Information and communication technologies and the integration of financial marketplaces: The development of the Euroclear single platform for cross-border securities settlement.

While cross-border financial activity continues to grow, facilitated by the adoption of electronic information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the multi-jurisdictional presence of large financial corporations, securities marketplaces have remained locally organised. Why has marketplace integration in this area lagged when ICTs have made possible the linking of geographically remote transacting parties and enhanced their calculative capabilities. This question raises issues regarding distinctions between markets and marketplaces and the implication of ICTs in the constitution of financial marketplaces that this research seeks to address through a study of an initiative to use ICTs to integrate the securities marketplaces of the UK and Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland, and Brussels-based international central securities depository Euroclear Bank. Adopting an approach informed by the social studies of finance that emphasise the importance of technologies, systematic knowledge, and material practices in the functioning of financial markets, the central empirical focus of the research is to trace the articulation of human and non-human entities involved in the development of the Euroclear cross-marketplace securities settlement platform. The study shows that integrating securities marketplaces is far from being a neat technical process requiring the integration of ICT systems. Instead, a meticulous sociotechnical re-articulation of the exchange architectures that format the encounters between transacting parties and transacting parties and objects of exchange is required. Furthermore, as the new arrangements take shape, they become a concrete interrogation of the world - both conceptual and material - surrounding them; technical issues become part of wider controversies, with points of interface between the emerging system and other sociotechnical networks it comes into contact with becoming nodes of actions, questions, and reactions from agencies required to respond to the demands of the new platform from the world around it. In the process, competing inscriptions of assumptions about the world are rendered explicit and contestable as the experiment of ICT-inspired marketplace integration becomes embroiled in a trial of rival conceptions of politico-economic integration

VALUE PROPOSITION FOR DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS OF UNCERTAIN MARKET POTENTIAL

In this paper we explore the notion of valu proposition in relation to the features of digital technology innovations of uncertain market potential. Drawing on an empirical study of ˜serious games´ development we focus on the interplay between the design features as they are being incorporated into the serious game and how these can be addressed through an emergent articulation of the valu proposition that sheds light on the establishment of a business model. We draw on ˜pragmatics of justification´ literature to develop an account of how the valus, with not only economic/finance but also non-monetary notion, manifested in digital technologies, are justified in order to arrive at a valu proposition. We argu that through mutual adjustment and reconciliation of each valu element with the emerging valu proposition, clarity and stability are brought to its constitution which are vital in the drawing-up of a business model in situations of high uncertainty. The research contributions we make are (a) theorizing how a valu proposition is constituted, (b) introducing a new analytical approach to the study of valu proposition drawing from the pragmatics of justification in the context of digital technology innovations´ development with social, economic and technical notions.

Lackluster Adoption of Cryptocurrencies as a Consumer Payment Method in the United States—Hypothesis: Is This Independent Technology in Need of a Brand, and What Kind?

Cryptocurrencies were supposed to replace traditional payment methods when they were invented over 13 years ago, but adoption by the general consumer is still lacking, at least in the United States. Instead, crypto is often used as a speculative investment, by illicit actors, or for use cases unrelated to everyday purchases. A literature review on general adoption barriers and interviews with experts has only unearthed factors like usability, performance, and political drivers, among other barriers. Brand as an adoption barrier is mostly missing from literature, at least for cryptocurrencies. This led to the formation of a hypothesis related to crypto’s lack of adoption as a payment method. A framework is being designed based on the technology adoption model to find out if “brand” has an impact on cryptocurrency adoption, which was paradoxically designed to be brandless and not needing any institutional trust. The intent is to focus on what “Bitcoin 2.0” might look like, and to also delve further and gauge perceptions about various types of brands getting involved in the next generation of cryptocurrencies, including traditional banks, governments, technology companies, and also some of the decentralized and hybrid consortia currently vying to get consumers to use stablecoins, nation-issued cryptocurrencies, and other forms of digital instruments. While other studies had focused on trust, early adopter usability, or performance of blockchain networks, this work intends to focus on the general consumer’s perceptions about digital money, and the types of brands and evolution of this instrument liable to increase uptak

