ABSTRACT:
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