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.