ABSTRACT:
INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCHERS HAVE DEVOTED MOST OF THEIR EFFORTS to the hierarchy end of the hierarchy-markets spectrum of business governance. Having contributed significantly to our understanding of organizational management information systems, this work has more recently resulted also in a firmer conceptualization of the interorganizational systems that combine firms in supply and cooperation networks. This direction is and will remain vital to our field. Yet, the time has come to devote greater attention to the relationships between information systems and markets. There are many sides to these relationships. Information systems are deployed to create marketplaces with the desired participation and characteristics; Web auctions are probably the best example for today. Marketplaces for information goods are another area now being subjected to investigation. These markets have distinct properties, flowing, inter alia, from the near-zero marginal cost of the product and of its distribution. They are also subject to more or less subtle manipulation, both by illegal and legal means. In order to ensure efficient resource allocation in these markets, it is important to structure them with incentive compatibility in mind. Several papers that open the present issue of the journal do indeed address nodal issues at the intersection of information systems and marketplaces. The variety of methodologies that aim at the target is highly notable.
In the first article, Alok Gupta, Boris Jukic, Dale O. Stahl, and Andrew B. Whinston develop an incentive-compatible mechanism for pricing Internet services. Although until now the Internet operation has been relying on fixed-fee pricing for a relatively uniform service quality, it is widely expected that pay-for-service-quality regimes will be established in the very near future. It then becomes important to establish price levels that would allocate the scarce resource of higher-priority treatment to the users who value it highest. It is also necessary to design a value-revelation mechanism that would not provide an incentive for the users to "game" the system. Most of the Internet pricing mechanisms currently put forward assume that the users state the urgency of their demand, which is, of course, not incentive-compatible. It is the highly original contribution of the present paper to offer a method for estimating the cost of delay to a user from the actual on-line behavior of the user. This work can be expected to generate both scholarly and practical interest. It can also be applied in environments other than the Internet.
Using the approach of experimental economics, Y. Alex Tung and James R. Marsden study the impact of inside information on trading volumes in securities markets. Beyond that, the authors are able to design experiments that analyze the outcomes of potential regulatory changes. Since information systems are a principal means of market surveillance, this contribution presents, in effect, a workstation for developing regulatory and punitive mechanisms in security marketplaces.
Lawrence A. West Jr. investigates pricing policies that have been used by on-line database vendors. As purveyors of what economists call public goods, they need to develop efficient markets for the product that can be widely copied and circulated, for example, over the Internet. West finds that by adopting a combination of pricing strategies, the industry has been able to create a well-functioning market for computer-readable information. With service enhancements, incentives have been created to protect products from unauthorized reuse. Moreover, market participants have been continuously adapting their behavior to drastic technological change, with mutual benefit: The invisible hand has been guided properly.
Another aspect of creating a market for information goods is studied by Srinivasan Raghunathan. The author investigates the profitability of introducing simultaneous multiple software editions, as well as upgrades, to serve the needs of multiple market segments. The near-zero marginal production cost results in specificities here as compared to the well-established segmentation strategies in the markets for physical goods. Some of the results are quite surprising. The author is able to make definite recommendations to the managers responsible for marketing software packages. The work is capable of extension in several directions, including the provision of application services on a rental basis.
A related, if largely nefarious, software marketing practice is investigated with the use of an entirely different methodology by John A. Hoxmeier. Product preannouncements long before the ship date, or in lieu of shipments that never take place, have been an industry practice for decades. Are they a breach of trust, or is a long lead time to delivery a helpful means of signaling to the potential customer and other vendors meant to enable them to prepare for the release? It appears that the specificity of software as a product asserts itself again. In the perceptions of the managers surveyed, it is only the final functionality that counts-another guideline to the marketers.
The distribution of multimedia objects, such as high-resolution images, video, audio, and various combinations thereof, over computer networks is what we see ever more of. Sandeep Purao and Tae-Dong Han present here a formal model and a more pragmatic approach to the distribution of multimedia content over intranets. The approach taken by the authors makes it possible to offer a spectrum of service quality at a corresponding cost for the initial distribution of multimedia content. A prototype design is offered as a proof of concept.
