Journal Self-Citation IX: The Power of the Unspoken in Journal Referencing

Publication of articles in so called “reputed” journals and achieving high citation counts for the publications are becoming increasingly important in establishing the scientific achievements of individual scholars and institutions. Given that a journal’s reputation is based predominantly on the extent to which its articles are cited, some editors, reviewers, and journal publishers tend to overtly request references to their articles or journals. This is justifiably found unethical by many of us. However, we shall argue that such explicit requests for referencing is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a widespread, covert understanding among potential authors that unless they cite work of editors and/or have references to the journal where one is submitting a manuscript, the probability of getting the paper accepted for publication may suffer. This consideration is a much more powerful influence than the overt requests some may have experienced as authors. Overt, as well as covert, activities aimed at bumping up individual and journal citations is a dysfunctional result of an increasingly competitive scholarly environment, where the value of success is high, and failure is a very unpleasant option. In the short run, making the community aware of dysfunctional behaviors with respect to citations might help counteract the most blatant exertion of power. However, addressing the more covert use of power requires a more in depth look at ourselves and the way we conduct and assess scholarship. In the long run, the IS field may even need to seriously assess the extent to which our research efforts serve standards primarily internal to our field (similar to rites of other tribes) rather than delivering value to society

Exporting e-Customs to Developing Countries: a Semiotic Perspective

This paper reports on an ongoing study of an initiative to build e-Customs capabilities in eastern Africa. The EU’s customs capability building unit is trying to “export” e-Customs solutions to developing countries in order to strengthen the competiveness of companies based in these countries. Following the international development, e- Customs (with the improved control and traceability possibilities from producer to end consumer) will soon be a prerequisite for participation in international trade. The study is based on a semiotic framework for e-Customs implementations. Previous research has shown how interdependencies between the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels cause problems already within the EU. This research we are now expanding to the introduction of so called Authorized Economic Operators (AEOs) in the East African Community. Since this project has just recently started we have only limited empirical material to load our framework, but initial data shows that the African initiative is trying to implement only parts of the e-Customs solutions that are developed to fit into a different semiotic structure. We can conclude that significant challenges lay ahead in adjusting also the rest of the structure if the initiative is to be successful

How IT will challenge existing organizational forms and create Ambient organizations

IT1 is likely to be as important to the way companies will organize in the future as electricity was to the industrial revolution. IT will revolutionize entire industries and markets. IT will create new types of organizations that will surpass and outsmart traditional organizations. This has been predicted for more than a decade. But now it is happening especially in the music, newspaper and publishing industries, and shall see it even more pronounced in these sectors in the future. But it will not be limited to these industries; it will influence all types of industry and government organizations. Already today, we see many examples of innovative organizational designs, enhancing organizational effectiveness and competitiveness. The paper will briefly discuss the potential of future IT developments, and will proceed to give a short theoretical background for why we see a growth in IT-facilitated new organizational forms. A couple of interesting organizational design will be mentioned, before we proceed to making the argument that any business process in principle may be reengineered, centralized or outsourced in one way or other. Interesting examples will be presented. We suggest that future IT will have such a profound impact on organizational structure going far beyond the traditional ‘virtual organization’ that it calls for a new organizational concept, which we have chosen to label the “Ambient Organization’

IT-ledelse i et halvt århundrede

Det er først i slutningen af 60’erne, at IT begyndte at have reel økonomisk betydning for andet end en helt snæver kreds. Artiklen opdeler udviklingen i main-frame, mini/mikro og ubiquitous1 æraen, som er karakteriseret med meget forskellig teknologi, placering af IT-funktionen, vigtigste applikationer og forskellige systemudviklingsmetoder. Artiklen lancerer her et nyt begreb, ’the ambient organization’, som betegnelsen for den type organisation, som ved hjælp af IKT2 er til stede alle vegne, langt uden for sine egne mure, sine kunder og sine leverandører. Dette åbner helt nye muligheder. Afslutningsvis opsummeres, at den ledelsesmæssige udfordring først var teknologisk, senere organisatorisk og i dag er strategisk. Dette stiller nye krav til den ledelsesmæssige kompetence, og vi ser, at den økonomiske styring går fra at betragte IT-funktionen som et omkostningscenter til at se den som et selvstændigt profitcenter, der ofte outsources

