This thirty-fifth volume of JMIS opens with the important Special Issue devoted to “Financial Information Systems and the Fintech Revolution.” The Special Issue brings to us six studies that illustrate what our field can contribute to the understanding and progress of a key phenomenon in the advanced information age we all live in. The guest editors, Peter Gomber, Robert J. Kauffman, Chris Parker, and Bruce W. Weber, have distinguished themselves as the thought leaders in the field both through their research and practice. The guest editors will introduce to you the articles they have included in the Special Issue, each of which makes a significant novel contribution to our knowledge about various aspects of financial information systems.
The financial technology (fintech) emerging on the foundation of the Internet-Web has been driving a fundamental change to the financial sector of our economy. The massive connectivity, the almost universal mobile accessibility, the computational capabilities growing exponentially in “the second half of the chessboard” driven inexorably by Moore’s law, the progress in artificial intelligence since its turn toward deep learning, are all mutually reinforcing and underwrite the Fintech Revolution we are witnessing. The revolution has been intensifying over past two decades, if we wish to date its origins to the launch of PayPal as a person-to-person (P2P) payment platform in 1998. As it is with revolutions, things change gradually and then suddenly, to repurpose the words of Ernest Hemingway.
Fintech startups, funded largely by venture capital (VC, another aspect of the modern financial sector), have led the charge. Indeed, several properties of VC make it especially suited to financing the uncertain investments in these startups: taking equity stakes rather than debt; and pooled investment in sequential tranches well-aligned with the rapid scalability of the intangibles-based businesses [1]. The fintech startups have innovated notably in areas such as payments and transaction processing; retail and investment banking; lending; insurance; international remittances; and advisory and money management. Among the direct major changes we see at present is the emergence of blockchain technology as a distributed ledger without central control that is becoming an infrastructure for many asset-management systems and potentially has the larger future in smart contracts and, indeed, reorganizing the foundations of organizations as we know them.
The incumbent banks, relying (and sometimes overrelying) on the advantages of bigness, resist the future of becoming utilities delivering commodity services to the upstart startups that would own the profitable client relationships. New and powerful phenomena such as nonbank banks, direct equity placements, crowdfunding, and ubiquitous touch points supported by the Internet of Things, are gaining scale and threatening to elude the traditional banks. Indeed, cryptocurrencies, whether Bitcoin, Ethereum, or one of their successors, may threaten the banks of issue. The existing banks are not sleeping at the switch, of course. The advantages of bigness, such as various forms of very considerable capital, scale of relationships with customers and clients, economies of scale and scope, and access to the lawmaking and regulatory processes, are always there. Innovation can be brought in by the acquisition of or partnership with truly innovative smaller companies, or fostered by attempting to adopt their ways. Citigroup, a leader among the mega-banks, has created Citi FinTech, as a skunkworks operation that is meant to instill financial innovation throughout the bank. Several banks have acquired robo-advisor startups and trading platforms, among other forms of fintech. The victors and the vanquished remain to be seen; the multifocal change is the only thing that is certain. There is one thing we know about revolutions: The outcomes cannot be foretold.
The financialization of our economy makes the present and future impacts of the Fintech Revolution reverberate throughout all industries. We can see that the massive gales of change are bringing inclusion to the unbanked, with identity systems, microcredit, and e-payments such as M-Pesa, and ubiquitous access via smartphones. We can see that it threatens many categories of well-populated and well-paying jobs. We hope to see that it will bring more new job categories that can offer many good workplaces.
As the articles included here in the Special Issue show, our discipline has much to offer to the understanding and, we hope, further development of fintech. In consequence, we can serve larger societal causes: expanding the inclusion of individuals in economic life and bridging digital divides, reducing friction and rents that hamper economic growth, and enhancing our experience as individuals in our financial lives. As can be seen here, Journal of Management Information Systems stands ready to provide leadership in the study of fintech.
In the first article in the general section, Taha Havakhor and Rajiv Sabherwal study virtual teams working on knowledge-intensive tasks, which they term virtual knowledge teams (VKT). In such units, exemplified by software-development teams, the coordination of expertise held by individual members is crucial to project success, while being challenged by geographical distribution and limited familiarity among the team members. The researchers investigate the mechanisms and processes through which information technology (IT) supports coordination of expertise and leads to enhanced team performance. The contribution of the study goes beyond its stated scope to showcase the processes that support IT deployment in knowledge-intensive work.
