich François Bergeron Ganesh Bhatt Anol Bhattacherjee Sudip Bhattacharjee Jesse Bockstedt Wai Fong Boh Indranil Bose Nicola Breugst Glenn J. Browne Sebastian Bruque Scott Buffett Judee Burgoon Andrew Burton-Jones Ashley Bush Terry A. Byrd Jinwei Cao Erran Carmel Susy Chan Yolande E. Chan Hsin-Lu Chang Mohamed Hédi Charki Patrick Chau Andrew Chen Daniel Chen Hong-Mei Chen Hsinchun Chen Jianqing Chen Jin Chen Kay-Yut Chen Kuan Chen Li Chen Yuanyuan Chen Hsing Kenneth Cheng Mike Cheung Lei Chi Robert T.H. Chi Roger Chiang Benjamin Chiao Ananth Chiravuri Alina M. Chircu Jong-min Choe H. Michael Chung Wingyan Chung Theodore H. Clark Randolph Cooper Kevin Crowston Dianne Cyr Qizhi Dai Yan Dang Ronald Dattero Gregory Dawson Sergio De Cesare Jason Dedrick Chrysanthos Dellarocas Didem Demirhan Sarv Devaraj Rajiv M. Dewan Soussan Djamasbi Su Dong Wenjing Duan Peter Duchessi Deborah E. Dunkle Alexandra Durcikova Kaushik Dutta Robert Easley Christophe Elie-Dit-Cosaque Omar A. El Sawy Mike Eom Sean B. Eom J. Alberto Espinosa Andrea Everard Ming Fan Patrick Fan Xiaofen Fang Yulin Fang Steven Feiner Jane Feng Daniel R. Fesenmaier Eliezer M. Fich Jerry Fjermestad Chris Forman Chiara Francalanci Mark Fuller Brent Furneaux John Gallaugher Dale Ganley Gordon Gao Edward J. Garrity Judith Gebauer Andrew Gemino Michiel van Genuchten Joey George Anindya Ghose Janis L. Gogan Kim Huat Goh Thomas Goh Jahyun Goo Dale Goodhue Anand Gopal Ram D. Gopal Nelson Granados Dawn G. Gregg Ulrike Gretzel Robert K. Griffin Michael D. Grigoriades Bin Gu Kemal Guler Ken Guo Zhiling Guo Saurabh Gupta Nicole Haggerty Jungpil Hahn Ingoo Han Kunsoo Han Paul Hart Matthias Häsel Khaled Hassenein Jun He Hemantha Herath Tejaswini Herath Traci Hess Alan R. Hevner Starr Roxanne Hiltz Oliver Hinz Richard Hoffman Weiyin Hong John A. Hoxmeier Pei-fang Hsu Jeffrey Hu Nan Hu Paul Hu Qing Hu Ming-Hui Huang Wayne Huang Kai Lung Hui Wendy Hui Ard Huizing Yujong Hwang Ghiyong Im Gretchen I. Irwin Varghese Jacob Bharat A. Jain Radhika Jain Jeevan Jaisingh Dietmar Jannach Matthew Jensen Anand Jeyaraj Bao-Jun Jiang James J. Jiang Zhengrui Jiang Alice Johnson Eric Johnson Emmanuel Josserand Surinder Kahai Ajit Kambil Arnold Kamis Atreyi Kankanhalli Karthik Kannan P.K. Kannan Jahangir Karimi Evangelos Katsamakas Michael Kattan Timothy Kayworth Weiling Ke William J. Kettinger Moutaz Khouja Melody Y. Kiang SiaSiew Kien Byung Cho Kim Young-Gul Kim Dan J. Kim Dongmin Kim Seung Hyun Kim Ruth King Rajiv Kishore Gary Klein Richard Klein Cenk Kocas Chang Koh Rajiv Kohli Tobias Kollman Sherrie Komiak Praveen K. Kopalle Marios Koufaris Kenneth A. Kozar Ramayya Krishnan Gillian Ku Uday Kulkarni Akhil Kumar Ram Kumar Jason Kuruzovich Atanu Lahiri Simon S.K. Lam Guido Lang Karl R. Lang Nancy Lankton Kai R. Larsen Gwanhoo Lee Heeseok Lee Ho Geun Lee Jungwoo Lee Matthew Lee Thomas Lee Yang Lee Yen-Hsien Lee Younghwa (Gabe) Lee Christine Legner Jan Marco Leimeister Natalia Levina Chen Li Dahui Li Jiexun Li Na Li Ting Li Xiaotong Li Xin Li XinXin Li Ting-Peng Liang Paul Licker John Lim Fu-ren Lin Lihui Lin Ming Lin Yihwa Irene Liou Ying Liu Yipeng Liu Alexandre Lopes Paul B. Lowry Henry C. Lucas Jr. Mark Lycett Jane M. Mackay Simha R. Magal Pruthikrai Mahatanankoon M. Adam Mahmood Bin Mai Yogesh Malhotra Arti Mann Michael V. Mannino Ji-Ye Mao Salvatore T. March Kent Marett Likoebe M. Maruping Jerrold H. May William McCarthy Roy McKelvey Harrison McKnight Ephraim R. McLean Nirup Menon Shaila Miranda Dinesh Mirchandani AbhayNath Mishra Sunil Mithas Prasenjit Mitra William Money Ali R. Montazemi Ramiro Montealegre Jolene Morrison Benjamin Mueller Michael D. Myers Peter P. Mykytyn Jr. Barin N. Nag Fiona Nah Derek Nazareth Matthew Nelson R. Ryan Nelson Boon Siong Neo Derrick Neufeld Michael Newman Andreas I. Nicolaou Ralitza Nikolaeva Mark Nissen Dmitri Nizovtsev Oded Nov Lih-Bin Oh Wonseok Oh Bob O’Keefe Lorne Olfman James Oliver Benoit Otjacques Peter Otto Yasin Ozcelik Zafer D. Ozdemir Carl Pacini Raymond R. Panko Gautam Pant Manoj Parameswaran Michael Parent Insu Park Sungjune Park Craig Parker Bhavik K. Pathak Ravi Patnayakuni Souren Paul David J. Pauleen Paul A. Pavlou Kenneth Peffers Robin Pennington Roger A. Pick Selwyn Piramuthu Huseyin Polat Jean-Charles Pomerol Jaana Porra Gerald Post John H. Prager David Preston Sandeep Purao WenGuang Qu Arik Ragowsky Rex Kelly Rainer Jr. Vandana Ramachandran K. Ramamurthy Arkalgud Ramaprasad B. Ramesh Richard G. Ramirez H.R. Rao R. Ravichandran Gautam Ray Louis Raymond Blaize Horner Reich Bruce Reinig Yuqing Ren Paul Resnick Hyuen-Suk Rhee William B. Richmond Christoph Riedl Lionel Robert Nicholas Roberts Daniel Robey Michael Rogich Nicholas C. Romano Jr. Sherry D. Ryan Young U. Ryu Khawaja Saeed Otavio Sanchez G. Lawrence Sanders Radhika Santhanam Pallab Sanyal Nilesh Saraf Saonee Sarker Surendra Sarnikar Carol Saunders George Schell Petra Schubert Judy Scott Ravi Sen Sagnika Sen Sylvain Sénécal Nainika Seth Vikram Sethi Theresa M. Shaft Michael Shaw Jim Sheffield Hong Sheng Morgan M. Shepherd Michael Shields Choon Ling Sia Siew Kien Sia Keng Siau Mark Silver Param Vir Singh Atish P. Sinha Sumit Sircar H. Jeff Smith Jai-Yeol Son Jaeki Song Ryan Sougstad Scott Spangler William E. Spangler Rajendra P. Srivastava Thomas F. Stafford Stephen Standifird Sandy Staples Eric W. Stein Dick Stenmark Theofanis C. Stratopoulos Diane M. Strong Besiki Stvilia Mani Subramani Chandra Subramaniam Heshan Sun Arun Sundararajan Shankar Sundaresan Tae Kyung Sung Ali Tafti Paul P. Tallon Vaughn Tan Yao-Hua Tan Xinlin Tang Mohan R. Tanniru Monideepa Tarafdar Nolan Taylor Gary F. Templeton Hock Hai Teo Thompson Teo Jason B. Thatcher Matthew Thatcher Dominic Thomas Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong Leon van der Torre Gregory E. Truman Yanbin Tu Ilkka Tuomi Ofir Turel Tuure Tuunanen N.S. Umanath Andrew Urbaczewski Rustam Vahidov Ganesan Vaidyanathan Anthony Vance Viswanath Venkatesh Goetz Viering Padmal Vitharana Radu Vlas Douglas Vogel Steven Walczak Zhiping Walter Bin Wang Eric T.G. Wang Jingguo Wang Michael S. Wang Qiu-Hong Wang Shouhong Wang Sophia Wang Weiquan Wang Yinglei Wang Y. Richard Wang Molly Wasko Mary Beth Watson-Manheim Sunil Wattal Thomas Weber Chih-Ping Wei Charles E. Wells John Wells Larry West J. Christopher Westland Jonathan Whitaker Michael E. Whitman Jeffrey L. Whitten George Widmeyer Rolf Wigand Fons Wijnhoven Christopher Wolfe Charles A. Wood Hans Wortmann Ryan Wright Dazhong Wu Mu Xia Weidong Xia Mingdi Xin Heng Xu Hongjiang Xu Lizhen Xu Peng Xu Zhiyong Yang Oliver Yao Ulku Yaylacicegi Byungjoon Yoo Yufei Yuan Fatemeh Zahedi Chun Zeng Dongsong Zhang Han Zhang Jennifer Zhang John Zhang Michael Zhang Ping Zhang Zuopeng Zhang Huimin Zhao Kexin Zhao J. Leon Zhao Dmitry Zhdanov Lina Zhou Yilu Zhou Zhongyun Zhou Hongwei Zhu Youlong Zhuang J. Christopher Zimmer Moshe Zviran Just as I finished writing this, the sad news of the passing of Paul Gray reached me. I am sure all of us in information systems share this sadness. Paul was one of the founders and sustainers of our field. His lasting contributions as a scholar, editor, teacher, mentor, and builder of academic institutions, are manifold and profound. He has made a foundational contribution to the area of decision support. He founded International Information Systems, a pioneering journal in the recognition of the global aspects of IS; he later led for several years, with great commitment and success, Communications of the AIS. He established the IS program at Claremont Graduate University, which flourished into its own school. Beyond and above, Paul was a wonderful man whom very many of us are proud to call a friend. Paul and Muriel graced our conferences and made them joy and fun. We will always remember Paul Gray. We will have the many fruits of his labor Paul bequeathed us. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1994)
The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Lawrence A. West, Jr. on the costs involved in adopting an information system and another by Nabil R. Adam, Aryya Gangopadhyay, and James Clifford on natural language querying.

