Mitigating the Tragedy of the Digital Commons: the Case of Unsolicited Commercial Email

The growth of unsolicited commercial email imposes increasing costs on organizations and causes considerable aggravation on the part of email recipients. A thriving anti-spam industry addresses some of the frustration. Regulation and various economic and technical means are in the works – all aimed at bringing down the flood of unwanted commercial email. This paper contributes to our understanding of the UCE phenomenon by drawing on scholarly work in areas of marketing and resource ownership and use. Adapting the tragedy of the commons to the email context, we identify a causal structure that drives the direct e-marketing industry. Computer simulations indicate that although filtering may be an effective method to curb UCE arriving at individual inboxes, it is likely to increase the aggregate volume, thereby boosting overall costs. We also examine other response mechanisms, including self-regulation, government regulation, and market mechanisms. The analysis advances understanding of the digital commons, the economics of UCE, and has practical implications for the direct e-marketing industrySPAM; Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE); Tragedy of the Digital Commons; Simulation

Internet Business Practices Across the Globe: Lessons from Emerging Economies

Firms in emerging economies are rapidly becoming formidable competitors to long-established industry leaders from developed economies. In some cases, emerging-economy firms are acquiring developed-economy firms, such as the recent acquisitions of Jaguar by Tata Motors and Gateway by Acer. Aside from anecdotal reports of high-level corporate strategies adopted by certain emergingeconomy firms, there is little scholarly evidence concerning the operational details of how emergingeconomy firms are becoming competitive with developed-economy firms. A common explanation is labor cost or currency advantages in emerging economies. As emerging-economy firms also compete effectively in developed economies using developed-economy resources, this cannot be the entire explanation. We propose another explanation, based on dissimilar adaptation of the Internet to enable and reinforce business practices related to customer relationships and supply chain integration. This paper draws on original survey data from over 450 firms across 10 countries as well as case examples to illuminate three key ways that Internet business practices differ between developed- and emerging-economy firms. First, compared with developed-economy firms, emerging-economy firms place a relatively higher priority on using the Internet to achieve strong customer relationships via service and support. Second, emerging-economy firms place a relatively higher priority on using the Internet to integrate processes with suppliers than do developed-economy firms. Finally, emerging-economy firms are relatively more driven to adopt Internet business practices to expand existing markets and enter new markets, and accordingly report a relatively greater impact to international sales growth compared with developed-economy firms. Our findings suggest that managers in developed-economy firms would be wise to re-assess and re-evaluate their use of Internet business practices – in particular, in the areas of customer relationships and supply chain integration – to retain competitiveness in the dynamic global economy.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61151/1/1113_Melville.pd

Environmental Sustainability 2.0: Empirical Analysis of Environmental Erp Implementation

We examined the implementation of a new and rapidly emerging class of enterprise software system for managing environmental resources such as energy and carbon emissions. Analysis of the implementation of an environmental enterprise resource planning (ERP) system at a leading global software and technology services company, SunGard Data Systems Inc., yielded three primary findings. First, we found that adoption of environmental ERP supported implementation of the corporate environmental sustainability strategy, and at the same time, may transform that very strategy. Second, we uncovered unique data sharing hurdles originating in the upstream energy information value chain. Finally, we identified the role of private equity as one important stakeholder that influences environmental ERP adoption. Overall, our analysis revealed that well-established IS phenomena have unique underlying mechanisms in the environmental sustainability context, inform understanding of cause and effect, and may ultimately enhance managerial practice and inform theoretical understanding.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91283/1/1175_Melville.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91283/4/1175_Melville.pd

Building Alliance Capabilities through Information Technology: The Effect of IT Resources on the Market Value Effects of Alliance Announcements

Does the investment in firm-specific IT resources lead to better alliance performance? This study proposes to answer this question by empirically examining the effect of a firm’s IT resources on the performance consequences of individual alliances for firms. Drawing upon previous works on organizational learning and dynamic capability, we identify and discuss key mechanisms that convert IT resources into alliance capability. Also, this study explores whether the effect of IT resources significantly varies depending on alliance characteristics, such as the types of activities and governance structures of alliances. Following an event-study approach, this empirical study analyzes the effect of IT expenditure on the stock market response to a new alliance announcement. 179 public firms spanning multiple industries in the United States account for 2,433 data points of alliance announcements from 1998 to 2005. The results are supportive of our hypotheses that a firm’s IT resources enhance its alliance performance