In e-commerce, social product-customization systems enable consumers to receive the opinions of their peers in the product configuration process to meet their own requirements. Input from others may be received either privately or publicly (via message boards). How influential is the input from peers? Is privately rendered input of greater consequence than that offered publicly? How do these factors influence the consumer’s evaluation of the customized product they receive? These are the issues investigated empirically by Tobias Schlager, Christian Hildebrand, Gerald Häubl, Nikolaus Franke, and Andreas Herrmann. The authors bring to bear theories of thinking styles and social impact to tease out the influential factors in a field study and four experiments. Their results contribute to the theories they deploy and have pragmatic value for online commerce.
Consumer reviews are a fundamental tool with which individuals cocreate value in e-commerce. They have been broadly used and intensely researched. As the reviews aggregate, they can increase the value of vendors and products, they can facilitate the selling process and decrease returns. They can also do the opposite—and here, deceptive reviews can be the deciding factor. The detection of such reviews is of great value to all involved in e-commerce. It is also difficult owing to the multiple and quite sophisticated methods of review manipulation. The authors of the concluding article in the issue, Naveen Kumar, Deepak Venugopal, Liangfei Qiu, and Subodha Kumar, deploy a machine-learning algorithm in order to consider multiple factors that help in review classification. The specific technique the researchers devise is hierarchical supervised learning that allows them to surface anomalies in the deceptive reviews. The technique itself is important, as would be the gain in platform confidence, should the method be applied to separate the wheat from the chaff. The authors demonstrate that their method is superior to what we now have.
As we begin the new volume of the Journal of Management Information Systems, it is my pleasure and privilege to thank our referees, the primary guarantors of the quality of the journal. Here are their names:
Ahmed Abbasi
Marc Adam
Ashish Agarwal
Hyung Jun Ahn
Manju Ahuja
Tolga Akcura
Oliver Alexy
Muhammad Aljukhadar
Gove Allen
Paul Alpar
Niek Althuizen
Kemal Altinkemer
Naveen Amblee
Corey Angst
Ofer Arazy
Kursad Asdemir
Norman Au
Yoris Au
Benoit A. Aubert
David Avison
Peter van Baalen
Hyunmi Baek
Akhilesh Bajaj
Hillol Bala
Dirk Baldwin
Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay
Youngsok Bang
Gaurav Bansal
Reza Barkhi
Henri Barki
Jordan Barlow
Richard Baskerville
Genevieve Basselier
Dinesh Batra
Daniel Beimborn
D. France Belanger
Skip Benamati
Michel Benaroch
Izak Benbasat
Alexander Benlian
François Bergeron
Ganesh Bhatt
Sudip Bhattacharjee
David Biros
Ivo Blohm
Jesse Bockstedt
Riccardo Bonazzi
Antal van den Bosch
Indranil Bose
Tobias Brandt
Nicola Breugst
Glenn J. Browne
Sebastian Bruque
Scott Buffett
Burcu Bulgurcu
Judee Burgoon
Andrew Burton-Jones
Ashley Bush
Brian Butler
Terry A. Byrd
Sonia M. Camacho
Jinwei Cao
Lan Cao
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
Rui Chen
Hsing Kenneth Cheng
Xusen Cheng
Mike Cheung
Robert T.H. Chi
Roger Chiang
Benjamin Chiao
Ananth Chiravuri
Chaochang Chiu
Jong-min Choe
Ben Choi
H. Michael Chung
Sunghun Chung
Wingyan Chung
Theodore H. Clark
Isabelle Comyn-Wattiau
Randolph Cooper
