Reference-Dependent Preferences in Multi-Issue Bargaining

Game theoretic bargaining models usually assume parties to have exogenously given preferences from the beginning of a negotiation on. Preferences in these models do not depend on the history of offers made during a negotiation. This paper argues that preferences are based on issue-wise reference points changing during the bargaining process as result of the counterpartys offers

Market Engineering: An Interdisciplinary Research Challenge

Market engineering is making markets work. Markets are information processing and information producing information systems which mediate allocation of resources within or between organizations. Setting up and operating a market in a way that it works effectively and efficiently is an art and a science. This paper outlines challenges in this interdisciplinary field of research and presents frameworks for assessing markets

Crowd Labor Markets as Platform for IS Research: First Evidence from Electronic Markets

Crowd labor markets such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) have emerged as popular platforms where researchers can inexpensively run web-based experiments. Recent work even suggests that MTurk can be used to run large-scale field experiments such as prediction markets in which participants interact synchronously in real-time. Besides technical issues, several methodological questions arise and lead to the question of how results from MTurk and laboratory experiments compare. In this work we provide first insights into running market experiments on MTurk and compare the key property of markets, information efficiency, to a laboratory setting. The results are mixed at best. On MTurk, information aggregation took place less frequently than in the lab. Our results suggest that MTurk participants cannot handle as much complexity as laboratory participants in time-pressured, synchronized experiments

Individualized Quality-Differentiated Services: A Market Model and Comparison of Negotiation Mechanisms

Individualized services are common in distributed computing systems: Consumers demand custom solutions and service providers tailor their offering. In negotiating a service contract, providers and consumers frequently fail in identifying the optimal combination of non-functional properties and price. A key reason is that negotiators simultaneously try to create and Claim value leading to strategic bidding and inefficient outcomes. We present a theoretical comparison of three negotiation mechanisms in the scenario of self-interested, rational agents bilaterally negotiating over Service quality and price. Two mechanisms are stylized representations of mechanisms commonly used in theory and practice, one is newly introduced. The mechanisms are characterized in terms of truthfulness of agents, efficiency of outcomes, and distribution of welfare. The analysis is an extension to the field of bilateral multi-attribute negotiations, relevant for researchers and practitioners designing markets for individualized IT services and for human and computer agents acting in such markets

FINANCING PROJECTS THROUGH ENTERPRISE CROWDFUNDING: UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF PROPOSAL CHARACTERISTICS ON FUNDING SUCCESS

Crowdfunding is a widespread approach for funding creative projects through an open call for support over the internet. Recently, companies have started to adopt this approach to engage employees into their innovation management processes, calling it enterprise crowdfunding. Employees publish own proposals for innovation projects on an internal crowdfunding site and invest companyendowed money on proposals of others. Although the underlying mechanism remains the same, enterprise crowdfunding exhibits distinct differences to crowdfunding on the internet such as employees investing corporate money rather than their own. With this study, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of funding success in enterprise crowdfunding. For this, we build on data from one of the hitherto largest enterprise crowdfunding implementations run at IBM in 2014. Employees submitted 204 ideas for internal mobile apps and IBM endowed four million US dollars to staff members. We investigate the role of idea and description characteristics for funding success. While idea characteristics such as novelty, relevance and feasibility do not explain proposal success, the degree of elaboration and the extent of follow-on costs do. Description characteristics affect the significant idea characteristics and, thus, indirectly funding success

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN DIGITAL SERVICE ENCOUNTERS: THE ROLE OF MEDIA RICHNESS, SOCIAL PRESENCE, AND CULTURAL DISTANCE

Digital technologies are increasingly used for communication between service personnel and custom-ers. These digital service encounters bring along two changes: First, diverse digital channels such as text, audio, or video communication vary in the perceived media richness and perceived social presence of the counterpart. Second, digital channels allow service providers to employ service personnel remote from the customer and to serve a geographically wider, potentially global market. In this, there is a rise of intercultural service encounters. Therefore, we investigate how customer satisfaction is influenced by the type of digital communication channel and by cultural differences between service personnel and customer. We build a theoretical model on the effect of communication channels and cultural differences on customer satisfaction in digital service encounters. Afterwards, we collect data through an internet-based survey including a simulation of a digital service encounter and cultural differences. We use the data and structural equation modelling to test our theoretical model. Our results indicate that perceived media richness and perceived social presence play a substantial role for customer satisfaction. Contrary to prior literature on offline service encounters, our results suggest that perceived cultural distance does not affect customer satisfaction in digital service encounters

How to Conquer One’s Weaker Self: Do Autonomy Affordance Increase Goal Performance and Well-being?

Positive self-tracking technologies support users in conducting personal analytics and, hence, aim to foster their users’ goal attainment and well-being. A driver for these two is the experience of autonomy which can be afforded by self-tracking IS. In this paper, we examine the influence of autonomy affordance provided by self-tracking IS as well as their actualization on goal performance and well-being. For this purpose, empirical data was collected in a field experiment using a self-developed mobile self-tracking application. The results of a path analysis indicate that the mere provision of autonomy affordance is positively linked to well-being and that their actualization positively affects goal performance, in turn improving well-being. Contributing to design knowledge in positive computing and self-tracking IS as well as Affordance Theory, we find that the design of self-tracking IS should provide autonomy affordance to further both their users\u27 goal performance and well-being

myStress: Unobtrusive Smartphone-Based Stress Detection

Life is becoming increasingly stressful in many aspects, e.g., due to technology-induced stress and stress in organizational context. The assessment of stress experienced by individuals enables stress management and prevention with the long-term aim to avoid psychological and physiological harm from excessive stress. Commonly this assessment is performed through questionnaires on perceived stress or physiological measurements evaluating body reactions to stress. We explore a third assessment method: Our design science approach aims to unobtrusively assess perceived stress based on smartphone data while waiving additional devices and explicit user input. The presented design artefact, myStress, reads 36 hardware and software sensors to infer users’ perceived stress levels. A prototypical instantiation of myStress for the Android platform is distributed to test users. For evaluation purposes, the stress level additionally is determined by a questionnaire consisting of the Perceived Stress Scale. By analyzing data from test users, we gain first insights into the feasibility of unobtrusive, continuous stress assessment considering exclusively data from smartphone sensors. We find that several sensors seem to correlate with perceived stress, e.g., the frequency of switching the display on/off. For future research, behavioral and situational prevention measures can build on this method of unobtrusive stress assessment