Organizing Digital Platforms and Customer Needs for Digital Service Innovation

Digital organizations have become highly dependent on digital platforms and customer needs as key resources for digital service innovation. These resources in the competitive environment are making and shaping innovation of digital services because, though external, they remain central to digital organizations’ strategic innovation and competitiveness. Yet, how and why organizing these resources influences digital service innovation is under-explained in the literature. This paper, based on an empirical study and grounded theory methodology, addresses this limitation. It explains that digital service innovation occurs through two complementary types of organizing, namely: foundational knowledge organizing by combining digital platforms and customer needs, leading to compound and technical knowledge; and applied knowledge organizing by creating applications, surpassing customer needs, improvising new solutions, and relating with customers, leading to original, transcendent, rapid, and renewed knowledge. The theoretical contributions of this explanation are discussed along with its practical and future research implications

The Role of Handheld Computers in Controlling Inter-Organizational Data Transactions

In spite of prior extensive research on the role of information systems (IS) in controlling interorganizational transactions, very little has been said about the role of handheld computers in inter-organizational control. The literature on handheld computers suggests that their facilities of mobility and connectivity engender usability patterns that are significantly different from those related to static and bulkier computers. Yet, the IS field lacks elaborate models explaining the role of handheld computers in inter-organizational control. This paper draws upon the philosophical assumptions of transactions costs theory to analyze this role. Four scenarios resulting from this analysis are appropriation and institutionalization of technology, and interaction and comprehension between the organizations. It further synthesizes these scenarios to propose four socio-technical systems of control that make electronic data transactions with handheld computers efficient. It argues that handheld computers supplant bureaucratic control, and engender more diverse and resilient systems of inter-organizational control. These roles will require IS researchers to rethink the sufficiency of traditional mechanisms of control suitable for efficient inter-organizational transactions, and induce the next wave of research on the control of electronic data transactions with inter-organizational IS

The Form, Function and Materiality of Portable IT in Inter-Organizational Control

Extant explanations of inter-organizational (IO) control are based on functional assumptions of information technology (IT) at the expense of structural assumptions. By focusing on structural assumptions, this paper explains how and why the formal and material properties of portable IT shape IO control. Based on analysis of portable IT mediation between a government agency and traders for tax administration, it was found that portable IT, with the support of the IO structure, reduces IO control. This occurs because portable IT invites users to subvert its connectivity and visibility with the support of the IO structure. Portable IT and IO structures are countervailing or generative depending on contingent conditions such as legislation, shared goals, and the imperative character of technology. The paper makes three main knowledge contributions: structural tensions between portable IT and IO relations; portable IT’s structure and relation; technological, human and IO agencies. Research and practical implications are discussed

The Implementation of G2B Inter-Organizational Information Systems: A Dialectical Design Perspective

Although the interactions between information technology and the context of government-to-business relations challenge the implementation of information systems, the challenges are currently under-researched. Therefore, this paper analyzes the mutual shaping between technology integration and the context. Based on an empirical study of the deployment of electronic cash registers for value-added tax administration, the analysis explains how government-business dialectics inform the design of relations between institutional, technological and organizational factors. The explanations lead to the argument for a dialectical design perspective on implementation that facilitates a systematic comprehension of (1) the inducements of design; (2) the relationships between the factors as design qualities; (3) the real and perceptual characteristics that define the soundness of the system; and (4) the paradigmatic distinctions between institution-organization design, organization-technology redesign, and functionality design of technology. This perspective leads the conceptualization of implementation in this context, and overcomes the limitations associated with the notable existing perspectives

Smartphone Appropriation and Knowledge Retention in Technology-Mediated Learning

Digitization of learning activities has introduced some notable improvements as well as some significant knowledge retention impairments. Extant theories of knowledge retention are dominated by instrumental and cognitive approaches. Relatively less attention has been paid to the smartphone appropriation which includes instrumental and cognitive approaches but transcends them. This research adopts the smartphone appropriation approach to model antecedents of knowledge retention in the context of technology-mediated learning. It synthesizes user-invited actions based on technology design, knowledge retention, looping, and unlearning. The data analysis and model testing primarily confirm smartphone appropriation in knowledge retention. Complexity of technology usage in itself does not cause an increase in cognitive load. Cognitive load increases because of the combination of smartphone appropriation and extraneous cognitive load. The proposed appropriation model of knowledge retention complements the extant ones. The theoretical contributions are discussed with their research and practical implications