Recombination in the Open-Ended Value Landscape of Digital Innovation

Digital innovation introduces a new open-ended value landscape to anyone seeking to generate or capture new value. To understand this landscape, we distinguish between design recombination and use recombination, explore how they play out together, and redirect the attention from products and services toward digital resources. Digital resources serve as building-blocks in digital innovation, and they hold the potential to simultaneously be part of multiple value paths, offered through design recombination and assembled through use recombination. Building on this perspective, we offer the value spaces framework as a tool for better understanding value creation and capture in digital innovation. We illustrate the framework and offer the early contours of a research agenda for information systems researchers

Developing a Relational View of the Organizing Role of Objects: A study of the innovation process in computer games

Innovation processes create distinctive challenges for coordination. Objects are seen as supporting coordination in such settings by enabling the emergent action needed to deal with a dynamic and uncertain process. Thus, previous work has highlighted the role of different types of objects in coordinating the collaborative tasks undertaken by expert groups, either by motivating the creation of new knowledge or through the translation of understanding. Through an empirical study of innovation processes in the computer games sector, our paper adds to this previous work by finding that the relations between objects, and not the objects alone, help to orchestrate multiple collaborative tasks towards a final outcome within temporal and resource constraints. The relational view which emerges from this study shows how such a ‘system of objects’ is able to stabilize coordination of the process while preserving the emergence and autonomy of games developer practices needed to achieve innovation

Entanglements of creative agency and digital technology : a sociomaterial study of computer game development

Digital technology, with its distinctive characteristics that result from the fundamental process of digitalization that underpins it, is seen as fundamentally altering processes of creativity. However, we currently have limited understanding of creativity in relation to the development of digital technology. Computer game development, with its combination of esthetic, affective and cultural use features and highly sophisticated digital technologies, is a valuable setting for investigating these issues. In this paper, we explore how computer games are shaped through the interplay between the creative intentions of developers and the digital technologies involved in their production and playing. Drawing on in-depth studies conducted at three leading computer game development studios and a leading producer of the software system used in game development, this paper shows how the game developers' creative ideas for imagined novel game-playing experiences relate to a) the development of relevant digital technologies, and b) the emergence of new game development practices. The article goes on to propose a view of creativity as an on-going flow that, following an initial ‘creative impulse’, ripples through the sociomaterial entanglements of a particular setting, reconfiguring them in the process and spreading out in time and space in often unexpected ways

The material production of virtuality: trials of explication in the design and development of computer games

Abstract: This article seeks to contribute to the development of a relationship between digital game studies and science and technology studies by studying the design and development of computer games at three leading UK studios in the light of what MacKenzie refers to "the material production of virtuality" (MacKenzie 2007). The article examines the common ground in treatment of 'the virtual' and 'virtuality' in science and technology studies and studies of material culture and the importance placed in the relationship between 'virtuality' and 'materiality' as "a dialectical process of imagination followed by its realisation&quot

Capital markets integration: A sociotechnical study of the development of a cross-border securities settlement system

Digital information and communications technologies (ICTs) are transforming capital markets. The integration of capital markets is seen as one such area of transformation. The research presented in this article studies one integration initiative that took shape around the proposed combination of a number of key European securities marketplaces through the development of a cross-border settlement system. Taking a sociotechnical approach, the research presents the positions of the key actants identified in relation to key controversies regarding the development of the settlement system and shows how the relations between the controversies and the positions of the actants involved in them evolve. By examining the role of ICTs in the evolution of these relations, the study seeks to illuminate the complex causalities between the social and technical aspects of cross-border capital market integration. The article argues that in addition to enabling the interconnecting of an expanded set of transacting parties, ICTs bring important cognitive dimensions that enable the inspiration, planning, and foresight necessary for both developers and market participants to formulate their plans, strategies, and positions vis-à-vis the expanded and transformed marketplace arrangements

Towards a Semiotics of Machines: the Participation of Texts and Documents in the Design and Development of an Information Technology-Based Market Device

Towards a Semiotics of Machines: the Participation of Texts and Documents in the Design and Development of an Information Technology-Based Market Devic