Digitally Enhancing Customer Agility and Competitive Activity: How Firms Use Information Technology to Sense and Respond to Market Opportunities in Hypercompetitive Environments

This dissertation studies how information technology (IT) facilitates customer agility and, in turn, competitive activity. Customer agility refers to the extent to which a firm is able to sense and respond quickly to customer-based opportunities for innovation and competitive action. As such, customer agility consists of two key dimensions: sensing and responding. We propose that IT plays a critical role in facilitating a firm\u27s customer agility - in particular, its sensing and responding components. The Internet has spawned a rich set of tools that allow firms to engage in rich, interactive dialogues with a broad and diverse customer base, thereby enhancing firms\u27 ability to sense and respond to shifting customer needs and preferences. Although academics and practitioners suggest that IT is a key enabler of customer agility, we know little concerning how IT facilitates customer agility. Building on the dynamic capability literature, we propose that the \u27knowledge creating\u27 synergy derived from the interaction between a firm\u27s web-based infrastructure and its analytical ability will enhance the firm\u27s ability to sense customer-based opportunities, and the \u27process enhancing\u27 synergy obtained from the interaction between a firm\u27s coordination efforts and its level of IT integration will facilitate the firm\u27s ability to respond to those opportunities. Finally, we propose that the alignment between customer sensing capability and customer responding capability will impact the firm\u27s competitive activity. We test our model with a two-stage longitudinal research design in which we survey marketing executives of high-tech firms. Our results find that web-based (resource and user) infrastructure has a significant effect on customer sensing capability. Moreover, analytical ability positively moderates these relationships. We also find that interfunctional coordination and channel coordination both have a significant impact on customer responding capability. Furthermore, internal information systems (IS) integration positively moderates the interfunctional-response relationship, yet external IS integration does not moderate the channel-response relationship. Our results also show that varying types of alignment between customer sensing capability and customer responding capability are related to different types of competitive activity. Specifically, a higher \u27match\u27 between sensing and responding results in actions which effectively meet or address customer needs. Furthermore, customer responding capability mediates the relationship between customer sensing capability and 1) number of actions executed and 2) the speed at which firms respond to changing customer needs. Finally, we also find that agility alignment is not related to action repertoire complexity. Our results have implications for both research and practice. To our knowledge, it is the first study to conceptualize and test a comprehensive yet parsimonious research model which includes the role of IT, customer agility and competitive activity. In doing so, we contribute to the IT business value literature, dynamic capabilities research, competitive dynamics literature, and organizational innovation research. We also give managers greater insight into how they can effectively leverage IT resources when sensing and responding to their customers in turbulent environments

The role of digital infrastructures in performances of organizational agility

Organizational agility has received much attention from practitioners and researchers in Information Systems. Existing research on agility, however, often conceptualizes information systems in a traditional way, while not reflecting sufficiently on how, as a consequence of digitalization, they are turning into open systems defined by characteristics like modularity and generativity. The concept of digital infrastructures captures this shift and stresses the evolving, socio-technical nature of such systems. This thesis sees IT in large companies as digital infrastructures and organizational agility as a performance within them. In order to explain how such infrastructures can support performances of agility, a focus on the interactions between IT, information and the people using and designing them is proposed. A case study was conducted within Telco, a large telecommunications firm in the United Kingdom. It presents three projects employees regarded as agile. A critical realist ontology is applied in order to identify generative mechanisms for agility. The thesis develops a theory of agility as a performance within digital infrastructures. This contains the central generative mechanism of agilization – making an organization more agile by cultivating digital infrastructures and minding flows of information to attain an appropriate level of agility. This is supported by the related mechanisms of informatization and infrastructuralization. Moreover, the concept of bounded agility illustrates how people in large organizations do not strive for agility unreservedly, instead aiming for agility in well-defined areas that does not put the business at risk. This theory of agility and the concept of bounded agility constitute the main theoretical contributions of this thesis. It also contributes clear definitions of the terms ‘information’ and ‘data’ and aligns them to the ontology of critical realism. Finally, the proposed mechanisms contribute to an emerging middle range theory of organizational agility that will be useful for practitioners

Bio Mind and Techno Nature in the Performance of Memory: Arts-Based-Research and Human Enhancement

This paper intends to examine two recent projects Enhancing the Mind’s I and Emerging Self that address notions of self-identity, the desire for freedom of form and the greater cognitive capacities promised by neuro-enhancement technologies. It is a bid on critical evaluation of the production of the artworks; departing from an understanding that the observer is not independent of reality and that observation and experience are constructed. Consciousness is considered as resulting from the organism capacities to understand its emotions and interacting context, thus the research explores the possibilities that memory and knowledge do not reflect a real exterior world, but a concrete interior world attempting to play with possibilities to generate affect and empathy in the audiences. The text reflects on the ethical side of Human Enhancement (i.e. the potentiation of biological characteristics of Human Body) and the technologies, such as Brain Computer Interaction (BCI) or digital tattoos (tattoos that have technological interactive properties), promising a refinement of nature by technology. It raises questions surrounding memory and identity through art installation. It explores whether is it possible to translate one’s emotions directly into matter, as a memory. The result is the opening of a critical gap between the way sciences produce knowledge about the subject and the affect produced by the experience of the viewer on the installation artworks

