Theorizing Agency and Temporality in IT-Enabled Competitive Actions

This paper seeks to extend earlier treatments of the relationship between information technology (IT) resources and competitive actions to explicitly account for the roles of human agency and temporality, which have not been adequately addressed in prior research. It draws on the literatures on competitive dynamics and time-situated agency to understand and explain the role of managers in formulating and executing IT-enabled competitive actions. We discuss insights from a review of the extant literature and argue that further inquiry is warranted to understand how the agency of managers shapes the development and execution of two types of IT-enabled competitive actions, i.e., proactive actions and reactive actions. In this research-in-progress paper, we address this issue and present a set of propositions to serve as the basis for a new theory of agency and IT-enabled competitive actions

Corporate Governance, Ownership Structures and IT Investments. An Institutional approach.

The research aims to highlight the relationships of traditional and new ownership structures on information technology (IT) investments for firms listed on Iberoamerican stock markets after a global crisis. The study uses a neo-institutional economic framework to show the corporate governance’s changes through institutional logic of ownership structures as well as IT investments growth in Iberoamerica. A literature review considers the relevance of concentrated ownership, top foreign ownership and common ownership of new institutional investors. The research design is a non-experimental longitudinal study with an annual panel data from 2009 to 2015, using 2,156 firm-year observations listed in stock market of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru (MILA) and Spain (IBEX). The findings show that IT investment growth is negatively affected by concentrated ownerships and top foreign ownership, this last as unexpected situation, while it is positively affected by the new institutional investors. The contribution is to expand this research topic as continuing and permanent discussion of academics on corporate governance closer to IT approach, and vice versa

Digital transformation and organizational implications

Digital technologies surround us. Some technologies, such as platforms, help us book our holidays, others, like apps, transform our appearance, and more sophisticated technology, such as artificial intelligence, even translates texts for us. With that in mind, it seems almost unbelievable that there are yet areas in our lives that are not digital but require pen and paper. This dissertation aims to gain a better understanding of the ongoing digital transformation of organizations, with a specific focus on the following aspects: (1) understand what digital transformation is and how it affects firms, (2) shed light on the business value implications and contingencies in the SME context, and (3) to unravel different actions on how firms may deal with institutional pressure. Chapter 2 addresses the conceptual nature of digital transformation through a literature review and provides a process model for different stages of digital change and insights on transforming from the analog world into a digitally transformed organization. Chapter 3 deals with the business value implications of digital transformation for small to medium firms (SMEs) by focusing on the pressure between doing radically different activities and overcoming established routines is provided. Chapter 4 takes a broader perspective on the institutional arrangement and how digital transformation may promote legitimacy challenges. Finally, Chapter 5 ties everything together, presents a general discussion of the different studies and their outcomes, explores managerial and societal implications, and offers future research directions

Tech-Savvy on Board: Investigating the Impact of Board of Directors’ IT Professional Experiences on Firms’ IT Investment and Performance

Our study investigates whether having directors with IT professional experiences on board impacts a firm’s IT investment growth and financial performance. We gather data from BoardEx, Compustat, and Harte-Hanks databases for S&P 1500 firms between 2011 and 2017. We include a rich set of controls and fixed effects in the analysis. We also employ a novel strategy to adjust for the remaining selection on unobservables. Our analysis shows that firms with tech-savvy directors have higher investment growth in different categories of IT including software, hardware, communication, and services. We also find these firms experience better performance measured by Tobin’s Q. The findings highlight the importance of board of directors in driving IT investment growth and firm performance

How Do Firms Adjust IT Investments in Response to Revenue Changes? The Role of Computing Eras and Aspiration

This study explores a novel question relating to responsiveness of IT investments, and documents three key findings. First, we find that firms adjust IT investments more actively in response to the revenue fluctuation during the 2001-2011 period than in the 1990-2000 period. Second, we find that underperforming firms are more likely to increase their IT investments in response to revenue increase in 2001-2011 than in 1990-2000, while outperforming firms are much more likely to decrease their IT investments in response to revenue decrease in 2001-2011 than in 1990-2000. Finally, underperforming firms have similar levels of adjustments in their IT investments in response to revenue decrease in both periods, while outperforming firms have similar levels of adjustments in their IT investments in response to revenue increase. We discuss the implications of these novel findings

Board IT Competence and Firm Performance

In this study, we theorize a new construct ‘board IT competence’, and show that it is systematically related to firm performance. Using a sample of 32,856 firm-years observations over the period of the year 2000 to 2018, our study shows that board IT competence is positively associated with firm performance. Moreover, the findings suggest that firm performance is not only higher, but also more consistent across time. While many firms find it difficult to identify the right sources in developing IT competence at the board level, our study suggests that a board composition that promotes the representation of directors with relevant IT competencies can offer valuable insights to mobilize and reconfigure IT asset to create firm value