Individual Adaptation to IT-Induced Change: The Role of Social Networks - Bruque, Sebastián; Moyano, José; Eisenberg, Jacob (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2008)
In order to better understand the sociopsychological factors involved in employees' adaptation to new technology in organizations, we examine the role that two types of social networks--supportive and informational--play in individual adaptation to IT-induced change in a large financial company. Using survey data from 371 employees working in 133 different branches of the organization, we find that several aspects of the social networks relate to quality of employees' adaptation to the new technology as assessed by the company's departmental directors. Specifically, the size of the support network as well as the strength and density of the information network significantly predict employees' adaptation to the new system. We conclude the paper by discussing theoretical implications for the relevance of social network research for members' adaptation to organizational changes as well as outlining specific implications for practice.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1993)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1995)
Radical transformation of business processes within organizations and in the interorganizational business networks, spurred by global competition and enabled by information technology, is a fact of life and we may expect to witness it in years to come. Business process reengineering (BPR) is the most prominent medium through which the long-forecasted effects of information technology on production and commerce present themselves. Developing theoretical insights into BPR is, consequently, a vital task for MIS researchers. The Special Section that opens this issue of the Journal is indeed moving us "Toward a Theory of Business Process Change Management," as it promises in its heading. This is an impressive accomplishment of the authors and the Guest Editors, William J. Kettinger and Varun Grover. The papers included in the Special Section analyze the strategies and tactics of BPR, management of information about processes, which is necessary to enable BPR, and the implementation of BPR projects. The work spans the spectrum of the business transformation depth, from evolutionary to revolutionary. All papers are thoroughly grounded in practice. Taken together, the papers surface the fundamental problems and provide the conceptual frameworks necessary for further theory building. In their introduction to the Special Section, the Guest Editors offer an embryo of BPR theory and introduce the included papers at length. In the first paper of the general section, Ronald M. Lee and Young U. Ryu introduce the notion and present a prototype of a deontic expert systems as an implementation of the "ought" type of rules. Based on deontic logic, the system can be used to implement the rules governing rights, duties, and privileges operative in an organization or perhaps even more fruitfully, in interorganizational relationships. Take strategic alliances: As we know, several prominent interorganizational strategic ventures (such as CONFIRM) have collapsed largely because no norms had been established to allocate responsibilities. Explicit use of deontic reasoning appears to be a promising alternative to the direct deployment of the speech-act theory., based on Austin's study of performative utterances [3]. One can see how deontic expert systems may help expand the information-system support of organizational memory, constituting a part of the pattern-maintenance subsystem of an organizational memory information system [2]. Related to the previous paper in an attempt to broaden the reach of information systems is the paper by Phillip Ein-Dor and Israel Spiegler, who propose a model supporting natural language access to multiple databases. In this environment, the difficulties of providing natural language access to a single database are compounded by the presence of several conceptual domains, or contexts, each represented by a member database. The authors present a system prototype and analyze the feasibility of their approach. Taken together with the previous paper, this contribution shows how information systems can provide far broader cognitive support to their users than they do today. The construct of information resource management (IRM) has been used rather loosely for a long time. Some analysts focus on managing systems and technologies and thus take an efficiency-based view; others take an effectiveness-oriented perspective , relating IRM to supporting the organizational users [1]. Based on an extensive analysis and integration of the available conceptualizations of IRM, Bruce R. Lewis, Charles A. Snyder, and R. Kelly Rainer, Jr., define IRM as a comprehensive approach to all aspects of managing the resources and processes associated with data-oriented activities in an enterprise with an objective of meeting its business needs. As will be obvious to the reader of the preceding two papers in the issue, "data" are not limited to quantitative entities. What is more salient, the author parsimoniously surface the dimensions of IRM and offer a survey instrument for measuring them. Further work should lead, after a refinement and validation of the instrument, to a gold IRM standard and comparisons of how well the information resources are managed and how this relates to the company's performance. The impact of expert systems on their users' jobs is assessed by Youngohc Yoon and Tor Guimaraes. The authors find substantial and multifaceted benefits in this regard. It appears that the principal gains can be derived from selecting a challenging and vital problem, and an outstanding domain expert. (The quality of domain experts is, of course, itself a multidimensional construct, with tip experts often being poor, and poorly motivated, communicators.) A close reading of the paper will reward with more specific insights into how to benefit from developing and fielding expert systems. As we enter the twelfth year of JMIS publication, I would like to thank once again the Editorial Board, authors, readers, and the broad MIS community for their contributions and support. It is a special pleasure and privilege to thank the Journal's reviewers, the primary guarantors of its quality. Finally, it gives me great pleasure to welcome to our Editorial Board new members: Thomas H. Davenport, WIlliam R. King, Ronald M. Lee, Tridas Mukhopadhyay, and Abraham Seidman. As the Journal continues to grow and receives more and more high-quality papers, we shall need their outstanding expertise and energy. Vladimir Zawss Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2020)
Innovation is an imperative, in all its varieties, from disruptive to incremental. It is as simple as that. Innovation is imperative for the Earth to sustain its people, for the people to thrive, and for the organizations to be able to contribute and to survive. Without exploration, exploitation withers. Innovation is the substance of our scholarly field, in all the meanings of these words. The opening paper of the issue, by Wietske van Osch and Burcu Bulgurcu, presents an investigation of idea generation, an initial phase of innovation, in the context of groups using enterprise social media (ESM), a common setting of today for communication and collaboration among knowledge workers. The researchers compare the ideation by open and closed social groups relying on an ESM whose log underlies the ability to conduct the quasi-experiment. Research questions are articulated on the basis of social network theory, to study the effectiveness of the bridging versus bonding ties in generating ideas by open versus closed groups. The work brings to the surface the importance of congruity between the nature of the group and the type of social network structure. It is a contribution both to the social network theory and to the pragmatics of innovation. The investigation of social media continues in the next paper, in a different context, that of focused public networks. In this case, in a study by Peng Xie, Hailiang Chen, and Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, the focus of the network is the ongoing discussion of the Bitcoin financial market. There are numerous message threads on a discussion board selected for the study. Which of them are more effective in determining signal from conversational noise to thus lead to a better price prediction? The authors show that the less cohesive networks formed on the discussion board lead to more accurate market forecasting. This finding is in line with the wisdom of crowds being grounded in the diversity of the participants and operationalizes this paradigm for market pragmatics. Mobile platforms are a preeminent locus of innovation activity. In another paper, Franck Soh and Varun Grover empirically study the marketplace of apps released for these platform ecosystems by the third-party developers. These developers gain access to a huge marketplace, as the platform users are about a third of humanity. However, this access does not always translate into shining market performance of the apps; the marketplace is equally hugely competitive. The authors argue and prove by their empirics that the release time of the apps is crucial to their financial performance. More specifically, Soh and Grover show that the app developers should leverage the innovations introduced by the platforms themselves to time their own app release. The econometric analysis indicates the preferred stages of app release. This is a contribution to the theory of innovations and, again, to the pragmatics of an online marketplace. Market concentration in the online domain is a current concern of many, including the regulators. Vertical integration of firms is one of the ways a market’s participants disappear from the competitive arena. The next paper presents a formal economic study of a consequential factor in the potential merger between the internet service providers (ISPs) and the content providers on the platforms offered by these ISPs. Soohyun Cho, Liangfei Qiu, and Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay analyze the interplay between the provision of zero-rated content (i.e., a content or data service free to the consumers under a variety of conditions) by content providers and the vertical integration between the ISP and the content provider. With the consideration of various comparative pricing contingencies for the alternatives to zero-rating, the authors are able to contribute to the important debate on the online market structures. D. Harrison McKnight, Peng Liu, and Brian Pentland empirically study the trust change in information-technology (IT) products; more specifically, they study the initial stage of trust dynamics in the light of such events such as news releases. Notably, the authors’ findings show the influence of the cognitive factors of attention, sense-making, and thresholds (tipping points) on the dynamics of the initial trust, which may strongly influence the trajectory of the product. These factors are combined with the situational and person-related trust factors in a survey-based experiment where a sequence of reported events is expected to affect the initial trust in a technological artifact. Several novel contributions of the paper, including the study of change as a dependent variable and foregrounding of the cognitive event-related predictors, open new research avenues going beyond the trust research area. The IT-enabled value co-creation by independent individuals along with organizational actors has emerged as a key factor of economic change. It is a complex phenomenon, in the state of flux and only partly understood. This is particularly so as the independent co-creators generally act in the frameworks created, maintained, evolved, and influenced by more or less formal organizations. In the next paper, Amber G. Young, Ariel D. Wigdor, and Gerald C. Kane present a study of the interplay between the core (a quasi-organization of established and ranked contributors acting as editors) and a periphery (more casual contributors) of the iconic product of co-creation, Wikipedia. The paper shows how the interaction between the sustained activity of the core and more transient contribution of the periphery enables a point of view (or bias?) of the online encyclopedia. Online question-and-answer forums are another component of co-creation. Here, it is very easy to go into a downward spiral, with poor answers leading to fewer questions, and vice versa, until the shutdown. Reza Mousavi, Raghu Santhanam, and Keith Frey, in their empirical study of a community-based health-related forum, show the importance of the quality of the first answer. Far more than that, they show how such forums can algorithmically monitor the quality of the answers and by adjusting the order of the answers increase the quality of the overall forum. This is also an exemplar of a highly useful application of machine learning to health analytics that clearly can be ported to other co-creation domains. Online consumer-oriented marketplaces, highly competitive as they are, rely on the accumulated reputation of the sellers. It is not often recognized that these reputations are another example of co-creation by consumers. Indeed, how often do you face a choice between responding to an evaluation questionnaire from a recently used seller and simply deleting the survey in the interest of expediency? One reputational mechanism is reputation badge (or a “gold medal”), awarded to the sellers surfaced as highly reputable by such a system. The mechanism includes a potential loss of a medal that has become tarnished by a deteriorating seller’s performance. What is the impact on sales of such an award and of such a loss? Hsing Kenneth Cheng, Weiguo Fan, Peipei Guo, Hailiang Huang, and Liangfei Qiu find a highly asymmetric effect on sales of the gain versus the loss of a reputation badge. They also present more nuanced workings of the badge-based reputation systems, and the evidence-based work tells you about the causal effects on the actual sales, which is meaningful indeed. Open source software (OSS), once in the realm of value co-creation by unaffiliated individuals, has been embraced by major companies. As such, OSS development competes with the more traditional development of proprietary software. How should a firm choose between these two development modes? Yu Wang, Yu Chen, and Bonwoo Koo present a formal economic model in a duopoly setting in a market with indirect network effects, where each firm provides software and services, and faces this choice. The answer hinges on the strength of the network effect and on the service dependency of software. The work strongly implies that OSS development should be considered in the strategic arsenal of software companies. Digital transformation of healthcare is moving apace, albeit unequally. The field of Information Systems has an important role to play in this broad development that can lead to a momentous improvement in human welfare. In the concluding paper of this Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS) issue, Stefanie Steinhauser, Claudia Doblinger, and Stefan Hüsig study the introduction of telemedicine as discontinuous innovation in the setting of a large number of acute care hospitals across Europe. Their empirics and analyses show the key importance of the complementary digital assets: They have a greater effect on the adoption of telemedicine by an incumbent hospital than do governmental regulations. A digital transformation, in other words, has to be just that — a transformation — to be fully successful, rather than just a fragmentary introduction of a particular initiative. The work is a strong conclusion to this issue of JMIS, whose content focuses on the innovations of the two decades that have transpired in the current century. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2006)
The penetration of advanced information technologies (IT), particularly the ever deeper and more diverse deployment of the multiple aspects of the Internet–Web compound, has empowered networks of firms benefiting from their long-term supply relationships. This new nature of cooperation and competition has far-reaching effects that require extensive investigation. In particular, effective cooperation among the firms in supply-based relationships requires encompassing information sharing. Coordination of actions is rooted in information. However, such sharing does not come naturally, as it may lead to opportunistic and exploitative behavior. Long-term, mutually beneficial relationships are the foundation of sharing. Here, Ravi Patnayakuni, Arun Rai, and Nainika Seth present a study of a vital aspect of the interorganizational information sharing in supply networks. The authors define the constructs that characterize the relational orientation of network firms and trace those to the outcome of information sharing. Fostering the specific relational factors of sharing identified by the authors thus comes into the managerial agenda. IT-enabled business process change (BPC) is fraught with dangers, and failure has many faces. With its ability to provide rich characterizations of phenomena, disciplined interpretive research is well positioned to set a lens and a mirror before these faces of failure. Here, Suprateek Sarker, Saonee Sarker, and Anna Sidorova analyze an extensive case of BPC failure. Applying the Latourian actor-network theory, the authors are able to distill a highly realistic set of diagnostic findings that contain nuggets of political wisdom for the sociopolitical processes of information system (IS) implementation. The need to heed technology appropriation as a continuing process of management is an important takeaway. Five contributions to this JMIS issue address various aspects of e-commerce. Fatemeh “Mariam” Zahedi, William V. Van Pelt, and Mark Srite study one of the cultural dimensions of Web sites: their masculine or feminine signification. In another exemplar of interpretive research, to follow the preceding paper, the present authors combine a hermeneutic approach with Barthes-inflected semiotics in order to tease out and categorize gender-oriented signifiers in Web site documents. Considering that these researchers have been able to find much gender-encoded communication on the Web sites, their work should be studied by all aiming at effective communication and usability of Web sites for commerce and beyond it. In a contrasting methodologically work, the authors of the next paper study the online music marketplace. The digital music is on the front line of the restructuring of the markets for digital goods, with the established intermediaries challenged by the opportunities for direct relationships between the producers and consumers, and—even more threateningly—among the consumers weakly motivated to reward the producers. Sudip Bhattacharjee, Ram D. Gopal, Kaveepan Lertwachara, and James R. Marsden deploy economic analysis to study this reforming marketplace. The authors find a complex interplay between the intermediary profits, policies of music publishers, and consumer search (and piracy) behavior. Notably, the authors identify the conditions under which a music retailer is better off in an environment with piracy, which functions as a sampling technique. The work is of definite interest to all invested in the digital good marketplaces, a vast area of drastic change. A great variety of auction mechanisms have been explored and, in part, implemented in e-commerce, as the auction form of market organization is highly compatible with the ubiquitous access and the ability to enforce the desired rules automatically and impartially. In particular, combinatorial auctions, in which bidders vie for collections of goods, and which may be highly complex in the winner selection, have become feasible. Joni L. Jones, Robert F. Easley, and Gary J. Koehler show here that it is possible to use their rule-based combinatorial auction to serve a multisegment marketplace with such a single mechanism. This work is of importance in fostering unified seller-owned marketplaces to serve a variety of customers. Trust deficit is the epiphenomenon of online marketplaces. Reputation is primary among the multiple sources from which trust can derive—hence, for example, the importance of brands in the online world (against the nonsensical predictions of some early commentators on the field). Enhanced online reputation of a firm may derive from an association with a more reputable firm. Web site links are a form of association. Katherine J. Stewart presents an empirical analysis of the effects of linking on the firms of unequal reputation on both sides of the hypertext link. The results will help organizations in partner selection and link presentations. Online buyers can pursue several ways of searching for a projected acquisition, with the choice of the search methods affecting the final purchase. In an empirical study, Ravi Sen, Ruth C. King, and Michael J. Shaw find that the loyalty to a vendor, the buyer’s perception of price dispersion, and other factors mitigate the determined search for the lowest price. The results of this are apparent in the well-known fact of wide price dispersion on the Web. The authors indicate how their results will be helpful to vendors in price setting and selling in the market space. The options approach to the IT investment valuations is now well established. With the use of real options analysis, adapted from the world of securities, the long-term effects of major investments can be estimated at their fuller contribution, avoiding the myopic view of the net present value. Indeed, the approach—introduced in this journal 15 years ago—is now entering textbooks and the IS practice. Considering the complexity of the method, temptations to use approximations arise. In their contribution, Michel Benaroch, Sandeep Shah, and Mark Jeffery show how these heuristics in search of tractability can lead to very significant overvaluations of IT investments. Further, the authors refine the option model. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are well known both for their potential in enterprise management and for the difficulty of their implementation. With the progressing business globalization, an important barrier to implementation success emerges in the distinctions between the country of implementation and the country of origin of the ERP package. Here, Eric T.G. Wang, Gary Klein, and James J. Jiang parse these distinctions and analyze their role in the implementation process. They approach the systems as products of and participants in different social arrangements in different cultural contexts. Based on their analysis, the authors are able to offer guidelines for alleviating the deleterious effects of the differences. The concluding paper in this issue takes a fundamental approach to the role of IS in organizations by turning to Galbraith’s information processing theory. The work is important in that, surprisingly, this theoretical lens had not been used in our field. The relatively recent expression of misunderstanding of the role of IS (as opposed to just IT) in organizations could have been informed—if not prevented—by a deeper analysis of embedding of technologies in organizations. Here, James F. Fairbank, Giuseppe “Joe” Labianca, H. Kevin Steensma, and Richard Metters deploy the information processing theory to study empirically the effects of the embedded IS on the performance of single-industry organizations. The beneficial strategic deployment of IS, when used fittingly to the firm’s competitive posture, is apparent. This issue opens the twenty-third volume of the Journal of Management Information Systems, the first in the expanded format. This is an excellent time to express gratitude to our readers and authors, and to the global community of the MIS scholars and practitioners. In this expression of gratitude, I represent the Journal’s Editorial Board, constituted of the leaders of our discipline. Very special thanks go, as always, to our reviewers, the primary guarantors of quality. Here are the JMIS referees: Niv Ahituv Pervaiz Alam Paul Alpar Donald L. Amoroso Murugan Anandarajan Hayward P. Andres Dorine Andrews Yoris Au Sulin Ba Barbro Back Akhilesh Bajaj P.R. Balasubramanian Dirk Baldwin Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay Indranil R. Bardhan Reza Barkhi Henri Barki Stuart J. Barnes Dinesh Batra Irma Becerra-Fernandez 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 Jacek Brzezinski Terry A. Byrd Edward G. Cale, Jr. Jinwei Cao Sven Carlsson William J. Carroll Sergio de Cesare Susy Chan 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 Bruce Dehning Didem Demirhan Amit Deokar Gordon Depledge Sarv Devaraj Rajiv M. Dewan Gisela von Dran Peter Duchessi Omar A. El Sawy Sean B. Eom J. Alberto Espinosa Robert Evaristo Ming Fan Xiaofen Fang Bijan Fazlollahi Steven Feiner Eliezer M. Fich Kirk Fiedler Elizabeth Fife Edmond P. Fitzgerald Jerry Fjermestad Steven W. Floyd Chiara Francalanci Michael R. Galbreth Dennis Galletta Michael Gallivan Gordon Gao Edward J. Garrity Judith Gebauer David Gefen Michiel van Genuchten Anindya Ghose Paulo B. Goes Janis L. Gogan Thomas Goh Dale Goodhue Ram D. Gopal Sanjay Gosain Peter Gray Stefano Grazioli Saul Greenberg Robert K. Griffin Michael D. Grigoriades Bin Gu Kemal Guler Alok Gupta Jungpil Hahn Barbara Haley James A. Hall Ingoo Han Kunsoo 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 Varghese Jacob Bharat A. Jain James J. Jiang Alice Johnson Linda Ellis Johnson K.D. Joshi Boris Jukic; Nenad Jukic; 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 Sia Siew Kien Ruth King Rajiv Kishore Gary Klein Cenk Kocas 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 Gwanhoo Lee Heeseok Lee Ho Geun Lee Jungwoo Lee Yang Lee Zoonky Lee Richard Leifer Jan Marco Leimeister Katherine N. Lemon Mary Jane Lenard Hugo Levecq Dahui Li Ting-Peng Liang Stephen L. Liedtka Nancy Lightner John Lim Kai Lim Ming Lin Yihwa Irene Liou Astrid Lipp Henry C. Lucas, Jr. Mark Lycett William McCarthy Jane M. Mackay Roy McKelvey D. Harrison McKnight Ephraim R. McLean Simha R. Magal M. Adam Mahmood Arvind Malhotra Yogesh Malhotra Ji-Ye Mao Salvatore T. March Ivan Marsic Nelson Massad Anne P. Massey Charles H. Mawhinney Jerrold H. May Roberto J. Mejias Shaila Miranda Rajesh Mirani Prasenjit Mitra 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 Carl Pacini Jonathan W. Palmer Raymond R. Panko Manoj Parameswaran Michael Parent Jeffrey Parsons Ravi Patnayakuni David Paul Souren Paul David J. Pauleen Paul A. Pavlou Kenneth Peffers Robin Pennington Francis Pereira Roger A. Pick 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 Richard G. Ramirez 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 Naveed Saleem G. Lawrence Sanders Sunanda Sangwan Radhika Santhanam Surendra Sarnikar Carol Saunders George Schell Petra Schubert Judy Scott Ravi Sen Kishore Sengupta Nainika Seth Vikram Sethi Theresa M. Shaft Michael Shaw 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 Katherine Stewart 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 Sonny Tambe Bernard C.Y. Tan Yao-Hua Tan Mohan R. Tanniru Alfred Taudes Nolan Taylor David P. Tegarden Rahul Telang Gary F. Templeton James T.C. Teng Hock-Hai Teo Thompson Teo Jason B. Thatcher Matthew Thatcher Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong Amrit Tiwana Kerem Tomak Leon van der Torre Jonathan K. Trower Gregory E. Truman Yanbin Tu Ilkka Tuomi Brad Tuttle Tuure Tuunanen N.S. Umanath Andrew Urbaczewski Rustam Vahidov Vasja Vehovar Viswanath Venkatesh Michael Wade Steven Walczak Zhiping Walter Bin Wang Jingguo 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 Rolf Wigand Fons Wijnhoven Charles Willow Barbara Wixom Christopher Wolfe Charles A. Wood Hans Wortmann D.J. Wu Mu Xia Weidong Xia Christopher Yang Byungjoon Yoo Fatemeh Zahedi Han Zhang Ping Zhang Zuopeng Zhang Huimin Zhao J. Leon Zhao Lina Zhou Kevin Zhu Youlong Zhuang Ilze Zigurs Moshe Zviran Following the expansion of the Journal, it is also a pleasure and a privilege to announce the expansion of the JMIS Editorial Board. The new members of the Editorial Board are: Michael J. Gallivan (Georgia State University) Paulo Goes (University of Connecticut) Alok Gupta (University of Minnesota) Rudy Hirschheim  (Louisiana State University) Ann Majchrzak (University of Southern California) Suzanne Rivard (HEC Montréal) Rajiv Sabherwal (University of Missouri) Bernard C.Y. Tan (National University of Singapore) As ever, I am looking forward to working with the Board and the referees in expanding the horizons of our field. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2019)
Peer influence in social networks (SN) is vastly important to our economies and societies. As the case may be (among billions of cases an hour), this influence magnifies, enhances, and distorts the flow of news, opinions, advice, data, and statements that traverse these encompassing networks. The phenomena surrounding SN and the (nontransparent) minute details of their design are a dominant factor driving the epochal change we experience in our world. Several fields of knowledge make them an object of their study. Our own field is in an excellent position to contribute to a granular understanding of what social networks or social media do and what they should be doing in the lives of people, in the shared fortune of communities, in the functioning of institutions, in the governing of countries, and in the affairs of the world at large. The opening paper of the issue indeed provides a contribution to both the understanding of peer influence and to the methodology of its study. Pedro Ferreira, Rahul Telang, and Miguel Godinho de Matos investigate the influence the network friends have on the focal consumer’s churn and tariff-plan choice in the mobile telecommunications marketplace. The authors are offering a method of separating peer influence from homophily, an econometric model of the setting that they exercise on an extensive data panel, and conclusions that expand our theoretical and pragmatic knowledge. They show how peer influence exerts itself in a stepwise reaction of friends and that the customer lifetime value understates the value of customers as social beings, with friends whom they influence. Influence on social media is the subject of the next study as well. Hailiang Chen, Yu Jeffrey Hu, and Shan Huang turn to the equity recommendations on social media to investigate the effects of monetary incentives provided to the amateur analysts who offer investment advice on these networks. As a premium service in a crowdsourced stock-research community, the remunerated advice is being compared to the advice offered by the unrewarded content contributors. The salutary effects of financial rewards are found to include the increased volume and the diversity of contributions, but no enhancement in their quality. This work adds to our knowledge regarding the financial rewards in crowdsourcing and opens the door to the experiments with the effects of the varying levels of rewards in various contexts. Digital geography is the term introduced and, apparently, contested vis-à-vis the geographers’ usage, by the authors of the next paper in order to express the Web’s traversal by a user moving from one website to another. Brian Kimball Dunn, Narayan Ramasubbu, Dennis F. Galletta, and Paul Benjamin Lowry contend that the border strength of a site, a concept they introduce and define, has a positive effect on the users’ recognition of their virtual location. The authors draw on the literature in experiential geography, limning the sense of a place which, as distinguished from its location, imbues the site with a distinguishable meaning (ancient Romans would call it genius loci). Increase the border strength of your site, make it distinctive in a meaningful way to the users entering it, and the users traversing the Web will attribute the credit for the experience to your site—that is the authors’ contention. The contention is refined into the hypotheses that are tested, and the empirics indeed show that the stronger a digital border the stronger is also the credit attribution to the focal website by a wanderer in the digital geography. The work opens a broad avenue to further research on the experiential geography of the Web, a lens that can help us see more clearly the relationships between the users and the digital objects, or websites and customers. With the progress of computer technologies, digital objects can be imbued with the ever more anthropomorphic (human-like) characteristics. This could be deployed in electronic commerce to promote products. Would the customers be willing to pay more for the products so promoted? Lingyao (Ivy) Yuan and Alan R. Dennis study this question in the context of an online auction, differentially adding auditory and visual anthropomorphizing features to a product display. The authors go beyond their finding of the positive effects for the sellers of the visual features on the willingness to pay, as opposed to the lack of effects of the auditory features. Important to the further theory development, they find that it is the attachment to the product, induced by the anthropomorphic features, which can lead the users to pay more. Peer-produced content, such as—emblematically—the contents of Wikipedia, has always been questioned with regard to quality. Beyond question is the obvious improvement over time in the quality of the reputable sites co-created by users. Quality assessment of the individual components combines human-produced ratings with automated approaches. Human assessment does not scale and moves the issue one level up: Who is assessing the assessors? The authors of the next paper, Srikar Velichety, Sudha Ram, and Jesse Bockstedt present a design-science paper introducing a novel automated assessment approach. They are forecasting the quality of the content item, such as a Wikipedia article, based on the history of the item’s development and the coordination activities in this development (e.g., a discussion record). The model includes the identification of the features relevant to the quality assessment in the given context. The authors are able to demonstrate the superiority of their approach, which is widely applicable to other settings. We know exceedingly well that mobile information technologies (smartphone, largely, but the wearables have been moving in) are with us every waking minute. What about selling to the time of day by highlighting the product’s value that may appeal to the user during the given time segment? This is the subject of the research presented here by Chee Wei Phang, Xueming Luo, and Zheng Fang. In a theoretically-founded field experiment, accompanied by a survey, the authors find a higher adoption of the product when the message is tied to the time segment. The time-based targeting avoids the privacy concerns of the location-based advertising and is well worth further exploration and, perhaps, exploitation. Crowdfunding has firmly entered the fundraising practice, particularly for the more exciting projects. The authors of the next paper, Gen Li and Jing Wang, study the backer motivations of reward-based crowdfunding, where rewards are non-financial, with Kickstarter being the leading such platform, as well as the source of the extensive dataset used by the authors. A funding threshold needs to be reached for the project to take effect. The researchers find a strong prosocial motivation in the backing of the projects, which overwhelms the loss aversion, a well-known behavioral motivator. Among other findings, they also see a large number of backers entering the field as the funding threshold approaches, resembling the behavior of auction participants in the last seconds of online auctions. Several granular findings of the authors further point to the prosociality of campaign backers. As we see and study the benefits of SN, we are ever more strongly recognizing—and need to study—their dark side. On that side is cyberbullying, the subject of the paper by Tommy K.H. Chan, Christy M.K. Cheung, and Randy Y.M. Wong. The authors take well-defined theoretical perspectives to investigate how the affordances of the SN sites and the environmental conditions combine with the characteristics of the likely offenders to produce the deviant behavior. The researchers proceed to test their encompassing model with survey empirics. The results contribute to the theory-building for the dark side of IT use and lead to pragmatic advice for prevention of cyberbullying. Online reviews have attracted a voluminous body of research. Ashish Kumar Jha and Snehal Shah make an original contribution by investigating the influence of past reviews on the future ones with the use of the appraisal theory. That lens focuses on the individuals’ constructing meaning from a situation, this appraisal leading to a corresponding emotion and response. In social appraisal, this process is influenced by the behavior of a reference group. Via their empirics-based sentiment analysis, the authors find subtle aspects of the influence of past reviews. A hint to those who would strive to delete negative reviews of their offerings: They may be good for you! The concluding paper of the issue moves us to the organizational level of analysis. Till J. Winkler and Jochen Wulf study the effects of the IT service management (ITSM), an integrated system for organizing and delivering IT services, driven by the specific user requirements. The ITSM practices are expected to result in the greater effectiveness of a firm’s IS operation. Do they? If so, how? The paper presents theory-based and empirically tested findings that confirm the positive effects of the ITSM capability on the IS effectiveness. It also surfaces the mechanisms through which these effects take place which, notably, include strategic conservativeness of the IS function. As sometimes contended and as established here, ITSM succeeds in the more stable contexts. It gives me great pleasure to welcome the new members of our Editorial Board, Jan Marco Leimeister of the University of St. Gallen, Paul Benjamin Lowry of Virginia Tech, and Monideepa Tarafdar of Lancaster University. I also wish to offer thanks to the outgoing member of the Board, Alain Pinsonneault of McGill University, for his multi-year contribution to the quality of JMIS.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2015)
As the formation of supply webs through strategic outsourcing has redefined the landscape of contemporary business, a deeper understanding of the long-term objectives of these relationships is emerging. Organizational learning is—or should be—a primary objective of the firms collaborating in information-technology (IT)–supported business-process outsourcing and in the outsourcing of IT itself. In realizing this objective, one needs to meet a challenge: learning can be impaired by outsourcing processes to other firms. Measures are needed to continuously learn from partner companies. In the opening paper of this issue of the Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS), Deepa Mani and Anitesh Barua investigate the impact of organizational learning on the creation of value in outsourcing relationships. The authors parse this learning into two fundamental components, relational and procedural, and use the market data on outsourcing contracts to determine the differential effects of these two kinds of learning. The results point to the salutary value-creation effects of learning as firms tend properly to these aspects of outsourcing—and, indeed, to the need to tend to these aspects. The disruption of business models of the traditional media by the Internet–Web compound is seen everywhere, perhaps most clearly in the newspaper industry. This package of content monetized largely by print advertising has been severely challenged. Is there a response? Jahangir Karimi and Zhiping Walter deploy the theory of disruptive innovation to establish which dynamic capabilities need to be mustered by a newspaper-owning firm to respond to such a survival-threatening challenge. Dynamic capabilities are in their essence the multifaceted capabilities for change through developing specialized and differentiating resources that are dispositive in the emerging competitive environment. Much of the required response that has surfaced in the authors’ research is of the “join-them” kind, but by far not all of it. As you will read, the proper deployment of IT to create these firm’s capabilities is central to the response. Two subsequent papers focus on software development. Nikhil Mehta and Anandhi Bharadwaj study software development by vendor teams serving a client firm in an outsourcing relationship. Adopting the knowledge-integration lens, these authors investigate two boundary-spanning processes that control, respectively, the inflow of information to a team and the outflow of information from it. Collectively, these processes aim to help the software-development team to minimize external distractions and thus help its members to integrate their common stocks of knowledge toward salutary project outcomes. Based on the empirics they deploy, the researchers show that the role these processes play has a nonlinear effect on a team’s knowledge integration and is sensitive to the degree of the project’s uncertainty. The findings are not obvious and have important implications for the regulation of interactions between the team and its organizational environment. Open source software (OSS) development has become a key development mode in the software industry. Communitarian in nature, it is often supported in various ways by major companies that benefit from the complementarities. Software innovation in this domain is therefore of great importance, as is the effective maintenance of the existing code base. Here, Orcun Temizkan and Ram L. Kumar adopt the software-artifact unit of analysis to seek the antecedents of ambidexterity in OSS development. They show that patch development and feature requests can serve as the respective proxies for exploitation and exploration activities in OSS development processes, and proceed to empirically determine which OSS team structures lead to success. Information technology has served to enable a variety of team structures, dispersed in space and time. J. Alberto Espinosa, Ning Nan, and Erran Carmel posit that the effects of the latter distance, that is, of the temporal separation among the team members have not been investigated in-depth, important as these effects are. After all, limited work synchronicity can be expected to lower a team’s performance, whereas the ability to “follow the sun” offers efficiencies. Basing themselves on several theoretical perspectives, the researchers devised a controlled experiment to investigate the contradiction. The authors show that the received wisdom of speed-for-quality trade-off requires qualification and they offer well-grounded avenues to achieving both benefits in the work of temporally and spatially dispersed teams. Four papers analyze various aspects of e-commerce. Gregory D. Moody and Dennis F. Galletta postulate maximizing information scent as a means of attracting users to a website and thus as a site design objective. Information scent is the set of visual, audio, and semantic cues that can be used to guide website users in accomplishing their informational or transactional task. The authors show the efficacy of latent semantic analysis in assessing the scent and, in turn, the scent’s value in reducing the stress and enhancing the positive attitude of the website user. Clear guidelines emerge for the site designers, in particular, in regard to the need to develop use scenarios and cases, and to scent the paths to their accomplishment. A similar objective—that of enhancing users’ attitude with respect to a website—is pursued by Alexander Benlian. He studies the effect of site-personalization cues on website stickiness and on users’ willingness to pay for the site’s offerings. The author differentiates between content and design personalization, and shows the distinctions in their effects, individually and jointly. The work relies on a model grounded in the stimulus–organism–response framework. Taken together, the two papers offer a rich store of theoretically grounded and empirically verified advice to website designers. Price dispersion online is a well-established fact, contra the early expectations of a one-price environment. There are two ways to assess this dispersion, as stated by Kexin Zhao, Xia Zhao, and Jing Deng, the authors of the next paper in the issue. One can focus on the supply side and thus the listing prices posted by sellers, or on the demand side, that is, the transaction prices, actually paid by the buyers. The difference in the two price aggregates exists because many transactions are realized at lower listing prices and the higher listing prices would thus appear less frequently as transaction prices. Using the data sets of actual prices, the authors show that the drivers of price dispersion are different on the supply and demand sides of the market. Notably, they also show that the dispersion of transaction prices is three times lower than that of listing prices. This is an important finding: whereas we do not see one price on the buying side, we are actually much closer to that than we would think when looking at the listing prices. Using a formal game-theoretic economic model, Dan Ma investigates the impact of push-type delivery of online content as compared to the pull of content by website users. A common realization of this delivery mode is really simple syndication (RSS). The impact is measured as profitability of the site and the competitive advantage of the owner. The anecdotal evidence from the push-versus-pull practice of content delivery has been contradictory, dependent as it is on various factors, including the motivation for disclosure of the attributable revenues. Do RSS and similar push-oriented modes of content delivery add value to a website? The author uncovers a nuanced response to this question and shows that this response answers some more general questions, too. A paper that generalizes empirically much of our knowledge about the exploration of complex information systems by organizational users closes this issue of JMIS. Huigang Liang, Zeyu Peng, Yajiong Xue, Xitong Guo, and Nengmin Wang triangulate system-exploration behavior into three factor sets: task, system, and organizational environment. The authors proceed to build a theoretically grounded model of employee-exploration behavior and use an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as an exemplar in their empirical verification of the model. Based on this, they are in a position to provide a rich set of guidelines for employers aiming to foster comprehensive and effective use of complex information systems, and their infusion into innovative organizational practices. As is our tradition at the outset of a new volume, I wish to thank our referees, the primary guarantors of the quality of our papers. Here are the names of the JMIS referees:Hyung Jun Ahn Pervaiz Alam Oliver Alexy Muhammad Aljukhadar Gove Allen Paul Alpar Niek Altuizen Kemal Altinkemer Naveen Amblee Ofer Arazy Kursad Asdemir Norman Au Yoris Au Benoit A. Aubert Peter van Baalen Hyunmi Baek Ainsworth Bailey Akhilesh Bajaj Hillol Bala Dirk Baldwin Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay Gaurav Bansal Reza Barkhi Henri Barki Stuart J. Barnes Richard Baskerville Dinesh Batra Daniel Beimborn Skip Benamati Michel Benaroch Raquel Benbunan-Fich Alexander Benlian François Bergeron Ganesh Bhatt Sudip Bhattacharjee Eva Bittner Jesse Bockstedt Riccardo Bonazzi Antal van den Bosch Indranil Bose Randy Bradley Tobias Brandt Nicola Breugst Glenn J. Browne Sebastian Bruque Scott Buffett Judee Burgoon Andrew Burton-Jones Ashley Bush Brian Butler Terry A. Byrd Jinwei Cao Lan Cao Erran Carmel Hasan Cavusoglu Sangmi Chai Hsin-Lu Chang Young Bong Chang Mohamed-Hédi Charki Sutirtha Chatterjee Michael Chau Patrick Chau Aihui Chen Andrew Chen Daniel Chen Hong-Mei Chen Hsinchun Chen Jianqing Chen Jin Chen Kay-Yut Chen Kuan Chen Li Chen Liwei Chen Yan Chen Hsing Kenneth Cheng Mike Cheung Robert T.H. Chi Robert Chiang Roger Chiang Benjamin Chiao Ananth Chiravuri Alina M. Chircu Chaochang Chiu Jong-min Choe H. Michael Chung Wingyan Chung Theodore H. Clark Randolph Cooper Kevin Crowston Dianne Cyr Qizhi Dai Yan Dang John D’Arcy Ronald Dattero Gregory Dawson Jason Dedrick Chrysanthos Dellarocas Haluk Demirkan Xuefei Deng Sarv Devaraj Sanjeev Dewan Debabrata Dey Soussan Djamasbi Su Dong Line Dubé Peter Duchessi Alina Dulipovici Deborah E. Dunkle Kaushik Dutta Robert Easley Dana Edberg Christophe Elie-Dit-Cosaque Omar A. El Sawy Mike Eom Sean B. Eom J. Alberto Espinosa Andrea Everard Kelly Fadel Ming Fan Patrick Fan Xiaofen Fang Yulin Fang Jane Feng Daniel R. Fesenmaier Eliezer M. Fich Thomas A. Fischer Jerry Fjermestad Chris Forman Chiara Francalanci Brent Furneaux John Gallaugher Dale Ganley Gordon Gao Monica Garfield Ina Garnefeld Edward J. Garrity Xianjun Geng Michiel van Genuchten Janis L. Gogan Kim Huat Goh Thomas Goh Dale Goodhue Anand Gopal Ram D. Gopal Nelson Granados Dawn G. Gregg Shirley Gregor Ulrike Gretzel Robert K. Griffin Michael D. Grigoriades Bin Gu Ken Guo Zhiling Guo Saurabh Gupta Nicole Haggerty Jungpil Hahn Ingoo Han Kunsoo Han Shu Han Il-Horn Hann Matthew Hashim Jun He Raymond Henry Hemantha Herath Tejaswini Herath Thomas Hess Traci Hess Alan R. Hevner Oliver Hinz Susanna Ho Richard Hoffman Christian P. Hoffmann Jason Hong Weiyin Hong John A. Hoxmeier Han-Fen Hu Jeffrey Hu Nan Hu Paul Hu Petra Hu Qing Hu Chun-Yao Huang Ming-Hui Huang Wayne Huang Xiaowen Huang Thomas Huber Kai Lung Hui Wendy Hui Ard Huizing Ghiyong Im Gretchen I. Irwin Anja Ischebeck Varghese Jacob Bharat A. Jain Hemant Jain Radhika Jain Jeevan Jaisingh Dietmar Jannach Matthew Jensen James J. Jiang Qiqi Jiang Zhengrui Jiang Zhenhui Jiang Monica Johar Alice Johnson Eric Johnson Emmanuel Josserand Surinder Kahai Arnold Kamis Atreyi Kankanhalli Karthik Kannan P.K. Kannan Jahangir Karimi Michael Kattan Timothy Kayworth Weiling Ke Mark Keith Peter Kenning William J. Kettinger Lara Khansa Moutaz Khouja Melody Y. Kiang Byung Cho Kim Dan J. Kim Dongmin Kim Gimun Kim Hee-Woong Kim Keongtae Kim Kihoon Kim Seung Hyun Kim Young-Gul Kim Ruth King Rajiv Kishore Gary Klein Richard Klein Sven Kleinknecht Cenk Kocas Chang Koh Rajiv Kohli Tobias Kollman Praveen K. Kopalle Marios Koufaris Kenneth A. Kozar Ramayya Krishnan Gillian Ku Uday Kulkarni Akhil Kumar Ram Kumar Subodha Kumar Jason Kuruzovich Juhee Kwon Atanu Lahiri Simon S.K. Lam Guido Lang Karl R. Lang Kai R. Larsen Dong-Joo Lee Gwanhoo Lee Heeseok Lee Ho Geun Lee Jong Seok Lee Jungwoo Lee Thomas Lee Yang Lee Yen-Hsien Lee Young-Jin Lee Pierre-Majorique Léger Jan Marco Leimeister Natalia Levina Chen Li Dahui Li Jiexun Li Seth Li Ting Li Xiaotong Li Xin Li XinXin Li XiXi Li Huigang Liang Ting-Peng Liang Paul Licker John Lim Aleck Lin Fu-ren Lin Lihui Lin Mei Lin Charles Zhechao Liu Ying Liu Yipeng Liu Alexandre Lopes Paul B. Lowry Henry C. Lucas Jr. Xueming Luo Christoph Lutz Mark Lycett Dan Ma Xiao Ma Jane M. Mackay Massimo Magni Pruthikrai Mahatanankoon M. Adam Mahmood Rolf Mahnke Bin Mai Yogesh Malhotra Deepa Mani Ravi Mantena Salvatore T. March Kent Marett Panos Markopoulos Likoebe M. Maruping Sabine Matook Kurt Matzler Jerrold H. May Kristina McElheran Roy McKelvey Ephraim R. McLean Nigel Melville Nirup Menon Thomas Meservy Randy Minas Shaila Miranda Dinesh Mirchandani Abhay Nath Mishra Stephanie Missonier Sunil Mithas Prasenjit Mitra Kannan Mohan Peter N.C. Mohr William Money Ali R. Montazemi Ramiro Montealegre Alan Montgomery Greg Moody Jolene Morrison Michael D. Myers Peter P. Mykytyn Jr. Barin N. Nag Fiona Nah Ravi Narayanaswamy Derek Nazareth Matthew Nelson R. Ryan Nelson Boon Siong Neo Derrick Neufeld Dirk Neumann Dorit Nevo Michael Newman Mark Nissen Dmitri Nizovtsev Oded Nov Lih-Bin Oh Wonseok Oh Bob O’Keefe Lorne Olfman James Oliver Ana Ortiz de Guinea Benoit Otjacques Peter Otto Eric Overby Zafer D. Ozdemir Raymond R. Panko Gautam Pant Manoj Parameswaran Michael Parent Insu Park Sungjune Park Craig Parker Bhavik K. Pathak Praveen Pathak Ravi Patnayakuni Souren Paul David J. Pauleen Kenneth Peffers Zeyu Peng Robin Pennington Chee-Wei Phang Roger A. Pick Selwyn Piramuthu Huseyin Polat Jean-Charles Pomerol Jaana Porra Constance Porter Gerald Post John H. Prager David Preston Sandeep Purao Liangfei Qiu Lingyun Qiu Wen Guang Qu Arik Ragowsky Rex Kelly Rainer Jr. Balaraman Rajan Vandana Ramachandran K. Ramamurthy Arkalgud Ramaprasad Bala Ramesh H.R. Rao R. Ravichandran Gautam Ray Louis Raymond Blaize Horner Reich Bruce Reinig Yuqing Ren Paul Resnick Hyuen-Suk Rhee Amir Riaz William B. Richmond Christoph Riedl René Riedl Lionel Robert Nicholas Roberts Daniel Robey Michael Rogich Huaxia Rui Sherry D. Ryan Young U. Ryu Khawaja Saeed Otavio Sanchez G. Lawrence Sanders Radhika Santhanam Pallab Sanyal Saonee Sarker Surendra Sarnikar Carol Saunders George Schell Hans J. Scholl Petra Schubert Judy Scott Ravi Sen Sagnika Sen Sylvain Sénécal Nainika Seth Vikram Sethi Theresa M. Shaft Tushar Shanker Michael Shaw Jim Sheffield Hong Sheng Zhan Shi Hung-Pin Shih Choon Ling Sia Siew Kien Sia Keng Siau Mark Silver Param Vir Singh Atish P. Sinha Kingshuk Sinha Sumit Sircar Laura Smarandescu Stefan Smolnik Manuel Sojer Jaeki Song Ryan Sougstad Scott Spangler William E. Spangler Rajendra P. Srivastava Shirish C. Srivastava Thomas F. Stafford Eric W. Stein Dick Stenmark Theofanis C. Stratopoulos Diane M. Strong Besiki Stvilia Daewon Su Mani Subramani Chandra Subramaniam Ramanath Subramanyam Eung-Kyo Suh Heshan Sun Arun Sundararajan Shankar Sundaresan Paul P. Tallon Yong Tam Prasanna Tambe Yao-Hua Tan Qiuan Tang Xinlin Tang Mohan R. Tanniru Monideepa Tarafdar Nolan Taylor Orkun Temizkan Gary F. Templeton Hock Hai Teo Thompson Teo Matthew Thatcher Dominic Thomas Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong Ryad Titah Yanbin Tu Ofir Turel Tuure Tuunanen Doug Twitchell Nathan W. Twyman N.S. Umanath Rustam Vahidov Ganesan Vaidyanathan Anthony Vance Viswanath Venkatesh Goetz Viering Padmal Vitharana Radu Vlas Douglas Vogel Sebastian Voigt Jan vom Brocke Heinz-Theo Wagner Steven Walczak Joseph Walls Zhiping Walter Bin Wang Eric T.G. Wang Jingguo Wang Michael S. Wang Qiu-Hong Wang Shouhong Wang Sophia Wang Weiquan Wang Yinglei Wang Y. Richard Wang Sidne Ward Mary Beth Watson-Manheim Sunil Wattal Thomas Weber Chih-Ping Wei Tim Weitzel John Wells Robert West J. Christopher Westland Jonathan Whitaker Michael E. Whitman Jeffrey L. Whitten George Widmeyer Rolf Wigand Fons Wijnhoven Christopher Wolfe Christina Wong Charles A. Wood Hans Wortmann Ryan Wright Dazhong Wu Mu Xia Weidong Xia Mingdi Xin Heng Xu Hongjiang Xu Kefeng Xu Lizhen Xu Peng Xu Yunjie (Calvin) Xu Ling Xue Lucy Yan Yinping Yang Zhiyong Yang Oliver Yao Ulku Yaylacicegi Cheng Yi Denny Yin Byungjoon Yoo Yufei Yuan Wei T. Yue Fatemeh (Mariam) Zahedi Chun Zeng Dongsong Zhang Han Zhang Jennifer Zhang John Zhang Ping Zhang Xiaoquan Zhang Yulei Zhang Zhu Zhang Huimin Zhao Kexin Zhao J. Leon Zhao Xia Zhao Dmitry Zhdanov Lina Zhou Yilu Zhou Zhongyun Zhou Hongwei Zhu Youlong Zhuang Moshe Zviran I would also like to welcome two new members of our Editorial Board, Sunil Mithas of the University of Maryland and Joseph S. Valacich of the University of Arizona. I would like to thank two outgoing board members, Alan Dennis and Alok Gupta, for their contribution over the years of service to JMIS.

