Centralizing Data Management with Considerations of Uncertainty and Information-Based Flexibility

This paper applies the theory of real options to analyze how the value of information-based flexibility should affect the decision to centralize or decentralize data management under low and high uncertainty. This study makes two main contributions. First, we show that in the presence of low uncertainty, centralization of data management decisions creates more total surplus for the firm as the similarity of business units increases. In contrast, in the presence of high uncertainty, centralization creates more total surplus as the dissimilarity of business units increases. The pivoting distinction trades the benefit of reduction of uncertainty from dissimilar businesses for centralization (with cost saving) against the benefit of flexibility from decentralization. Second, the framework helps senior management evaluate the trade-offs in data centralization that drive different business models of the firm. We illustrate the application of these propositions formally using an analytical model and informally using case vignettes and simulation

Exploring foundations for using simulations in IS research

Simulation has been adopted in many disciplines as a means for understanding the behavior of a system by imitating it through an artificial object that exhibits a nearly identical behavior. Although simulation approaches have been widely adopted for theory building in disciplines such as engineering, computer science, management, and social sciences, their potential in the IS field is often overlooked. The aim of this paper is to understand how different simulation approaches are used in IS research, thereby providing insights and methodological recommendations for future studies. A literature review of simulation studies published in top-tier IS journals leads to the definition of three classes of simulations, namely the self-organizing, the elementary, and the situated. A set of stylized facts is identified for characterizing the ways in which the premise, the inference, and the contribution are presented in IS simulation studies. As a result, this study provides guidance to future simulation researchers in designing and presenting findings

Toward big data and analytics governance: redefining structural governance mechanisms

Big Data and Analytics (BDA) enable innovative business models and, simultaneously, increase existing business processes’ efficiency and effectiveness. Although BDA’s potential is widely recognized, companies face a variety of challenges when adopting BDA and endeavoring to generate business value. Researchers and practitioners emphasize the need for effective governance to delineate data and analytics’ roles and responsibilities. Existing studies focus either on data or on analytics governance, even though both approaches are closely interlinked and depend on each other. Our study aims to integrate these two distinct research perspectives into a unified view on structural mechanisms for BDA. Using design science research, we iteratively develop data and analytics roles, clarify their responsibilities and provide guidelines for their organizational assignment. Our study contributes to advancing research on data and analytics governance and supports practitioners managing BDA

ANTI-FRAGILE INFORMATION SYSTEMS

As complex socio-technical systems composed of many interconnected parts, interacting in non-linear, dynamic, emergent, and unexpected ways, Information Systems are fragile. In this paper we introduce the concept of antifragility as an alternative means of apprehending the fragility of Information Systems and a novel way of dealing with risk, uncertainty, and the unknown. Antifragility is the opposite of fragility. Antifragility allows us to go beyond robustness or resilience by moving away from a predictive mode of thinking and decision making to a mode that embraces the unknown and randomness and focuses on the characteristics that render systems fragile rather than trying to assess and predict the chain of events that may harm them. We propose a set of guidelines for moving from the fragile toward the antifragile and explore, for the processes of the IT function, their applications and the questions they raise for practice and research

Whose Talk is Walked? IT Decentralizability, Vendor versus Adopter Discourse, and the Diffusion of Social Media versus Big Data

Discourse plays a central role in organizing vision and computerization movement perspectives on IT innovation diffusion. While we know that different actors within a community contribute to the discourse, we know relatively little about the roles different actors play in diffusing different types of IT innovations. Our study investigates vendor versus adopter roles in social media and big data diffusion. We conceptualize the difference between the two IT innovations in terms of their decentralizability, i.e., extent to which decision rights pertinent to adoption of an organizational innovation can be decentralized. Based on this concept, we hypothesized: (1) adopters would contribute more to discourse about the more decentralizable social media and influence its diffusion more than would vendors; (2) vendors would contribute more to discourse about the less decentralizable big data and influence its diffusion more than would adopters. Empirical evidence largely supported these hypotheses

