Sharing Yet Caring - Mitigating Moral Hazard in Access-Based Consumption through IS-Enabled Value Co-Capturing with Consumers

The quest for creating smart and sustainable cities entails various substantial challenges, such as environmental degradation and a shortage of space. To negotiate these hurdles, innovative approaches must be implemented. A key aspect in this regard is the shared use of resources via forms of access-based consumption. Owing to advances in the digitalization of contemporary societies, these concepts have recently attracted both consumer and scholarly interest. However, the digitally enabled separation of ownership and use brings along the risk of moral hazard by consumers using resources in careless or wasteful ways, which is detrimental to the sustainability of the overall system. In this study, the authors conceptualize and empirically investigate how these adverse effects can be mitigated by applying the potentials of connectivity and digital data to enable users to participate economically while acting favorably from a collective perspective. The results of the quasi-experimental research design, situated in a carsharing context and comprising data records of 2,983 bookings, indicate that this form of value co-capturing with consumers can significantly motivate users to alter their behavior. From these findings, the authors derive important implications for research on the sustainability of digital business eco-systems in the specific context of smart cities

Does value-based management facilitate managerial decision-making? An analysis of divestiture decisions

While recent studies indicate that value-based management (VBM) helps owners in aligning managerial interests (i.e., decision-influencing role), little evidence is provided for its support in managerial decision-making (i.e., decision-facilitating role). We investigate whether the depth of VBM implementation and contextual factors may determine VBM’s decision-facilitating role. We investigate our research question on a dataset of 1,774 divestitures by European firms between 2005 and 2016. Divestitures allow for the analysis of managerial decision-making in situations where managerial self-interest is less pronounced and, thus, where VBM’s decision-facilitating role can be differentiated from its decision-influencing role. Our empirical results indicate that VBM implementation down to the business-unit level is positively associated with divestiture returns, while we find no such effect if VBM implementation is limited to the corporate level. Further empirical tests indicate that this positive association is contingent on a high dispersion of the costs of capital across a firm’s business portfolio. In sum, our study indicates that VBM can facilitate managerial decision-making when firms consider its depth of implementation and firm-specific information needs

Digital Innovation Units: An Empirical Investigation of Performance Implications

Digital innovation is both a necessary and a challenging endeavor for most firms. To achieve progress in this regard, firms across contexts increasingly set up digital innovation units (DIUs). Despite its popularity in practice, the prospects of this initiative are to date unclear. Building upon dynamic capabilities theory, we hypothesize the performance implications of DIUs and employ panel data regressions to a longitudinal and cross-industry data-set to investigate our predictions. We find that DIUs increase performance and that this effect is strengthened by the presence of digital ventures in the industry as well as the degree to which the industry relies on tangible assets. Our additional analyses provide a nuanced perspective on the implications of DIU establishments. On the base of these findings, we derive important implications for IS research about digital innovation and transformation as well as DIUs and provide recommendations for managerial practice

Can the Balanced Scorecard Help in Designing Conference Calls? The Effect of Balanced Information Composition on the Cost of Capital

Most recent studies on conference calls focus on the costs for firms that can arise from the calls' open nature. We study the benefits of conference calls and hypothesize that firms could use the balanced scorecard concept as a framework for presenting the information (i.e. balanced information composition) in conference calls to lower the cost of capital. Our results show a negative association between a more balanced information composition in conference calls and a firm's cost of capital. Additional tests substantiate that the effect of such a balanced information composition on the cost of capital is driven by a reduction in information asymmetry. Overall, the findings suggest that firms can benefit from the balanced scorecard concept by using it as a framework for preparing their conference calls

Top management team characteristics and digital innovation:Exploring digital knowledge and TMT interfaces

