Uses and attitudes of young people toward technology and mobile telephony

This paper aims at showing how young people are developing new and innovative ways of interacting using technology. Previous literature shows that technology adoption depends not only on the technology per se, but also on situational and contextual issues. Mobile telephony has been claimed to change young people's lifestyles, although only scarce empirical evidence exists. We have conducted an empirical study in which we first analyze the existence of differences in technology adoption, acquisition, and usage of technology and mobile telephony between young people in general and those that are online. We find that there are some significant differences in certain dimensions. Next, we carried out the same analysis differentiating between young people that assess themselves as technology-savvy and those that consider themselves inexpert in technology matters. We find that patterns of mobile phone usage in these two groups vary significantly along all analyzed dimensions.mobile telephony; Internet; technology adoption; uses and attitudes;

Market bundling strategies in the horizontal portal industry

The arrival of the Internet offers opportunities for both incremental efficiency gains and complete industry redefinition, presenting new value propositions and hence leading to the emergence of new businesses and industries. One particular case is that of the horizontal portal industry, such portals being consistently the most visited sites on the Web. Nevertheless, despite ongoing market concentration, overall profitability remains low. In this paper we contend that, although the industry has great potential for value creation, value appropriation in such information-based businesses remains problematic. The only way to achieve it is through cross-market bundling; that is, portals selling their products packaged with Internet access and proprietary content through system competition. We support our claims with theoretical argument and empirical evidence, analyzing the information distribution value chain in its entirety.Portals; information goods; Internet advertising; Internet service providers; content provider;

Indo Gives Its Sales Force a New Mobility Technology

In April 2007, the Spanish optical company indo Internacional was facing a renewal decision of the mobility solution for its eyeglasses division’s sales force. Initially, the company was seeking to implement a solution that would allow to look up inventories in real time. One of the potential providers offers to extend the functionality with a virtual catalog, which would allow the company to eliminate part of the current physical sample collection of the sales force. Nevertheless, the virtual catalog would imply a major change in the current work practice of the sales force, and a new way of purchasing for the clients. The objective of this case is to analyze the complexities of IS investment decisions from a variety of perspectives, including a financial analysis. It also focuses on broader qualitative implications in terms of its impact on current work practices of part of the organization

CIO herds and user gangs in the adoption of open source software

Open Source Software (OSS) has received wide attention from the research community, analyzing both the innovation process of software development by distributed and unrelated teams, and the market dynamics at play between "free" and proprietary software. Up until now, OSS adoption has been irregular, although it seems to be breaking the dominance of existing players in some market segments. In this paper, we contend that due to the particularities of its development process, traditional ways of explaining IT adoption -rational decision making, technology diffusion models, and the psychology of the decision maker- are insufficient to explain the case of OSS diffusion. We believe that the existence of a strong and diffused development community leads to a new role of the user community, as both are intertwined. In addition, new concerns for social corporate responsibility and welfare create a new context, in which "user gangs" may exert some degrees of pressure on the IT decision maker. By analyzing some significant cases we depict under what conditions significant OSS adoption may unfold, showing that in two of the cases studied user gangs play a significant role. The resulting preliminary framework will inform future work, in which we aim at validating the emerging insights gained in this research.Open source software; IT adoption; user communities; CIO herding;

Forms of organizing: What is new and why?

This paper aims to further our understanding of new forms of organizing by asking and answering two related questions: What is new in forms of organizing? and Why is it so? It starts by examining the main forces that lead to the emergence and diffusion of new organizational arrangements, distinguishing between objective and subjective factors and pointing out the interplay between the two. Elaborating on these two groups of factors, the paper introduces two dimensions ‹flexibility and openness‹ on which a contingency analysis of new forms of organizing and a classification are built. Flexibility is associated with the question «How fast does the organization as a whole have to learn?», while openness is intended to measure the need for knowledge integration and the location of relevant knowledge. Having outlined the main trends in the development of organizational arrangements, the paper looks at some of the implications. The use of information and communication technologies, knowledge management, changes in human resource practices and social contract, and changes in management roles and careers are all seen as consequences of a new quest for openness and flexibility. All these considerations lead to the conclusion that, nowadays, changes in organizational patterns are radical, calling for a paradigm change that will facilitate, in a holistic manner, the adjustments that are needed in order to build and manage these organizations. Like any paradigm change, this requires a change in the mindset of the agents involved, especially the decision-makers.new forms of organizing; new organizational arrangements;

eLearning: Designing New Business Education

Business Schools are experiencing increased competitive pressures, and one way to differentiate and compete distinctively is through the adoption of innovative uses of information technology. However, the integration of information technology to business education is by no means trivial. This research seeks to provide some guidance about the effect of these new information technologies in the field of high-level executive education, providing a conceptual framework of the main key factors that have to be taken into account for the efficient and effective design of an executive education course

CIO Herds and User Gangs in the Adoption of Open Source Software

Open Source Software (OSS) has received wide attention from the research community, analyzing both the innovation process of software development by distributed and unrelated teams, and the market dynamics at play between “free” and proprietary software. Up until now, OSS adoption has been irregular, although it seems to be breaking the dominance of existing players in some market segments. In this paper, we contend that due to the particularities of its development process, traditional ways of explaining IT adoption -rational decision making, technology diffusion models, and the psychology of the decision maker- are insufficient to explain the case of OSS diffusion. We believe that the existence of a strong and diffused development community leads to a new role of the user community, as both are intertwined. In addition, new concerns for social corporate responsibility and welfare create a new context, in which “user gangs” may exert some degrees of pressure on the IT decision maker. Through the analysis of some significant cases we depict under which conditions significant OSS adoption may unfold, showing that in two of the cases studied user gangs play a significant role. The resulting preliminary framework will inform future work, in which we aim at validating the emerging insights gained in this research

The Adoption of Information Technology by Spanish CIOs: Facts and Fallacies

In this paper, we contend that due to the particularities and widespread use of new ICT, traditional ways of explaining IT adoption in companies-rational decision making, technology diffusion models, and the psychology of the decision maker-are insufficient to explain some observed cases of ICT diffusion. We prove that there is a new role played by the user community in the technology adoption process, brought about by factors like the existence of a strong development community in the case of OSS, or widespread access to Internet technology. A mixed two-phase method was used for this study. In the first phase, through a qualitative analysis of some significant cases we depicted under which conditions a significant adoption of a particular technology (OSS) might unfold, showing that in some circumstances user groups could play a significant role. In the second phase an exploratory quantitative analysis was carried out to verify the new dimensions of the technology adoption process. The results showed a high influence of social factors like peer group adoption and user’s pressure. Due to reasons of geographical proximity the research was carried out in Spanish companies, but we believe that, like with similar adoption studies, the results are of general nature as there are no culturally specific dimensions that we could identify. Conclusions and further research are outlined