Special Section: Strategic and Competitive Information Systems - Clemons, Eric K; Weber, Bruce W (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1996)
Eric K. Clemons is Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His research and teaching interests include strategic information systems, the use of information systems in international securities markets and financial services firms, the impact of systems on the distribution of consumer packaged goods and on retail services, and the impact of information technology on procurement and the nature of interfirm markets for intermediate goods and services. He specializes both in assessing the competitive implication of information technology and in managing the risk of large-scale implementation efforts. Dr. Clemons is also Project Director for the Reginald H. Jones Center's Sponsored Research Project on Information: Industry Structure and Competitive Strategy and senior fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. His education includes an S.B. in physics from MIT and an M.S. and Ph.D. in operations research from Cornell University. In addition to twenty years on the faculties of Wharton, Cornell, and Harvard, Dr. Clemons has professional experience as a consultant in both the private and public sectors and in executive education both domestically and abroad. In his consulting practice, Dr. Clemons focuses on helping clients anticipate the fundamental impacts information technology will have on the structure of their industries and on the future strategies available to their firms. In addition to his more traditional consulting practice, he has added participation as a facilitator of strategic change. This has enabled his clients to manage the strategic risks of change more carefully, by engaging the client's full senior team early in assessing the wide range of potential futures enabled by technology, in assessing the need for strategic change, and in the formulation of the broad outlines of strategies that are enabled by technology. Dr. Clemons is currently a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Management Information Systems and the International Journal of Electronic Commerce. He participated in the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment study of securities markets and served on the Quality of Markets Advisory Board of the London Stock Exchange. Bruce W. Weber is an Assistant Professor in the Information Systems Department of the Stern School of Business at New York University. His research examines the impact of information technology on financial markets and the effects of information systems on industry and firm economic performance. He has an A.B. in applied mathematics from Harvard University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in decision sciences from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the Stern faculty, he held a faculty position in Information Management at the London Business School. In 1995, he was a visiting faculty member at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The special section on Strategic and Competitive Information Systems appears in the Journal of Management Information Systems for the seventh consecutive year to showcase promising current work on the strategic use of information systems and the impact of information technology on the competitive performance of organizations.. Earlier versions of the three works in this special section were published in the Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science in January 1996. All three were nominated for the Best Paper award in the conference's Information Systems track, and the papers by Theodore H. Clark and Donna B. Stoddard and by Sabyasachi Mitra and Antoine Karim Chaya were selected to share the award. The papers in this year's Special Section emphasize the ways in which information technology (IT) affects competition within industries, and influences the relative performance of firms with differing IT strategies. Specifically, the authors address questions concerning information technology's role (1) in cross-organizational reengineering, (2) in achieving cost efficiency in firms, and (3) in revising the strategies of dominant, established firms facing new, narrowly focused competitors. "Interorganizational Business Process Redesign: Merging Technological and Process Innovation," by Theodore H. Clark and Donna B. Stoddard, investigates the increasingly critical challenges of reengineering across firm boundaries. The authors break down IT-driven process redesign efforts into their technological and process components. Case examples are provided of coordinated efforts by manufacturers and retailers to improve performance in the distribution of grocery products. The authors conclude that effective management of the interdependence of these components-process innovation and the underlying information technology-is required to achieve significant results from interorganizational reengineering efforts. In "Analyzing Cost-Effectiveness of Organizations: The Impact of Information Technology Spending," Sabyasachi Mitra and Antoine Karim Chaya find compelling evidence of cost reductions that result from IT investments in a multi-industry sample of 190 firms. The results contradict recent studies exposing a "Productivity Paradox"-namely, that huge IT investment shave failed to improve white-collar productivity. A strong case is made for assessing two categories of IT benefits. The first is an automation effect resulting from reduced labor inputs to carry out a task; the second is an information effect, arising from better decision making and greater employee autonomy. In tests of five hypotheses, the authors demonstrate that larger IT budgets are associated with beneficial automation and information effects, and lower firm costs. Eric K. Clemons, David C. Croson, and Bruce W. Weber, in "Market Dominance as a Precursor of a Firm's Failure: Emerging Technologies and the Competitive Advantage of New Entrants," detail how firms that are new entrants have made strategic use of IT to "contest" markets in several industries. As the economic conditions of contestability become apparent in an increasing number of industries, new entrants are placing great pressure on previously dominant firms. The authors describe how information technology has reduced entry barriers and made competitive attacks on market share possible. Moreover, pricing policies and implicit cross-subsidies of once-dominant firms often lead new entrants to target only potentially profitable customers, making focused attacks particularly attractive. This combination-new IT-based entry possibilities and market attractiveness due to the incumbents' mispricing-leads to a fundamental increase in the ability of entrants to assume favorable competitive positions. The paper lists strategic responses available to incumbents in newly contestable markets. These three papers represent important new contributions to the body of research on strategic and competitive information systems. They also employ a range of methodologies to study the strategic implications of information systems. A common theme in the papers is that the economic performance of firms reflects the use of IT to undertake innovation in business practices and to set strategies for competitive conditions that change at the pace of technological innovation. Research in strategic systems has continued to expand the understanding of consequences of large-scale IT use in firms and industries and to inform information systems practitioners, who are making multimillion-dollar investments in technologies whose competitive and strategic impacts are complex and difficult to anticipate.

Special Section: Strategic and Competitive Information Systems - Clemons, Eric K; Row, Michael C (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1994)
The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Eric K. Clemons and Bruce W. Weber on information technology and flexible pricing and another article by Frederick J. Riggins and Tridas Mukhopadhyay on interorganizational systems and reengineering.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2009)
The present issue closes the anniversary twenty-fifth volume of JMIS by offering to you a set of papers that represent a great variety of subjects and methodologies, reflective of the richness of our discipline. Open source software (OSS) has been changing the structure of industries. The processes of its development have been in their own right immensely influential in changing the relationships between the producers and consumers across industries in the age of widely accessible means of production and effort aggregation. The more we can learn about these processes that enter various domains of creation, the better we can understand the future of industrial structures, work, and human endeavor. The research on motivations of the participants in OSS projects has focused primarily on the intentions to join the development communities. In the opening paper of this issue, Yulin Fang and Derrick Neufeld investigate the motivations for a continuing participation in the projects. Relying on the theories of situated learning and of identity construction, the authors conduct a qualitative study over rich and multifaceted primary data from a well-known OSS community. Their results are particularly interesting as they show that the sustained participation has a different set of predictors from those that antecede the initial joining of the community. Tobias Kollmann, Matthias Häsel, and Nicola Breugst investigate the competence of information technology (IT) professionals in a highly interesting setting that has hardly met with the prior attention of researchers. The authors, who combine their academic credentials with an extensive entrepreneurial background, investigate empirically the desirable sets of competencies to be displayed by the members of a venture team entering e‑business. More specifically, they study the perceptions of the e‑business entrepreneurs with respect to this requisite expertise and experience, to arrive at four competence clusters. As is the preceding work, the paper is notable for its theoretical grounding, along with actionable results. The quality of knowledge contained in its repositories is of obvious concern in organizational knowledge management (KM). Yet knowledge validation processes can become burdensome and discouraging to the potential contributors. How are we to structure the validation processes so as to ensure the inclusion of only high-quality content while encouraging continuing contributions to the repositories? This is the issue addressed by Alexandra Durcikova and Peter Gray, who develop and test empirically a theoretical model of the behavior of repository users, based on signaling and reinforcement theories. The results enable the authors to put forth well-grounded recommendations for knowledge validation processes. Document corpora are in some cases a part of organizational KM and in others constitute independent repositories. Document management systems generally rely on the classification of their contents into categories, such as folders. As the repositories grow, manual categorization and recategorization become virtually impossible, and automated methods are necessary. However, it is essential for the appropriate user support in accessing the repositories that the original user preferences in categorization be preserved. The document categories originally developed by a user will be the user’s expectations in the future, and drastic departures will cause heightened cognitive load. Here, Chih-Ping Wei, Paul Jen-Hwa Hu, and Yen-Hsien Lee propose and validate two techniques of category evolution for automatically reclustering the documents with the growth of the repository, while taking into account the user’s original categorization. The methods can be applied both on the individual and on a collective level. Product recommenders have become ubiquitous in e‑commerce and the aspects of their design influence the success of the transactional Web sites. Lingyun Qiu and Izak Benbasat present here their study of the effectiveness of anthropomorphic interfaces in the design of recommendation agents. Theorizing from a social relationship perspective that presumes such a relationship between the customer and the humanoid (well, to a degree) agent, the authors test their model in a laboratory experiment. The researchers find that the use of recommenders with anthropomorphic interfaces has a multifaceted positive effect on the shopping experience. Beyond that, they are able to justify their claim about the applicability of the social relationship theories to the human relationship with anthropomorphic artifacts. In the next paper of the issue, Xiaotong Li examines the agency problem potentially attendant on the strategic deployment of IT. Specifically, the author studies the incentive for IT managers to enhance their position in the organization by strategic IT investments that are not necessarily value-maximizing for the firm. Formal analysis presented here shows the presence of such incentives for the deployment of technologies that have the potential to increase the decision maker’s leverage through a dispositive or informational advantage. While the work is clearly not normative, it surfaces the necessity for additional organizational measures and governance mechanisms. An entirely different aspect of IT spending is the subject of the work authored by T. Ravichandran, Yu Liu, Shu Han, and Iftekhar Hasan. The authors study the influence of this investment on the relationship between the firm’s diversification and its performance. In their theorizing, the authors combine the resource-based view with the organizational control perspective to test their hypotheses against the data available for manufacturing firms. The results show that IT spending influences the firm’s performance only in certain categories of diversification—and are obviously of pragmatic significance. The fact that the Web has changed—and continues to change—the structure of the industries producing digital content is well known. B2C has yielded much ground to C2C, and much of it extralegal. Since the trend can be expected to continue or accelerate, it is important to understand the options available to the firms active in the domain. Here, Yunfang Feng, Zhiling Guo, and Wei-yu Kevin Chiang formally analyze the pricing and service strategies available to a firm that wishes to address its market through both the B2C and C2C channels. The model yields valuable recommendations; further research that would drop some of the present modeling assumptions will certainly follow. The cognitive shift involved in the adoption of object-oriented development is the subject of the paper authored by H. James Nelson, Deborah J. Armstrong, and Kay M. Nelson. They use the theory of cognitive fit to arrive at a picture of how a new mind-set is gradually constructed in the move toward the new expertise. Indeed, the work transcends its immediate subject and contributes to our understanding of the formation of expertise, and deserves to be replicated in a broader empirical setting. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Special Section: Navigation in Information-Intensive Environments - Isakowitz, Tomas; Bieber, Michael (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1995)
The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by James B. Baty, II and Ronald M. Lee on electronic commerce and another by Minder Chen on executive information systems.