Development of an intelligent analytics-based model for product sales optimisation in retail enterprises

A retail enterprise is a business organisation that sells goods or services directly to consumers for personal use. Retail enterprises such as supermarkets enable customers to go around the shop picking items from the shelves and placing them into their baskets. The basket of each customer is captured into transactional systems. In this research study, retail enterprises were classified into two main categories: centralised and distributed retail enterprises. A distributed retail enterprise is one that issues the decision rights to the branches or groups nearest to the data collection, while in centralised retail enterprises the decision rights of the branches are concentrated in a single authority. It is difficult for retail enterprises to ascertain customer preferences by merely observing transactions. This has led to quantifiable losses. Although some enterprises implemented classical business models to address these challenging issues, they still lacked analytics-based marketing programs to gain competitive advantage. This research study develops an intelligent analytics-based (ARANN) model for both distributed and centralised retail enterprises in the cross-demographics of a developing country. The ARANN model is built on association rules (AR), complemented by artificial neural networks (ANN) to strengthen the results of these two individual models. The ARANN model was tested using real-life and publicly available transactional datasets for the generation of product arrangement sets. In centralised retail enterprises, the data from different branches was integrated and pre-processed to remove data impurities. The cleaned data was then fed into the ARANN model. On the other hand, in distributed retail enterprises data was collected branch per branch and cleaned. The cleaned data was fed into the ARANN model. According to experimental analytics, the ARANN model can generate improved product arrangement sets, thereby improving the confidence of retail enterprise decision-makers in competitive environments. It was also observed that the ARANN model performed faster in distributed than in centralised retail enterprises. This research is beneficial for sustainable businesses and consideration of the results is therefore recommended to retail enterprises.ComputingM Sc. (Computing