An Organizational Communication Approach to Information Security

Organizations thrive on efficient information management systems as they support activities. Hence, these systems need to be protected from attacks that threaten their existence and use. Although non-technical information security ideas have been espoused by researchers, they have excluded the role of organizational communication. As such, this study explains information security from an organizational communication perspective. Drawing upon a framework of discourse and organizational change, we analyze an empirical case of how information security in an organization is implicated by communicative actions, deep structures, and communication traits. The analysis reveals that (1) prevention of security breaches is achieved by structures of domination and clarity in communicative action mediated by a reserved communication trait; and (2) response to information security breaches is achieved by structures of signification and legitimation, inter-departmental collaboration, and knowledge-rich communication mediated by an outspoken communication trait. Implications of these insights for theory and practice are discussed

Mobile Banking Adoption in the United States: Adapting mobile banking features from low - income countries

This is a work-in-progress research paper on Mobile Banking (mBanking) in the USA that draws upon mBanking deployment successes in low-income countries. The research investigates mBanking adoption at a large (over 24,000 students) university in the southeast United States, with plans to collect data from low-income countries (Ghana, Kenya, and Ethiopia). The completed study will compare the results from the USA to those in low-income countries with a view to developing a theoretical framework that compares US adoption patterns to those in low-income countries. The paper has three objectives: identification of the core mBanking features evidenced in the dominant mBanking solutions within low-income countries, identification of a theoretical framework for mBanking use, and an empirical study to understand the adoption of mBanking in the US as contrasted to its adoption in the low-income countries. We borrow from Internet banking studies and adapt a theoretical framework for mBanking use. We conduct surveys and interviews to empirically test our theoretical model. We identify common mBanking features from solution providers in low-income countries and apply it to our target population in the US. In January 2011 the United States’ Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as a major part of its economic inclusion campaign to reach out to the unbanked and under-banked communities, sponsored nine banks to launch economic inclusion program for the seventeen million unbanked and forty-three million under-banked residents in the United States (Corporation 2011). Students are part of these sixty million people that make up the unbanked and under-banked US residents. Students aren’t building the credit history needed to get loans and often are unable to take advantage of the less costly forms of financial products. There are similarities between low-income countries and the unbanked and under-banked communities in the US. Hence, this study looks at common mBanking features in low - income countries and tests to see their likely adoption in the US

Technology Media, Service Innovation and the Shaping of Executive Cognition

The upsurge of information and communication technology innovations around the world has induced the establishment of many technology enterprises, mostly small-medium, that focus on service innovation. Due to the materiality of technology to this enterprise genre, its executive is significantly shaped by technology media, but explanations of technological shaping are low. This paper seeks to address this gap through a study informed by critical realism and media ecology. It argues that executive cognition is shaped because ICT media and service innovation imperatives combine to generate executive internalizations; and it is shaped by service innovation driven internalizations of technology media functions. The paper also discusses theoretical, research and practical implications based on these arguments

A Framework for the Analysis of Coordination in Global Software Development

This paper attempts a conceptualization of coordination in Global Software Development (GSD) by arguing that distribution is a significant conditioner of software development that engenders distance-related, socio-cultural and technological conditioners. It is proposed that the core organising dimensions on which coordination analysis in GSD should focus are people, processes, information, technology and the interactions between them. It is also argued that these dimensions are characterized by process interdependencies, interpersonal and interunit conflicts, information uncertainties and equivocalities, technology representations, and their interrelations. The final argument is that the management of the dimensions ’ characteristics – which defines coordination – will be conditioned by distribution, and that the awareness of this conditioning must be central in coordination analysis. The resultant is an analytical framework that will hopefully proffer a theoretical foundation for research on coordination in GSD