A Study of the Compensatory and Non-Compensatory Decision Support on the Top - 100 U.S. E-Commerce Websites

Given the explosive growth of products available on the Web, providing decision support features to consumers has become an important area of concern for both researchers and practitioners. When encountered with products with multiple attributes, consumers have been shown to use compensatory and non-compensatory decision strategies. This paper investigates the support provided by the top-100 U.S. retail websites for consumers’ execution of these strategies. The results show that while overwhelming support is provided for consumers’ execution of non-compensatory decision strategies, no such support exists for implementing compensatory strategies

Latest Trends in AI: Implications for Organizations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to transform the global economic landscape. A recent study by Price Waterhouse Cooper suggests that AI is expected to contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030 (Price Waterhouse Coopers, 2019). The goal of this abstract is to summarize six latest trends in AI and suggest implications for organizations. The field of AI has experienced two disappointing “AI Winters” in the past because it was unable to keep up with industry’s expectations. Experts believe that the time for AI has come and we don’t expect to see another AI meltdown because of increasing corporate adoption of AI, growing power of computer hardware that powers AI, and increased interest in AI from students and universities (Castellanos, 2020). Second, novel AI applications continue to emerge. Many innovative applications are being developed in consumer electronics, automobile, farming, healthcare, IT consulting, consumer retail, etc. For instance, algorithms are being used detect COVID-19. Infervision, a Chinese AI company’s AI application is used by doctors in more than 10 Chinese hospitals to detect this virus (Rosenbush, 2020a). Third, the use of AI is enabling companies to create new business models. For instance, Flip Fit, an e-commerce fashion startup adopted a business model wherein they will ship the clothes to customers who haven’t paid in advance, and customers can try what they’re interested in and pay for only what they keep (Loten, 2020). Fourth, we are seeing the emergence of many regulatory frameworks to govern AI. While GDPR and CCPA are aimed at protecting privacy and have implications for AI, the next set of regulations may be directly related to the AI models used in the real-world (Rosenbush, 2020b). The fifth trend AI is regarding the evolving AI strategy and preparedness. Companies are developing AI strategies and hiring responsible personnel; they are working with regulators proactively; and they are communicating with stakeholders on how they’re using AI in their products and services. The six trend in AI is regarding data, talent, and other challenges for AI. Some of these challenges include lack of qualified AI talent, data privacy and portability issues, difficulties in defining AI fairness, ethical issues involved in the use of certain AI technologies, and the drawbacks of current AI algorithms in predicting human behavior. Public policy initiatives must account for the full potential of AI to unfold and at the same time impose restrictions on the exploitative uses of AI. While the regulation emerges on various aspects of AI, researchers must work towards fine-tuning and improving AI systems to better address the needs of the organizations, communities, and economies

Exploring Health Information Exchange (HIE) Through Collaboration Framework: Normative Guidelines for IT Leadership of Healthcare Organizations

Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) hold the promise to integrate patient data residing across disparate information systems in various hospitals to improve care coordination, patient engagement, and provisioning of real-time information to physicians. This research posits that collaboration is the key to HIE’s success. Drawing from the extant literature on collaboration, we discuss collaboration-related challenges that healthcare IT leaders are facing and provide normative guidelines that they can implement during the HIE initiation phase as well as the maintenance phas

Parallel Imports Debate: Resource Advantage Theory Perspective

Parallel imports (PI) are goods brought legally into a market without the authorization of the local intellectual property rights (IPR) owner. Whether governments should allow PI liberally or not has been a subject of great debate. In this paper, we argue that full-scale liberalization of PI hurts international competition and should not be allowed. Instead, we argue that national/regional IPR exhaustion within countries or groups of countries with similar demand characteristics, while sustaining price differentiation across groups with different demand characteristics, may be the optimal global policy on PI activities. Our arguments are based on Resource Advantage (R-A) theory

Preparing Information Systems (IS) Graduates to Meet the Challenges of Global IT Security: Some Suggestions