The Limits of an Ostrich Policy for Resolving Dialectical Conflicts

In this paper, we analyze the introduction of the Australian Integrated Cargo System (ICS) in order to improve our understanding of eCustoms innovations in Europe, primarily Single Window services. We combine the case study with a theorization based on socially constructed change in networks. The development and diffusion of eCustoms solutions takes place within an elaborate network of businesses, government agencies, and technology providers. We focus on the ongoing dialectics during change in such a network. This means we zoom in on the constant confrontations and conflicts of both interests and understandings of contents, processes, and outcomes of change. These conflicts potential shift change in unintended and unwanted directions, resulting in perceived failure. We critically reflect on the practical lessons that surfaced from the Australian ICS-Import case, where we observed a tendency to avoid facing conflicts, ignoring them, or dismissing them as not important. Our analysis demonstrates that using a dialectic approach can provide substantial insights in eCustoms innovation. We offer a characterization of conflicts and we contribute to the discussion of eCustoms in Europe

Future Strategies for a Click-and-Mortar Bank: A Case Study of the Nordea Group

The case study describes one of the most ambitious and successful attempts of creating a Nordic based large international financial service company, capable of spearheading the transition to the digital economy. Nordea is in the midst of various transformation processes across the organisation due to several years of multiple cross boarder mergers and acquisitions, new composition of the group executive management, increasing thrives towards automation of business processes to reduce costs, and different innovations involving a change of the roles of value network partners. The focus of the study is on the future e-business challenges to the Nordea Group internally, in its collaboration with network partners, in its utilization of the largest number of on-line customers of any bank (3,1 million in 2002), and the implications for the value proposition of the Nordea Group customers

Generating Value from Open Government Data

A driving force for change in society is the trend towards Open Government Data (OGD). While the value generated by OGD has been widely discussed by public bodies and other stakeholders, little attention has been paid to this phenomenon in the academic literature. Hence, we developed a conceptual model portraying how data as a resource can be transformed to value. We show the causal relationships between four contextual, enabling factors, four types of value generation mechanisms and value. We use empirical data from 61 countries to test these relationships, using the PLS method. The results mostly support the hypothesized relationships. Our conclusion is that if openness is complemented with resource governance, capabilities in society and technical connectivity, use of OGD will stimulate the generation of economic and social value through four different archetypical mechanisms: Efficiency, Innovation, Transparency and Participation

Benefits and Barriers of University Industry Collaborations from a Researcher\u27s Perspective - Development of Formative Scales and Cluster Analysis

This article extends previous empirical research on the benefits and barriers for researchers in the field of Information Systems (IS) to engage in University-Industry Collaboration (UIC), a term that is used to describe the active engagement of a company or government agency in a joint research project with academics. The objectives and motivations of UIC have been discussed widely and controversially in the literature. We were particularly interested in the perceived benefits and barriers that influence an individual researcher to engage (or not engage) in a joint research project. An in-depth literature analysis showed that a very small number of research articles contain empirical data and that there are serious methodological issues. In order to address these issues, we collected primary data from 328 IS researchers with experience in UIC and conducted an explorative study. We developed parsimonious formative measures for the benefits and barriers of UIC and we found that academic and economic benefits positively influence the intention to conduct UIC in the future, while economic barriers negatively influence the intention to engage in UIC. A cluster analysis found five clusters (groups of researchers) that differ in their perception of benefits and barriers and the future intention to conduct UIC. However, the majority of the researchers have a very high intention to conduct UIC in the future

Unleashing the IT potential in the complex digital business ecosystem of international trade: The case of fresh fruit import to European Union

The digital ecosystem for import of goods in international trade is analyzed, in-efficiencies are identified and their possible causes are revealed. The business ecosystem is rather complex and interlocked with many actors and various rules and regulations. It is supported by a digital business infrastructure, which however is very disjointed. The communication of information among the actors involves many disconnected information systems and manual processes, which introduce delays and lower data quality. This has severe consequences in the shape and form of increased lead-time, which our case analysis of import of fresh fruit reveals is critical for the quality of the fruit. However, the coordination is difficult since information is stored in isolated information systems and only shared among few actors. The IT potential in the digital business ecosystem could be unleashed by using a state of the art integrated information infrastructure to exchange information between the actors and their information systems in real time. This potentially could ameliorate the complexity of business ecosystem and thereby be a foundation for improvements of the business processes for all import to EU including of course fruit