SOCIAL NETWORKS AND CONTRACT ENFORCEMENT IN IT OUTSOURCING

Most prior research on Information Technology Outsourcing(ITO) has characterized the dominant governance modes as either ‘Formal’ or ‘Relational,’ which rely on stringent assumptions of perfect foresight or about the extent to which one party can punish unilateral deviations by the other. We propose a third alternative in addition to dyadic measures of inter-firm reputation. The reputation of an actor may be associated with how the firm is positioned in a network, which in turn influences how information about a particular actor flows within the network. Such aspects of structural embeddedness suggest a role in predicting characteristics of inter-firm exchange. The network capital offers a measure to mitigate the uncertainty associated the nature of service outsourced and the service provider. The network of trading partners enables a community enforcement of contracting terms by providing safeguards that may not be offered by traditional measures of formal or relational governance. Based on a large dataset of publicly announced ITO arrangements, we examine the role that structural embeddedness can play in predicting contract duration. Our preliminary results are very encouraging. We find evidence suggesting that network position does matter in predicting contract structure over and above the traditional economic variables

“Maybe You Should Talk to Someone”: The Role of Online Communities on Mental Healthcare

Online Health Communities like YouTube offer mental health patients an alternative channel to learn about mental illnesses, the treatment path to follow, and to share their experiences. For many patients who are reluctant to seek professional help, a video on mental health uploaded by a content creator may serve as a substitute for a counsellor. Our work aims to develop an understanding of the relationship between language formality and social support and provide normative guidelines for content creators on social media platforms. Using two transformer-based deep learning classification models, we determine the degree of language formality or informality present in the content, and three dimensions of social support in the comments. We then utilize propensity score estimation to establish the causal effect of (in)formality on the dimensions of social support for 994 videos and 3,10,157 comments. Our findings indicate that informal speech increases emotional support, leading to better health outcomes

Democratizing Knowledge Creation Through Human-AI Collaboration in Academic Peer Review

In the rapidly evolving landscape of academic research, artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to revolutionize traditional academic peer review processes and knowledge evaluation systems. We believe that the growing collaboration between humans and AI will disrupt how academics assess scholarly manuscripts and disseminate published works in a way that facilitates the closing of gaps among diverse scholars as well as competing scholarly traditions. Such human-AI collaboration is not a distant reality but is unfolding before us, in part, through the development, application, and actual use of AI, including language learning models (LLMs). This opinion piece focuses on the academic peer review process. It offers preliminary ideas on how human-AI collaboration will likely change the peer review process, highlights the benefits, identifies possible bottlenecks, and underscores the potential for democratizing academic culture worldwide

Understanding the organization of managed service providers: an analysis of customer satisfaction and contracting in markets for hosted IT services

textThis dissertation looks at several facets of the application service provider business model. Application service providers are companies who provide software capabilities for multiple organizations over the Internet. Though the ASP model has the potential to fundamentally transform the manner in which IT services are provided to firms, to date the ASPs have not been successful in attracting a large client base. My dissertation explores research issues arising from the ASP business model and can offer insights into the survival and future viability of ASPs. In my work I combine insights from the principal-agent literature in emphasizing incentive compatibility of the contract, the transaction cost literature in outlining the need for ex post adaptation, and literature on customer satisfaction that emphasizes the importance of understanding customer expectations and performance evaluations. One of the implications from this work is that negative evaluations such as post usage disconfirmation have a higher magnitude of effect on customer satisfaction outcomes than positive evaluations of service provider performance. Another implication is that users expectations are more important in making satisfaction assessments than their experiences with similar services. I also draw upon the transactions cost economics framework of Bajari and Tadelis (2002) and look at the role of ex post adaptability of ASP services as a need for designing flexible contract forms. Another contribution is to look at multitask agency issues underlying the application service provider business model, which establishes that the optimal contract should a low powered incentive contract in order not to induce task distortionInformation, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM

Can Outsourcing of Information Technology Foster Innovations in Client Organizations? An Empirical Analysis

There is a substantial body of literature on information technology (IT) outsourcing. However, little is known about employing IT outsourcing to generate innovation. In this paper, we articulate the ex ante as well as ex post contracting challenges that could preclude firms from realizing such business value through outsourcing. We develop and test a model linking innovation in IT outsourcing (process innovation and service innovation) to two complementary solutions to the contractual problems: credible commitments and contingent control rights. Alternative empirical estimation approaches support the basic thesis that contractual solutions are complementary in their association with enhanced innovation performance. Our study suggests that portfolios of complementary contractual provisions need to simultaneously address ex ante and ex post hazards through contract design in the outsourcing of innovative tasks. Theoretical and practical implications are explicated

Contractual Provisions to Mitigate Holdup: Evidence from Information Technology Outsourcing

T he complexity and scope of outsourced information technology (IT) demands relationship-specific investments from vendors, which, when combined with contract incompleteness, may result in underinvestment and inefficient bargaining, referred to as the holdup problem. Using a unique data set of over 100 IT outsourcing contracts, we examine whether contract extensiveness, i.e., the extent to which firms and vendors can foresee contingencies when designing contracts for outsourced IT services, can alleviate holdup. While extensively detailed contracts are likely to include a greater breadth of activities outsourced to a vendor, task complexity makes it difficult to draft extensive contracts. Furthermore, extensive contracts may still be incomplete with respect to enforcement. We then examine the role of nonprice contractual provisions, contract duration, and extendibility terms, which give firms an option to extend the contract to limit the likelihood of holdup. We also validate the ex post efficiency of contract design choices by examining renewals of contracting agreements