Special Section: IT Project Management - Jiang, James J; Klein, Gary (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2014)
JAMES J. JIANG is the Fu-Bon Chair Professor, College of Management, National Taiwan University (NTU), Taiwan. Prior to joining NTU he was a distinguished professor of information systems at the Australian National University and professor of information systems at the University of Central Florida. He earned his Ph.D. in information systems from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Jiang's research interests include IS project and program management and IT service quality. He has published over 160 academic journal articles related to these subjects. He is an associate editor of Information & Management and Journal of the Association for Information Systems and a senior editor of MIS Quarterly. GARY KLEIN is the Couger Professor of Information Systems at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He earned his Ph.D. in management from Purdue University. His research interests include project management, technology transfer, and mathematical modeling, with over 160 academic publications in these areas. He served as Director of Education for the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management, is an active member of the Project Management Institute and the International Project Management Association, and is a Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute. He serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Information Technology Project Management and Information & Management, as a departmental editor for the Project Management Journal, as a senior editor of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems and the Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and as an associate editor of MIS Quarterly. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) MANAGERS IN MANY ORGANIZATIONS recognize the value of project management practices as an effective means to structure tasks to convert resources to new products, develop services for internal and external clients, and implement organizational change. The growth of professional associations reflects the level of emphasis placed on project management by organizations; in particular, these include the Project Management Institute headquartered in the United States and the International Project Management Association headquartered in Switzerland. Together, these organizations have an international membership of over 850,000. These organizations provide standards of practice regarding the behavioral, technical, and contextual dimensions of managing projects with a focus on frameworks, tools, methodologies, and competencies critical to project managers. Each professional society considers the individuals and organizations in both the practice and academic pursuits of developing better managers of projects. The expected state of rapid change and demand for orderly control dictates a future demand for projects and the inherent management of those projects will drive the need for a better understanding of how to prosecute that work. In general, research into project management focuses on the development and merit of techniques to assist the management of projects within organizations. The tools and management practices are then chosen as appropriate for specific projects based on the experiences of an organization and the context of the project underway. Such work results in improvement to methodologies and management practice that indeed have high value to organizations, but fails to consider the theoretical reasons why the techniques may prove successful. In fact, though project management is an established practice, little academic work exists that advances theories of behavior and success for projects, focusing more on the integrated functions [2]. Part of this may be due to the multidisciplinary nature of projects that rely heavily on common management practices but have methods tailored to the specific conditions and constraints of the application context. Researchers can begin to address this lack of general understanding by applying qualitative, quantitative, and design science approaches to examine project management issues and practices from a theoretical perspective, or to contribute by developing theory that explains behavior and success. We need to paint the discipline with a broad brush of understanding rather than continuing to provide a paint-by-numbers canvas. This special issue has two objectives: promote broader perspectives of project management issues in the information systems (IS) context and consider different research approaches to IS project management. A limitation of much of the project management research is treating a project in isolation. Studies into tools, methods, and management practices focus on the success of an individual project, each with well-defined deliverables phased over time and assigned a particular budget. Most ambiguity is removed from single projects by establishing output expectations. Ambiguity enters when the project is considered in a more comprehensive perspective. Completion of one project requires that team members be returned to their functional positions. Ensuring the continuation of talent within an organization means that transitions must be effectively managed. Those delivering project outcomes work to satisfy the conditions and expectations of others through coordination. Effective coordination processes must be established to direct project activities and effectively avoid unpleasant surprises, at all stakeholder levels and across functional boundaries within an organization. Organizations achieve ambitious and ambiguous outcomes by implementing a series of interdependent projects termed "programs." These multiproject implementations may be set up to deliver substantial change in parts of an organization, across the entire organization, or across more than one organization. The three papers in this Special Section consider these complexities of personnel transition, communication, and programs to the IS project orientation. Line Dubé considers the transitions a project team member makes from a temporary project environment back to a traditional role in the IT function of an organization. Applying qualitative research methods, the study reported in "Exploring How IT Professionals Experience Role Transitions at the End of Successful Projects" considers the shock of transition an IS worker experiences upon termination of a project with their return to a traditional role within the organization. Retaining talented IS workers proves difficult for many organizations, and the results of this study may be a strong indication of why individuals will fight or accept the change in roles. Difficulties arise after the change in environment from the project approach to the day-to-day organizational activities, incorporating the project output in a working environment, and the organization's transition management practices, or lack thereof. The propositions present an opportunity to examine this important issue in greater detail and offer insight to IS managers dealing with returning workers. In "Talk Before It's Too Late: Reconsidering the Role of Conversation in Information Systems Project Management," Stefano Mastrogiacomo, Stephanie Missonier, and Riccardo Bonazzi go outside traditional coordination theory to propose a structured design that addresses coordination problems handled during project meetings. They articulate an elaborate solution using abductive reasoning to combine Clark's joint activity theory [1] with project management competency into a coordination process involving project participants. The process is further built into a tool that is examined in experiments to determine the potential of the conceptual model. Project managers reported an increased ability to discover and manage potential coordination problems with the application of the tool. From a research perspective, the theoretical addition of variables such as language, time, intention, and decision processes to our understanding of coordination in IS projects opens up novel avenues of study. Conflict within programs of multiple projects is the topic of "Achieving IT Program Goals with Integrative Conflict Management," by James J. Jiang, Jamie Y.T. Chang, Houn-Gee Chen, Eric T.G. Wang, and Gary Klein. Key barriers to successful IT programs reside in the complex relationships among projects and stakeholders of multiple interdependent projects. The interdependencies create resource limitations, differing and conflicting needs, emergent conditions affecting processes, and elevated ambiguity which can lead to conflict among the project teams. Merging considerations from constructive controversy theory [3] and goal theories yields a conceptual model of how productive conflict resolution can arrive at a reasoned solution to a problem. The resulting model considers agreement on the means to achieve delivery of technology-related business objectives under the unique conditions of programs. A unique, matched sample that includes three key perspectives of projects and programs confirms that determination of means to deliver the technology is a critical aspect in promoting goal commitment and eventually achieving desired business outcomes. We thank the guest editorial team, whose knowledge and effort were invaluable in the completion of this Special Section: Walter Fernandez, The Australian National University Laurie J. Kirsch, University of Pittsburgh Carol Saunders, University of Central Florida Bernard Tan, National University of Singapore Rodney Turner, Europrojex & Université Lille Nord de France Furthermore, the reviewer team, which provided valuable insight and comments on the quality of the papers, included: Mark Haney, Robert Morris University Ola Henfridsson, Viktoria Institute Cheng-Suang Heng, National University of Singapore Jan Holstrom, Aalto University Mark Keil, Georga State University Dong-Gil Ko, University of Cincinnati Loo Geok Pee, Tokyo Institute of Technology Jan Pries-Heje, Roskilde University Siew Kien Sia, Nanyang Technological University Juliana Sutanto, ETH Zurich Chuan-Hoo Tan, City University of Hong Kong Yunjie Xu, Fudan University REFERENCES 1. Clark, H.H. Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 2. Hanisch, B., and Wald, A. A project management research framework integrating multiple theoretical perspectives and influencing factors. Project Management Journal, 42, 3 (2011), 4-22. 3. Johnson, D.W.; Johnson, R.T.; and Tjosvold, D. Constructive controversy: The value of intellectual opposition. In M. Deutsch and P.T. Coleman (eds.), The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000, pp. 65-85.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2008)
Journal of Management Information Systems is celebrating the twenty-fifth year of publication. The first quarter-century of JMIS has witnessed its rise to a leadership position among the scholarly publications in the field of information systems (IS). More important, these years have seen the IS field become a rightful member of the family of disciplines, with its core subject and a coherent body of knowledge within which we deliver theory-based answers to ever new questions. It brings me joy and satisfaction to see that the Journal has contributed prominently and consistently to our field. It has always been the objective of JMIS to interpret the contour of our discipline broadly, and indeed expand it as time marches on. Centering on the development, use, impacts, and products of IS, our research has gained particular salience as the value-delivery webs are enabled by IS, as dominant firms are organized around their IS, as they deliver products that are fully or in a large part digital, and as our societies evolve around electronic relationships and interactions. It is especially in the impacts domain that our field can contribute at various levels of analysis and with a great methodological variety. It is by studying the impacts that we can feed back the knowledge we gain in order to develop organizational and supraorganizational structures, systems, and modalities of use that will lead us to higher levels of performance. Shrinking from this broad field of action is not the way to success. Several now prominent research streams saw their origins in the foundational paper published in the Journal. Among others, these are the assessment of the IS value (1986), real options theory in IS (1991), design science avant la lettre (1991), negotiation systems (1992), and structures of information technology (IT)--based supply webs (1993). Over the years, the Journal has offered leadership in championing the research on the economics of IS deployment, on the strategic use of IS, on the assessment of IS impacts, and on collaborative work--again, among others. Special issues and sections help us bring into focus and address in depth key problems. Thus, recently, we have published a special issue on trust in online environments that represents a significant benchmark in this relatively new IS subfield and contributes to the core understanding of what trust actually is. Always looking to the future, we have a call for papers out for a special issue on Information Systems in Services, which aims to firmly establish this vital line of research within our field. Considering the response to the call, it probably will. There are many measures of a journal’s success. Wide communities of scholars have benefited not only from seeing the papers authored by thought leaders in the Journal but also from theirown active involvement in the creation, editing, and refereeing of the work in their domains fostered by JMIS. Consistently top ranked, the Journal has also been found (along with ISR) to be the most representative of the leading journals in the field; an admittedly imperfect measure, the impact factor (most recently, 1.818 in 2006) places JMIS among the very top journals publishing the work in the field. All of this has been accomplished thanks to the support of the vibrant IS research community, thanks to the authors of the papers we have published, and owing to the hard (and smart) work of the JMIS editorial board, guest editors, and of the broad corps of our referees, whom I always consider the primary guarantors of our quality. It truly brings me great pleasure to thank our reviewers at the conclusion of this introduction. Thanks also go to our publisher, M.E. Sharpe, and the editorial personnel who have been helping us bring JMIS to you. Harry Briggs, Debra E. Soled, and Sharon Ray deserve special recognition. Now that we have concluded the celebratory part, let me introduce to you the present issue of JMIS. The Special Section that opens the issue, guest edited by Robert O. Briggs, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., and Ralph H. Sprague, addresses multiple aspects of online coordination and interaction in the global environment. The Special Section is notable for the use of multiple strong methodologies in the treatment of greatly diverse research issues by its constituent papers. The coordination of the world’s economic activity and the collaboration of its actors is indeed to a large degree underwritten by IS, as the papers included in the Special Section illustrate. The guest editors are introducing the papers to you. The Internet--Web compound has opened an additional distribution channel that may be used by manufacturers, who may sell via traditional retailers, as well as via e‑tailers. What distribution channel, or channels, should a manufacturer adopt, depending on the nature of the product and on the nature of the information necessary for the consumer to select the product? Dazhong Wu, Gautam Ray, and Andrew B. Whinston study the issue by economic modeling. The authors arrive at very specific strategy recommendations regarding the use of the two alternative distribution channels by the manufacturers introducing a new product category. As the authors say, it will be interesting to see whether the study of the empirics of the market will bear out these formal results. As innovation drives competition and profits, and as the means of production and the products themselves have moved to a great degree into the digital domain and are subject to easy reproduction, the intellectual property (IP) issues have moved into the domain of concerns of our discipline. In particular, massive databases are openly available over the Web, many of them not subject to copyrights and amenable to various modes of repurposing with the existing and emerging data-extraction technologies. As it generally is with IP, the incentive for the creators of the publicly available databases needs to be combined with the ability of others to access them and create further value. What are the socially beneficial parameters of this combination? Here, Hongwei Zhu, Stuart E. Madnick, and Michael D. Siegel offer an economic analysis of this issue in a rich legal context. The analysis surfaces results actionable in the realm of policy setting and legislation, as well as for competitive marketplace positioning. Electronic markets offer clear advantages in the financial industry. Yet almost the entire volume of fixed-income securities is traded by phone or squawk box (a form of intercom)--in other words, not through electronic trading systems (ETS). The analysis of barriers to the adoption of ETS, if followed by the measures aiming at lowering these barriers, will clearly pay off to all but some of the intermediaries who do the trading. Ali Reza Montazemi, John J. Siam, and Akbar Esfahanipour present such an empirical analysis, based on the network-relations model and a thorough on-the-ground investigation of the fixed-income industry practices. Here is indeed the case of an industry where the adoption of IT has remained --a challenge-- for decades. Here is the theory-based and highly contextual analysis that may help in changing the detrimental situation. The next paper in the issue moves the discourse about user motivation in IT adoption away from the extrinsic-intrinsic dichotomy of the mutually exclusive motivations imposed externally or by personal volition. A deeper analysis of the users’ own feelings of autonomy, freedom, conflict, or external pressure is the subject of investigation. Yogesh Malhotra, Dennis F. Galletta, and Laurie J. Kirsch present their theory-grounded model of such endogenous motivation and validate the model in a field study. The appeal of the new approach is both in the fact that the user becomes more of the active locus of causality rather than a playground of largely external forces, and in the organizational policies that may be engendered to actually make the user be that way -- and be more effective. User participation in information systems development (ISD) has been the subject of many and various studies. Conflicting recommendations as to the beneficial degree and nature of this participation have ensued. The area is clearly in need of a generalization of results by meta-analysis. In the concluding paper of the issue, June He and William R. King present such a work. Their findings are rather strong: this participation has only a modest, if beneficial, effect on both the behavioral and productivity outcomes. The authors place the work in the context of the general research findings regarding employees’ participation in organizational decision making, which are similar. One could posit that IS users have more to offer to the success of ISD projects and of their products than employees contributing to an organizational decision in a general context. The authors conclude that user participation per se is not enough. More nuanced, goal-oriented, and contextualized measures need to be designed for specific projects to ensure that user participation has a stronger effect on the ISD outcomes. As I said at the beginning of this introduction, the opening of our anniversary twenty-fifth volume is a particular occasion to express gratitude to the JMIS referees, always the primary guarantors of the Journal’s quality. Here are the names of the JMIS referees: Niv Ahituv Pervaiz Alam Gove Allen Paul Alpar Naveen Amblee Hayward P. Andres Dorine Andrews Yoris Au Benoit A. Aubert Sulin Ba Barbro Back Akhilesh Bajaj Dirk Baldwin Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay Ravi Bapna Indranil R. Bardhan Reza Barkhi Henri Barki Stuart J. Barnes Anitesh Barua Richard Baskerville Dinesh Batra Irma Becerra-Fernandez Skip Benamati Michel Benaroch Raquel Benbunan-Fich François Bergeron Hemant Bhargava Ganesh Bhatt Anol Bhattacherjee Sudip Bhattacherjee Jesse Bockstedt Wai Fong Boh Indranil Bose Glenn J. Browne Jacek Brzezinski Scott Buffett Kelly Burke Brian Butler Terry A. Byrd Jinwei Cao Sven Carlsson William J. Carroll Huseyin Cavusoglu Susy Chan Jerry Cha-Jan Chang Debabroto Chatterjee Patrick Chau Ramnath K. Chellappa Hong-Mei Chen Kay-Yut Chen Kuan Chen Yuanyuan Chen Hsing Kenneth Cheng Lei Chi Robert T.H. Chi Roger Chiang Alina M. Chircu Jong-min Choe Vidyanand Choudhary H. Michael Chung Wingyan Chung Theodore H. Clark Randolph Cooper Kevin Crowston Dianne Cyr Qizhi Dai Ronald Dattero Sergio De Cesare Bruce Dehning Didem Demirhan Sarv Devaraj Rajiv M. Dewan Debabrata Dey Peter Duchessi Deborah E. Dunkle Alexandra Durcikova Kaushik Dutta Omar A. El Sawy Sean B. Eom J. Alberto Espinosa Ming Fan Patrick Fan Xiaofen Fang Steven Feiner Jane Feng Eliezer M. Fich Kirk Fiedler Edmond P. Fitzgerald Jerry Fjermestad Chiara Francalanci Mark Fuller Brent Furneaux Michael R. Galbreth John Gallaugher Dennis Galletta Dale Ganley Edward J. Garrity Judith Gebauer David Gefen Michiel van Genuchten Anindya Ghose Sanjay Goel Janis L. Gogan Thomas Goh Dale Goodhue Ram D. Gopal Nelson Granados Peter Gray Stefano Grazioli Saul Greenberg Robert K. Griffin Michael D. Grigoriades Bin Gu Kemal Guler Jungpil Hahn Kunsoo Han Barbara Haley James A. Hall Ingoo Han Paul Hart Khaled Hassenein Stephen Hayne Mohamed Hédi Alan R. Hevner Ann Hickey Starr Roxanne Hiltz Richard Hoffman John A. Hoxmeier Pei-fang Hsu Paul Hu Qing Hu Ming-Hui Huang Wayne Huang Cary Hughes Kai Lung Hui Wendy Hui Ard Huizing Yujong Hwang Ghiyong Im Zahir Irani Gretchen I. Irwin Bala Iyer Varghese Jacob Bharat A. Jain Matthias Jarke Bao-Jun Jiang James J. Jiang Alice Johnson Linda Ellis Johnson Joni Jones K.D. Joshi Emmanuel Josserand Surinder Kahai Timo Kakola Ajit Kambil Atreyi Kankanhalli P.K. Kannan Jahangir Karimi Michael Kattan Varol Kayhan Timothy Kayworth William J. Kettinger Omar E.M. Khalil Moutaz Khouja Melody Y. Kiang Sia Siew Kien Dan J. Kim Ruth King Rajiv Kishore Gary Klein Dong-Gil Ko Cenk Kocas Chang Koh Rajiv Kohli Sherrie Komiak Marios Koufaris Kenneth A. Kozar Kenneth L. Kraemer Ramayya Krishnan Uday Kulkarni Akhil Kumar Chetan Kumar Ram Kumar Vineet Kumar Atanu Lahiri Simon S.K. Lam Karl R. Lang Tor J. Larsen Gwanhoo Lee Heeseok Lee Ho Geun Lee Jungwoo Lee Thomas Lee Yang Lee Zoonky Lee Richard Leifer Jan Marco Leimeister Katherine N. Lemon Mary Jane Lenard Hugo Levecq Natalia Levina Dahui Li Xiaotong Li Ting-Peng Liang Paul Licker Stephen L. Liedtka John Lim Kai Lim Ming Lin Yihwa Irene Liou Jacqueline Lipton Ying Liu Alexandre Lopes Paul B. Lowry Henry C. Lucas Jr. Mark Lycett Jane M. Mackay Simha R. Magal M. Adam Mahmood Arvind Malhotra Yogesh Malhotra Arti Mann Ji-Ye Mao Salvatore T. March Nelson Massad Charles H. Mawhinney Jerrold H. May William McCarthy Roy McKelvey Ephraim R. McLean Nigel Melville Shaila Miranda Rajesh Mirani Dinesh Mirchandani Abhay Nath Mishra Prasenjit Mitra William Money Ali R. Montazemi Ramiro Montealegre Jolene Morrison Michael D. Myers Peter P. Mykytyn Jr. Barin N. Nag Murli Nagasundaram Fiona Nah Matthew Nelson R. Ryan Nelson Boon Siong Neo Fred Niederman Mark Nissen Dmitri Nizovtsev Rosalie Ocker Wonseok Oh Bob O’Keefe Lorne Olfman James Oliver Benoit Otjacques Carl Pacini Raymond R. Panko Manoj Parameswaran Michael Parent Sungjune Park Craig Parker Bhavik K. Pathak Ravi Patnayakuni Souren Paul David J. Pauleen Paul A. Pavlou Kenneth Peffers Robin Pennington Francis Pereira Roger A. Pick Huseyin Polat Jean-Charles Pomerol Gerald Post John H. Prager Sandeep Purao S. Raghunathan Arik Ragowsky T.S. Ragu-Nathan Arun Rai Rex Kelly Rainer Jr. K. Ramamurthy K.S. Raman Arkalgud Ramaprasad B. Ramesh Richard G. Ramirez H.R. Rao R. Ravichandran T. Ravichandran Sury Ravindran Gautam Ray Louis Raymond Blaize Horner Reich Yuqing Ren Paul Resnick Hyuen-Suk Rhee William B. Richmond Frederick Riggins Daniel Robey Nicholas C. Romano Jr. Sherry D. Ryan Young U. Ryu Timo Saarinen Naveed Saleem Otavio Sanchez G. Lawrence Sanders Sunanda Sangwan Radhika Santhanam Suprateek Sarker Surendra Sarnikar Pallab Sanyal Carol Saunders George Schell Petra Schubert Judy Scott Ravi Sen Kishore Sengupta Nainika Seth Vikram Sethi Theresa M. Shaft Michael Shaw Jim Sheffield Olivia Sheng Morgan M. Shepherd Michael Shields Siew Kien Sia Keng Siau Mark Silver Atish P. Sinha Sumit Sircar H. Jeff Smith Michael D. Smith Toni M. Somers Jai-Yeol Son Jaeki Song Ryan Sougstad Scott Spangler William E. Spangler Valerie K. Spitler Rajendra P. Srivastava Thomas F. Stafford Stephen Standifird Sandy Staples Eric W. Stein Dick Stenmark Katherine Stewart Mani Subramani Chandra Subramaniam Girish Subramanian Ramesh Subramanian Ramanath Subramanyam Robert T. Sumichrast Shankar Sunarajan Arun Sundararajan Shankar Sundaresan Tae Kyung Sung Anjana Susarla Edward J. Szewczak Paul P. Tallon Kar Yan Tam Bernard C.Y. Tan Yao-Hua Tan Xinlin Tang Mohan R. Tanniru Monideepa Tarafdar Alfred Taudes Nolan Taylor David P. Tegarden Gary F. Templeton James T.C. Teng Thompson Teo Jason B. Thatcher Matthew Thatcher Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong Amrit Tiwana Kerem Tomak Leon van der Torre Jonathan K. Trower Gregory E. Truman Yanbin Tu Ilkka Tuomi Ofir Turel Brad Tuttle Tuure Tuunanen N.S. Umanath Andrew Urbaczewski Rustam Vahidov Anthony Vance Vasja Vehovar Viswanath Venkatesh Roumen Vragov Michael Wade Steven Walczak Zhiping Walter Bin Wang Eric T.G. Wang Jingguo Wang Michael S. Wang Shouhong Wang Weiquan Wang Y. Richard Wang Molly Wasko 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 Rolf Wigand Fons Wijnhoven Christopher Wolfe Charles A. Wood Hans Wortmann Dazhong Wu Mu Xia Weidong Xia Hongjiang Xu Peng Xu Christopher Yang Mun Yi Byungjoon Yoo Wei T. Yue Fatemeh Zahedi Dongsong Zhang Han Zhang Jennifer Zhang Michael Zhang Ping Zhang Zuopeng Zhang Huimin Zhao Kexin Zhao J. Leon Zhao Lina Zhou Yilu Zhou Kevin Zhu Youlong Zhuang J. Christopher Zimmer Moshe Zviran Let us now turn our attention to the actual first issue of the anniversary volume. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Special Issue: Impacts of Information Technology Investment on Organizational Performance - Mahmood, M Adam; Mann, Gary J (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2000)
THIS SPECIAL ISSUE ADDRESSES A SUBJECT OF MUCH DEBATE among interested researchers: the relationships between organizational investment in information technology (IT) and organizational performance and productivity. Despite the enormous investment in IT during recent years, demonstrating the effects of such investment on organizational performance has proven extremely difficult. The present Special Issue is intended to enhance this area of research by encouraging the development of new perspectives of the IT investment-performance relationships, thereby expanding the portfolio of methods used in investigating these relationships. Some recent studies of relationships between investment in IT and organizational performance and productivity [1, 2, 4, 10, 12, 14] have reported positive and significant effects of such investment. Some researchers question these results on the grounds that the studies involved examination of primarily cross-sectional data. This criticism stems at least in part from the premise that the benefits of IT investment can be realized only over longer periods of time. However, it is possible, indeed likely, that in many instances IT has the potential to provide important benefits within the same year the investment is made. In any event, research reflecting relationships between IT investment and organizational performance and productivity might be more convincing if it were based on IT investment in both current and earlier periods. Although some authors [3, 9, 13] have speculated on the lagged effects of IT investment, there have so far been no empirical studies, with the exception of one reported in a conference [11], that have demonstrated a relationship between such investment and organizational performance and productivity in subsequent periods. This Special Issue contains a paper by Sarv Devaraj and Rajiv Kohli that reports on their longitudinal research design in identifying lag effects of IT investment. Another reason for disagreement among researchers involves the argument that correlations reflecting relationships between IT investment and organizational performance and productivity do not necessarily imply causation, particularly if the correlations are based on data from the same year only [12]. It has also been emphasized that causality cannot be established by using conventional statistical techniques. The call for papers for this Special Issue encouraged researchers to apply multivariate (e.g., canonical correlation analysis) and nonparametric (e.g., data envelopment analysis) methods, as opposed to more commonly used methods such as correlation and regression analyses, to enable them to infer causality, if present, between IT investment and organizational performance and productivity. Accordingly, Sumit Sircar, Joe L. Turnbow, and Bijoy Bordoloi, as well as Byungtae Lee and Nirup M. Menon in their papers in this Special Issue report on their use of multivariate and nonparametric methods in analyzing study data. Some researchers have flatly rejected the conclusions of studies that found positive relationships between investment in IT and organizational performance and productivity. One went so far as to call such conclusions "the big lie of the information age" [15]. Perhaps a more valid method of determining whether IT is living up to expectations is through analyses involving both cross-sectional and longitudinal databases involving hundreds or even thousands of data points from various industries. Large databases would serve to average out extremes and provide a clearer picture of the underlying relationship between IT investment and organizational performance. A report on findings from a study using multiyear, cross-sectional data is provided here by Sumit Sircar, Joe L. Turnbow, and Bijoy Bordoloi, and by Byungtae Lee and Nirup M. Menon. Based on the review of a number of research studies that were presented at the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE), Brynjolfsson and Hitt [5, p. 50] state that, "[w]hile the average returns to IT investment are solidly positive, there are huge variations across organizations, some have spent vast sums on IT with little benefit, while others have spent similar amounts with tremendous success." They hold that the greatest benefits of IT appear to be realized by organizations when IT investment is coupled with other complementary investments such as organizational reengineering, restructuring, and redesign. Also, it is quite possible that the nature of some businesses may be such that they may not be able to obtain as great a return from IT as other organizations might. Another purpose of this Special Issue was to encourage researchers to go beyond the sole effects of IT investment and explore these complementary issues. We are pleased to report that Sarv Devaraj and Rajiv Kohli examine the combined effects of IT and business process reengineering on organizational performance, while Byungtae Lee and Nirup M. Menon examine the relationship between IT investment levels and technical and allocative efficiencies in a firm. Michael J. Davern and Robert J. Kauffman also contribute in this area by presenting a perspective for understanding a firm's potential IT value and for relating this to realized value. "Despite the fact [that] the productivity paradox of IT is an international phenomenon," according to Dewan and Kraemer [6, p. 57], most of the existing studies in this area involve firm-level analysis mainly conducted in the United States using American firms. With the exception of the Dewan and Kraemer research, no international-level studies have previously been conducted. We believe it is important that researchers add an international dimension to the matter of IT investment-performance relationships, extending beyond the United States to encompass the experience of organizations in other developed countries. In this Special Issue, Paul P. Tallon, Kenneth L. Kraemer, and Vijay Gurbaxani, as well as Arik Ragowsky, Dennis A. Adams, and Myles Stern report on their respective uses of international data. It has been argued that traditional IT investment-performance analyses have not been very successful in the past because of their overreliance on financial data. Some researchers (e.g., [4]) have called for additional research to identify "hidden costs and benefits" that are typically not included in a traditional analysis of IT investment relationships with organizational performance and productivity. In their paper in this Special Issue, Sherry D. Ryan and David A. Harrision provide insights into what they believe to be one of the sources of such hidden costs-namely, those associated with human resources. The divide between the several groups of researchers investigating the effects of IT investment, discussed above, is rather common knowledge. One group, emphasizing the need for use of qualitative analysis, believes that quantitative measures have received preferential consideration in the research performed to date. The quantitative group is somewhat vocal about what it considers the superiority derived from the rigors of its approach. Some members of this group even go so far as to say that they do not believe in qualitative measures of IT productivity. They argue that qualitative measures can be used only if they first concur with the quantitative measures of IT payoff. Yolande E. Chan does a fine job in bringing forward and explaining this controversy. This Special Issue also includes a number of research studies that use qualitative data (e.g., by Paul P. Tallon, Kenneth L. Kraemer, and Vijay Gurbaxani; by Akemi Takeoka Chatfield and Philip W. Yetton; and by Sherry D. Ryan and David A. Harrison) to emphasize that there is room for both camps in IT productivity research. Ideally, the work of each group should complement that of the other. In summary, we believe this Special Issue makes a significant contribution to the ongoing debate over the value of IT investment by shedding new light on organizational experiences with IT investment. We feel the research presented here, by providing new insights, moves the area of IT investment research to a new level of inquiry. It is clear that, while progress is being made in the area, the various approaches used in measuring IT payoffs are not universally accepted and the conclusions are arguable. The papers presented here focus on critical, yet insufficiently explored, dimensions of the IT payoff question. These papers, selected from a large number of manuscripts submitted by authors within and outside the United States, collectively exemplify the study of this critical question in both national and global environments. We now introduce to you the papers included in this Special Issue. As described in the first paper, Sherry D. Ryan and David A. Harrison interviewed fifty IT decision-makers in various industries in conducting an investigation of social subsystem costs related to IT decisions. Ryan and Harrison's study supported the observation that IT decisions are traditionally focused on financial or technological issues. The results further indicated that human-related costs often are not considered, or are minimized or ignored until after IT is implemented, resulting in less than optimal investment decisions and thereby reducing the potential benefits of IT investments. The paper extends existing theory by describing systematic patterns of inclusion and exclusion of related costs and benefits. In addition, a decision aid is provided to help IT executives begin to think about which social subsystem costs and benefits should be incorporated into various decisions. Sarv Devaraj and Rajiv Kohli examined monthly data from eight hospitals over a three-year period to evaluate possible relationships between IT investment measures and performance measures of profitability and quality. Holding that the difficulty in identifying the impacts of technology in past research has been the isolation of such benefits from other factors that may also contribute to organizational performance, they sought to determine whether another organizational factor-namely, business process reengineering (BPR)-had a positive impact on measures of organizational profitability and quality. Using a longitudinal research design, the study found positive lag effects of IT investment on organizational profitability. Also, IT investment was found to have a positive effect on organizational quality initiatives. BPR alone was not found to lead to improvement in profitability; however, evidence was found that IT capital investment combined with BPR had a positive impact on profitability. Sumit Sircar, Joe L. Turnbow, and Bijoy Bordoloi reviewed earlier studies of the impact of information technology (IT) on firm performance, noting that previous research provided conflicting findings. Extending this earlier work, they analyzed a large database by use of canonical correlation, finding strong empirical validity for the premise that a relationship exists between sets of IT investment measures (as opposed to individual measures) and firm performance. Further investigation revealed that, overall, IT investment (computer capital, MIS staff and staff training, and other MIS), and non-IT investment (labor and noncomputer capital) were directly related to firm performance measures. Byungtae Lee and Nirup M. Menon extended previous research of the contributions of IT to the enhancement of output. Using 19 years of data from hospitals, they applied both parametric and nonparametric approaches to evaluating the effects of IT. In addition to productivity measures, they estimated error terms representing various inefficiencies in business processes. Efficiency, measured through post-hoc analyses, provided information on how well the mix of inputs impacted production, as well as on how well costs and the productivity impacts of inputs were factored into decision making during resource allocation. In addition, the authors used efficiency results to distinguish between over- and underinvestment in IT and to infer the relationship between level of investment and process reengineering. Michael J. Davern and Robert J. Kauffman present a method of measuring IT value that emphasizes the importance of understanding where potential value lies and how best to relate it contextually to the measurement of a firm's realized value. Using concepts such as locus of value and value conversion contingencies, the authors developed the idea that complementary assets (particularly business process design and human capital) have some bearing on the firm's realization of value. In contrast to earlier process models of IT value that begin with IT expenditures, their analysis emphasizes the initial assessment of potential value for an IT investment. They suggest that the critical level of analysis for understanding how potential value is transformed into realized value may be different from the level of analysis at which the business case for investment, and thus potential value, was initially established. Paul P. Tallon, Kenneth L. Kraemer, and Vijay Gurbaxani used another approach to assessing the impacts of IT, applying a process-oriented model to estimate possible impacts on critical business activities within the value chain. The model incorporates four types of corporate goals for IT and management practices as key determinants of realized IT payoffs. To evaluate the model, and in recognition of the increasing role that executives play in IT investment decisions, the authors based their assessment of IT payoffs on a worldwide survey of executives' perceptions of realized IT impacts. The survey confirmed that the goals were useful indicators of IT payoffs. It was also found that the adoption of certain management practices enables firms to realize higher levels of IT business value. The research reported by Arik Ragowsky, Myles Stern, and Dennis A. Adams had two objectives. The first was to find support for the premise that benefits derived through the use of information systems (IS) depend on an organization's operating characteristics (e.g., number of suppliers and lead time for purchase orders). The second was to show that the relationship between the benefits of an IS and an organization's operating characteristics was stronger for a specific IS application than for the entire IS applications portfolio considered as a whole. Using data from over 500 manufacturing firms in Israel and the United States, the authors found no beneficial relationship between the overall organizational IS and the operating characteristics of organizations for either country. However, for identical specific IS applications in both countries, a beneficial relationship with operational characteristics was noted. Focusing on a more narrow aspect of information technology applications, Akemi Takeoka Chatfield and Philip W. Yetton report on the conduct of cross-case analyses of three organizations that initiated sophisticated electronic data interchange (EDI) networks but that experienced different levels of strategic payoffs. Applying sociological theories of embeddedness, they postulate that the relationship between EDI use and strategic benefits is moderated by EDI embeddedness, which they define as a measure of how central or peripheral a specific EDI network is to managing firm interdependence. Finally, Yolande E. Chan observes that, to provide evidence that would be considered by an executive audience, many past studies of the relationships between IT investment and organizational performance have focused exclusively on quantitative performance measures. She calls for renewed recognition of the important contributions made by "soft" IT value measures and individual-level measures and suggests that researchers need to recognize the important contributions that can be made by qualitative measures, and by individual and group-level analyses in IT value research. Acknowledgments: We wish to recognize the contributors to this Special Issue for being highly responsive to reviewers' and guest editors' suggestions in preparing revisions of their manuscripts. If there is one single factor underlying the success of this Special Issue, it can be attributed to the authors' participation and cooperation. They have our sincere thanks for their outstanding individual efforts. We also recognize the contributions of the scholars who diligently reviewed and critiqued the original proposals, and the initial and revised manuscripts. All accepted manuscripts were reviewed by at least two reviewers and went through at least three revisions. Each reviewer spent a large amount of time carefully evaluating the assigned manuscript and its subsequent revisions until the manuscript was finally accepted or rejected. Their professionalism in moving this project to completion is truly appreciated. We express our special thanks to Jo Willems at the College of Business, University of Texas at El Paso, who was instrumental in keeping the Special Issue project on track. Her efforts and dedication to the project are truly appreciated. The reviewers for the Special Issue were: William Acar, Kent State University Dennis A. Adams, University of Houston Niv Ahituv, Tel Aviv University Irma Becerra-Fernandez, Florida International University James R. Burkman, Indiana University Jeff Butterfield, Western Kentucky University James I. Cash, Jr., Harvard University Yolande E. Chan, Queen's University Akemi Takeoka Chatfield, University of New South Wales Debabroto Chatterjee, Washington State University Michael J. Davern, New York University Sarv Devaraj, University of Notre Dame Kelley Donalds, University of Connecticut Kevin J. Dooley, Arizona State University T. Selwyn Ellis, Ouachita Baptist University Gerald E. Evans, University of Montana Edmond P. Fitzgerald, University of Southern Queensland Dale Goodhue, University of Georgia Sanjay Gosain, University of Southern California Tom G. Gough, University of Leeds Barbara Haley, University of Virginia Diana Hoogeveen, Erasmus University Murray E. Jennex, Claremont Graduate University Kailash Joshi, University of Missouri Robert Kauffman, University of Minnesota C. Bruce Kavan, University of North Florida Betty A. Kleen, Nichols State University Kevin Kobelsky, University of California Stefan Koch, Vienna University of Economics & Business Administration Rajiv Kohli, Holy Cross Health System Kenneth L. Kraemer, University of California Tor J. Larsen, Norwegian School of Management Byungtae Lee, University of Illinois at Chicago In Lee, Western Illinois University Jack T. Marchewka, Northern Illinois University Fred Niederman, University of Baltimore Prashant Palvia, University of Memphis Arik Ragowsky, Wayne State University Manash Ray, Lehigh University Pekka Reijonen, University of Turku Marcus A. Rothenberger, Arizona State University Sherry D. Ryan, University of North Texas Benjamin B. M. Shao, State University of New York at Buffalo Susan A. Sherer, Lehigh University Namchul Shin, Rowan University Wesley Shu, Santa Clara University Sumit Sircar, University of Texas at Arlington Paul P. Tallon, University of California Asher Tishler, University of Iowa Marvin D. Troutt, Kent State University Stijn Viaene, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven John Wallace, Marshall University Hugh J. Watson, University of Georgia Susan Rebstock Williams, Georgia Southern University REFERENCES 1. Alpar, P., and Kim, M.A. A microeconomic approach to the measurement of information technology value. Journal of Management Information Systems, 7, 2 (1990), 55-69. 2. Barua, A.; Kriebel, C.H.; and Mukhopadhyay, T. Information technologies and business value: an analytic and empirical investigation. Information Systems Research, 6, 1 (March 1995), 3-23. 3. Brynjolfsson, E. The productivity paradox of information technology. Communications of the ACM, 36, 12 (1993), 67-77. 4. Brynjolfsson, E., and Hitt, L. Paradox lost? Firm-level evidence on the returns to information systems. Management Science, 42, 4 (1996), 541-558. 5. Brynjolfsson, E., and Hitt, L. Beyond the productivity paradox. Communications of the ACM, 41, 8 (1998), 49-55. 6. Dewan, S., and Kraemer, K.L. International dimensions of the productivity paradox. Communications of the ACM, 41, 8 (1998), 56-62. 7. Hitt, L.M., and Brynjolfsson, E. Productivity, business profitability, and consumer surplus: three different measures of information technology value. MIS Quarterly, 20, 2 (1996), 121-141. 8. Holden, T., and Wilhelmij, P. Improved decision making through better integration of human resource and business process factors in a hospital situation. Journal of Management Information Systems, 12, 3 (1995-96), 21-41. 9. Loveman, G.W. An assessment of the productivity impact of information technologies. In T.J. Allen and M. Scott Morton (eds.), Information Technology and the Corporation of the 1990s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 81-117. 10. Mahmood, M.A., and Mann, G.J. Measuring the organizational impact of information technology investment: an exploratory study. Journal of Management Information Systems, 10, 1 (1993), 97-122. 11. Mahmood, M.A.; Mann, G.J.; Dubrow, M.; and Skidmore, J. Information technology investment and organizational performance: a lagged data analysis. Proceedings of the Information Resources Management Association, Boston, 1998, pp. 19-22. 12. Mitra, S., and Chaya, A.K. Analyzing cost-effectiveness of organizations: the impact of information technology spending. Journal of Management Information Systems, 13, 2 (1996), 29-57. 13. Osterman, P. The impact of computers on employment of clerks and managers. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 39, 2 (1986), 175-186. 14. Rai, A.; Patnayakuni, R.; and Patnayakuni, N. Technology investment and business performance. Communications of the ACM, 40, 7 (1997), 89-97. 15. Schrage, M. The real problem with computers. Harvard Business Review, 75, 5 (1997), 178-183. 16. Semich, J.W. Here is how to quantify IT investment benefits. Datamation, 40, 1 (1994), 45-48. From the Editor-in-Chief WE ARE DELIGHTED TO WELCOME to the Editorial Board Alan Dennis of the University of Georgia and Varun Grover of the University of South Caroina. Wishing all of you a good millennium, Vladimir Zwass