Leveraging Alliance Networks through Information Technology: Evidence from Panel Regressions

Despite the expectation that Information Technology (IT) is valuable in managing and leveraging multiple alliance relationships and the resultant alliance networks, a paucity in theoretical and empirical examination persists in the literature. Employing social network analysis (SNA), we examined whether IT investment moderates the effect exerted by a firm’s structural properties in alliance networks (direct partners, indirect partners, and structural holes) on its performance. Drawing upon previous research on dynamic capabilities and the knowledge-based view of the firm, we propose a conceptual model and discuss a potential underlying mechanism. Our empirical analysis of 306 U.S. public firms, which provide 971 observations during an 8-year span from 1998 to 2005, suggests that IT investment helps firms to (1) manage the burden of increasing complexity in coordinating multiple alliances, and (2) overcome the relative informational disadvantage resulted from their limited access to indirect partners and structural holes

Do Carbon Management System Adoption Announcements Affect Market Value?

In this paper we conduct an event study to test the hypothesis that carbon management systems (CMS) are perceived by financial markets to be value-adding IS investments worth more than their costs. After populating a list of over 200 exchange-traded CMS adopters, we search newswires and specialty news outlets to identify 62 adoption announcements over a 10 year period. These are analyzed for a 3 day window starting with the announcement and we find that the mean cumulative abnormal returns (MCARs) from CMS announcements are 1.04%. A sub-analysis by firm size confirms earlier IS research results that smaller firms experience larger returns. Another sub-analysis by industry finds a potentially surprising result that lower-C02 emission industries accrue larger MCARs than high-emitting industries, though further research will be required to establish this conclusively

Roadblocks to Implementing Modern Digital Infrastructure: Exploratory Study of API Deployment in Large Organizations

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are an important component of digital infrastructure. Extensively employed in diverse industries, APIs are a boundary resource that enables new business models, enhances efficiency, and generates new sources of revenue. As little is known about how organizations deploy APIs, we conducted an exploratory examination of organizational deployment challenges of this important component of digital infrastructure. Analysis of semi-structured interview data collected within two large organizations reveals managerial challenges involving data, incentives, shared knowledge, and supplier management. Overall, our study contributes to knowledge about boundary resources while informing management practice concerning this emergent business imperative in the fourth industrial revolution

Digital innovation: A review and synthesis

Organizations are under increasing pressure to apply digital technologies to renew and transform their business models. A great deal of research has examined specific phenomena, such as adoption antecedents and design methods. However, it is unclear what we know in totality, including what research streams exist, how they fit together, and fruitful opportunities for new knowledge development. We combine scientometric and systematic literature review methodologies to examine 7 dimensions of an adapted theoretical framework: initiation; development; implementation; exploitation; the role of the external competitive environment; role of internal organizational environment; and product, service, and process outcomes. From a macro perspective, we find vastly uneven coverage of research streams, diversity and diffusiveness of research, and knowledge and learning as an underlying conceptual pillar. Combined with our summary of each of the 7 research streams, these findings suggest several areas of future research, which we develop by identifying oppositions and tensions.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146990/1/isj12193.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146990/2/isj12193_am.pd

Global Diffusion of the Internet XVI: The Role of Economic Development and Firm Internationalization in Internet Business Practices

Firms from emerging economies are rapidly becoming formidable competitors to established industry leaders from developed economies. Aside from anecdotal reports, there is little scholarly evidence concerning the operational details of how emerging economy firms are becoming competitive with developed economy firms. This article addresses the gap by building on the International Business, Strategy and Information Systems literature, and through an empirical analysis of original survey data for 468 firms across ten countries. We develop three primary empirical findings. First, despite the differences between emerging economy firms and developed economy firms, we find that emerging economy/high internationalization firms use marketing- and supply chain-oriented Internet business practices with about the same frequency as developed economy/high internationalization firms. Second, we find that emerging economy/high internationalization firms are more driven than developed economy/high internationalization firms to use Internet business practices to expand existing markets and enter new markets. Third, we find that emerging economy/high internationalization firms report relatively higher sales and customer service impacts from Internet business practices than do developed economy/ high internationalization firms. These findings suggest that emerging economy firms have used the Internet as a resource to position themselves as credible competitors to developed economy firms