Robert E. Crossler
Kevin Crowston
Qizhi Dai
John D’Arcy
Elizabeth Davidson
Gregory Dawson
Jason Dedrick
Benedict Dellaert
Chrysanthos Dellarocas
Haluk Demirkan
Tianjie Deng
Xuefei Deng
Amit Deokar
Sarv Devaraj
Debabrata Dey
Jens Dibbern
Su Dong
Tianxi Dong
Line Dubé
Peter Duchessi
Alina Dulipovici
Deborah E. Dunkle
Kaushik Dutta
Robert Easley
Dana Edberg
Christophe Elie-Dit-Cosaque
Aaron Elkins
Mike Eom
Sean B. Eom
J. Alberto Espinosa
Andrea Everard
Kelly Fadel
Ming Fan
Patrick Fan
Xiao Fang
Yu-Hui Fang
Yulin Fang
Dennis Fehrenbacher
Rei Fen
Jane Feng
Daniel R. Fesenmaier
Thomas A. Fischer
Jerry Fjermestad
Chris Forman
Chiara Francalanci
Mike Friedman
Johann Füller
Brent Furneaux
John Gallaugher
Gordon Gao
Hong Gao
Monica Garfield
Rajiv Garg
Ina Garnefeld
Edward J. Garrity
Abhijeet Ghoshal
Janis L. Gogan
Kim Huat Goh
Thomas Goh
Sigi Goode
Dale Goodhue
Anand Gopal
Ram D. Gopal
Nelson Granados
Peter Gray
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
Andrew Hardin
Matthew Hashim
Taha Havakhor
Irina Heimbach
Cheng-Suang Heng
Raymond Henry
Hemantha Herath
Tejaswini Herath
Traci Hess
Alan R. Hevner
Oliver Hinz
Susanna Ho
Richard Hoffman
Christian P. Hoffmann
Jason Hong
Kevin Hong
Weiyin Hong
Yili (Kevin) Hong
Zhe 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
Tabitha James
Dietmar Jannach
Jeff Jenkins
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
P.K. Kannan
Maurits Kaptein
Prasanna Karhade
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
Tobias Kollman
Praveen K. Kopalle
Kenneth A. Kozar
Ramayya Krishnan
Uday Kulkarni
Akhil Kumar
Ram Kumar
Subodha Kumar
Jason Kuruzovich
Juhee Kwon
Simon S.K. Lam
Guido Lang
Karl R. Lang
Kai R. Larsen
Michael Lash
Benjiang Lee
ByungJoon Lee
Byungtae Lee
Daniel Lee
Dong-Joo Lee
Gene Moo Lee
Goonwoong Lee
Gwanhoo Lee
Heeseok Lee
Ho Geun Lee
Jong Seok Lee
Jungwoo Lee
Thomas Lee
Yang Lee
Youngjin Lee
Pierre-Majorique Léger
Jan Marco Leimeister
Chen Li
Dahui Li
Jiexun Li
Mengxiang Li
Seth Li
Shengli Li
Ting Li
Weifeng Li
Xiaotong Li
Xin Li
XinXin Li
Xitong Li
Yan Li
Demin Liang
Huigang Liang
Nan (Peter) Liang
Ting-Peng Liang
Paul Licker
John Lim
Shi Ying Lim
Aleck Lin
Fu-ren Lin
Mei Lin
Zhijie Lin
Charles Zhechao Liu
Jun Liu
Ying Liu
Yipeng Liu
Alexandre Lopes
Paul B. Lowry
Benjiang Lu
Jingdu Lu
Henry C. Lucas Jr.
Stephan Ludwig
Xueming Luo
Andy Luse
Christoph Lutz
Mark Lycett
Dan Ma
Xiao Ma
Jane M. Mackay
Massimo Magni
Pruthikrai Mahatanankoon
M. Adam Mahmood
Bin Mai
Yogesh Malhotra
Deepa Mani
Ravi Mantena
Kent Marett
Panos Markopoulos
Likoebe M. Maruping
Anne P. Massey
Lars Mathiassen
Sabine Matook
Kurt Matzler
Kristina McElheran
Ephraim R. McLean
Nigel Melville
Nirup Menon
Thomas Meservy
Randy Minas
Shaila Miranda
Dinesh Mirchandani
Abhay Nath Mishra
Stephanie Missonier
Prasenjit Mitra
Kannan Mohan
William Money
Ali R. Montazemi
Ramiro Montealegre
Alan Montgomery
Greg Moody
Jolene Morrison
Barin N. Nag
Fiona Nah
Ravi Narayanaswamy
Derek Nazareth
Matthew Nelson
R. Ryan Nelson
Boon Siong Neo
Derrick Neufeld
Dirk Neumann
Dorit Nevo
Saggi Nevo
Michael Newman
Tingting Nian
Mark Nissen
Dmitri Nizovtsev
Oded Nov
Joo Hee Oh
Lih-Bin Oh
Onook Oh
Wonseok Oh
Bob O’Keefe
Lorne Olfman
James Oliver
Benoit Otjacques
Bob Otondo
Peter Otto
Eric Overby
Zafer D. Ozdemir
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
Jeffrey Proudfoot
Sandeep Purao
Jessica Pye
Hamed Qahri-Saremi
Liangfei Qiu
Lingyun Qiu
Wen Guang Qu
Xin Xue Qu
Arik Ragowsky
Rex Kelly Rainer Jr.