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2014)
TWO SPECIAL SECTIONS OPEN THIS FIRST ISSUE OF OUR THIRTY-FIRST VOLUME. The first, guest edited by James J. Jiang and Gary Klein, contains three papers on information technology (IT) project management. As we all know, the rubber hits the road at the project level, and the execution of corporate strategy and tactics under the conditions of rapid change places high demands on skillful project management. The authors' work ranges from the project transitions of IT professionals to the team coordination on a project, and on to achieving organizational goals with programs consisting of multiple IT projects. Methodological richness of the section should be noted. The Guest Editors further introduce the subject and the content of the Special Section. The Special Section titled "Information Systems Support for Shared Understanding," guest edited by Robert O. Briggs, brings together three papers that focus on using information systems (IS) in the creation of shared understanding as a prerequisite to the coordination of effort. Clearly, aspects of this Special Section are a natural complement to the preceding one. The subjects range from the empirics of using a collaboration-process module in creating such an understanding in heterogeneous work groups (read: the usual type of groups today) through the effects of social networking on surfacing results in a prediction market, on to the design of a system for real- time credibility assessment, a sure help in seeking common ground. This section is also notable for three different methodological commitments of its authors, whose work will be introduced by the guest rditor. In the first paper of the general section, Robert G. Fichman and Nigel P. Melville identify and study empirically a key obstacle to the organizational success with IT innovation, namely a misalignment between a firm's IT innovation posture and its IT resource profile. The authors postulate-and confirm empirically-that such a misalignment will substantially diminish organizational performance resulting from an attempt at innovation. Thus, for example, a firm that pursues an aggressive IT innovation strategy without an endowment of human and organizational resources will meet with more limited success than a firm that matches its intended reach with the complement of its resources. The authors deploy a large dataset to show how the returns to innovation depend on the alignment between the posture and the resource profile. The preconditions for another form of alignment are studied empirically by the authors of the next paper, Heinz-Theo Wagner, Daniel Beimborn, and Tim Weitzel. The authors focus on the business-IT alignment on the operational level and its influence on organizational performance. Their specific contribution here is to conceptualize the antecedents of this alignment in the light of social capital theory with its three dimensions (structural, cognitive, and relational). As the authors show empirically, social capital has to be built up among the business and IT units of a firm to achieve the alignment on the operational level. This perspective allows the authors to provide a significant novel contribution to our comprehension of the long-vaunted alignment. Indeed, the "shared understanding" analyzed in the above Special Section of the issue is a component of the cognitive dimension of the social capital required to achieve the alignment. Innovation contests are a growing aspect of co-creation of value between firms and the communities of their stakeholders. In this form of open innovation, the stakeholders may be primarily characterized as consumers, or users, or enthusiasts. The communities may be autonomous, organized and controlled by these outsiders, or sponsored by a firm. Here, Johann Füller, Katja Hutter, Julia Hautz, and Kurt Matzler present a typology of these users. With social network and cluster analyses, the authors empirically identify six roles the users may play in the community. As we are learning to deploy IT to stimulate open innovation, this research will help us to provide the support and incentives the different categories of contributors need. The paper also adds to our understanding of the hybrid structures that emerge from the technology-supported competition and cooperation of online community members. In our current and future environment of the growing capabilities of computers in the cognitive domain, the apportionment of work between people and machine-based systems has become a central concern. Indeed, it behooves our field to foster systems that bring out the best in humans in cooperation with the other parts of IS. The concluding paper of the issue, by Niek Althuizen and Berend Wierenga, investigates the outcomes of the support of creative problem solving by individuals with a case-based reasoning (CBR) system. CBR is one of the principal technologies that may be deployed to create the technological component of an organizational memory information system (OMIS). The-highly interesting-results obtained by the authors show that the effects of the CBR support are contingent on the type of the individual supported and on the proximity of the cases to the problem domain. The detailed nuanced results presented by the authors challenge some of the established tenets creative cognition theory and are of importance to the practical work apportionment. With the new volume, and the new decade, of JMIS it is my privilege to acknowledge the contribution of our referees, the primary guarantors of the Journal?'s quality. Here are their names: [Omitted for brevity] Let us proceed to the works in this issue. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2005)
The research domain of management information systems (MIS) centers on the development, use, and effects of organizational information systems. The scope of systems under study spans a spectrum extending from those that support a small firm or community to those that enable the functioning of multinational corporations, industry supply webs, and national governments. The effects of the systems and of the information technologies they are based on are exerted on individuals, groups, organizations, industries, economies, and supranational entities. Consequently, the units of analysis in the domain run an equally wide span. The virtuous spiral of heightened performance does indeed lead from the study of the effects to the development of future systems, and to the organizational and institutional changes that would render the societal entities and the information systems effective. It is vital to appreciate the fact that the discipline of MIS studies information systems. These systems include information technologies-but also, and crucially, they include people who work with them. The broad transdiciplinary area of human-computer interaction (HCI) focuses on human interaction with information technologies and with the information they produce. In a nutshell, this is why HCI is organic to MIS. The field of HCI has been the subject of study in computer science, the discipline centering on computer technologies; notably, the design of user interfaces has been studied there. Cognitive science has focused, among other issues, on the study of apportioning the cognitive task between the person and the machine. Other scholarly disciplines, including psychology and anthropology, supplied methods of HCI research. In the MIS domain, we address the complex set of issues involving human interaction with information technologies in an organizational context or for an organization’s benefit. In any direct sense, organizations do not develop or use systems-people do. We need to know how to make them ever better at it-recursively, with information systems. The Guest Editors of the Special Section on Human-Computer Interaction Research in Management Information Systems, Ping Zhang, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, and Izak Benbasat, do our field-and the field of HCI-a great service by working tirelessly to establish the work on HCI on a firm footing within our discipline. The Special Section that opens this issue of the Journal is a prominent effort among several they have undertaken with this goal in mind. In their introduction to the Special Section, the Guest Editors will not only discuss the four papers they have selected for publication after an extensive editorial process but also inform you about the state and the prospects of HCI research in MIS. Four papers in the general section of the Journal address very different aspects of knowledge, of its creation and utilization, and of information systems-based knowledge management. In the first of these works, Peter H. Gray and Alexandra Durcikova, empirically study the deployment of one of the types of knowledge repositories, those used by technical support analysts. In pursuing the well-known issue of exploitation versus exploration, the authors find-rather distressingly-a dichotomy, rather than a unity. Against the expectations of knowledge management theorists, the knowledge repositories studied here are used just for expediency, rather than for the speed of current performance accompanied by learning for the improvement of future performance. The extensive discussion of the results in the paper will repay those who would change this state of affairs by altering organizational environments and knowledge management systems. The analysis is continued in the next paper, which focuses on the role of organizational culture in knowledge management. Concentrating on the deepest cultural phenomena, the organizational values, Maryam Alavi, Timothy R. Kayworth, and Dorothy E. Leidner choose the case study method for its contextual embededdness. The authors establish a complex set of influences exerted by organizational culture on the firm’s knowledge management practices and on their outcomes. Beyond that, the researchers find the feedback from these practices to the value set. It is quite clear that the two papers just discussed, when taken together, offer a rich narrative to those who wish to make organizational information systems-supported knowledge management truly effective. A different aspect of organizational knowledge management is studied by Mark E. Nissen. Rather than researching the use of the organizations’ knowledge stocks, the author addresses the need to enhance their knowledge flows using information systems. A multidimensional model of organizational knowledge dynamics is presented, along with its visualization. The author proceeds to apply this model in a field study, which serves, in turn, to elaborate the model itself. The high-level study of the overall organizational knowledge flows becomes necessary as the complexity of the knowledge work increases, particularly in the organizations whose effectiveness depends on these flows-and these are legion. The paper by Wonseok Oh, Jin Nam Choi, and Kimin Kim brings theory-based study of knowledge creation into our own bailiwick. In an original approach, based on the social network perspective, the authors study the creation of knowledge capital in the field of MIS. Specifically, they study the collaboration among the researchers representing four subfields of our domain, based on the publications in our leading journals. The paper offers important insights about the patterns of our discipline’s development over a quarter of a century. It also brings within our compass a knowledge analysis methodology that is certain to be used more broadly in our epistemics. Tight electronic integration of supply channels and supply networks has been generally considered of advantage to the participant firms. In their empirical study of a large number of multinational enterprises, Kyung Kyu Kim, Narayan S. Umanath, and Bum Hun Kim tell us that this integration can reach the point of negative returns. In other words, the authors find that there is a best level of integration to be achieved in a given business context. The authors operationalize the determinants of the fit between the factors that describe the channels’ information processing needs and those that determine the channel’s information-processing capabilities. That fit is to be sought in defining the volume of information transfer in the channel. By all measures, firms continue to invest heavily in information technologies, with the larger investments performed on the strategic level. The costs of the technologies continue to decline over time. The natural conclusion is that, ceteris paribus, the earlier investment in the same technology labors under a disadvantage. Here, Didem Demirhan, Varghese S. Jacob, and Srinivasan Raghunathan apply formal economic analysis to relate such an investment decision to the nature of the marketplace addressed by the investing firms. More specifically, the IT investment decisions of the firms addressing the price-sensitive market should differ from those addressing the markets where product attributes are of a greater moment. Several other results obtained by the authors surface practical guidelines for the organizational decision makers. Christopher J. Wolfe and Uday S. Murthy use a laboratory setting to study the comparative advantages and drawbacks of deploying negotiation support systems (NSS) in budget negotiations. Face-to-face budget negotiations are notoriously difficult, often resulting in an impasse. Yet the prevailing prescription for this type of a single-issue distributive negotiation is indeed the reliance on the richness of a face-to-face communication. The present work shows the need to revisit, and perhaps revise, that prescription. The authors empirically find the deployment of NSS to be of a potential advantage in budget negotiations. Considering the ever-increasing global distribution of work and of organizational structures, this is an important result that certainly merits further research. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1994)

Special Issue: Information Technology and Its Organizational Impact - Nunamaker Jr, Jay F; Briggs, Robert O (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1996)
THREE DECADES AGO, LEAVITT AND WHISTLER PREDICTED that the computer would cause fundamental changes in the organization and society. We live in a time when many of their expectations have been realized. As they predicted, many organizations have flattened, eliminating many middle-management positions. Developments in computer applications have also led the world in directions not foreseen three decades ago. The Internet and the World Wide Web have connected people in ways that challenge the very concept of the traditional organization. Indeed, there is now some discussion of organizations with no physical place except in cyberspace. With the advent of standard cross-platform Web browsers, we may be advancing from the horse-and-buggy days to the Model-T days of the information agemass-produced standard information interfaces are now inexpensive enough to find a place in all offices and in most homes. The next thirty years are likely to bring ever more dramatic changes as more of our interactions move on-line. We are far from a technological plateau. It is becoming increasingly difficult for organizations to keep pace with software advances. Product release cycles have dropped from the standard two to three years of the 1970s. "Internet years" are now six weeks long. Throughout this change, it is important to understand the organizational and interorganizational issues that arise from new and existing technologies. Toward that end, this special issue presents eight of the best papers from the Information Systems track at the 1996 Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science. The papers in this issue address both emerging and mature technologies. The papers break into groups as follows: Individuals in the organization: Lim and Benbasat, National University of Singapore and University of British Columbia Shibata, Fukuda, and Katsumoto, Toyo University, Communication Research Laboratory of Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication Organizational issues: Galletta, Hartzel, Johnson, Joseph, and Rustagi, University of Pittsburgh Vandenbosch and Ginzberg, Case Western University Interorganizational issues: Oliver, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Lee and Clark, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Mejias, Shepherd, Vogel, and Lazaneo, Universities of Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona, InstitLto Technclgico Y de EstLdias Superiores de Monterry Organizational and interorganizational issues Nunamaker, Briggs, Mittleman, Vogel, and Balthazard, University of Arizona and University of North Carolina, Greensboro The two papers addressing the individual in the organization treat very different topics: the use of technology to overcome judgment biases, and technological support for creativity in the form of aesthetics-oriented retrieval of images in databases. Lim and Benbasat present a persuasive theoretical argument for using GSS to overcome biases in their paper, "A Framework for Addressing Group Judgment Biases with Group Technology." This paper explains the cognitive basis for the representativeness bias and the availability bias and argues that these biases may be overcome by using GSS to improve the efficiency of information searches and to reduce the cognitive costs of communication. The paper offers propositions about debiasing with respect to cognitive support and task characteristics. Shibata, Fukuda, and Katsumoto present an unusual approach to the storage and retrieval of aesthetic data in their paper, "A Hypermedia-Based Design Image Database System Using a Perceptional Link Method." The paper reports on the development and testing of a system to support clothing designers using a distributed design image database system. The system includes a repository of fabric design images, a computer-aided design (CAD) mechanism for shaping garment designs, and a human-centric retrieval mechanism that retrieves fabric designs based on aesthetic abstractions (called, kensai) such as elegant, chic, and daring. Over time, the retrieval mechanism learns each designer's tastes and tailors its responses to meet the designer's particular sensibilities. The authors present the architecture of their prototype and report on its performance under field conditions. Both papers dealing with the organizational level address issues critical to successful appropriation of commercially available software. In "Spreadsheet Presentation and Error Detection: An Experimental Study," Galletta, Hartzel, Johnson, Joseph, and Rustagi examine the serious proem of undetected errors in spreadsheets. More that half the errors in spreadsheets go undetected by creators and auditors. This paper reports on an experiment that tests whether error detection can be improved by changing the way data and formulas are presented. Analysis revealed that new presentation formats did not improve error detection, but the new formats did reduce the number of false-positive errors found. The paper discusses the implications of the results for practitioners and suggests new directions for research. In "Lotus Notes and Collaboration: Plus ca change . . . ," Vandenbosch and Ginzberg revisit Lotus Notes implementation for an update five years after Orlikowski's landmark paper on the subject. Lotus Notes continues to be the world's leading commercial groupware product and is a key component in a widespread effort to foster collaboration in organizations. This paper provides additional perspective about Notes in organizations. The authors report on a two-part survey of a new Notes installation within a particular organization. They report user perceptions of the impact of the team database on work practices, focusing particularly on whether collaboration among users increased after the implementation. They also discuss key factors that may have affected the trajectory of implementation. The paper reports that patterns of collaboration did not shift after implementation of Notes. Participants who already worked in collaboration with others reported that the groupware tool improved their effectiveness and efficiency. Participants who generally did not collaborate reported no increase in collaboration and little benefit from the technology. The authors find little support for a groupware technological imperative. Two of the papers that address interorganizational issues deal with electronic markets. Oliver, in "A Machine Learning Approach to Automated Negotiation Prospects for Electronic Commerce," presents a method for using artificial agents based on genetic-algorithm learning techniques to improve the joint outcomes of multi-issue business negotiations. The paper describes the architecture of the agents and compares their performance with that of human subjects. The author discusses how the new technology might be applied to support or even to entirely automate certain kinds of business negotiations. In "Market Process Reengineering through Electronic Market Systems: Opportunities and Challenges," Lee and Clark present four case studies of attempts to implement electronic marketplaces. Two of the systems were successful; two were failures. The paper details the economic benefits that may be derived by the implementation of electronic markets and explores the factors that led to success or failure in each case. It suggests issues that are relevant to the analysis, design, and implementation of such systems by market-making firms. The third interorganizational paper addresses important questions about cross-cultural groups. In "Perceived Satisfaction and Consensus Levels: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of GSS and Non-GSS Outcomes within and between the U.S. and Mexico," Mejias, Shepherd, Vogel, and Lazaneo report on an experiment testing the effects of cultural differences on participants in electronically supported meetings. Working from Hofstede's cultural dimensions, the researchers compared forty-four teams and found several differences in consensus change, satisfaction, and perceived participation. The paper suggests a need for careful consideration about how group technologies are used when crossing cultural boundaries. In the final paper, "Lessons from a Dozen Years of Group Support Systems Research: A Discussion of Lab and Field Findings," Nunamaker, Briggs, Mittleman, Vogel, and Balthazard examine and summarize a broad range of individual, organizational, and interorganizational issues surrounding the design, implementation, and use of group support systems. This paper combines knowledge from empirical experimentation with knowledge derived from thousands of cases in the field, examining issues ranging from software architecture to facilitation techniques to the design of the physical environment. It examines group processes such as divergent idea generation and convergent issue identification and examines group activities such as strategic planning and collaborative requirements definition. The paper examines future directions for GSS research and concludes that many unanswered questions remain in this research domain.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1985)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2011)
The Special Section on information and technology that opens this issue of the Journal shows once again the intimate relationship between the deployment of information technology (IT) and the operation of modern firms, business networks, and markets. The strategies of many organizations are fundamentally predicated on IT; the strategies of others are dependent on it. The firms that act in the space of digital---or digitizable---content are in the seek mode, as they encroach one another’s business models, attempt to create engaged customer communities, and rebrand themselves in the business universe of the ever-more rapid change. All companies and other organizations redevelop---or need to---their business processes to garner the opportunities and to respond to the threats occasioned by the IT-based ways of doing business. The papers of the Special Section run the gamut of settings: information diffusion in virtual communities, effects of à la carte airline pricing, global supply chain management, innovation strategies by IT firms, electronic procurement channels, and platform-based two-sided marketplaces. Our field has developed, adapted, and adopted a rich array of research methods to carry out the studies, and they are demonstrated here. The Guest Editors of the Special Section, Eric K. Clemons, Robert J. Kauffman, and Thomas A. Weber, introduce each of the papers and their research methodologies to you. The general section of the issue begins with the paper by Ken H. Guo, Yufei Yuan, Norman P. Archer, and Catherine E. Connelly that empirically investigates workplace security violations related to information systems (IS). The focus here is on the motivations of end users who commit nonmalicious---but knowing---violations. The authors present a theory-based multifaceted model, whose validation surfaces the key determinants of the user intentions to engage in such behavior. Once such fine-grained understanding of these rather rife violations is reached, with some quite potent potential motivators eliminated from consideration as the result of this research, the authors are able to provide effective and efficient guidelines for organizational practice. Virtual communities are the principal locus of value co-creation by consumers. As the community members (also known as consumers in some settings) share information and build up the community’s aggregated knowledge stock, the value is being created. The arrogation of this value is a---big---question for another day. What matters here is that the value created depends on the quality of information contributed. There are various means of inducing higher quality of comments and discouraging or eliminating the lower-quality ones. In the next paper, Jianqing Chen, Hong Xu, and Andrew B. Whinston study the effects of moderation in the communities where the principal motivation of contributors is achieving high reputation. The moderators serve as filters and the keepers of the gate opening to the reputational tokens (such as karma points). Using formal analysis, the authors show that the use of moderators leads to improved quality of information shared by its contributors. The authors offer further results regarding the effects of the frequency and quality of moderation, thus presenting a comprehensive picture of one path to quality of user-generated content in virtual communities. Andreas I. Nicolaou and D. Harrison McKnight use the setting of electronic data exchanges, that is, business-to-business marketplaces, to study the effectiveness of the IT features leading to information transparency and providing outcome feedback. Even more important, the authors address a broader question: Do the design features of an exchange (or of any major IS) have the same effect at two different points in time, say, at the initiation, and then two weeks later? The authors address the question empirically and arrive at results that make a significant contribution to the way we should study IS going forward. These results tell us to not arrive at conclusions about the effectiveness of an IS on the basis of a single snapshot of its use. Standardization is necessary for progress in e-commerce. It is also the domain of opportunistic behavior that can lead to highly suboptimal results. The study of motivators that drive firms to participate in the consortia that develop e-commerce standards is therefore of the moment. Here, Kexin Zhao, Mu Xia, and Michael J. Shaw present an empirical study of the drivers, based on their model grounded in the collective action theory. By testing the model, the authors offer their conclusions as to the factors that lead the member firms to provide resources for the operation of the consortia. Notably, the interests of consortia members and the users diverge, and the authors’ research should help in seeking out the common ground. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1995)
The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Magid Igbaria, Tor Guimaraes, and Gordon B. Davis on microcomputer usage and another by John W. Satzinger and Lorne Olfman on group support systems (GSS).

