Value Frame, Paradox and Change: The Constructive Nature of Information Technology Business Value

The role of IT in the creation of business value has been considered from various perspectives, such as strategic alignment, sustained advantage, and infrastructure capability. In this paper, we try to extend these previous perspectives by describing a flexible sensemaking framework for valuing complex technological resources. This framework assumes that the nature of IT business value is pluralistic, paradoxical, and dynamic. We describe four modes of valuation that comprise this framework: Routinizing, Cost-structuring, Positioning, and Learning, and illustrate them using historical lessons from airline reservation systems. Findings suggest that IT-derived business value can be characterized by competing tensions across diverse value frames that are paradoxically structured and change over time. We propose that such a pluralistic approach will extend the vocabulary of IT-derived business value and will improve managerial capability for sensemaking across multiple frames

The BG News March 01, 2016

The BGSU campus student newspaper March 01, 2016. Volume 95-Issue 48.https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/bg-news/9900/thumbnail.jp

School of Sciences embraces programming (Exactas Programa): reaching every corner of Science

Las herramientas computacionales juegan un rol cada vez mas importante en casi todas las disciplinas cientificas y tecnologicas, asi como el sector gubernamental y la industria. El saber programar, por otro lado, no ha sido formalmente incorporado como conocimiento requerido para los graduados de las distintas instituciones educativas, tales como laFacultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales (o simplemente Exactas como la llamamos) de la Universidad de Buenos Aires en Argentina. Esta fuerte contradiccion podria llevarnos a que los futuros cientificos tengan una pobre preparacion en terminos de las herramientas computacionales que deberian utilizar en sus tareas diarias. Para solucionar este complejo escenario, es necesario incorporar el potencial que ofrece la Computacion en las diferentes carreras. Saber como escribir un programa para resolver un problema es mucho que aprender a programar, es una aproximacion activa que ayuda a los estudiantes a organizar su razonamiento logico en forma de pasos claros y concisos.Ayuda a consolidar el entendimiento del problema en si, mas alla de la disciplina de que se trate. Nuestro objetivo al crear Exactas Programa es proveer los elementosesenciales de programacion, sin introducir una asignatura completa en su plan de estudios ya exigente, buscando que los estudiantes puedan incorporar a la computadora como una herramienta practica que los asista en la resolucion de problemas.Con este objetivo en mente, hemos formado un equipo de trabajo conformado por profesores, auxiliares, estudiantes de doctorado de diferentes disciplinas para asegurar una mirada interdisciplinaria que combine diferentes motivaciones para el uso de la computadora para presentar desafios transversales a las distintas disciplinas. El resultado, ExactasPrograma, no es un curso de programacion, es un taller de resolucion de problemas en el que la computadora tiene el rol principal.En este trabajo, compartimos la estructura del curso, los detalles de las actividades incluidas y algunas lecciones que aprendimos luego de haber dictado el taller en cinco oportunidades.Computational tools play an increasingly central role in almost all scientific and technological disciplines, as well as throughout both Government and Industry sectors. Programming skills, on the contrary, have not been formally incorporated as required knowledge for graduates of educational institutions, such as the School of Sciences (or simply Exactas as we call it in Spanish) of the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina. This sharp contradiction could lead to the poor preparation of future scientists in terms of the necessary use of computational tools in their daily activities. To address this skill gap, it is necessary to incorporate the great potential of computing into the different curricula. Knowing how to write a program to solve a problem is far more than learning to write a piece of code; it is an active learning approach that helps students organize the logical reasoning steps and fosters a solid understanding of the subject matter, regardless of the discipline. Our objective in creating Exactas Programs was to provide the essential elements of programming- without introducing another stumbling block in their already challenging degree programs- so that students of any major can incorporate the computer as a practical problem solving tool. With this objective in mind, we formed a working group of professors, teaching assistants, and doctoral students of different scientific backgrounds to ensure a multidisciplinary initiative that combines different motivations and contexts for the use of the computer in addressing challenges that traverse all majors. The result, Exactas Programs, is not a programming course; it is a short problem-solving workshop in which the computer is the central tool. In this work, we share our proposal’s structure, the details of some of the activities that comprise it, and the lessons learned after five editions of the workshop.Fil: López y Rosenfeld, Matías. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Computación; ArgentinaFil: Mocskos, Esteban Eduardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Computación; ArgentinaFil: González Lebrero, Mariano Camilo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Crespo, José Emilio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Arrar, Mehrnoosh. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Caridi, Délida Inés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Cálculo; ArgentinaFil: Sued, Raquel Mariela. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Cálculo; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Information Technology Platforms: Definition and Research Directions

The concept of an information technology (IT) related platform is broad and covers phenomena ranging from the operating system Linux to the Internet. Such platforms are of increasing importance to innovation and value creation across many facets of industry and daily life. There is, however, a lack of common understanding in both research and industry about what is mean by the term platform when related to IT. This lack of consensus is detrimental to research and knowledge development. Thus, the aims of this study are to: (i) provide a sound definition of the IT-platform concept by identifying its distinguishing dimensions; and (ii) identify important current research directions for the IT-platform concept. To achieve these aims a systematic literature review was undertaken with 133 relevant articles taken from major information systems journals, conferences, and business publications. The study contributes by providing a sound base for future research into IT-platforms.Comment: Research-in-progress ISBN# 978-0-646-95337-3 Presented at the Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2015 (arXiv:1605.01032

The Anchor, Volume 129.23: April 20, 2016

The Anchor began in 1887 and was first issued weekly in 1914. Covering national and campus news alike, Hope College’s student-run newspaper has grown over the years to encompass over two-dozen editors, reporters, and staff. For much of The Anchor\u27s history, the latest issue was distributed across campus each Wednesday throughout the academic school year (with few exceptions). As of Fall 2019 The Anchor has moved to monthly print issues and a more frequently updated website. Occasionally, the volume and/or issue numbering is irregular