Decentralizzazione e tecnologia blockchain: una prospettiva ecosistemica

Il concetto di ecosistema ha ricevuto una crescente attenzione tra studiosi, professionisti ed esponenti politici (Colombo et al. 2019). Considerato come un nuovo modo di rappresentare l'ambiente competitivo (Beliaeva et al. 2019), un ecosistema si riferisce a un gruppo di aziende interagenti che dipendono dalle reciproche attività (Jacobides et al. 2018). Gli ecosistemi stimolano il coordinamento tra organizzazioni interconnesse ma significativamente autonome (Jacobides et al. 2018). Gli ecosistemi sono spesso considerati una parte cruciale dell'economia e una metafora per sostituire il tradizionale termine "mercati" (Audretsch et al. 2019). L'ecosistema, a differenza dell'impresa classica, si basa sulla modularità piuttosto che sulla gestione gerarchica, e vi è la necessità di coordinamento e condivisione di risorse e competenze complementari. l'ecosistema può essere definito come un insieme di organizzazioni autonome che producono componenti complementari di valore che formano una certa struttura di relazioni e sono coordinate senza la necessità di integrazione verticale (Jaco- bides, Cennamo, Gawer, 2018; Kleiner, 2018). L'avvento della quarta rivoluzione industriale (Industria 4.0) ha portato alla necessità di analizzare un'enorme quantità di dati e le esigenze del mercato sono disponibili in tempo reale per le aziende (Ardito et al., 2019; Atzori et al., 2010; Islam et al. , 2020; Shashi et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2018). Per questo motivo, le operazioni aziendali si stanno spostando verso una maggiore affidabilità, decentralizzazione, automazione e coordinamento favorendo l'integrazione di processi digitali incentrati sulla domanda e sull'offerta (Castagna et al., 2020; Goertzel et al., 2017; Ranganathan et al., 2011 ). Per quanto riguarda il modo in cui i dati e le informazioni vengono creati, raccolti, archiviati e resi disponibili su una piattaforma, anche decentralizzata, un argomento cruciale per accademici e professionisti riguarda la necessità di sistemi distribuiti per garantire trasparenza e sicurezza alle transazioni commerciali e flussi di informazioni senza la necessità di un terzo di fiducia (Goertzel et al., 2017; Marsal-Llacuna, 2018; Pereira et al., 2019). Inoltre, questi sforzi dovrebbero essere coordinati all'interno di un meccanismo trasparente e affidabile, portando quindi a processi decentralizzati, complessità gestionali e organizzative (Chen et al., 2012; Islam et al., 2020; Schoenherr e Speier-Pero, 2015; Vigna e Casey , 2016; Wang et al., 2016; White et al., 2020). In questo contesto, l'implementazione dell'architettura blockchain consente alle aziende di affrontare una crescente trasparenza, disintermediazione dei processi aziendali, efficienza e problemi di qualità dei dati, a causa del volume, della varietà e della velocità senza precedenti dei dati che possono essere acquisiti e del trasferimento di proprietà che possono essere elaborati (Cecere, 2017; Hazen et al., 2014; Mancilla e Sepúlveda, 2017; Raguseo e Vitari, 2018). Tuttavia, sebbene vi sia una vasta letteratura che evidenzia che la blockchain sta diventando un fattore strategico chiave nel nuovo ambiente industriale (Martinez-Vazquez, & Timofeev, 2010; Dafflon, 2015; Tumasjan, & Beutel, 2019; Chen, et. al., 2020), nel campo della gestione della tecnologia il futuro dei registri distribuiti e delle tecnologie decentralizzate sembra ancora essere trascurato. Le implicazioni della governance decentralizzata sono molteplici, prima di tutto, l'applicazione di questo modello sfida in varia misura i tradizionali meccanismi centralizzati di autorità statale, cittadinanza e democrazia (Atzori, 2015). Le nuove tecnologie, come la blockchain, consentono la possibilità di creare piattaforme decentralizzate, in grado di gestire interazioni su larga scala e destituire le autorità centrali tradizionali (Chen, & Bellavitis, 2020). Lo scopo di questa tesi è esplorare come una tecnologia emergente possa fungere da piattaforma decentralizzata per abilitare un nuovo concetto di ecosistema. Partendo da questa ricerca combinando la metodologia Grounded Theory con la metodologia dei casi studio multipli si cerca di comprendere l'impatto della prossima generazione di tecnologie rivoluzionarie, blockchain, sull'ecosistema. Lo studio rivela varie percezioni del cluster di utenti intervistati su ciò che potrebbe cambiare nei mercati e nell'ecosistema nel prossimo futuro, dopo l'introduzione della tecnologia blockchain. Di conseguenza, siamo in grado di mostrare l'utilità del modello in un contesto empirico, presentare una critica che aiuta a sviluppare ulteriormente il quadro e contribuire con teorie che riguardano l'approccio ecosistemico. Per esplorare come la piattaforma decentralizzata e la tecnologia blockchain consentono il cambiamento dell'ecosistema e rispondono alle richieste di ricerca in questo settore, l'elaborato di tesi è organizzato come segue. Il primo capitolo mostra la revisione sistematica della letteratura per delineare le lacune teoriche e l'obiettivo della ricerca; quindi, descrive il processo di ricerca attraverso il quale la ricerca li ha affrontati, costituito dalla posizione paradigmatica della ricerca, dalla scelta dell'approccio di ricerca e dal processo di raccolta e analisi dei dati. Viene quindi presentato il contesto della ricerca. Il secondo capitolo propone una revisione della letteratura sui diversi approcci al concetto di ecosistema e in particolare sulla formazione e l'innovazione dell'ecosistema e i cambiamenti al suo interno. Il terzo capitolo presenta presentano una metodologia di ricerca. Innanzitutto, per fornire una panoramica strutturata e completa della letteratura sul decentramento, la blockchain e il cambiamento nell'ecosistema, conduco una revisione strutturata della letteratura (SLR) che può essere vista come un mezzo con cui qualsiasi letteratura centrale potrebbe essere presa in considerazione durante l'analisi di uno studio. In secondo luogo, per l'analisi empirica conduco una metodologia di studio combinando la Grounded Theory e la metodologia dei casi studio. L'ultimo capitolo della tesi illustra i risultati di questa ricerca e la loro discussione. Lo studio discute infine i principali contributi teorici e le implicazioni gestionali; vengono quindi delineati limiti e suggerimenti per ulteriori ricerche