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1990)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1993)

Special Section: Strategic and Competitive Information Systems - Clemons, Eric K; Row, Michael C (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1993)

Special Section: Structure and Complexity in Sociotechnical Systems - Nunamaker Jr, Jay F; Sprague Jr, Ralph H; Briggs, Robert O (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2009)
Jay F. Nunamaker Jr. is Regents and Soldwedel Professor of MIS, Computer Science and Communication, and Director of the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He received his Ph.D. in Systems Engineering and Operations Research from Case Institute of Technology, an M.S. and B.S. in Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Nunamaker received the LEO Award from the Association of Information Systems at ICIS in Barcelona, Spain, December 2002. This award is given for a lifetime of exceptional achievement in information systems. He was elected as a fellow of the Association of Information Systems in 2000. Dr. Nunamaker has over 40 years of experience in examining, analyzing, designing, testing, evaluating, and developing information systems. He served as a test engineer at the Shippingport Atomic Power facility, as a member of the ISDOS team at the University of Michigan, and as a member of the faculty at Purdue University prior to joining the faculty at the University of Arizona in 1974. His research on group support systems addresses behavioral as well as engineering issues and focuses on theory and implementation. He has been a licensed professional engineer since 1965. Ralph H. Sprague is a Professor of Information Technology Management in the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawaii. He has over 40 years of experience in teaching, research, and consulting in the use of computers and information technologies in organizations. His specialties are decision support systems, strategic systems planning, the management of information systems, and electronic document management. He has served as chairman or cochairman of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences for the past 30 years. Robert O. Briggs is Director of Academic Affairs for the Institute for Collaboration Science and Professor of Marketing and Management at the University of Nebraska. He earned his Ph.D. in Management and Information Systems from the University of Arizona in 1994. He researches the theoretical foundations of collaboration and applies his findings to the design and deployment of new collaboration technologies and work practices. He is a codeveloper of the collaboration engineering discipline, and coinventor of the thinkLets design pattern language for collaboration processes. He has published more than 100 scholarly works on theoretical, experimental, and technical aspects of collaboration. This Special Section focuses on the many roles of structure in the complex, sociotechnical milieu of the information systems (IS) domain. Complex objects and complex phenomena abound in the IS domain. From the myriad of relationships among data objects to the vast interdependencies among software requirements to the networks of knowledge and human relationships both engendered by and supported by IS, the complexity of the domain far exceeds the limited capacity of human cognition. Structures and approaches to structuring make it possible to comprehend, reason about, and use these complex concepts. The eight papers in this Special Section illuminate approaches to bringing structure and order to the complexity of the domain. Indeed, the first of these articles tackles the complexity of the domain itself. In their paper "A Meta-Theory for Understanding Information Systems within Sociotechnical Systems," Robert P. Bostrom, Saurabh Gupta, and Dominic Thomas argue that adaptive structuration theory can serve as a meta-theory to organize and integrate many other theories in the IS literature into a comprehensive sociotechnical understanding of the field. They examine the nature and value of meta-theory, drawing insights and examples from many papers within and from outside the domain in support of the position that a meta-theoretical perspective can deepen understandings of the domain, of phenomena that manifest in the domain, and of theories offered to explain these phenomena. Andrea Forte, Vanessa Larco, and Amy Bruckman examine the emergence and nature of self-governance structures such as policies, norms, and ideals among developers in large-scale distributed voluntary knowledge-work projects in their paper, "Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance." They examine centralization and decentralization trends for self-governance in light of theories of commons-based governance developed for offline contexts, supporting their positions with examples from long-running projects from the field. The paper "Engaging Group E-Learning in Virtual Worlds," by Katherine Franceschi, Ronald M. Lee, Stelios H. Zanakis, and David Hinds, addresses the question of the value that 3D virtual worlds can bring to the online learning experience beyond that which is already generated by more conventional approaches to computer-aided instruction. The authors argue that the strong sense of presence generated by these systems, the degree to which they afford naturalistic modes of conversation, and the degree to which they provide capabilities for joint manipulation of shared objects lead to more engaging online interactions, and therefore better learning. The paper discusses in detail the way the unique affordances of 3D immersive environments support new social structures for online learning experiences. Xitong Guo, Doug Vogel, Zhongyun (Phil) Zhou, Xi Zhang, and Huaping Chen, in their paper, "Chaos Theory as a Lens for Interpreting Blogging," report on a method for discovering structure in large, seemingly chaotic patterns of communication among people and interconnections among the data objects they exchange. Using the blogosphere as an example, the paper provides an overall view of blogging from micro (individual blog traffic dynamics) and macro (blogosphere structure) levels. Its findings may be extended to many other IS/information technology (IT) challenges where value could be derived by discovering the structure that underlies seeming chaos. The paper "Managing Knowledge in Light of Its Evolution Process: An Empirical Study on Citation Network--Based Patent Classification," by Xin Li, Hsinchun Chen, Zhu Zhang, Jiexun Li, and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., also addresses the discovery and use of relationship structures among large collections of data objects by focusing on networks of citations. The paper reports an experimental study on a longitudinal patent data set. The reported approach yielded an improvement of more than 30 percent in classification accuracy compared to conventional content-based methods, which could lead to significant reductions of information overload among people who must draw information from collections of objects that contain citations to one another. Paul Benjamin Lowry, Nicholas C. Romano Jr., Jeffrey L. Jenkins, and Randy W. Guthrie examine a similar question from a different perspective in their paper, "The CMC Interactivity Model: How Interactivity Enhances Communication Quality and Process Satisfaction in Lean-Media Groups." This field study found that in very large groups, interactivity, communication quality, and satisfaction-with-process improved substantially when groups moved from face-to-face communication to lean computer-mediated communication channels. The authors discuss the implications of their findings for the continuance, satisfaction, and performance of large-scale global groups. The paper "Leveraging Crowdsourcing---Activation-Supporting Components for IT-Based Ideas Competition," by Jan Marco Leimeister, Michael Huber, Ulrich Bretschneider, and Helmut Krcmar, examines a complex new social structure, crowdsourcing, and proposes a new structured procedure for harnessing the approach. It describes how activation-enabled functionalities can be systematically designed and implemented to support crowdsourced IT development using enterprise resource planning software as an example from the field. From this work, the authors derive a two-step model for the process for motivating participation in such projects. Gwendolyn L. Kolfschoten and Gert-Jan de Vreede also present a structured methodology in their paper, "A Design Approach for Collaboration Processes: A Multimethod Design Science Study in Collaboration Engineering." The paper reports a four-year field study during which they developed and deployed a multistep design process for collaborative work practices. This work provides insights that may generalize to other domains where designers use a design pattern language as a foundation of their approach. Each of the papers in this Special Section builds on a paper that was nominated for a best-paper award at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). Each paper presents an important and thought-provoking perspective on complexity and structure in the IS/IT domain. We commend each of them to your reading.

Special Section: Computer Personnel Research - Lederer, Albert L (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1993)

Special Section: Information Technology and Organization Design - Baroudi, Jack J; Lucas Jr, Henry C (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1994)

Tuning Data Mining Methods for Cost-Sensitive Regression: A Study in Loan Charge-Off Forecasting - Bansal, Gaurav; Sinha, Atish P; Zhao, Huimin (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2008)
Real-world predictive data mining (classification or regression) problems are often cost sensitive, meaning that different types of prediction errors are not equally costly. While cost-sensitive learning methods for classification problems have been extensively studied recently, cost-sensitive regression has not been adequately addressed in the data mining literature yet. In this paper, we first advocate the use of average misprediction cost as a measure for assessing the performance of a cost-sensitive regression model. We then propose an efficient algorithm for tuning a regression model to further reduce its average misprediction cost. In contrast with previous statistical methods, which are tailored to particular cost functions, this algorithm can deal with any convex cost functions without modifying the underlying regression methods. We have evaluated the algorithm in bank loan charge-off forecasting, where underforecasting is considered much more costly than overforecasting. Our results show that the proposed algorithm significantly reduces the average misprediction costs of models learned with various base regression methods, such as linear regression, model tree, and neural network. The amount of cost reduction increases as the difference between the unit costs of the two types of errors (overprediction and underprediction) increases.

Information System Design and Development - Weldon, Jay-Louise (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1984)

Special Section: Digital Economy and Information Technology Value - Clemons, Eric K; Dewan, Rajiv M; Kauffman, Robert J (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2006)
Eric K. Clemons is a Professor at theWharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he has served since 1976. His visiting appointments include Harvard University, Cornell University, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Management Information Systems and International Journal of Electronic Commerce. His research specialties are in the areas of IT and business strategy, IT and financial markets, making the decision to invest in strategic IT ventures, managing the risk of strategic IT implementations, and strategic implications of e-commerce for channel power and profitability. He is the past founder of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences’s annual Competitive Strategy, Economics and Information Systems mini-track, which will have its twentieth anniversary meeting in January 2007. Rajiv M. Dewan is an Associate Professor at the University of Rochester’s William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration, where he is involved in research in electronic commerce, organizational issues in management and information systems, information technology industry, and financial information systems. He currently serves as the chair of the schoolwide doctoral program. His papers have been published in Management Science, Journal of Management Information Systems, Information Systems Research, INFORMS Journal of Computing, Decision Support Systems, IEEE Transactions on Computers, and other journals. Prior to joining the Simon School, he was a faculty member at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE Computer Society, INFORMS, Association for Information Systems, and Beta Gamma Sigma. Dr. Dewan and two colleagues from the University of Rochester won the "Best Paper Award" in the Internet and Digital Economy Track at the Thirty-Fifth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35), January 2002. He has been organizing HICSS mini-tracks on strategy, economics, IS, and e-commerce since 1999. Robert J. Kauffman is the Director of the MIS Research Center and Professor and Chair in the Information and Decision Sciences Department at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. He previously worked in international banking, and served on the faculty of New York University and the University of Rochester. His graduate degrees are from Cornell University and Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on senior management issues in IS strategy and business value, IT infrastructure investments, technology adoption, e-commerce and e-markets, and supply-chain management. His research has been published in Organization Science, Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Decision Sciences, and other leading journals and conferences. He recently won best research paper awards at the INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST) in 2003, 2004, and 2005; Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences in 2004; International Conference on Electronic Commerce in 2006; and the Eighth Information Management Conference in Taiwan in 2006. He is also a 2006 recipient of the IEEE Society for Engineering Management’s "Best Research Prize." In this Special Section of the Journal of Management Information Systems, our authors explore new research themes and developments in the areas of digital economy and information technology (IT) value research. The first several papers represent the digital economy and IT value themes by addressing issues that arise through the outsourcing and systems design for flexibility and integration in manufacturing plant and financial services business processes. They examine how IT-driven supply-chain integration affects organizational abilities to achieve manufacturing process flexibility and competitive cost control, why IT investments make it possible for manufacturing plants to effectively outsource processes, and the role that IT integration plays in supporting high-performance import–export trade services in international banking. The next three papers examine interesting new theoretical perspectives. One is how network effects should influence firm-level business strategy for offering different kinds of value-maximizing licensing arrangements for software products. Another tackles the role of software stacks and technological complementarities when technology firms acquire other technology firms, and what our expectations should be for the consequent creation of market value. A third assesses the strategic opportunities that exist for firms to hyperdifferentiate their products when it is possible for online reviews to enable the identification of uniquely valuable product characteristics among interested high-end consumers. The Special Section opens with a contribution to our knowledge of IT strategy in the manufacturing setting. The paper is entitled "Information Technology, Production Process Outsourcing, and Manufacturing Plant Performance," by Indranil Bardhan, Jonathan Whitaker, and Sunil Mithas. In a cross-sectional survey study of manufacturing plants, their IT capabilities, and the choices they make with respect to production process outsourcing, the authors examine the role that IT and process outsourcing play in achieving high performance in terms of plant costs and quality. They report that higher levels of IT investments are associated with a greater propensity to outsource production processes, and suggest that the systems integration capabilities are critical for this to work well for the firms. Such outsourcing also appears to be associated with some benefits; the authors report that better cost controls for plant overhead and labor expenses also result, and that higher quality results at the plant level. They also note that when a plant’s strategy is quality focused, there is a greater likelihood that process outsourcing will be observed. The authors speculate that this approach can take advantage of the core competencies of their outsourcing vendors, whose own technology investments may do more to support high quality than would otherwise be possible for the manufacturing plant. Interestingly, there is no evidence in this research that plants outsource processes simply to reduce costs. This is consistent with what is known in other research about the high costs and significant risks associated with interfirm collaboration. Overall, this research challenges other authors to pick up where it leaves off, and to establish additional new knowledge for senior managers on the rationale for and the efficacy of process outsourcing. The second paper continues this emphasis on empirical research on IT value and manufacturing sector issues. Eric T.G. Wang, Jeffrey C.F. Tai, and Hsiao-Lan Wei present new research on "A Virtual Integration Theory of Improved Supply-Chain Performance" that also builds on our digital economy theme. The authors propose virtual integration as a governance mechanism for interorganizational interactions in supply-chain management, in lieu of other mechanisms. These include vertical integration, which is known to be inflexible in changing markets, and other forms of non-ownership-based collaboration, which may be more costly for the participants. They define virtual integration as the substitution of ownership with partnership by integrating a smaller set of suppliers through IT. They also argue that flexibility in supply-chain management is value-maximizing, and that virtual integration of buyer-supplier systems encourages the suppliers to be more responsive to the changing needs of the buyer. This study involves 149 responding firms in the automobile, chemical, computer and electronics, food, machine tool, metal, and textile industries. The authors find that although there was not a direct cost-reducing contribution for the manufacturer from virtual integration, the "loose coupling" with IT did yield benefits in terms of supplier responsiveness. The results were obtained through a structural equation model with path estimates that tested eight hypotheses. The third paper is on IT integration in trade services business processes in international banking. Prabu Davamanirajan, Robert J. Kauffman, Charles H. Kriebel, and Tridas Mukhopadhyay contributed "Systems Design, Process Performance, and Economic Outcomes in International Banking." Their research uses the business process performance evaluation perspective for IT investments, and provides two different levels of analysis. One level is a process performance model that links system characteristics that impact business process outputs and performance quality. A second, more aggregate level of analysis is based on an economic performance model that enables senior managers to analyze the statistical connection between business process performance and the economic performance of the organization. The authors apply their modeling approach to the context of global trade services in international banking, where IT investments are made to effect systems integration to support letter of credit and lending management support. The authors’ data come from the American international banking community in New York City, during the 1990s, where historically large investments in IT were made to support international financial services business processes. The primary findings of the research include evidence for increased labor productivity and decreased cycle time in the presence of increasing electronic initiation of letter of credit-related lending requests. The authors also report that integration between the trade services system and the general ledger system in global trade services had a beneficial impact by reducing cycle time. An additional contribution of this research is that it offers new ideas about how to analyze business process-level IT investments in the presence of sequentially independent and reciprocally independent processes, as well as processes that exhibit pooled interdependence and have many shared activities. The fourth paper in this Special Section examines technology value issues, and is by Lihui Lin and Nalin Kulatilaka. They study issues in the context of "Network Effects and Technology Licensing with Fixed Fee, Royalty, and Hybrid Contracts," especially the appropriateness of fixed fees versus royalties, which the economics literature has suggested is value maximizing for firms that license their technologies. The authors show that the usual conclusion from economics may not hold when IT innovations lead to the creation of products and services that exhibit network externalities. This problem is complicated by concerns on the part of the innovator about whether it is appropriate to license technology to competitors (such as Microsoft making some of its operating systems innovations available to Apple Computer, so that it is possible for Apple to produce Microsoft-compatible computers). Lin and Kulatilaka offer answers about the key drivers that underlie effective decisions, including the strength of the network externalities, the potential size of the market in which licensing will occur, and the investment levels required to create a similar technological innovation. They also explore the implications of current practices that have increasingly focused on developing hybrid approaches relative to managerial decision making for network externality-driven technology licensing policy. The fifth paper in the Special Section is by Lucia Silva Gao and Bala Iyer. Their paper, "Analyzing Complementarities Using Software Stacks for Software Industry Acquisitions," offers a new theoretical perspective about why firms that are closer in distance across different layers of the software stack are likely to be perceived in the financial markets as more likely to produce value and profits due to the expected technological complementarities. Their perspective is based on the economic theory of complementarities, which emphasizes the value that complementary assets and processes can produce in proximity to one another. The authors examine a number of different empirical models that implement event study methods in order to determine whether cumulative abnormal returns on equity show up among software companies involved in mergers and acquisitions. Especially interesting in this research is that the authors are able to empirically tease out the relative strength that software stack proximity has between firms whose capabilities are brought together. Based on the authors’ findings, one might guess that there is an "optimal" software stack distance in mergers and acquisitions that will support the creation of maximum business value. The authors’ findings are especially relevant in network industries, including electronic products, computer and hardware technologies, and information and communication technologies, where the use of complementary components is necessary in the creation of their products. The closing paper of the Special Section focuses on a subject that will give good cheer to many readers of this journal: micro-brewery beer production. It also covers new theory in resonance marketing and the new possibilities for hyperdifferentiation in the digital economy. The authors, Eric K. Clemons, Guodong "Gordon" Gao, and Lorin M. Hitt, contributed "When Online Reviews Meet Hyperdifferentiation: A Study of the Craft Beer Industry." The thrust of their research is to examine the capabilities that the Internet offers to support resonance marketing, which emphasizes the degree to which consumers are well informed so they can purchase the products and services that delight them. The role of online reviews in this context is to supply consumers with "level-up" knowledge of the products that interest them, so it becomes possible for producers to hyperdifferentiate and better monetize what they are selling. It turns out that the craft beer industry is a perfect setting to explore these firm strategy issues, because beer is hardly a necessity and the differences among beers only become discernible to consumers as they gain experience and knowledge of the characteristics of the different products that are available. The paper contributes new ideas for the measurement of product positioning using online ratings from RateBeer.com, a popular Internet-based consumer rating service. The authors’ empirical analysis shows the extent to which positive reviews drive the growth of demand for new craft beers, consistent with their views of how resonance marketing can make hyperdifferentiation an effective strategy. We thank the authors of the papers that appear in this Special Section for sharing their interesting research. We also want to recognize the reviewers and participants at the 2006 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. They offered their knowledge and outstanding comments and insights on the theory, analysis, methods, and findings in the research that we report. We also appreciated the help of our colleagues at the MIS Research Center of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, the Simon Graduate School of Management at the University of Rochester, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Donna Sarppo always contributes flawless behind-the-scenes logistics in the construction of these annual special issues--thank you, Donna. Jesse Bockstedt, now a fourth-year doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, was our "managing editor" for this Special Section project. He provided excellent reviewing input to the coeditors, helped us to be in touch with the authors, and kept the reviewers on track to meet our tight delivery schedule. Penultimately, we offer our thanks for guidance and encouragement to Hugh Watson, who annually chairs the Organizational Systems and Technology Track, and to Ralph Sprague, who has chaired the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences for many years. Finally, we thank Vladimir Zwass, the editor of the Journal of Management Information Systems, for giving us a "blank canvas" each year on which to draw--and only after many late nights of effort, to produce this competitive strategy, economics, and information systems--focused issue of the journal.

Investments in Information Security: A Real Options Perspective with Bayesian Postaudit - Herath, Hemantha S B; Herath, Tejaswini C (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2008)
The application of real options techniques to information security is significantly different than in the case of general information technology investments due to characteristics unique to information security. Emerging research in the economics of information security has suggested real options analysis (ROA) as a potential technique for assessing the value of information security assets, but has focused primarily on the most effective level of investment and the configuration of intrusion prevention/detection systems. In this paper, we attempt to address significant gaps in the literature by developing an integrated real options model for information security investments using Bayesian statistics that incorporates learning and postauditing in the analysis. By using the proposed model with actual data on e-mail and spam, we demonstrate that ROA with Bayesian postauditing offers a systematic valuation and risk management framework for evaluating information security spending by firms. We also discuss the managerial implications.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1990)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1988)

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2018)
The Special Issue on “Strategic Value of Big Data and Business Analytics” presents research that aims to go beyond the highly publicized notions about big data and to discover how the accumulations of very large longitudinal collections of structured and unstructured data can be deployed to create value that can furnish organizations with strategic benefits. The potential strategic value may include enhanced customer relationships, evidence-based decision making, action-oriented knowledge management, fielding of service-extended products with continuing revenue flows, and more flexible or efficient supply-web management. Ultimately, and particularly in the case of several major online companies, the exclusive possession of vast data can lead to lasting competitive advantage. The guest editors of the Special Issue, Roger H.L. Chiang, Varun Grover, Ting-Peng Liang, and Dongsong Zhang, introduce to you the problematic of the analytics grounded in the big data and offer a framework of research within which our field can contribute. It must be recognized that these are still early days and it was not long ago that we passed the end of the beginning of the big data movement in information systems (IS). We are far better at assembling data aggregates and conditioning them for use than at actually deploying them for organizational results. Nevertheless, as the examples of the leading companies show, such results can be gained with well-targeted and sustained organizational actions. And such results can be devastating to competitors that do not measure up, as well as presenting tall barriers to entry. A firm that has been collecting data that surround its activities for a decade—and deploys the data with appropriate IS—has an inherent and lasting advantage over a competitor that has not collected its longitudinal data. The Big Five online companies in the United States and several companies that are rapidly gaining similar scope in China are already in a position to command their marketplaces. Like any other major asset, big data attracts risks. These include the distortion of marketplace functioning by firms with massive captive data aggregates, further erosion of privacy, inappropriate purely algorithmic decision making, and data breaches. These exposures will need to be paid attention to on the societal and international levels. As noted above, we are only past the end of the beginning. The studies in the Special Issue point to several paths forward. The guest editors present an encompassing framework within which our research can help derive organizational value from big data. The first article in the general section contributes to our understanding of the economy of intangibles, more specifically, of information goods. Sampling of such goods is almost costless to the provider. In the context of video on demand, Ai-Phuong Hoang and Robert J. Kauffman empirically study the effectiveness of such sampling and its influence on consumer purchasing decisions. The researchers find an intricate dependence of consumer buying decisions and willingness to pay for the complete entertainment product on preference match during sampling. Indeed, it is found beneficial to the provider to offer free sampling rather than limit access to the customers with paid samples. A number of strategies to expand the viewing by sampling entertainment content emerge from the work. This work bears generalization to other content products. Two subsequent studies address enterprise social media (ESM), which aim to harness the advantages of online communities within an organization. While in some respects resembling general social media activities, the organizational nature of the communities that emerge on these media conditions the specificities. In the first of the articles, Burcu Bulgurcu, Wietske van Osch, and Gerald C. Kane study the operations of such a community in a global firm to determine these special features. The researchers find that the majority of users, whom the authors call promoters, use the platform for self-promotion, without reference to posts by others. Further, self-promoters contribute to groups of a different scope than that in open social media. The findings surface a phenomenon deleterious to organizational knowledge sharing and elaboration. Attention must be paid to this, and the culture of ESM use in some organizations calls for change. In the second of the two articles, Wietske van Osch and Charles W. Steinfield investigate the boundary-spanning role of ESM use by groups within an organization. The visibility affordance of ESM allows all the group members (rather than just the team gatekeepers) to modulate the information flow across the group boundary. The differential characteristics of the networks constituted by the employee groups lead to more or less effective boundary-spanning activities. Taken together, the two studies offer novel insights into organizational information and knowledge sharing occasioned by ESM. The intersection of social media and organizational cultures offers a fruitful domain of study with a view toward harvesting ESM benefits in a firm. In the concluding article of the issue, Kholekile L. Gwebu, Jing Wang, and Li Wang present a study of organizational management in the aftermath of a data breach. Specifically, the researchers investigate the efficacy of various responses to a breach in relation to the firm’s reputation. The authors’ findings draw on an established theoretical background, accumulated knowledge about crisis management, and an extensive data-breach database. They find that the firm’s reputation is highly salient in protecting the firm’s value consequent to a breach. They also discover differential effects of various response strategies. The evidence-based findings will help firms in reacting to this, unfortunately, all too frequent occurrence. This is, of course, a complement to the strategies that prevent data breaches in the first place.

Special Section: Strategic and Competitive Information Systems - Clemons, Eric K; Weber, Bruce W (Journal of Management Information Systems, 1999)
THIS TENTH ANNUAL JMIS SPECIAL SECTION ON STRATEGIC AND COMPETITIVE information technology reflects a growing understanding of the relationship among advances in information systems and critical issues in distribution, disintermediation, and electronic commerce. The three papers selected represent a wide range of research methods, including intensive case study in a single organization, computer simulation, and closed-form analysis. They address very different questions, including successful leadership of a company threatened by disintermediation, simulation analysis of the performance of alternative trading systems, and financial analysis of the optimal use of portfolio balancing systems. All, however, compare the performance of attackers and defenders in industries faced with profound transformation due to the introduction of electronic alternatives to established markets. The first paper, Rosenbluth International: Strategic Transformation of a Successful Enterprise, by Eric K. Clemons and Il-Horn Hann, is a case study of a successful travel agency under assault from airlines and electronic Web-based ticketing services. The company first had to understand and accept the seriousness of the threat; it had to acknowledge that it no longer represented the airlines' lowest-cost distribution system, and thus that airlines would do everything they could either to slash its commissions or to disintermediate it entirely. The firm next had to accept that its corporate customers the source of the bulk of their profits would not remain loyal unless Rosenbluth remained the best available alternative and the highest source of value. Rosenbluth, as the most successful of the traditional corporate agencies, might experience the greatest reluctance to reject its past and might experience the greatest difficulty in achieving a strategic transformation. In brief, the firm would have to accept that their fees were too high, the value they added was too low, and their suppliers and customers were prepared to abandon them. This case study examines how a successful transformation was indeed achieved. The second paper, Next-Generation Trading in Futures Markets: A Comparison of Open Outcry and Order Matching Systems, by Bruce W. Weber, compares the performance of traditional futures trading systems (open outcry markets in circular tiered pits) with alternative systems based on electronic order matching. Simulation modeling and analysis, as used in the paper, enable objective comparisons between trading mechanisms. Ultimately, through enhancements, and the design and tuning of screen-based market alternatives make them significant threats to established markets. The third paper, Information Systems for Optimal Transaction Implementation, by John T. Rickard and Nicolo G. Torre, shows how an alternative electronic equities market, by allowing fully accounted trading costs to approach zero, allows optimal portfolio trading strategies to be implemented for the first time. Since trading costs can by definition never approach zero in labor-intensive floor-based markets, with intermediaries risking capital in order to earn returns, such alternative trading systems once again represent a threat to traditional established markets. Unlike in the paper by Weber, however, here the threat comes less from the design of the market and more from the alternative trading strategy that the model allows to be fully implemented for the first time. All three papers are substantial modifications and extensions of work originally presented at the Thirty-Second Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences in January of 1999. All of them have been informed by discussion during HICSS sessions. Key words and phrases :