Proceedings of the Inaugural Meeting ofAIS SIGPrag

The Special Interest Group on Pragmatist IS Research (SIGPrag) was approved by the Association for InformationSystems (AIS) council at its June 2008 meeting in Gallway. The motivation for this initiative is the growingrecognition of the importance of theorizing the IT artifact and its organizational and societal context from apragmatic and action-oriented perspective. SIGPrag\u27s mission is to provide a much-needed centre of gravity and tofacilitate exchange of ideas and further development of this area of IS scholarship.In summary, pragmatist IS research rests on the following set of assumptions: * Human life is a life of activity.* Humans do things that effect changes in their environment and/or within themselves.* Doing permeates thinking, conceptualizations and language use.* Human consciousness is a practical one that is in constant interplay with interventive, investigative, andevaluative actions.* Practical consciousness is formed by experience from previous actions and participation in social contexts.* IT and information systems are fundamentally symbolic language systems.* Linguistically expressed collective presuppositions, norms and categories (such as those embedded in ITand information systems) serve human activity and life.* The true value of IT and information systems lies in their potential to support human communication andcollaboration central to human activity and life.For more information about SIGPrag, its mission and current activities, please visit http://www.sigprag.org/The inaugural meeting of SIGPrag is to be held in Paris on Dec 14, 2008, in conjunction with the InternationalConference on Information Systems (ICIS). The meeting will consist of two parts, a scientific meeting and abusiness meeting. For the scientific meeting a call for position papers was issued in the summer of 2008, whichresulted in the following papers being selected for presentation:• What Kind of Pragmatism in Information Systems Research? by Göran Goldkuhl.• Pragmatic Approach in IS Projects Grounded on Recognised Frameworks by Raija Halonen.• Co-Design as Social Constructive Pragmatism by Mikael Lind, Ulf Seigerroth, Olov Forsgren, and AndersHjalmarsson.• Pragmatism and Information Systems (IS): Neurophilosophical approach by Garikoitz Lerma Usabiagaand Francesc Miralles.• Sustainability Communication: A role for IT and IS in relating business and Society by Mark Aakhus andPaul Ziek.• Managing Ambiguity while Reducing Uncertainty by Gianni Jacucci and Mike Martin.• A Pragmatic Conception of Service Encounters by Mikael Lind and Nicklas Salomonson.• Making the Web More Pragmatic: Exploring the Potential Of Some Pragmatic Concepts For IS ResearchAnd Development by Jens Allwood and Mikael Lind.• Introducing Human in Complex System: A Cognitive Pragmatics Based Model by G. Lortal.• The Pragmatic Web: An Application View by Mareike Schoop.• Design Research from a Communicative Perspective: How to Design Things with Words by Hans Weigand.• Representation and Correspondence: On the Validity of the Representation Assumption in InformationSystem Design by Pär J. Ågerfalk and Owen Eriksson.• Habermas’ theory in action by Jan L.G. Dietz.• Challenges to Information Systems Development by Roland Kaschek.The idea behind this inaugural meeting was to bring together people that share an affinity with pragmatist ISresearch and to initiate a scientific discussion about the role of pragmatist research in IS. We certainly hope that thisdiscussion will continue over the years to come. The papers are freely available for download athttp://www.sigprag.org

Software Development Life Cycles and Methodologies:Fixing the old and adopting the new

Information Systems as a discipline has generated thousands of research papers yet practice still suffers from poor-quality applications. This research evaluates the current state of application development, finding practice wanting in a number of areas. Changes recommended to fix historical shortcomings include improved management attention to risk management, testing, and detailed work practices. In addition, for industry\u27s move to services orientation, recommended changes include development of usable interfaces and a view of applications as embedded in the larger business services in which they function. These business services relate to both services provided to parent-organization customers as well as services provided by the information technology organization to its constituents. Because of this shift toward service orientation, more emphasis on usability, applications, testing, and improvement of underlying process quality are needed. The shift to services can be facilitated by adopting tenets of IT service management and user-centered design and by attending to service delivery during application development

Conceptual Foundations of Online Communities

The purpose of this working paper is to provide conceptual foundations for the reader interested in online communities. A useful summary of research conducted on online communities is provided in this paper. Beside several classifications for online communities, we will also pay attention to the questions why consumers belong to online communities, and what are the reasons and motives for consumers to join these communities. The different perspectives for the reasons and motives complement each other. We have proposed a valueinterest framework where several theories are combined into one, integrated model. The value-interest framework looks the motives from several perspectives simultaneously. It must be remembered, however, that beside this integrated model, it is fruitful to look at the motives and reasons from the different perspectives separately, too

The BG News March 29, 2016

The BGSU campus student newspaper. March 29, 2016. Volume 95-Issue 54.https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/bg-news/9906/thumbnail.jp

Explanation in Information Systems

Developing explanations of observed phenomenon is one of the major functions of research in Information Systems (IS). But what is an explanation? What types of explanation can IS research provide and what do they mean? The objectives of this research are to develop a shared language, to increase understanding of the meaning of research results and to stimulate discussion of explanation in Information Systems research. Four years of articles published in two top-ranked IS journals over a period of ten years were sampled based on four explanation types defined in modern philosophy: covering-law, statistical-relevance, pragmatic and functional. Explanation types, sub classifications ontologies and research methods were classified and the relationships between these characteristics were examined. Results reveal opportunities for studying Information Systems beyond a single explanation, towards the use of a rich set of explanation types to fully describe phenomena