Journal of Management Information Systems

Volume 33 Number 1 2016 pp. 1-10

Editorial Introduction

Zwass, Vladimir

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.