A Rejoinder to “Reconsidering Counting Articles in Ranked Venues (CARV) as the Appropriate Evaluation Criteria for the Advancement of Democratic Discourse in the IS Field”

We agree with Cuellar et al.’s (2019) main premise that, for a research field to advance, scholars must be able to openly exchange ideas. For such an open exchange to exist, the contexts and methods that evaluate scholarly output must encourage this interchange. Cuellar at al. argue that the current process for evaluating scholarly output (which they call “counting articles in ranked venues” (CARV)) creates pressures that result in a distorted discourse that inhibits the field’s growth. In this article, we extend the conversation by adding clarifications, further insights, raising questions, and providing different solutions. Specifically, for the sake of logical clarity of the ensuing debate, we separate individual research contribution (IRC) and field research discourse (FRD). We explain and clarify the pairwise relationships between CARV and IRC and between CARV and FRD in order to discuss the role of CARV or lack thereof in assessing research contribution and discourse. We posit that CARV may assess IRC but not FRD and offer insights into how to improve IRC and FRD. We provide anecdotal evidence that a CARV-free world could exist but that it would entail high agency cost. We also offer an alternative solution that could supplement or substitute CARV. We conclude that any attempt to measure IRC without adequately incorporating attributes of FRD habitat is destined to be flawed

The Politics and Power in Curriculum Introduction:An Information Management Case Study

There can be resistance to a new curriculum. Generally, resistance is a tricky subject and so are itsexplanations. Building on work about organizational effectiveness and resistance, this paper examines two theories of resistance in order to understand and explain resistance. It deals with potential difficulties in curriculum design process posed by political and organizational structural forces within a university. Conclusion and insights obtained from this study, we hope, will contribute, on one hand, to the body of organizational theory regarding innovation, change, conflict and resistance. On the other hand, this work will add to the explanations of resistance in general, and to new IM curriculum in particular. (Keyword: IS Education: Curriculum, IM Education; Research Methodology: Case study; Organizational Environment: Dynamics--Change, Power, Innovation.) This paper deals with the organizational difficulties in launching a graduate program in Information Management. The problem deserves attention specifically because there exist fields of studies and academic departments (which could be viewed as separate cost centers) that are more precisely defined and established--such as Management, Sociology, Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Management Science, Computer Science, etc., to name a few--across which the IM field spans taxonomically. Existence ofsuch departments in-or out-side the college of business, we observe, can make launching a new program in IM very vulnerable to criticism of duplicating efforts and wasting university\u27s scarce resources in times of economic downturns. In contrast to our initial thought that once we know what we want to teach we will be able to offer the program, we found that there are organizational difficulties--such as the one mentioned above. Because of its inter-disciplinary nature, an IM program (launch) puts different demands on the organizational structure of a university than any other one-discipline program would. We suspect most universities are not organized for inter-disciplinary program offerings. Of course, there are exceptions, but most universities are generally organized by strict academic disciplines, and, at the best, can offer inter-disciplinary programs that simply require students take a mix of course offerings that are serviced by separate departments. The study focuses on the resistance posed by organization structure, the nature of product, the politics of power and resource redistribution. We examine resistance theories that attempt to explain the reasons of resistance. We report the results of a study that has been conducted in the context of existing theories of resistance and conflict (Markus, 1983) and organizational politics and power (Kling, 1978). In addition, in the realm of organizational change and innovation, we draw upon the congruence hypothesis of Nadler and Tushman (1980), discussed in the next section. We propose and test two theories in order to understand and explain resistance and conflict in general, and, in particular, to new IM curriculum in a university setting. The subject university, the Our Pride University (OPU), is a 2A medium-sized state-school that is primarily a teaching institution, with significant master\u27s programs, and which mirrors numerous other US state schools in tradition, rigid departmental structure, resource scarcity, bureaucratic slow decision making process, and academic protectionism. The subject college is the College of Business which is accredited by AACSB for both MBA and Undergraduate Business programs. The OPU is a hierarchically organized, public university. As of Fall, 1992, when the proposal of a new graduate program in IM first started, and since, at least, the last decade and a half, the OPU was composed of six academic colleges administered by their respective deans: Applied Sciences, Arts & Sciences, Business, Education, Fine Arts, and Health, Physical Education, and Recreation. The five departments of the college of business are functionally organized around the following disciplines: accountancy, economics, marketing and finance, management, and information management. In addition to the above undergraduate degree programs, the College of Business also offers graduate degree programs in business administration, economics, and accountancy. From this point on, our presentation is as follows. The product proposal and its rationale are brieflydescribed, the data for resistance presented and then the assumptions are tested. The predictions from the theories are then derived for the case and contrasted with the real data from the case to accept or refute the theories