The Concept of a Smart Action – Results from Analyzing Information Systems Literature

In recent years, the term \u27smartness\u27 has entered widespread use in research and daily life. It has emerged with various applications of the Internet of Things, such as smart homes and smart factories. However, rapid technological development and careless use of the term mean that, in information systems (IS) research, a common understanding of smartness has not yet been established. And while it is recognized that smartness encompasses more than the use of impressive information technology applications, a unified conceptualization of how smartness is manifested in IS research is lacking. To this end, we conducted a structured literature review applying techniques from Grounded Theory. We found that smartness occurs through actions, in which smart things and individuals interact, process information, and make data-based decisions that are perceived as smart. Building on these findings, we propose the concept of a \u27smart action\u27 and derive a general definition of smartness. Our findings augment knowledge about how smartness is formed, offering a new perspective on smartness. The concept of a smart action unifies and increases understanding of \u27smartness\u27 in IS research. It supports further research by providing a concept for describing, analyzing, and designing smart actions, smart devices, and smart services

The Impact of Dominant IT Infrastructure in Multi-Establishment Firms: The Moderating Role of Environmental Dynamism

Multi-establishment firms (MEFs) rely on digitized processes enabled by advanced IT infrastructure; however, environmental dynamism is a major influence on their operations. Environmental dynamism threatens the efficacy of current operations, requiring firms to evolve their processes. Firms’ IT infrastructure may catalyze or hinder their endeavors and performance as they respond to environmental dynamics. Little previous research has examined which IT infrastructure types are high-performing and whether their effects vary across environments. We investigate the impacts of IT infrastructure, examining microlevel implementation—the constitution of technical and human assets—across the establishments of a multi-establishment firm (MEF). Specifically, we use the notion of a dominant IT infrastructure to unravel the heterogeneity of IT infrastructure across establishments. We explore dominant IT infrastructures—technology, human, or both—and assess their impacts across environmental conditions. To test our hypotheses, we used a panel dataset from 2007 to 2009 comprising 355 unique firms. Our findings reveal that the impact of establishment-level IT infrastructure types on MEF performance is contingent on environmental dynamism. A technology-dominant IT infrastructure leads to greater MEF performance in less dynamic environments, while a human-dominant IT infrastructure leads to greater MEF performance in more dynamic environments. The MEF performance is enhanced through a combination of technology- and human-dominant IT infrastructures in more dynamic environments. We conclude by discussing the theoretical insights and managerial implications of our findings

Using Information Systems in Innovation Networks: Uncovering Network Resources

In order to innovate, firms progressively combine complementary abilities through forming networks. Such innovation networks represent temporary assemblages of partners that, in collaboration, pursue new product developments. Existing theories suggest that successful participation in such networks depends on firms’ having certain firm-level dynamic capabilities (i.e., skill in sensing the network and its environment, learning about the network, and coordinating and integrating individual resources across the network). In this paper, we argue that firms also have to develop particular networking capabilities (i.e., they have to understand who they are partnering with, what each partner can contribute, and how exactly each partner can cooperate with others across the network). We show that inter-organizational information systems (IS) are vital for facilitating the development of these networking capabilities. IS are also vital in developing unique constellations of resources (i.e., physical, human, and organizational resources) that we term IS-embedded network resources. These resources are manifested in the IS and are unique to the innovation network because they go beyond resources at the firm level. Using three innovation networks as case studies, we provide empiric evidence on how IS support networking capabilities to arrive at unique resource constellations embedded in IS and how the set of IS-embedded network resources is a determining factor for competitive advantage in innovation networks

Digital manufacturing, industry 4.0, clould computing and thing internet: Brazilian contextualization and reality

The digital era represents significant changes in the design of IT projects with an emphasis on digital infrastructure, especially in terms of investment and professional qualification, which requires, in Brazil, the creation of specific lines of financing by government development agencies. The creation of demonstration platforms could be an effective initiative to stimulate the dissemination of the concept and the establishment of partnerships between customers and suppliers of new technologies. On the other hand, and particularly for the consumer market, corporations can create new business models and modify their relationships with their consumers, users and even competitors. In fact, today, "Thing Internet" has come to significantly modify the paradigms of perception, production and distribution of the capitalist world. This article discusses, covering and understanding the main reasons for the existence of this gap between theory and practice regarding digital manufacturing and adjacencies, the perspectives of technological innovations in the digital era specifically in Brazil. Its content is the result of a bibliographical review carried out from April to June 2016