On their journey toward digital transformation, industrial firms need to embrace digital innovation. The top management team (TMT) is expected to set the course for digital innovation, which is a challenging endeavour given the novel and cross-functional nature of digital innovation. We draw on role theory to make sense of emerging role requirements for the TMT and combine this view with upper echelon theory to hypothesize on the specific TMT characteristics that are needed for digital innovation. We first theorize that firms could benefit from TMT digital knowledge. Second, we argue that the effective utilization of TMT digital knowledge can be fostered at internal TMT interfaces, such as between the chief executive officer (CEO), respectively a chief digital officer (CDO), and other top managers. Finally, we consider the TMT hierarchical structure as a contextual factor in the stimulation of TMT integration processes by integrative CEOs and CDOs. We employ panel data regressions to a longitudinal dataset of US industrial firms and find a positive relation between TMT digital knowledge and digital innovation, on average. We additionally find evidence for the integrative roles of CEOs and CDOs. However, our findings also indicate that the CDO's integrating role can be hampered by a strong hierarchical structure in the TMT

Entering the Digital Era – The Impact of Digital Technology-related M&As on Business Model Innovations of Automobile OEMs

Digital technologies have reached the sphere of industrial-age, primarily physical industries, thus forcing incumbent firms to digitally innovate their business models. Employing a longitudinal dataset of the world’s largest automobile manufacturers from 2000 to 2013, we found empirical evidence of a positive effect of digital technology–related mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on digital business model innovativeness. Moreover, this effect is enhanced by previous non-digital M&A experience, a diversified M&A history, as well as early experience with digital technology–related M&As. Consequently, our findings reveal that OEMs acquiring complementary and heterogeneous external knowledge on digital technologies and possessing the absorptive capacity to integrate as well as commercialize this type of knowledge are better prepared to master the digital transformation of their business. Furthermore, we find indications of a positive influence of digital business model innovations on the expected future firm performance of automobile manufacturers, thus substantiating the importance of digital transformation

Value-based Management and Merger & Acquisition Returns:A Multi-level Contingency Model

Whereas the performance effects of value-based management (VBM) have been intensively addressed in previous research, little is known regarding whether-and which-specific managerial decisions are improved by VBM. In this study, we take advantage of merger and acquisition (M&A) decisions that allow us to analyze a specific managerial decision with a direct assessment by the capital market. Moreover, to better grasp the underlying mechanisms of VBM, we consider potential contingency factors that may affect the relationship between VBM and M&As. Specifically, we examine the risk of managerial self-interest in M&A decisions that may be influenced by a firm's internal, industry- and country-specific contexts. We gather VBM data of firms from the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the MSCI Europe Index between 2005 and 2011, and combine the data with deal data resulting in a sample of 2787 deals. Our empirical results do not indicate a positive direct effect from VBM on M&A returns. However, we find that VBM leads to superior M&A returns in the presence of contingency factors that increase the risk for self-interested managerial decisions

Board experience and value creation in cross-border acquisitions:The role of acquirer and target country institutions

Our study investigates the effects of board acquisition experience on value creation in cross-border acquisitions and the dependence of this relationship on acquirer and target country institutions. We draw on cross-border acquisition research and institution-based corporate governance research to argue that the effect of board acquisition experience depends on the institutional characteristics of the acquirer and target countries and on cultural differences between these two countries. Based on 1775 cross-border acquisitions of U.S. and European acquirers, we show a positive effect of board acquisition experience on the announcement returns of cross-border acquisitions, which is even stronger when the target country’s takeover regulations are less friendly and when the target and acquirer countries are culturally more distant

Environmental management control systems:Exploring the economic motivation behind their implementation

Environmental management control systems (EMCSs) effectively integrate environmental objectives into corporate decision-making, yet implementation costs may discourage their adoption. To understand firms’ economic motivation for implementing EMCSs, we theorize that internal and external factors drive both their economic performance and the decision to implement EMCSs. We argue that the environmental costs induced by firms’ pollution intensity drive the economic benefits of EMCSs as well as their implementation. Additionally, we suggest that this relationship depends on society's environmental awareness. By introducing an archival measure of EMCS implementation, we test these hypotheses on a longitudinal dataset of European and US firms. Our results support the argument that environmental costs drive EMCSs’ economic benefits and implementation. We also find that environmental awareness in societies influences the impact of environmental costs. Our study highlights the importance of environmental awareness in society for aligning environmental and economic goals and thus to increase corporate environmentalism.</p