Outsourcing and centralizing corporate accounting -Case Aspo

Technological development has given more options on how to organize accounting and financial department, namely outsourcing and centralizing. This thesis studies those subjects and how those are handled in companies’ accounting. Main objective is to find out how company sees its strategy regarding these two things and how can it best utilize possibilities of outsourcing and centralization. Finding out best practices for these thing will benefit companies. Research question of the study is: How can companies best utilize outsourcing and centralizing in accounting? To answer this question, a framework is built, which shows benefits and downsides of each combination. Examples for types of companies are also named. All combinations were found suitable in specific situations. In empirical part this framework is used in a case study to see how it fits in a real life company. Case study also examines on how the company has seen these problems, how their decision-making is done and if their company is adjusted towards the kind of model that their company form would suggest or if they have different view of the alternatives of outsourcing and centralizing. The empirical part is a case study of Aspo Plc’s financial department reorganization. The case goes through different sorts of models that had been utilized during the reorganization. These models are studied through checking how they handle outsourcing and centralizing. During the whole monitoring period there was a shift from decentralized and in-housed system to a centralized and outsourced system. Therefore, this case gives views from different situations and combinations of these two aspects. Benefits that were found during the theoretical part of the study held mostly true also in empirical test. In the case example, some situations were reacted more slowly than the theory suggest and in different ways, but overall same conclusions were reach in both situations. Those conclusions suggest that in a company like Aspo, most effective way is to outsource and centralize accounting as much as possible, since cost benefits outweigh downsides that can come from these choices. This option is also most viable in general. This study gives more understanding on how to handle these two aspects as one thing and making strategies concerning both outsourcing and centralizing, not just one of them. The framework can be utilized in other similar service processes inside companies, not just financial department and accounting. This benefits all service processes that are commonly run inside the company

Centralizing data management with considerations of uncertainty and information-based flexibility

BackgroundHistorical studies of news media have suggested an association between reporting and increased drug abuse. Period effects for substance use have been documented for different classes of legal and illicit substances, with the suspicion that media publicity may have played major roles in their emergence. Previous analyses have drawn primarily from qualitative evidence; the temporal relationship between media reporting volume and adverse health consequences has not been quantified nationally. We set out to explore whether we could find a quantitative relationship between media reports about prescription opioid abuse and overdose mortality associated with these drugs. We assessed whether increases in news media reports occurred before or after increases in overdose deaths.Methodology/Principal FindingsOur ecological study compared a monthly time series of unintentional poisoning deaths involving short-acting prescription opioid substances, from 1999 to 2005 using multiple cause-of-death data published by the National Center for Health Statistics, to monthly counts of English-language news articles mentioning generic and branded names of prescription opioids obtained from Google News Archives from 1999 to 2005. We estimated the association between media volume and mortality rates by time-lagged regression analyses. There were 24,272 articles and 30,916 deaths involving prescription opioids during the seven-year study period. Nationally, the number of articles mentioning prescription opioids increased dramatically starting in early 2001, following prominent coverage about the nonmedical use of OxyContin. We found a significant association between news reports and deaths, with media reporting preceding fatal opioid poisonings by two to six months and explaining 88% (p<0.0001, df 78) of the variation in mortality.Conclusions/SignificanceWhile availability, structural, and individual predispositions are key factors influencing substance use, news reporting may enhance the popularity of psychoactive substances. Albeit ecological in nature, our finding suggests the need for further evaluation of the influence of news media on health. Reporting on prescription opioids conforms to historical patterns of news reporting on other psychoactive substances