Crypto and Blockchain Fundamentals

I believe blockchain will do for trusted transactions what the Internet has done for information. - Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM Since the 1990s, we have had an Internet of Information that allows us to seamlessly share information such as documents, images, emails, and videos over the Internet. While most Internet users do not need to understand the details of the technical protocols operating underneath user-friendly software interfaces, it is helplful to understand how they work at a high-level. With the Internet of Information, copies of information are routed over the Internet. If a sender emails a friend, the sender keeps the original email, and the friend receives a copy of the email. To transact value, i.e., money, over the Internet, one cannot send a copy. Instead, after the transfer of value is complete, the sender should no longer have the money, but rather the recipient should

Nine likely scenarios arising from the growing use of robots

The future of work is less predetermined and more nuanced than many think, write Leslie P. Willcocks and Mary C. Lacit

Funny Business: Public Opinion of Outsourcing and Offshoring as Reflected in U.S. and Indian Political Cartoons

In this paper, we studied the public’s opinion of outsourcing and offshoring as reflected in political cartoons. Researchers in many fields have used political cartoons to track public opinion, yet we are unaware of any such research in the field of IS. We analyzed the content of 165 political cartoons from the U.S. and India that depict offshoring and outsourcing. Overall, U.S./Western political cartoons portray outsourcing and offshoring negatively, causing lost jobs for workers and poorer customer service for consumers. Indian political cartoons focus on jobs gained and the labor and infrastructure constraints caused by the rapid growth of ITO and BPO industries. We also compared the content of political cartoons to IS academic research. We found both similarities and differences. One similarity is that lower costs were found to be the most common reason depicted/cited for outsourcing/offshoring in political cartoons and IS academic research. One difference is that political cartoonists primarily empathize and thus promote the interests of the workers, direct supervisors, and customers most affected by outsourcing/offshoring whereas IS researchers primarily promote the interests of the firm. We also discuss the use of political cartoons as an effective pedagogical device in global outsourcing courses

Businesses will increasingly use robots to deal with theexplosion of data

The term “Robotic Process Automation” (RPA) connotes visions of physical robots wandering around offices doing the job of humans. However, the term really means automation of service tasks. Let’s think of business processes such as transferring data from multiple input sources such as email and spreadsheets to systems of record like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Here the term RPA most commonly refers to configuring software to do the job

Employing U.S. Military Families to Provide Business Process Outsourcing Services: A Case study of Impact Sourcing and Reshoring

This paper describes how a startup business process outsourcing (BPO) provider named Liberty Source helped a large U.S.-based client reshore business services from an established Indian BPO provider. Founded in 2014, Liberty Source is a for-profit firm that provides a competitive alternative to offshoring while fulfilling its social mission to launch and sustain the careers of U.S. military spouses and veterans who face various employment disadvantages. Thus, the case describes reshoring in the context of impact sourcing. It addresses key impact sourcing issues pertaining to workforce development, scalability, and impact on employees. The impact was positive: the workers found the employment and stable salary were beneficial, “the military” culture fit well with the workers, and workers received considerable flexibility and greater career options. Liberty Source was able to reduce a client’s costs after reshoring the client’s processes because Liberty Source’s U.S. site had about 20 percent fewer full time equivalents (FTEs) FTEs than the original India location and because Liberty Source received subsidies. We found evidence that the offshore BPO provider and Liberty source experienced difficulties with finding enough skilled staff for the wages offered and both firms experienced attrition problems, although attrition was greater in India

A new approach to automating services

Companies are achieving productivity gains by using software robots to perform routine, rules-based service processes. If implemented well, such automation can result in high-performing human-robot teams, in which software robots and human employees complement one another

Understanding the Relationship between Organizational and Individual Adoption of IT Innovations: Literature Review and Analysis

Researchers who study IT innovations aim to understand the relationship between two different loci of adoption1 – individual adoption and organizational adoption. A first step is diagnosis of the current state of empirical research on IT innovation adoption. We analyzed 486 relationships between independent variables (IVs) and dependent variables (DVs) found in 89 empirical studies of which 45 studied individual adoption and 44 studied organizational adoption. We categorized 135 IVs into 4 classes (organizational variables such as top management support, individual variables such as age, innovation variables such as relative advantage, and environment variables such as external pressure). We classified 25 DVs into 8 classes (perceived systems use, intention to use, adoption, diffusion, rate of adoption, outcomes, actual system use, and time of adoption). We analyzed the 486 relationships between the 4 classes of independent variables and the 8 classes of dependent variables across all 89 studies and also by locus of adoption (individual or organizational). Two classes of independent variables (organizational and innovation characteristics) are systematically used – and more importantly – found to be significant, whether researchers are studying individual or organizational adoption. This suggests that there is indeed a relationship between individual adoption and organizational adoption. We have many other interesting findings (gaps in research, most studied IVs and DVs, most frequently/least frequently found to be significant IVs, etc.), but consider this a work in progress. We anticipate that DIGIT members will use our findings to integrate individual and organizational adoption theories

Information Technology Sourcing Research: Critique, Lessons and Prospects

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