Journal of Management Information Systems

Volume 18 Number 2 2001 pp. 5-9

Editorial Introduction

Zwass, Vladimir

ABSTRACT:

THE SPECIAL SECTION ON Economies, Electronic Commerce, and Competitive Strategy that opens the issue brings together several analyses of competitive strategy in deploying information technology and trading information goods. The papers are notable not only for their pushing the research frontier, but also for their tackling of real and important problems within the context of the contemporary business environment. The Guest Editors of the Special Section—Eric K. Clemons, Rajiv M. Dewan, and Robert J. Kauffman—introduce the papers in appropriate detail.

The theme is continued in the two subsequent papers. Reynold E. Byers and Phillip J. Lederer analyze the effective distribution strategy for retail banking in the face of the changes brought on by e-banking. The results are important and enlightening. As it is becoming apparent across the e-commerce retailing landscape, the success of purely virtual banking is remote, if only in time. Based on their formal model, the authors 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 good’s price depends on the size of the buying group, assembled through a Web site. Through modeling and empirics, the authors are able, among other results, to track down the failure sources of the several well-known implementations of the group-buying model.

Many information systems projects fail. It is disheartening that often this future outcome is known to the insiders, or at least suspected by them, quite early in the development process. Yet the same insiders choose not to bear the bad news—at a great cost to the firms on whose behalf the project is run and to which they owe allegiance. To increase the willingness to report, it is good to go beyond the obvious to establish specific causes of “keeping mum.” Here, H. Jeff Smith, Mark Keil, and Gordon Depledge furnish and test an explanatory model of the decision-making that leads to non-reporting. Beyond that, the authors translate the results into specific recommendations for managers who want to elicit truthful reporting of project status.

Decision support systems (DSS) are generally used to evaluate the alternative courses of action as envisaged by a human decision-maker. In other words, it is up to the human to generate the alternatives during an early stage of the decision-making process. Bijan Fazlollahi and Rustam Vahidov present the design of a DSS that is itself able to generate alternatives. The DSS design is based on genetic algorithms, and the authors show that 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 thank our 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 our reviewers, 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