Digital Innovation Units: An Empirical Investigation of Performance Implications

Digital innovation is both a necessary and a challenging endeavor for most firms. To achieve progress in this regard, firms across contexts increasingly set up digital innovation units (DIUs). Despite its popularity in practice, the prospects of this initiative are to date unclear. Building upon dynamic capabilities theory, we hypothesize the performance implications of DIUs and employ panel data regressions to a longitudinal and cross-industry data-set to investigate our predictions. We find that DIUs increase performance and that this effect is strengthened by the presence of digital ventures in the industry as well as the degree to which the industry relies on tangible assets. Our additional analyses provide a nuanced perspective on the implications of DIU establishments. On the base of these findings, we derive important implications for IS research about digital innovation and transformation as well as DIUs and provide recommendations for managerial practice

Seeking value through deviation? Economic impacts of it overinvestment and underinvestment

2017-2018 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journal201803 bcmaAccepted ManuscriptSelf-fundedPublishe

New Organizational Challenges in a Digital World: Securing Cloud Computing Usage and Reacting to Asset-Sharing Platform Disruptions

Information technology (IT) and IT-enabled business models are transforming the business ecosystem and posing new challenges for existing companies. This two-essay dissertation examines two such challenges: cloud security and the disruption of asset-sharing business models.The first essay examines how an organizations usage of cloud storage affects its likelihood of accidental breaches. The quasi-experiment in the U.S. healthcare sector reveals that organizations with higher levels of digitalization (i.e., Electronic Health Records levels) or those with more IT applications running on their internal data center are less likely to experience accidental breaches after using public cloud storage. We argue that digitalization and operational control over IT applications increase organizations awareness and capabilities of establishing a company-wide security culture, thereby reducing negligence related to physical devices and unintended disclosure after adopting cloud storage. The usage of cloud storage is more likely to cause accidental breaches for organizations contracting to more reputable or domain expert vendors. We explain this result as the consequence of less attention being focused on securing personally accessible data and physical devices given high reliance on reputed and knowledgeable cloud providers. This research is among the first to empirically examine the actual security impacts of organizations cloud storage usage and offers practical insights for cloud security management.The second essay examines how Asset-Sharing Business Model Prevalence (ASBMP) affects the performance implications of industry incumbent firms competitive actions when faced with entrants with asset-sharing business models, like Airbnb. ASBMP represents the amount of third-party products and services that originally were unavailable inside the traditional business model but now are orchestrated by asset-sharing companies in an industry. We use texting mining and econometrics approaches to analyze a longitudinal dataset in the accommodation industry. Our results demonstrate that incumbents competitive action repertoires (i.e., action volume, complexity, and heterogeneity) increase their performance when the ASBMP is high but decrease incumbents performance when the ASBMP is low. Practically, incumbents who are facing greater threat from asset-sharing firms can implement more aggressive competitive action repertoires and strategically focus on new product and M&A strategies. This research contributes to the literature of both competitive dynamics and asset-sharing business models

Three essays on the economics of cybersecurity

The rapid growth of digitization has made cybersecurity a critical area for corporations, markets, and governments. The rise in cybersecurity investments and sweeping changes in the regulatory environment raise new economic questions — related to the impacts of cybersecurity investments, innovations, and legislation — that are yet to be answered. Focusing on the limited supply of cybersecurity labor, which has fallen behind the large demand for cybersecurity, Essay 1 studies how cybersecurity labor impacts the value of major infrastructural cyber investments. Moving beyond the ways to leverage cyberinfrastructure and labor, Essay 2 sheds light on the impact of the increasing pressure to pursue development and innovation in the cybersecurity area. This essay examines the bottom-line value of a prevalent type of innovative initiatives, i.e., corporate venture capital (CVC) investment in cybersecurity startups. Essays 1 and 2 heavily focus on the value proposition of cybersecurity investments in corporations. While both essays consider the cybersecurity legislation as exogenous variations instigating further demand for cybersecurity products and innovations, Essay 3 links a widely-adopted cybersecurity law, i.e., security breach notification law (SBNL), to the broader economic demand for general IT services. Compliance costs of cybersecurity legislation raise the barrier for general digitization initiatives, thus decreasing the demand for digitization and negatively impact general IT service providers, the main suppliers of digital goods and services. A difference-in-difference study examines how passages of SBNLs impact the employment of general IT service providers. Overall, the dissertation highlights a) the importance of cybersecurity labor in leveraging cybersecurity infrastructure, b) the business value of innovation in cybersecurity as an area that is predominantly believed to be costly but not value-generating, and c) the broader economic impacts of cybersecurity legislation. In doing so, the dissertation covers a wide range of institutional entities that both shape and are impacted by the cybersecurity ecosystem