Balaraman Rajan
Vandana Ramachandran
Arkalgud Ramaprasad
Bala Ramesh
R. Ravichandran
Gautam Ray
Louis Raymond
Blaize Horner Reich
Bruce Reinig
Fei Ren
Yuqing Ren
Paul Resnick
Hyuen-Suk Rhee
Amir Riaz
William B. Richmond
Christoph Riedl
René Riedl
Lionel Robert
Nicholas Roberts
Michael Rogich
Huaxia Rui
Ko de Ruyter
Sherry D. Ryan
Young U. Ryu
Michael Sacks
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
Zhe Shan
Tushar Shanker
Jim Sheffield
Hong Sheng
Zhan Shi
Hung-Pin Shih
Siew Kien Sia
Keng Siau
Anna Sidorova
Mark Silver
Harpreet Singh
Param Vir Singh
Atish P. Sinha
Sumit Sircar
Bernd Skiera
Stefan Smolnik
Jaeki Song
Scott Spangler
William E. Spangler
Rajendra P. Srivastava
Shirish C. Srivastava
Thomas F. Stafford
Eric W. Stein
Dennis Steininger
Dick Stenmark
Stefan Stieglitz
Theofanis C. Stratopoulos
Diane M. Strong
Ayoung Su
Mani Subramani
Chandra Subramaniam
Ramanath Subramanyam
Eung-Kyo Suh
Daewon Sun
Heshan Sun
Arun Sundararajan
Shankar Sundaresan
Juliana Sutanto
Paul P. Tallon
Chee-Wee Tan
Chuan-Hoo Tan
Yao-Hua Tan
Xinlin Tang
Mohan R. Tanniru
Monideepa Tarafdar
Nolan Taylor
Orkun Temizkan
Gary F. Templeton
Hock Hai Teo
Thompson Teo
Matthew Thatcher
Ferdinand Thies
Dominic Thomas
Ron Thompson
James Y.L. Thong
Ryad Titah
Torrie Wu Tong
Monica Chiarini Tremblay
Manuel Trenz
Dimitrios Tsekouras
Yanbin Tu
Ofir Turel
Tuure Tuunanen
Doug Twitchell
Nathan W. Twyman
Sonja Utz
Rustam Vahidov
Ganesan Vaidyanathan
Goetz Viering
Padmal Vitharana
Radu Vlas
Douglas Vogel
Sebastian Voigt
Jan vom Brocke
Heinz-Theo Wagner
Eric Walden
Jeffrey Wall
Joseph Walls
Zhiping Walter
Bin Wang
Chong (Alex) Wang
Eric T.G. Wang
Jingguo Wang
Michael S. Wang
Qiu-Hong Wang
Shouhong Wang
Sophia Wang
Weiquan Wang
Yinglei Wang
Y. Richard Wang
Deepa Wani
Sidne Ward
Mary Beth Watson-Manheim
Sunil Wattal
Thomas Weber
Chih-Ping Wei
Markus Weinmann
Tim Weitzel
John Wells
Robert West
Jonathan Whitaker
Michael E. Whitman
Jeffrey L. Whitten
George Widmeyer
Rolf Wigand
Fons Wijnhoven
E. Vance Wilson
Robert Winter
Christopher Wolfe
Christina Wong
Charles A. Wood
Hans Wortmann
Ryan Wright
Dazhong Wu
Choon Ling Xia
Lan Xia
Mingdi Xin
David Xu
Heng Xu
Hongjiang Xu
Kefeng 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
Kexin Zhao
J. Leon Zhao
Kang Zhao
Xia Zhao
Dmitry Zhdanov
Lina Zhou
Wenqi Zhou
Yilu Zhou
Zhongyun Zhou
Hongwei Zhu
Wenqi Zhu
Youlong Zhuang
Moshe Zviran
Let us now turn our attention to the papers.