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2021)
The Special Section on Strategic Integration of Blockchain Technology into Organizations that opens this issue of Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS) shows both the emerging strategic importance of the blockchain in the competitive posture of business firms and the contribution that the information systems (IS) research methods can make to the understanding and development of the field. Few information technologies rise up the stack from the levels of technology to the level of strategic, mission-critical, application. The blockchain is becoming one of them. Guest-edited by Rajiv Kohli and Ting-Peng Liang, the Special Section encompasses four papers that apply different methodologies to four different aspects of blockchain adoption and its impacts. Blockchain is an unalterable append-only ledger of transaction records with properties that ensure an agreement on its contents by multiple distributed actors without central control. This definition encompasses the most salient attributes of the technology without actually indicating its power and the multiplicity of its facets. Introduced as the vehicle for Bitcoin in 2008 in a pseudonymous open-access paper published on the Web, blockchain and the cryptocurrency it serves to implement represent a highly impressive integration and deployment of the intellectual products of multiple research streams of computer science [4]. In particular, cryptographic means are used to ensure that the linked chain of blocks of transaction records cannot be altered, thus providing the integrity to the ledger and engendering trust in it. Peer-to-peer networks serve as the means of distributing the blockchain to the participants. In the case of cryptocurrencies and similar tokens, the transactions are simply transfers of ownership. Blockchains ensure trust. The strategic potentialities of blockchain emerge from the variety of key properties it may be implemented to possess. Permissionless blockchains with public access are replicated across the servers of independent actors and provide a simile of trust among them, with all actors being potential transaction validators. Permissioned blockchains serve a restricted set of actors, with a further restricted (if desired) set of validators and with the consequent ability to cut drastically the amount of computing (and electric) power needed to add to the preexisting trust. A highly promising capability that can be realized in a blockchain is the implementation of smart contracts. Such blockchains combine the transaction data with the software code that can transform the data over the extended life of the contract. The code represents the application. This is a transformational capability for various markets. As another, and complementary use, non-fungible tokens implemented with blockchain technology can serve as the proof of ownership of digital items, be they a meme, a video, or digital art, and make them into marketable assets that can, with smart contracts, render royalties to their creators over time under the intellectual property laws. This application area is transforming, for example, the art marketplace [6]. New business models founded on blockchain are emerging apace. Blockchain-as-a-service cloud offerings lower the entry barriers for the startups as for the existing organizations [5]. Lowering the transaction costs can have significant effects in many fields of the economy, such as startup financing [1]. By enabling the integrity and the desired level of transparency of transactions, blockchain can serve societal objectives of proper governance at all levels, constraining opportunistic behavior, rent seeking, and economic crime. Real-estate property rights secured by blockchain as the land registry would markedly improve citizens’ rights in a number of countries. Higher levels of trust in a society have been associated with its superior economic performance and human flourishing [3]. Two of the papers in the Special Section point to this weighty opportunity. A recent review of competitively important blockchain applications shows a burgeoning interest [2]. They include such various systems going well beyond cryptocurrencies as digitizing supply chain information by the Danish shipping and logistics company A.P. Mollers-Maersk with TradeLens (whose developer is a co-author of one of the papers in the Special Section); the blockchain platform AntChain enabling over 50 large-scale blockchain applications, including smart contracts, for Ant Group of China and its partners and clients; tracking the ESG attributes of suppliers by Australian mining company BHP; markedly speeding up through direct settlement the trades enabled by Credit Suisse; and making aviation-quality documents directly accessible to its customers by Honeywell of the United States. Our discipline is methodologically well equipped to study the capabilities furnished by various principal forms of blockchain to organizations and to investigate their impacts at the operational, tactical, and strategic levels. The cost and complexity of blockchain-based systems are perceived as significant barriers to its implementation by governmental and business organizations. Additionally, the inefficiency associated with the replication of public blockchains over the servers of the participating parties and with some of the consensus protocols is a significant barrier. Cost-benefit analyses of various structural alternatives and the design exemplars we can provide will serve well in the adoption of this technology. The trade-offs between security and performance for various federations in permissioned blockchains should be an important focus for the formal economic research and for design science in our field. The organizational impacts on all the levels of analysis are certain to be investigated. The introduction of the guest editors of the Special Section offers a framework for the research and introduces us to the contents. The papers the guest editors included in the issue have been selected for publication after a rigorous editorial process that eliminated 61 out of 65 submitted works and, thus, they represent the best collective foot forward in our field. It is important to combine these new works with the study we published last year to see some of the key spectra of potentialities of blockchain in the inter-organizational collaboration and other domains [8]. The first article of the general section is an excellent complement to the Special Section. Aleksi Aaltonen, Cristina Alaimo, and Jannis Kallinikos analyze the process of commoditization of data into tradeable tokens. In a constructivist work, the researchers study the process that aggregates and turns data into commodities, that is recontextualizable and tradable objects. The authors distill the commoditization process from the organizational practices they analyze in their empirics in an intensive case study they conducted. The approach taken in the paper is partly inspired by the insights published in this journal by Tuomi [7]. The marketable data tokens can be made, perhaps with blockchain’s smart contracts, to conform to the rules of privacy and ownership. Recommender systems do not only help buyers to match their needs more closely and rapidly. They may also help the sellers to personalize their offering and cross-sell via follow-up recommendations. Does the cross-selling affect prices and if so, how? Abhijeet Ghoshal, Vijay S. Mookerjee, and Sumit Sarkar address this research question through formal economic modeling. The authors offer a monopoly model and a duopoly, with one of the firms deploying a higher-caliber recommender. In a monopoly, the seller may charge a higher price under cross-selling, particularly with an improved recommender, and yet both the seller firm and the customer benefit from the personalization. Under duopoly, a nuanced interdependence among the prices, profits, market sizes, and consumer surpluses emerge. Most of the native digital content is free online. Yet we are beginning to question the effects and the aptness of that in some categories of applications. Explorations of paid content are increasingly appearing on the Web and in the academic literature. Monetization and valuation of digital assets are of the moment and of the future. They also tie in to the issues of blockchain and data commodities. Here, Hua (Jonathan) Ye, Xueping Yang, Xinwei Wang, and Theophanis C. Stratopoulos explore the drivers of revenue from a paid Q&A platform, whose users prepay a fee to view an answer. As an answer is an experience product whose value cannot be assessed without consumption, the potential viewers need to rely on signals to predict quality, and the researchers employ signaling theory in their study. Several kinds of signals are available, notably including the price and the endorsements (or their absence) on social media. By crawling Weibo Q&A, the authors arrive on the answers to their hypothesized relationships between the various signals and the realized sales. This is another important contribution to our understanding of the opportunities for digitalization in the present issue of the Journal. With the impressive progress of e-commerce, we are witnessing the growth in omni-channel selling. In particular, the complementary advantages of online and offline selling are being harnessed by combining these two channels. Although experience has been garnered in the promotion for each of these channels individually, the integrated promotion presents a challenge. The entire point of the distribution over multiple channels is to exploit their synergy and spillovers between them. In the next paper, Seung Yoon Lee, Yoonseock Son, and Wonseok Oh study the effectiveness of integrated online-offline promotion. The authors ground themselves in construal level theory that links an individual’s evaluation of an object, such as a product, to the perceived, psychological distance from it. The hypothesized relationships, tested via a randomized field experiment, allow the researchers to reach granular results and to offer pragmatic advice to marketers. Several trends in societal development, individual behavior, technology availability, combined with the impetus from the pandemic, have led to the proliferation of mHealth. Defined as the practice of medicine and public health with the support of mobile devices, the practice relies to a significant degree on the active participation of individuals in the management of their health and thus calls for a behavioral change. The current practice of mHealth has been based on several behavioral change techniques that the authors of the next paper assert do not have a synergistic effect. Kai Spohrer, Monica Fallon, Hartmut Hoehle, and Armin Heinzl conduct and report on a randomized field experiment the participants of which use prototype mHealth apps designed on differing theoretical premises and their combinations. The authors show negative interaction effects of combining certain theoretical bases in app designs and suggest the way forward based on their conclusions. With the growth of complexity of platform-based ecosystems, owing to the growing number, proliferation of sources, and increasing interconnectedness of components, failures are quite common. In a failure, the offending component needs to be identified and dealt with. This may be the core platform itself or one of the apps running on it. In their research presented here, Brian Dunn, Matthew L. Jensen, and Ryan Ralston address both of these issues. They examine how the users assign the responsibility to a specific component after the failure and how the providers of the component considered culpable manage the implications of the failure. The authors’ theory-based empirics lead them to recommend, from the point of view of responsibility attribution, a tighter integration of the ecosystem components, among other conclusions of this study. The scholarly community of the IS discipline mourns the passing of Ting-Peng Liang, Guest Editor of the Special Section opening this issue of JMIS. A prominent scholar, quietly inspiring leader, successful entrepreneur, thoughtful and modest individual, gracious meeting host, T.P. was a significant presence in our lives. Over several decades, he has done much for the global development of IS scholarship as an organizer, mentor, and author of generative works. His research interests and contributions ranged widely, including decision support, knowledge management, strategic deployment of information technologies, data analytics, and intelligent systems. The subjects of the recent special sections Dr. Liang has guest-edited for JMIS, neuroIS and strategic deployment of blockchains, are a testimony to his constant self-renewal as a researcher. It is difficult for me to believe that the contribution you find here is a coda to the scholarly life of Ting-Peng Liang, but a worthy coda it is. We are welcoming to our Editorial Board Professors Sulin Ba (University of Connecticut), Oliver Hinz (Goethe University Frankfurt), Jannis Kallinikos (LUISS University, Rome, and London School of Economics and Political Science), and Christine Legner (HEC Lausanne). We are thanking for their contribution the outgoing members of the Board, Indranil Bardhan and Michael J. Ginzberg.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2013)
THE PAPER THAT OPENS THIS ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL will play an important role in systematizing our field. As a follow-up to the DeLone and McLean IS Success Model, whose original version was published in MISQ and the updated version was published in JMIS, Stacie Petter, William DeLone, and Ephraim R. McLean present their Determinants of IS Success Model. The authors move from the dimensions of success to the factors that condition it. Based on their comprehensive analysis of the research literature, the authors identify the variables that influence IS success and integrate them into 15 success factors within five categories that have been consistently found to affect this success. This integration allows the researchers to identify the gaps in our knowledge and offer guidelines for the future work in the domain. Among the factors identified in the preceding paper is the satisfaction of user expectations. In the next paper, Alexander Benlian empirically investigates the aspects of the congruence between the perceptions of users and those of IS professionals as a prerequisite to user satisfaction. Deploying several theoretical lenses, this work explains the nature and the effects of this alignment of perspectives, and the roots of the rather frequent misalignment. Aside from its contribution to the theory of user satisfaction, the work will be helpful to the managers who need to influence the forming of proper perceptions as a condition for harmonious collaboration. The Special Issue on Multiple Dimensions of Value in Information Systems shows how the deployment of IS goes well beyond the creation of economic value. In their introduction, Guest Editors Robert O. Briggs and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., discuss several dimensions along which IS contribute to the societal development and individual welfare, the dimensions that sometimes can be expressed as economic value, but often complement or surpass it. The seven papers included in the Special Issue, introduced to you by the Guest Editors, well illustrate this important point. Vladimir Zwass Editor-in-Chief

Special Issue: Information Economics and Competitive Strategy - Clemons, Eric K; Goh, Kim Huat; Kauffman, Robert J; Weber, Thomas A (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2013)
ERIC K. CLEMONS is a professor of operations and information management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His education includes an S.B. in physics from MIT and an M.S. and Ph.D. in operations research from Cornell University. For the past 30 years, he has focused on systematic study of the transformational effects of information on the strategy and practice of business. More recently, he has been studying blogging and social media, cloud computing and cloud computing standards, and the challenges to applying current antitrust law to online business models. He has published over 100 scholarly articles and regularly contributes to Huffington Post, Business Insider, and Tech Crunch. Dr. Clemons is the founder and project director for the Wharton School's Sponsored Research Project on Information: Strategy and Economics within the Program for Global Strategy and Knowledge Intensive Organizations. He participated in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in February 2009 and in the Beijing Forum in November 2011. He is currently studying the processes needed to create innovative consumer products in China and is active in regulatory and technology policy work in Japan, Korea, and the European Union. KIM HUAT GOH is an assistant professor of information systems in the Division of IT and Operations Management in the Nanyang Business School at Nanyang Technological University. He received his Ph.D. in business administration with a specialization in Information Systems from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His research interests include applying behavioral economic theories to explain consumer behavior in technology-mediated environments, examining the value of IT, and IT strategy. His research has appeared in Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, and Electronic Commerce and Research Applications. ROBERT J. KAUFFMAN is a professor of information systems at the School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University, where he was the Lee Kuan Yew Faculty Fellow for Research Excellence in 2011 and 2012. He also serves as Associate Dean (Research) and Deputy Director of the Living Analytics Research Centre. He recently was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for Digital Strategies of the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. His research focuses on technology and strategy, the economics of IT, technology in financial services and e-business, managerial decision making, and innovations in research methods. His work has appeared in Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Telecommunications Policy, IBM Research and Development Journal, Decision Support Systems, Managerial Decisions and Economics, Management Science, Review of Economics and Statistics, and Operations Research Letters. THOMAS A. WEBER is a professor at the Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he holds the chair of Operations, Economics and Strategy. Between 2003 and 2011, he was a faculty member in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Dr. Weber is an ingénieur des arts et manufactures (Ecole Centrale Paris) and a diplom-ingénieur in electrical engineering (Technical University Aachen). He holds an S.M. in both technology and policy, and electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in managerial science and applied economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2008, he was a visiting faculty member in the Department of Economics at the University of Cambridge, and in 2009 in the Department of Mathematics at Moscow State University. Between 1998 and 2002, he was a senior consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. His current research interests include the economics of information and uncertainty, the design of contracts, and strategy. Dr. Weber's articles have appeared in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Information Systems Research, Decision Support Systems, Economics Letters, Economic Theory, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, and many other journals. He is the author of Optimal Control Theory with Applications in Economics (MIT Press, 2011). THIS SPECIAL ISSUE REPRESENTS THE REVISED AND EXPANDED best papers from the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Symposium on Competitive Strategy, Economics and Information Systems held at the 2013 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences and the related conference mini-track. It also represents 25 years of continuing progress and evolution in the field, and many years of a pioneering partnership between the Journal of Management Information Systems and the field of information economics and competitive strategy. JMIS was perhaps the first academic venue to welcome the field, predating the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE), and has provided a welcome home as the field changed, grew, and evolved. The first three papers help define the past, present, and future of the field. "Firm Strategy and the Internet in U.S. Commercial Banking," by Kim Huat Goh and Robert J. Kauffman, starts by examining questions raised by Clemons and Kimbrough in 1986 concerning the strategic necessity hypothesis, and uses modern econometric analysis to substantiate what was, in 1986, merely a well-argued and logical guess [1]. By focusing on technology, regulation, and social effects, "Health-Care Security Strategies for Data Protection and Regulatory Compliance," by Juhee Kwon and M. Eric Johnson, links us to the future of our field. Information technology and information economics professionals must take a greater role in the regulatory and social welfare challenges that society will face as a result of technological progress, changed information endowment, increases in capability, and threats to privacy. "The Impact of Cloud Computing: Should the IT Department Be Organized as a Cost Center or a Profit Center?" by Vidyanand Choudhary and Joseph Vithayathil, ties us back to our earliest roots, when the field focused on information-based strategy for the information technology (IT) function itself. The next three papers address information-enabled strategy and competition. "Channel Capabilities, Product Characteristics, and the Impacts of Mobile Channel Introduction," by Youngsok Bang, Dong-Joo Lee, Kunsoo Han, Minha Hwang, and Jae-Hyeon Ahn, studies the influence of the introduction of the newest channel, mobile, on channel competition. "The Competitive Business Impact of Using Telemedicine for the Treatment of Patients with Chronic Conditions," by Balaraman Rajan, Abraham Seidmann, and Earl R. Dorsey, shows how modern online channel competitive affects competition in medicine; it brings together the newest channel with perhaps the oldest of professions. "Competing with Piracy: A Multichannel Sequential Search Approach," by Xianjun Geng and Young-Jin Lee, examines how legitimate channels compete with free illegitimate pirate channels and shows that the intensity of competition in the traditional channels- which, of course, affects pricing-also influences the optimal strategies of legitimate players when competing with pirates. The final four papers show how online behavior, including behavior of friends in social networks and the presence of online reviews, affect competition in physical products, information-based products, and services. "Network Structure and Observational Learning: Evidence from a Location-Based Social Network," by Zhan Shi and Andrew B. Whinston, uses empirical data to demonstrate that observing the behavior of friends in online social networks affects consumers and potential consumers differently from observing the queuing behavior of strangers. Interestingly, the "proximity" of the social connection has a dramatic effect on behavior. In "How Do Consumer Buzz and Traffic in Social Media Marketing Predict the Value of the Firm?" Xueming Luo and Jie Zhang show that social buzz and traffic are closely related in a virtuous circle, with buzz generating traffic and traffic generating buzz. "Consumer Learning and Time-Locked Trials of Software Products," by Debabrata Dey, Atanu Lahiri, and Dengpan Liu, shows that the impact of using free trial software products on consumers' behavior will be affected by the speed with which consumers can actually learn about the product. In other words, the impact of demos on reducing uncertainty is a function of how quickly users learn true product attributes from the demo packages. Finally, "Reducing Buyers' Uncertainty About Taste-Related Product Attributes," by Panos M. Markopoulos and Eric K. Clemons, shows how online information and reduced uncertainty, which they call informedness, affect company strategy by enabling resonance marketing. This builds on a number of papers previously published in JMIS on this subject, and extends both the mathematical analysis and the understanding of the managerial implications of resonance marketing. This Special Issue showcases the research streams in the information systems literature that are being actively pursued by numerous academic and industry researchers around the world, who are focused on creating new innovations with information economics for corporate strategy. From the contents, the reader can see that rich and insightful new contributions of knowledge are offered for multiple industry contexts, including financial services, mobile telephony, health-care services and telemedicine, IT services, and resonance marketing. Also demonstrated is the extent to which economics and technology-related thinking have the potential to shape the next generation of business process design and marketing activities in Internet-based selling, the extent of trial use by consumers of software products prior to purchase, and the way that use of social media may be connected to the value of the firm. In addition, the emphasis that we have placed on considering the more timeless issues of strategic advantage and strategic necessity, the organization of the IT department in the firm, and how IT transforms the opportunity for the firm to leverage consumer informedness, reflects the evolution of the scholarship in information economics and corporate strategy. If the high effects on technology-led management and strategy from the first 25 years of research in this stream published in JMIS are any indication, then future research in this area, as we broaden its coverage to include regulation, law, and society issues, offers outstanding possibilities for the development of relevant new knowledge, and business and industry innovations. REFERENCE 1. Clemons, E.K., and Kimbrough, S.O. Information systems, telecommunications, and their effects on industrial organization. In C. Bullen and E.A. Stohr (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Systems. San Diego, CA: Association for Information Systems, 1986, pp. 99-108.

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2001)
THE SPECIAL SECTION ON Economies, Electronic Commerce, and Competitive Strategythat opens the issue brings together several analyses of competitive strategy indeploying information technology and trading information goods. The papers arenotable not only for their pushing the research frontier, but also for their tackling ofreal and important problems within the context of the contemporary business environment.The Guest Editors of the Special Sectionâ€”Eric K. Clemons, Rajiv M. Dewan,and Robert J. Kauffmanâ€”introduce the papers in appropriate detail. The theme is continued in the two subsequent papers. Reynold E. Byers and PhillipJ. Lederer analyze the effective distribution strategy for retail banking in the face ofthe changes brought on by e-banking. The results are important and enlightening. Asit is becoming apparent across the e-commerce retailing landscape, the success ofpurely virtual banking is remote, if only in time. Based on their formal model, theauthors offer specific guidance under what circumstances such success may be expected.Robert J. Kauffman and Bin Wang assess group-buying business models in ecommerce,where a goodâ€™s price depends on the size of the buying group, assembledthrough a Web site. Through modeling and empirics, the authors are able, amongother results, to track down the failure sources of the several well-known implementationsof the group-buying model. Many information systems projects fail. It is disheartening that often this futureoutcome is known to the insiders, or at least suspected by them, quite early in thedevelopment process. Yet the same insiders choose not to bear the bad newsâ€”at agreat cost to the firms on whose behalf the project is run and to which they oweallegiance. To increase the willingness to report, it is good to go beyond the obviousto establish specific causes of â€œkeeping mum.â€ Here, H. Jeff Smith, Mark Keil, andGordon Depledge furnish and test an explanatory model of the decision-making thatleads to non-reporting. Beyond that, the authors translate the results into specificrecommendations for managers who want to elicit truthful reporting of project status. Decision support systems (DSS) are generally used to evaluate the alternative coursesof action as envisaged by a human decision-maker. In other words, it is up to the humanto generate the alternatives during an early stage of the decision-making process. BijanFazlollahi and Rustam Vahidov present the design of a DSS that is itself able to generatealternatives. The DSS design is based on genetic algorithms, and the authors showthat it generates diverse and promising alternatives for a problem solution. In this eighteenth year of JMIS publication, it is a pleasure and a privilege to thankour readers, authors, members of the Editorial Board, and, most important, our referees,who all vitally contribute to the success of the Journal. Here are the names of ourreviewers, always the primary guarantors of the quality of our publication: William Acar Dennis A. Adams Niv Ahituv Murugan Anandarajan Sulin Ba Barbro Back Yannis Bakos P.R. Balasubramanian Dirk Baldwin Henri Barki Genevieve Bassellier Dinesh Batra Irma Becerra-Fernandez Salvatore Belardo Skip Benamati Michael Benaroch Francois Bergeron Sudip Bhattacherjee Bijoy Bordoloi Carol V. Brown Glenn Browne Jeffrey Butterfield Terry A. Byrd Edward G. Cale, Jr. Judith Carlisle Sven Carlsson Houston H. Carr William J. Carroll Robert P. Cerveny Namsik Chang Patrick Chau Hong-Mei Chen Hsing Kenneth Cheng Robert T.H. Chi Roger Chiang William C. Chismar Jong-min Choe H. Michael Chung Roger Clarke Sue Conger Randy Cooper Timothy P. Cronan David C. Croson Paul Cule Qizhi Dai Ronald Dattero Michael J. Davern Donald L. Davis Gordon Depledge Sarv Devaraj Ali Dogramaci Peter Duchessi Omar A. El Sawy Hyun B. Eom Gerald E. Evans Bijan Fazlollahi Steven Feiner Kirk Fiedler Edmond P. Fitzgerald Jerry Fjermestad Steven W. Floyd Edward Fox Dennis Galletta Edward J. Garrity Erol Gelenbe Mark Ginsburg Janis L. Gogan Dale Goodhue Sanjay Gosain Martin D. Goslar Paul Gray Saul Greenberg Robert K. Griffin Michael D. Grigoriades Mary-Liz Grise Tor Guimaraes Alok Gupta Jungpil Hahn Barbara Haley Bill C. Hardgrave Il-Horn Hann Paul Hart Stephen Hayne Roxanne Starr Hiltz Rudy Hirschheim Lorin M. Hitt Richard Hoffman John A. Hoxmeier Qing Hu Wayne Huang Cary T. Hughes Ard Huizing E. Gerald Hurst Zahir Irani Gretchen I. Irwin Tomas Isakowitz Bharat A. Jain Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa Murray E. Jennex Per V. Jenster Linda Ellis Johnson Kailash Joshi Charles Kacmar Surinder Kahai Timo Kakola Ajit Kambil P.K. Kannan Jahangir Karimi Michael Kattan Timothy Kayworth Mark Keil Robert T. Keim Chris Kemerer Julie E. Kendall William J. Kettinger Omar E.M. Khalil Melody Y. Kiang Rajiv Kishore Gary Klein Stefan Koch Esther Koster Kenneth A. Kozar Kenneth L. Kraemer Ramayya Krishnan Uday Kulkarni Akhil Kumar Ram Kumar Mary C. Lacity Simon S.K. Lam Gwynne Larsen Tor J. Larsen Kathy S. Lassila Heeseok Lee Ho Geun Lee Jungwoo Lee Dorothy Leidner Richard Leifer Mary Jane Lenard Hugo Levecq Ting-Peng Liang Nancy Lightner Yihwa Irene Liou Astrid Lipp Paulo J.G. Lisboa Henry C. Lucas, Jr. Kalle Lyytinen William McCarthy Jane M. Mackay Roy McKelvey Ephraim R. McLean Poppy L. McLeod Gregory Madey Simha R. Magal Mo A. Mahmood David Maier Ji-Ye Mao Salvatore T. March Anne P. Massey Charles H. Mawhinney Jerrold H. May Karon Meehan Roberto J. Mejias Thomas Miller Shaila Miranda Rajesh Mirani William H. Money Ali R. Montazemi Ramiro Montealegre Janette Moody Ajay S. Mookerjee Scott Moore Jolene Morrison Michael D. Myers Kathleen Mykytyn Peter P. Mykytyn, Jr. Barin N. Nag Murli Nagasundaram R. Ryan Nelson Boon Siong Neo Fred Niederman Mark Nissen Rosalie Ocker Lorne Olfman James Oliver Levent Orman Richard Orwig Jonathan W. Palmer Raymond R. Panko Michael Parent Diane Parente Kenneth Peffers Norman Pendegraft Mark Pendergast Roger A. Pick Leo L. Pipino Steven Poltrock Gerald Post John H. Prager Jayesh Prasad G. Premkumar Sandeep Purao S. Raghunathan Arik Ragowsky T.S. Ragu-Nathan Arun Rai Rex Kelly Rainer, Jr. K.S. Raman B. Ramesh Richard G. Ramirez H.R. Rao R. Ravichandran T. Ravichandran Sury Ravindran Amy W. Ray Louis Raymond Paul Resnick William B. Richmond Frederick Riggins Daniel Robey Michael B. Rogich Young U. Ryu Timo Saarinen Rajiv Sabherwal Sharon Salveter G. Lawrence Sanders Tuomas Sandholm Radhika Santhanam John Satzinger Carol Saunders Naveed Saleem George Schell K.D. Schenk Judy Scott Irmtraud S. Seeborg Kishore Sengupta Vikram Sethi Kenneth C. Sevcik Dennis G. Severance Theresa M. Shaft Steven Sheetz Jim Sheffield Olivia Sheng Michael Shields J.P. Shim Siew Kien Sia Mark S. Silver Atish P. Sinha Sumit Sircar H. Jeff Smith Eli M. Snir Charles A. Snyder William E. Spangler Rajendra P. Srivastava Thomas F. Stafford Sandy Staples Eric W. Stein Dick Stenmark John M. Stevens Veda Storey Girish Subramanian Ramesh Subramanian Ephraim Sudit Robert T. Sumichrast Shankar Sunarajan Arun Sundararajan Tae Kyung Sung Edward J. Szewczak Paul P. Tallon Kar Yan Tam Bernard C.Y. Tan Mohan R. Tanniru Alfred Taudes David P. Tegarden James T.C. Teng Hock-Hai Teo Thompson Teo Matthew Thatcher Ron Thompson James Y.L. Thong John Tillquist Peter Tingling Leon van der Torre Jonathan K. Trower Duane Truex Gregory E. Truman Ilkka Tuomi Jon A. Turner Brad Tuttle Craig K. Tyran N.S. Umanath Rustam Vahidov Yaniv Vakrat Alfredo Vellido Boris S. Verkhovsky Ajay Vinze Michael Wade Steven Walczak Michael S. Wang Shouhong Wang Y. Richard Wang Carol Watson Richard Watson Mary Beth Watson-Manheim Chih-Ping Wei Peter Weill Charles E. Wells Larry West J. Christopher Westland Seungjin Whang Michael E. Whitman George Widmeyer Fons Wijnhoven Kristoff K. Wolyniec Hans Wortmann Evangelos Yfantis J. Leon Zhao Lina Zhou Ilze Zigurs Moshe Zviran Enjoy the papers! VLADIMIR ZWASS Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Introduction - Zwass, Vladimir (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2014)
THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON NEUROSCIENCE IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS (IS) RESEARCH, guest-edited by Ting-Peng Liang and Jan vom Brocke, that opens (and nearly fills) this issue of JMIS will help in establishing NeuroIS as an important component of our field. The theories and research methods of neuroscience, and the neurophysiological tools that support them, promise to broaden the compass of our discipline and to deepen our understanding of the interaction between individuals and technological artifacts. By directly measuring and imaging the reactions of a human body, and-crucially-interpreting these data and images in the frame of the appropriate constructs and theories, we are now able to gain new insights and reach new disciplinary targets. As the relatively new arrivals to our toolbox, the methods of neuroscience will teach us how to guide the bottom-up, data-based, approaches with theories, and how to induce new theories from the wealth of the data we will acquire. But then that is what we have done for decades in our field with different lenses. However, there are numerous and serious difficulties to be overcome as we move up the learning curve in acquiring the capabilities necessary to produce reliable insights in NeuroIS. There have been serious concerns about various inferences drawn from the neuroimaging studies in some of our sister fields, for example. This is why the guidelines offered by the Guest Editors in their own methodological paper will be of help in furthering this research, particularly when combined with the preceding methodological papers they cite. This is also why the Guest Editors, who will introduce the papers of this Special Issue to you, have assembled two blue-ribbon boards to assist them in producing it. This is why, too, we hope that the papers assembled here will contribute to our IS discipline not only the specific conclusions they arrive at, but also that they will move us up on our learning curve in deriving new-and novel-understandings and insights that we had not been able to arrive at before we started to assimilate these methods. The general section of this issue of JMIS consists of three papers that address various aspects of electronic commerce. The first of them investigates the performance of prediction markets in the context of social networks. Prediction markets are one of the methods of harnessing the so-called wisdom of crowds, that is, the expected positive effects of aggregating the predictions of multiple independent forecasters who possess different and relevant information and knowledge. In our days of the wide use of social media, the forecasters participating in such a market may be expected to communicate, which will affect the outcome. Liangfei Qiu, Huaxia Rui, and Andrew B. Whinston use a laboratory experiment to study the performance of prediction markets embedded in social networks, where the participants communicate. The authors find a stark difference in the outcomes depending on the cost of information acquisition necessary for a decision, and thus depending on the complexity of the decision. There are also further effects of the structure of the social networks. The most important implications of the study are those for internal corporate prediction markets that are subject to finer calibration; however, the results have a general significance for the co creation of value. Considering that virtually all companies above a certain size are embedded today within supply webs, with business processes either explicitly or implicitly distributed among partner companies, the interoperability of their IS is necessary. This foundational layer of interoperability supports the higher levels that enable organizational collaboration and market activity. A key avenue to the IS interoperability is the promulgation of standards for the interorganizational systems (IOS). The authors of the next paper, Kexin Zhao and Mu Xia, study empirically how the interoperability can be achieved by means of such standards. The authors analyze interoperability as a complex corporate capability and build a model that leads to the development of this capability, centering on standardized data infrastructure, reinforced by network effects. Along with their contribution to the capability theory, the authors are able to offer specific managerial recommendations for gaining interoperability in IOS. Sponsoring well-selected keywords in search engines is one of the most effective online advertising methods, aimed as it is at the consumers who appear to be already looking for the product offering. In the concluding paper of the issue, Xianghua Lu and Xia Zhao investigate the effects of keyword selection not only on direct product sales, but also on the indirect sales of other products of an advertiser. Thus, the authors study the differential effects of more general versus more specific keywords. With theory-guided empirics that rely on an econometric analysis of a dataset from a major search engine, the authors obtain significant results that can guide the sellers in keyword selection and that contribute to our theoretical understanding of search-engine advertising. As we close our anniversary thirtieth year, it brings me great pleasure to welcome new members of the JMIS Editorial Board: Wai Fong Boh, Robert O. Briggs, Robert G. Fichman, Joey F. George, Alain Pinsonneault, and Yong Tan. Thanks for their contribution go to our outgoing Board members: Hemant Bhargava, Gary Grudnitski, and Ronald M. Lee. We are also welcoming our new Web site editor, David Eargle, with profuse thanks for his long-term outstanding service to his predecessor, Arnold Kamis.