It has been widely argued that a flexible information technology infrastructure, from which new business initiatives can be launched, is strategically important to organizations. However, no method to measure the flexibility construct has been available-until now. Here, Terry Anthony Byrd and Douglas E. Turner operationalize the construct and present a validated instrument for its measurement. This work is of obvious importance to the practitioners, who will be able to root their infrastructure claims in measurable dimensions. No doubt, it will also stimulate the interest of researchers in refining the factors presented by the authors.
Business-to-business (B2B) commerce dominates the present electronic commerce. This is well known. It is not equally well known that Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and private-network EDI in particular, dominates B2B e-commerce. The ubiquity of EDI in business practices leads Gregory E. Truman to conclude that its organizational disposition has moved from the strategic to the tactical level. Accordingly, he studies how the integration of EDI with other corporate systems affects corporate performance. In addition, Truman finds the influence of integration among the internal systems themselves to be salient to the way EDI deployment influences financial outcomes.
Management information systems in the public sector are a weighty component of the overall MIS engagement. It is also a vastly understudied one. Here, James Y.L. Thong, Chee-Sing Yap, and Kin-Lee Seah present a case study of business process reengineering (BPR) in a large public organization in Singapore. Relative absence of market pressures, combined with more elaborate internal processes, distinguishes public organizations from private firms and affects organizational change. Although some of the findings apply to both private and public companies, the authors are able to offer detailed guidelines for conducting public-sphere BPR, which cannot be easy, even in Singapore. Of particular interest is the role of an information system pilot in promoting the goals of the reengineering effort.
This issue opens our seventeenth year of publication. It has become customary to thank at such time our readers, members of our Editorial Board and, crucially, the JMIS referees, who all collaborate in the success of the Journal. Here are our reviewers, the primary guarantors of the quality of our papers:
William Acar
Dennis A. Adams
Niv Ahituv
Murugan Anandarajan
Lynda M. Applegate
Paul Attewell
Sulin Ba
Barbro Back
Yannis Bakos
P.R. Balasubramanian
Dirk Baldwin
Dinesh Batra
Salvatore Belardo
Michael Benaroch
Francois Bergeron
Sudip Bhattacherjee
Bijoy Bordoloi
Carol V. Brown
Jeffrey Butterfield
Terry A. Byrd
Edward G. Cale, Jr.
Judith Carlisle
Sven Carlsson
Erran Carmel
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
Ronald Dattero
Michael J. Davern
Donald L. Davis
Sarv Devaraj
Ali Dogramaci
Peter Duchessi
Omar A. El Sawy
Hyun B. Eom
Gerald E. Evans
Steven Feiner
Kirk Fiedler
Edmond P. Fitzgerald
Jerry Fjermestad
Steven W. Floyd
Edward Fox
Dennis Galletta
Edward J. Garrity
Bezalel Gavish
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
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
Cary T. Hughes
Ard Huizing
E. Gerald Hurst
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
Mark Keil
Robert T. Keim
Chris Kemerer
Julie E. Kendall
William J. Kettinger
Omar E.M. Khalil
Melody Y. Kiang
Gary Klein
Stefan Koch
Esther Koster
Kenneth A. Kozar
Kenneth L. Kraemer
Ramayya Krishnan
Uday Kulkarni
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
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
Rosalie Ocker
Lorne Olfman
James Oliver
Levent Orman
Richard Orwig
Jonathan W. Palmer
Raymond R. Panko
Lee Papayanopoulos
Michael Parent
Diane Parente
Kenneth Peffers
Norman Pendegraft
Mark Pendergast
Roger A. Pick
Leo L. Pipino
Robert Plant
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 C. Row
Young U. Ryu
Sherry D. Ryan
Timo Saarinen
Rajiv Sabherwal
Sharon Salveter
G. Lawrence Sanders
Tuomas Sandholm
Radhika Santhanam
John Satzinger
Carol Saunders
Naveed Saleem
George Schell
K.D. Schenk
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
Charles A. Snyder
William E. Spangler
Rajendra P. Srivastava
Eric W. Stein
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
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
Yaniv Vakrat
Alfredo Vellido
Boris S. Verkhovsky
Ajay Vinze
Steven Walczak
Michael S. Wang
Shouhong Wang
Y. Richard Wang
Carol Watson
Richard Watson
Mary Beth Watson-Manheim
Bruce Weber
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
Chee Sing Yap
Evangelos Yfantis
Ilze Zigurs
Moshe Zviran