Gauging the Effect of Buyer vs. Seller Initiation of Customer Value Creation on Buyer Loyalty in Large B2B Sales Relationships

This study addresses two central questions: Is it important to determine whether the salesperson or the buyer initiates value creation in large business-to-business (B2B) selling environments? Furthermore, does the mode of initiation – buyer or seller – later influence customer attitudes toward the sales interaction? Value creation is necessary for large B2B sales situations because customized solutions often are required to meet customer needs. This empirical study compares buyer and seller initiators of value creation in B2B dealings and analyzes which actor most positively affects customer perceptions. In a study of 142 senior-level managers at buyer organizations who participated in large-sale deals, we quantitatively analyzed the relationship to identify who initiates value creation, based on the initial Net Promoter Score (NPS). Buyer managers rated seller-initiated value creation higher than buyer-initiated value creation, and seller-initiated value creation had a net positive effect on buyer attitudes and loyalty. The study concludes by offering sales managers practical strategies for enhancing buyer satisfaction, creating positive customer word-of-mouth, and engendering customer loyalty

Improving Performance in Cyclic Production Systems by Using Forced Variable Idle Setup Time

In the early 1990s, research began to show that the Japanese production theory, which espouses reduction of machine setup time as a sure way to improve production performance, may be limited. Specifically, it was found that reduction in mean setup times without any change in variance can, paradoxically, increase waiting time and work in process (WIP) in a cyclic production system. Setup time variance was demonstrated to play a central role because of the paradoxes it produced with the resulting harm to effective capacity. Subsequently, explicit formulas were derived for determining whether adding fixed forced idle time (but holding variance constant) would reduce waiting time and, if so, the optimal amount of idle time to add. However, research to date has offered little guidance to reduce setup time variance to improve waiting time. We show that a greater reduction is achievable by adding a variable idle time that is a nonincreasing function of setup time and thereby reduce the combined setup time variance. We provide explicit procedures for finding the optimal variable idle time as a function of setup time when the latter follows any finite discrete distribution. We also show how to implement our policy and show that our approach can improve waiting time even when other currently known approaches cannot.cyclic production systems, multiproduct systems, setup times, waiting times, variance effects, stochastic inventory, variance reductions, cyclic queues

Multi-Organizational Networks: Three Antecedents of Knowledge Transfer

Researchers have demonstrated that organizations operating within formal networks are more likely to experience knowledge transfer, and the associated benefits of knowledge transfer, than would organizations operating outside of a network. However, limited research attention has been given to how the established antecedents of knowledge transfer are affected by the different forms that multi-organizational networks can assume. Using two case studies, we develop six testable propositions regarding how three of the established antecedents of knowledge transfer —absorptive capacity, shared identity and causal ambiguity—would be affected by the different characteristics, which define multi-organizational network form. We discuss these propositions and raise issues of relevance for researchers and practitioners

The Role of Ambiguity in the Transfer of Knowledge Within Multi-Organizational Networks

Organizations join multi-organizational networks in part to mitigate environmental uncertainties and to access knowledge. However, the transfer of knowledge cannot be assumed simply as a function of network membership. Researchers in the area of knowledge management have identified several factors that have been found to affect the transfer of knowledge within, between, and among organizations. This chapter investigates specifically how organizational ambiguity impacts the transfer of knowledge within multi-organizational networks. The authors explore the effects of casual ambiguity, defined as the ambiguity relateaad to imputs and factors, in a multi-organizational context, and discuss the existence of a previously undefined ambiguity, the ambiguity related to outcomes or outcome ambiguity. The authors provide a discussion on why outcome ambiguity is particularly relevant when multiple organizations are engaged in a network, where the objective is access to knowledge