Determinants of the Choice of Open Source Software License - Sen, Ravi; Subramaniam, Chandrasekar; Nelson, Matthew L (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2008)
In this paper, we examine how the motivations and attitudes of open source software (OSS) developers affect their preference among the three common OSS license types--Strong-Copyleft, Weak-Copyleft, and Non-Copyleft. Despite the importance of the license type and developers to OSS projects, there is little understanding in open source literature of the license choice from a developer's perspective. The results from our empirical study of OSS developers reveal that the intrinsic motivation of challenge (problem solving) is associated with the developers' preference for licenses with moderate restrictions, while the extrinsic motivation of status (through peer recognition) is associated with developers' preference for licenses with least restrictions. We also find that when choosing an OSS license, a developer's attitude toward the software redistribution rights conflicts with his or her attitude toward preserving the social benefits of open source. A major implication of our findings is that OSS managers who want to attract a limited number of highly skilled programmers to their open source project should choose a restrictive OSS license. Similarly, managers of software projects for social programs could attract more developers by choosing a restrictive OSS license.

Special Issue: Information Systems for Deception Detection - Nunamaker, Jay F; Burgoon, Judee K; Giboney, Justin Scott (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2016)
JAY F. NUNAMAKER, JR. (jnunamaker@cmi.arizona.edu, corresponding author) is Regents and Soldwedel Professor of MIS, Computer Science and Communication at the University of Arizona. He is director of the Center for the Management of Information and the Center for Border Security and Immigration. He received his Ph.D. in operations research and systems engineering from Case Institute of Technology. He obtained his professional engineer’s license in 1965. He specializes in the fields of system analysis and design, collaboration technology, and deception detection. He has been inducted into the Design Science Hall of Fame and received the LEO Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association of Information Systems. He has published over 368 journal articles, book chapters, books, and refereed proceedings papers. He has also cofounded five spin-off companies based on his research. JUDEE K. BURGOON (jburgoon@cmi.arizona.edu) is a professor of communication, family studies, and human development at the University of Arizona, where she is director of research for the Center for the Management of Information, and site director for the Center for Identification Technology Research, a National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center. She has authored or edited 14 books and monographs and over 300 articles, chapters, and reviews related to nonverbal and verbal communication, interpersonal deception, and computer-mediated communication. Her current program of research centers on developing tools and methods for automated detection of deception and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security, among others. She has received numerous awards and has been identified as the most prolific female scholar in the field of communication in the twentieth century. JUSTIN S. GIBONEY (jgiboney@albany.edu) is an assistant professor in information technology management and digital forensics at the University at Albany. He received his Ph.D. in management information systems from the University of Arizona. His research focuses on behavioral information security, deception detection, expert systems, and meta-analytic processes, with an emphasis on design science. He has published in International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Decision Support Systems (DSS), and other journals. Security organizations are developing systems to screen human behavior and communication. Such systems keep gaining in importance with the growing complexity of human behaviors in the interactions with information technology. Screening systems search through human communication for signs of abnormal behavior—deceit, malicious intent, fraud, or other threats. As sociotechnical systems, screening technology encompasses human behavior, human communication, and computational algorithms. These systems are studied as information-processing tools focusing largely on the computational capability to capture human behavior and thus this study is well-placed in the information systems (IS) research domain [6]. The research work presented in this special issue discusses deceptive practices and malicious intent, and the interaction between technology, information, people, and organizations [1]. Many of these technologies are in their early development stages, and require further advances and theoretical understanding. This special issue increases the theoretical, design, and process knowledge regarding systems intended to detect deception, fraud, malicious intent, and insider threat. Due to the potential damage that can be done through lies, especially from fraud scandals such as those of Enron and WorldCom, law enforcement agencies are looking for ways to detect deception in communication. As there is no single telltale sign of deception [4], many academic scholars are working on leveraging computational power to detect deceit and malicious intent. This Special Issue covers two means of detecting deception—linguistics and oculometrics—and two ways of identifying malicious insiders—character analysis and community participation. Linguistic analysis is based on the idea that our language choices are not always deliberate or conscious, but that they reflect our emotional and cognitive states [2]. Humans cannot typically perceive these emotional and cognitive states by word choice alone, but scholars are designing computer tools to detect deception by uncovering emotional and cognitive states by analyzing communicators’ linguistic choices. These tools are not only being tested experimentally in universities, but also being field tested in various screening environments, such as international border crossings. Oculometric analysis is based on the idea that people’s emotional state is reflected physiologically. The pupils are considered part of the autonomic nervous system and are controlled by flight-or-flight responses [3] as well as attention-orienting behaviors [5]. Ocularmetrics are measured using eye-trackers that use infrared light reflections from our eyes to detect movement and pupil diameter. The first article in this special issue, “More Than Meets the Eye: How Oculometric Behaviors Evolve Over the Course of Automated Deception Detection Interactions,” by Jeffrey G. Proudfoot, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Judee K. Burgoon, and Jay F. Nunamaker, Jr., explains how deception detection systems can employ two oculometric behaviors—pupil dilation and eye-gaze fixation—in conjunction with visual stimuli to distinguish between deceivers and truth-tellers. In a mock-crime experiment where participants—randomly assigned as either smugglers carrying contraband or normal passengers carrying normal luggage—were asked to proceed through a mock security checkpoint with their luggage. At the mock security checkpoint an automated deception detection system asked participants questions about their luggage and showed them images. Some of the images showed contraband items. The study reveals that deceivers (smugglers) had higher levels of initial pupil dilation than truth-tellers (normal passengers) and that deceiver’s pupil dilation will decrease more rapidly than truth-tellers, especially if deceivers do not see relevant contraband stimuli. The article also shows that deceivers will increasingly look toward a neutral area of the screen—one that will never display contraband stimuli—more so than truth-tellers; and this will be accelerated by the display of relevant contraband stimuli. The second article, “An Empirical Validation of Malicious Insider Characteristics,” by Nan (Peter) Liang, David P. Biros, and Andy Luse, identifies and validates characteristics of malicious insiders. The authors of this article use 133 documents about known malicious insiders to textually identify keywords of characteristics thought to be indicative of malicious insiders such as personality disorders, issues with ethics, and disgruntlement. Using a subsample of the documents, the authors built dictionaries to be identified in the remaining documents. The keywords were then counted and categorized as representing symptoms of one of the characteristics. If the number of keywords met a threshold for a reported individual, the individual was classified as having that characteristic as recommended by clinical psychology for making diagnoses. The authors then compared characteristic rates from their sample of malicious insiders with published characteristic rates for the general population to look for statistical differences. They found that malicious insiders are more likely to have an antisocial personality disorder, an avoidant personality disorder, a disruptive personality disorder, a substance abuse disorder, and disgruntlement. The authors also noted that malicious insiders are described as dedicated to family or work, agreeable, professional, and high academic performers. The third article, “Computer-Mediated Deception: Strategies Revealed by Language-Action Cues in Spontaneous Communication,” by Shuyuan Mary Ho, Jeffrey T. Hancock, Cheryl Booth, and Xiuwen Liu, studies linguistic cues related to deception in spontaneous online communication. The authors found that deceivers in an online experiment use more cognitive and affective-driven words, use fewer words, and have longer response times compared to their truthful counterparts. The authors designed an experimental game in which two participants were randomly paired and participants were randomly assigned as interviewers or interviewees as well as at times randomly assigned to be deceivers. This setup allowed the authors to study deception success and linguistic features of deception. Linguistic features were analyzed using a decision tree, a support vector machine, and a logistic regression. The results of the three algorithms demonstrate the feasibility of developing a contextual analysis to protect business communications from deception. The fourth article, “Detecting Fraudulent Behavior on Crowdfunding Platforms: The Role of Linguistic and Content-Based Cues in Static and Dynamic Contexts,” by Michael Siering, Jascha-Alexander Koch, and Amit V. Deokar, investigates deception in crowdfunding projects. The authors investigate 652 projects from a popular crowdfunding website where 326 of the projects were suspended due to fraudulent behavior and 326 were not suspended. The authors use project information, founder information, and linguistic analysis of communications from the founder to build classifiers to distinguish between suspended and nonsuspended projects. The authors found that deception can accurately (near 80 percent) be detected in crowdfunding projects. The authors use various linguistic cues such as complexity, diversity, and expressivity to analyze the textual information from the founders. The authors then compare accuracy rates from various classifiers (SVM, artificial neural networks, naive Bayes, k-nearest neighbor, decision trees, and ensemble methods to investigate which one achieves the highest accuracy rate. The fifth article, “What Online Reviewer Behaviors Really Matter? Effects of Verbal and Nonverbal Behaviors on Detection of Fake Online Reviews,” by Dongsong Zhang, Lina Zhou, Juan Luo Kehoe, and Isil Yakut Kilic, studies the nonverbal features of deceptive online reviews. Deceptive online reviews can severely damage a business’s reputation either by overselling a product or negatively portraying it. Using 1,033 legitimate and 1,100 fake reviews from Yelp.com, the authors used the Natural Language ToolKit to count various verbal features, including, the number of nouns and the content diversity, as well as nonverbal features including, the number of friends, the number of local photos taken, and the number of compliments that the reviewer had received. Using the full feature set, the authors compared various classification methods. The authors found that the combination of verbal and nonverbal features creates a better prediction model than either feature does alone. The sixth article, “Examining Hacker Participation Length in Cybercriminal Internet-Relay-Chat Communities,” by Victor Benjamin, Bin Zhang, Jay F. Nunamaker, Jr., and Hsinchun Chen, examines techniques for identifying knowledge leaders inside cybercriminal communities. The authors collected 463,000 messages from 6,300 users for eleven months from two large Internet Relay Chat channels frequented by hackers. The authors then calculated metrics of participation and knowledge of the users including number of messages, days of participation, hacking messages, hyperlinks shared, and keywords related to hacking. Using Cox’s proportional hazard modeling technique, the authors demonstrate that the number of times uniquely contacted by another member of the community and the number of times contacting another unique member best predict continual participation in the community for a long period. These metrics can be used to better understand whether a communication about a hack from a specific member is more credible. The seventh article, “Untangling a Web of Lies: Exploring Automated Detection of Deception in Computer-Mediated Communication,” by Stephan Ludwig, Tom van Laer, Ko de Ruyter, and Mike Friedman, studies linguistic features of e-mails from business partners participating in deceitful practices. The authors obtained 9,000 e-mails communicated between a Fortune 100 technology vendor and its channel partners. The channel partners e-mail the technology vendor to claim incentive rewards (ranging from US$100 to US$100,000). The claims are evaluated by the technology vendor to assess eligibility. The authors investigate word use (micro level), message development (macro level), and intertextual exchange cues (meta level) from business partners. On a micro level, deceptive e-mails contained fewer pronouns, more positive adjectives, less self-deprecating humor than their truthful counterparts. On a macro level, deceptive e-mails had more excessively structured arguments than truthful e-mails. Finally, on a meta level, deceitful e-mails more closely resembled the program manager e-mails than truthful e-mails. It is critical for deception detection research to have ground truth (something that is known to be correct). It is easy to ensure ground truth for the experiments, but as we move into the field, we are faced with the problem of obtaining ground truth. The term “ground truth” comes from earth science in measuring their instruments. Most of the time in the field we have no way to measure ground truth. However, it is imperative that researchers find ways to measure ground truth in the field. This might be accomplished by red teaming or simulation. Each of these articles identifies scientific techniques that law enforcement and businesses can use to develop systems to identify deception, fraud, and insider threat. Each elevates our understanding of the nature of deception and malicious insiders. More important, they contribute to the IS literature by helping enhance systems to detect these activities, and by advancing our knowledge of automated deception detection in particular, and a broad class of human behaviors in general. References 1.Avison, D., and Elliot, S. Scoping the discipline of information systems. In J.L. King and K. Lyytinen (eds.), Information Systems: The State of the Field. West Sussex: Wiley, 2006, pp. 3–18. 2.Bradac, J.J.; Courtright, J.A.; and Bowers, J.W. Three language variables in communication research: Intensity, immediacy, and diversity. Human Communication Research, 5, 3 (1979), 257–269. 3.Cannon, W.B. The emergency function of the adrenal medulla in pain and the major emotions. American Journal of Physiology, 33, 2 (1914), 356–372. 4.DePaulo, B.M.; Lindsay, J.J.; Malone, B.E.; Muhlenbruck, L.; Charlton, K.; and Cooper, H. Cues to deception. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 1 (2003), 74–118. 5.Nunnally, J.C.; Knott, P.D.; Duchnowski, A.; and Parker, R. Pupillary response as a general measure of activation. Perception and Psychophysics, 2, 4 (1967), 149–155. 6.Orlikowski, W.J., and Iacono, C.S. Research commentary: Desperately seeking the “IT” in IT research–A call to theorizing the IT artifact. Information Systems Research, 12, 2 (2001), 121–134.

Special Section: Information and Technology: Understanding New Strategies for Firms, Networks, and Markets - Clemons, Eric K; Kauffman, Robert J; Weber, Thomas A (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2011)
Eric K. Clemons is a professor of operations and information management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His education includes an S.B. in Physics from MIT, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in operations research from Cornell University. He has been a pioneer in the systematic study of the transformational effects of information on the strategy and practice of business. His research and teaching interests include strategic uses of information systems, the changes that IT enables in the competitive balance between new entrants and established industry participants, transformation of distribution channels, the structure and governance of the IT functional area, and the impact of IT on the risks and benefits of outsourcing and strategic alliances. More recently, he has begun studying blogging and social media, cloud computing and cloud computing standards, and the challenges to applying current antitrust law to online business models. Dr. Clemons is the founder and project director for the Wharton School's Sponsored Research Project on Information: Strategy and Economics Within the Program for Global Strategy and Knowledge Intensive Organizations. He participated in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in February 2009. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Management Information Systems, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Electronic Commerce Research and Applications. Dr. Clemons has 36 years' experience on the faculties of Wharton, Cornell, Harvard, the Indian School of Business, and Singapore Management University, and consulting experience in the private and public sectors both domestically and abroad. Robert J. Kauffman is a visiting professor of information systems and strategy at the School of Information and the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore University. He acts as the Deputy Director of the Living Analytics Research Center, which was formed in March 2011. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. He served on the faculty at New York University, the University of Rochester, the University of Minnesota, and Arizona State University, and visited the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. His graduate degrees are from Cornell and Carnegie Mellon. His research interests span IS, economics, marketing and consumer behavior, competitive strategy, and risk management. His articles have appeared in Management Science, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Organization Science, and the Review of Economics and Statistics, among others. He worked in international banking prior to his academic career. Thomas A. Weber is an associate professor of operations management at the College du Management at the Ecole Polytechnique FEdErale de Lausanne, Switzerland, where he holds the chair of Operations, Economics and Strategy. Between 2003 and 2011, he was a faculty member in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Professor Weber is an IngEnieur des Arts et Manufactures (Ecole Centrale Paris) and a Diplom-Ingenieur in Electrical Engineering (Technical University Aachen). He holds S.M. degrees in technology and policy and electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as an M.A. in operations and information management and a Ph.D. in managerial science and applied economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2008, he was a visiting faculty member in the Department of Economics at the University of Cambridge, and in 2009 in the Department of Mathematics at Moscow State University. Between 1998 and 2002 he was a senior consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. His current research interests include the economics of information and uncertainty, the design of contracts, and strategy. He has been developing new theoretical models and methods that have the potential to change the way in which we approach social systems, and integrate different levels of analysis. His papers have appeared in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Information Systems Research, Decision Support Systems, Economics Letters, Economic Theory, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Operations Research, Optimal Control Applications and Methods, and Theory & Decision. He is the author of Optimal Control Theory with Applications in Economics (MIT Press, 2011). The papers in this Special Section reflect a spectrum of methods in current research in information systems (IS), competitive strategy, and economics. On the empirical side, they include case-based analysis, organization theory based on small data sets, survey-based structural modeling, and innovative econometrics for social networks. On the theory side, they feature dynamic optimization and game-theoretic modeling. Last, one of the paper offers a blend of both an analytical model and an empirical analysis of a testable model-generated hypothesis. Technology diffusion has been studied in great depth over the past 50 years, but work on information diffusion, a significant issue for IS (in light of emerging social networks and virtual communities), has been scarce outside of the finance and marketing domains. Rajiv Garg, Michael D. Smith, and Rahul Telang examine the issue of "Measuring Information Diffusion in an Online Community." The authors deal with homophily, self-selection, influence sources, and preexisting knowledge effects; they study these in the context of a social network that revolves around the user community associated with Last.fm, a provider of digital music services on the Internet. Using a large, archival data set, their exploration focuses on how information about songs and music groups diffuses among members of the social network. The authors offer an empirical analysis that suggests a number of interesting effects of information sharing and diffusion, specifically that social network peers tend to help other members discover new songs and music groups at a rate in excess of the levels predicted in their absence. The next two papers deal with information strategy issues. In "Decommoditization, Resonance Marketing, and Information Technology: An Empirical Study of Air Travel Services amid Channel Conflict," Nelson F. Granados, Robert J. Kauffman, Hsiangchu Lai, and Huang-chi Lin offer a theory-testing empirical case study of an airline that has been experimenting with a la carte pricing approaches. The authors' central premise is that during the past decade, Internet technologies used by digital intermediaries for air travel services distribution have continued to disadvantage the airlines, despite the airlines' ability to distribute their own services directly to consumers; fees to global distribution systems, such as Apollo and Sabre, remain among the largest avoidable expenses incurred by airlines. The airlines are exploring a range of mechanisms to fight back. Using a large data set involving booking records over two years for a single air carrier and 39 city-pair routes, the authors explore two hypotheses: the decommoditization hypothesis and the resonance marketing hypothesis. The decommoditization hypothesis argues that the airlines can use information technology (IT) to create flexible bundles of air travel services that cannot yet be represented by the digital intermediaries and, in this way, avoid the excessive and unnecessary fees imposed by the global distribution systems. The resonance marketing hypothesis suggests that the primary underlying mechanism that makes decommoditization of an airline's services possible, a la carte pricing, permits consumers to express their exact preferences and buy just what they want, allowing the airlines to create additional revenue and further differentiate their offerings. The authors find support for the decommoditization hypothesis but only mixed support for the resonance marketing hypothesis. The high use of bundles is consistent with decommoditization. The use of these bundles is more mixed in support of the claim that they will produce higher margin business. The authors offer empirical evidence to show that consumers often customized the airline's standard bundles when they took advantage of a la carte pricing to book their tickets, but this was most often observed for low-feature standard bundles. In contrast, members of the airline's frequent flyer program tended to buy high-feature bundles more frequently. The next paper, "Through a Glass Clearly: Standards, Architecture, and Process Transparency in Global Supply Chains," by Charles Steinfield, M. Lynne Markus, and Rolf T. Wigand, examines information strategy in global supply chain management. The authors conduct case study research to explore information transparency, long-distance sourcing arrangements, and the efficacy of point-to-point and hub- based IT architectures in automotive industry interorganizational systems to support financially beneficial outcomes. The authors analyze the conditions under which data and process standardization are insufficient to produce dramatically different outcomes in terms of supplier adoption and supply chain performance. They argue that an important complementary asset in the production of higher value is the use of a hub-type, cloud-computing services--based IT architecture that is shared among organizations in an industry, instead of only by participating suppliers in one manufacturer's supply chain. Their analysis of "trade lane" performance in automotive industry supply chain management also shows how information transparency is able to yield much more desirable outcomes for the firms that are willing to implement standards-based procurement coordination hub IT solutions. In "R&D Versus Acquisitions: Role of Diversification in the Choice of Innovation Strategy by Information Technology Firms," Rajiv D. Banker, Sunil Wattal, and Jose M. Plehn-Dujowich examine the propensity of incumbent firms to either acquire a prospective new entrant or engage in their own R&D effort to discourage other firms from entering the market. A representative consumer in the authors' model has a taste for product variety and thus implicitly encourages product diversification by the firms. Using a game-theoretic model, the authors show that the more an incumbent is diversified, the more likely it is to acquire new entrants rather than engage in in-house research. With the aid of Compustat data for about 1,000 firms, the authors confirm this insight empirically. These findings carry through to the magnitude of investments in acquisition or R&D as a function of diversification. Electronic procurement markets are of great concern in the technology, competitive strategy and economics literature. The paper, "A Study of Sourcing Channels for Electronic Business Transactions," co-authored by Byungjoon Yoo, Vidyanand Choudhary, and Tridas Mukhopadhyay, examines how senior managers should approach decision making about their participation in private and public procurement channels in the presence of uncertainty, and what the appropriate levels of IT investment should be. The authors' use of embedded options enables them to represent managerial flexibility as an option to commit to a sourcing channel at some point in time in the future, or to do nothing. The authors argue that investing in business-to-business sourcing channel alternatives is a hedging strategy. Based on a set of justifiable real-world assumptions, the authors show that involvement in multiple e-procurement channels requires developing greater IT capabilities to make the strategy pay off. The paper "Innovation and Price Competition in a Two-Sided Market," by Mei Lin, Shaojin Li, and Andrew B. Whinston, puts innovation in the context of a two-sided market, where a platform's access fees, for both buyers and sellers, can have an effect on sellers' incentives to engage in product innovation. A pricing equilibrium is derived explicitly for the case of a seller duopoly as a function of the platform's access prices. Using a dynamic approach for innovation, the authors find that the platform tends to encourage seller innovation by charging a high price on that side of the market, which also tends to extract seller surplus. The results apply to many online and offline markets, such as the Microsoft Windows platform. They enable managers to understand pricing strategies when facing a consumer base with varying marginal utility for quality, on the one hand, and firms that need to decide dynamically how to allocate their R&D investments (over a finite or infinite decision horizon), on the other. We thank the HICSS and JMIS reviewers for their thorough and insightful comments on the authors' submissions, and the authors for their hard work and cooperation to achieve a high standard for this Special Issue. We also express our deep gratitude to our wonderful editorial assistant, Juliana Tsai. Her great effort smoothed the process for both authors and editors, from start to finish.