IT Diffusion Stages in the Network Era of Chinese Companies

One of our recent studies revisited Nolan’s stages theory on IT growth in the context of Chinese companies and concluded that IT spending and learning with regard to IT management are not as tightly linked as is implied in Nolan\u27s stages theory. The study also revealed that aggregate IT spending can be better explained by a technology diffusion process on the population level. Based on the findings, in this paper, we re-consider Chinese companies’ IT spending growth pattern, and in turn, their IT application history over the past 20 years from a perspective of IT diffusion stages, highlighting the special characteristics of the network/Internet era. We project that the IT diffusion process in China’s Network Era would experience four stages and has currently reached the third. Also, we propose some important issues to be further addressed

Assortment Size and Performance of Online Sellers: An Inverted U-Shaped Relationship

This paper investigates the role of assortment size in sellers’ performance in the e-commerce context, which has been primarily associated with lowered search costs and switching costs. However, in contrast to the findings in the literature, our theoretical analysis postulates an inverted U-shaped association, showing that performance of online sellers increases and then decreases as the assortment size becomes larger. The nonlinear effect can be effectively explained by the interplay between the benefits derived from simultaneous consumer utility and the liabilities derived from the competition-intensifying effect. Additionally, the optimal level of assortment size is reduced when market density or product uncertainty is high. Using a data set of 10,000 online sellers from a large e-commerce platform, our hypotheses concerning the inverted U-shaped curve and moderation effects of market density and product uncertainty are statistically supported. Our research contributes to the assortment literature by revealing the special effects of assortment size in the online retailing context, and provides practical implications for online sellers’ assortment planning and optimization under both general settings and specific conditions

Diffusion and Evaluation of E-Government Systems: A Field Study in China

As IT/IS application in governmental organizations gains more and more attention from both academics and practitioners in China, the diffusion of e-government systems has become one of the central research issues in this fast growing economy. In this paper, we follow a conceptual model consisting of two dimensions to evaluate the IT/IS application status of Chinese governments. With a field study conducted in a local government in Beijing, the capital of China, we utilize the model to determine the e-government development level in this administrative district. Furthermore, a behavioral research model for analyzing the factors influencing e-government systems evaluation in the Chinese cultural context is proposed based on classical IT/IS adoption theories. In the light of survey data, the relationships between ease of use, usefulness, fitness, and user evaluation towards egovernment systems are validated, providing us with more in-depth understanding about the characteristics and process of e-government diffusion in such Chinese organizations

Adoption and Penetration of e-Government Systems: Conceptual Model and Case Analysis based on Structuration Theory

The study of IT/IS adoption has by far largely relied on social psychological theories which lack the capability to explain why and how systems continue to be used after they are adopted. Incorporating Structuration Theory from the sociology realm, this paper proposes a “structure-pattern” conceptual model for analyzing the adoption and application practice of e-Government systems from an organizational level perspective. Based on this model, a case study with regard to the practice of an e-Government application in Chaoyang District of Beijing City is conducted, so as to validate the interpretive ability of the model, as well as to reveal the evolution process of typical e-Government applications. Results from this case study may provide helpful insights for related practice. It is also demonstrated that Structuration Theory based Concepts and the case study methodology are promising for tackling the long existing difficulties in the traditional IT/IS research

Continued Use Of Intra-Organizational Blogs: Impacts Of Habits, Network Externalities, And Ranking

Enterprise 2.0 applications, such as blogging systems, are increasingly prevailing in corporate contexts. As intra-organizational blogs are expected to provide a new approaching to building a flexible intra-organizational networking platform which could effectively facilitate knowledge sharing, it is worthwhile to address why and how the employees may accept a blogging system and keep blogging continually. Drawing upon the existing literature, this paper proposes a conceptual model which suggests that the continued use of internal blogging among employees is jointly driven by the forces of habituation and network externalities, while these forces can be shaped by managerial incentives such as a ranking mechanism. To empirically test the proposed model, actual usage data are collected from the internal blogging platform of a large Chinese company, so as to measure all the related constructs. Statistical results from a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis illustrate that the model effectively explains the continued use of corporate internal blogging systems. By using the actual record data obtained from an in-practice system, our study manages to avoid the self-report bias which inevitably perplexes conventional survey-based research. We believe that the findings of this paper would contribute to the literature of Enterprise 2.0 user behavior on both theoretical and methodological perspectives, while providing helpful practical insights for better promoting the use of blogging systems in corporate contexts

Will You “Dashang”? Effects of Social Signals in Online Pay-What-You-Want

Dashang, as a new form of the pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing paradigm, has emerged on social media platforms, especially in China. In the settings of Dashang, consumers are free to pay any amount to the authors or broadcasters after they have consumed some information goods. Compared with traditional offline scenes, Dashang has incorporated more social elements and platform engagements. However, it remains unelucidated what are the critical factors that motivate users to pay. In this paper, we investigate whether and how social signals, such as the disclosed information about the volume of paid people, may influence consumers’ willingness to pay under Dashang. An ambivalent framework is proposed, suggesting that such social signals may have both positive and negative effects on voluntary payment. The manuscript is to present the theoretical development of the research, aiming to reveal the benefits and liabilities of the social signal disclosure mechanism

“GROWTH OF THE FITTER”: EVOLUTIONARY GROWTH PATHS AND FIRM SIZE OF START-UPS IN E-MARKETS

Existing research related to firm growth has not paid sufficient attention to the growth paths of online stores in e-markets. The linkage between growth path and firm size has not been built up. This paper aims to investigate evolutionary trajectories and their effects on firm size. Theoretically, conceptually define three types of distinguishable paths, namely the convergent, tepid, and sustained paths. We then propose related theoretical hypotheses that reflect the impacts of different types of growth paths on the resulting firm size. To empirically validate the proposed hypotheses, we applied the trajectory analysis method with a novel indicator, the relative expansion rate, based on a data set that consists of 5,582 online stores on Taobao.com, the largest e-commerce platform in the world. Testing results largely support our hypotheses and suggest that the sustained growth path is the ideal mode nascent online sellers should struggle for, since it is significantly positively related to the firm size that the sellers can achieve. To achieve their goal of firm expansion, new online sellers should aggressively pursue opportunities in the short term, which is a reflection of the “the growth of the fitter” principle. Our findings also suggest that E-commerce platforms may attempt to facilitate the sustained growth path of sellers through including growth path analysis in the evaluation system of online stores

Providing a Service for Interactive Online Decision Aids through Estimating Consumers\u27 Incremental Search Benefits

Consumer information search has been a focus of research nowadays, especially in the context of online business environments. One of the research questions is to determine how much information to search (i.e., when to stop searching), since extensive literature on behavior science has revealed that consumers often search either “too little” or “too much”, even with the help of existing interactive online decision aids (IODAs). In order to address this issue, this paper introduces a new approach to IODAs with effective estimation of the incremental search benefits. In doing so, the approach incorporates two important aspects into consideration, namely point estimation and distribution estimation, so as to make use of the relevant information by combining both current and historical facts in reflecting the behavioral patterns of the consumers in search. Moreover, experiments based on data provided by Netflix illustrate that the proposed approach is effective and advantageous over existing ones