Managing IT security and assurance is a top priority for organizations. Aware of the costs associated with a security or privacy breach, organizations are constantly vigilant about protecting their data and IT systems. In addition, organizations are investing heavily in IT resources to keep up with the challenges of managing their IT security and assurance. Therefore, the IT industry relies greatly on the U.S. higher education system to produce a qualified and competent workforce to manage security challenges. This advisory discusses some security challenges faced by global companies and provides input into the design and delivery of IS curriculum to effectively meet such challenges

Gray Market for Information Technology (IT) Products: Status, Implications, and Strategies to Address the IT Gray Market Threat

When genuine and branded Information Technology (IT) products flow through unauthorized channels, IT gray markets emerge. Gray markets for IT products represent a grave threat for many IT companies. Monetary losses in profits due to IT gray markets are estimated to be in the billions of dollars. Despite the importance of guidance in addressing the IT gray market threat, the paucity of IS research in gray markets is surprising. In this article, we discuss the IT gray market phenomenon, present the legal status of gray markets in several developed and developing nations, suggest some strategies to address the gray market problem, discuss implications, and call for future IS research in this important area

Achieving Success With a New Design of Hybrid Information Systems Major: The Case of University of ABC’s Operations and Technology Management (OTM) Program

Decreasing IS enrollment has become a huge concern to business schools around the United States. IS academic leaders are interested in finding ways to attract students to major in IS, make IS programs current, offerings valuable, and students marketable. We discuss the case of a hybrid major called Operations and Technology Management (OTM) which was started at University of ABC at the peak of the recession in IS enrollment and chronicle how it achieved success and industry recognition. We elaborate on the strategies that underpinned the success of the program such as inter-disciplinary nature of the major, curriculum design and delivery, student recruitment efforts, industry outreach, use of advisory boards and alumni, and a successful student placement model. We hope these details will motivate IS administrators to reverse the past trends in the decline of IS enrollment

An Investigation of Cognitive Antecedents to Satisfaction Using Web-Based Decision Spport Systems

Web sites play a critical role in attracting customers. Many Web sites provide different functionalities to assist customers in decision-making. Despite the importance of different types of functionalities provided by Web sites, there is little knowledge about how Web customers’ satisfaction is formulated using Web-based decision support systems (DSS). In this study, we develop a conceptual model for investigating cognitive antecedents to Web users’ satisfaction in the context of Web-based DSS. The empirical examination of the research model indicates that perceived effectiveness is influenced by perceived accuracy and effort and, in turn, has a positive impact on satisfaction in using Web-based DSS. The implications of this study provide information to Web site designers and developers as to how a Web-based DSS needs to be implemented to enhance Web users’ satisfaction

An Active Learning Approach to Teaching Undergraduate Introduction to MIS Course

The undergraduate Introduction to MIS course is generally taught as a core course in business schools to introduce information systems concepts. In addition, the course serves as an important entry point to recruit MIS majors. For instructors wanting to do well in the MIS course, use of traditional lecturing alone may not be entirely effective. This paper proposes an active learning approach to supplement traditional lecturing for teaching the MIS course. The use of various active learning techniques and their implementation in the classroom is discussed. Qualitative and quantitative feedback from students suggests that students like the active learning-based approach and report increased levels of subject matter understanding and ability to apply the material in real world contexts

Debunking Misinformation Using a Game Theoretic Approach

The growth in social media communication has witnessed an increase in misinformation. The harmful effects of misinformation range from defamation of reputation to loss of life. Information Systems research has a long history of studying the antecedents of misinformation and how to find out when it occurs. However, there is limited research on how to deal with the harm caused by misinformation. The governing bodies responsible for handling misinformation need to be strategic in addressing ever-increasing misinformation and prioritizing the type of misinformation. In this study, we propose an evolutionary theoretic-based game model to establish equilibrium to optimize the efforts needed by the governing bodies to debunk the misinformation. We propose to empirically validate our model using COVID-19-related social media tweets using experiments. In doing so, we contribute to a growing body of literature on misinformation harm and evolutionary game theory, while offering practical solutions to address an important societal problem