Information Systems and e-Business Management最新文献

In this Era of digitalization and digital transformation, both Information Technology (IT) and Information Systems (IS) have become vital resources for organizations. IT/IS support organizations to effectively respond to evolving business needs and emerging opportunities, enhancing their competitiveness. Therefore, the success of today’s organizations is almost totally dependent on their IS. Organizations need to have a capable IS Function (ISF) to tackle the challenges and responsibilities of the IT/IS. Considering its importance, a scoping literature review was performed to characterize the state of the art of the research focused on the ISF. The results provide a comprehensive picture of the research's key themes: ISF capability, ISF structure changes, ISF performance, ISF contributions, ISF transformation, ISF maturity, ISF and the organization, and others. Directions for research are provided according to these same themes.

Reputation systems to rate companies’ performances remain largely unexplored in research and are scarcely used in business-to-business (B2B) practice. Such systems are essential for businesses seeking trustworthy partners, as they help reduce information asymmetry, lower buyers' transaction risks, and allow high-quality service providers to justify premium pricing. Unlike traditional review-based systems in the business-to-consumer (B2C) context, we propose a B2B reputation mechanism in which buyers commit to a rating payment before a transaction. Once the buyer finalizes the rating, this payment is executed and recorded on a blockchain as an immutable, secure ledger. Our system mimics natural trust-building mechanisms with ratings that are (1) monetary-based, (2) stake-based, (3) non-aggregated, (4) involve counter-ratings, (5) selectively sellable, (6) individually comparable, (7) stored on a blockchain, (8) and monitored by a third instance. This system provides a novel approach to fostering trust in B2B transactions by reducing information asymmetry and transaction risk. We illustrate the mechanism’s application in the consulting sector. Our analysis has identified 23 institutional trust and distrust dimensions that promote establishing institutional trust through the proposed mechanism. Qualitative interviews suggest that, while complex and challenging to apply, this mechanism can foster trust in B2B transactions. Given the low maturity in the application domain—rating professional business services with business reputation systems—and solution domain—using monetary stakes for ratings, this system stands as a potential invention.

Competing with dominant players in the digital platform (DP) economy is an increasingly complex and expensive endeavor for alternative digital platform (ADP) providers trying to disrupt established platform ecosystems. Nevertheless, ADPs position themselves deliberately in the competitive space of large competitors, targeting customer groups whose values and mindsets differ from mainstream DPs. Although there are many examples to find in practice, the variety of ADPs across different DP ecosystems and industries, especially in regards of strategic objectives, directions and characteristics, has not been researched in-depth yet. Based on a systematic, practice-based artifact review, this paper analyses and compares 105 ADPs in the competitive space of dominant DP ecosystem players. The study utilizes the theory of Corporate Aikido as an analytical framework, mapping the strategic elements of overthrowing established value propositions and turning a competitors’ strengths into weaknesses. Our findings indicate that privacy- and security-awareness, empowerment and inclusivity, premium quality and curation, open source and free access, uncensored, transparent and decentralized platforms as well as ecological and climate-friendly offers shape the landscape of alternative approaches in today’s DP economy. The results are subsequently discussed, yielding managerial implications and future opportunities for DP research.

In our data-centric society, the imperative to determine the value of data has risen. Therefore, this paper presents a taxonomy for a data valuation business capability. Utilizing an initial taxonomy version, which originated from a systematic literature review, this paper validates and extends the taxonomy, culminating in four layers, twelve dimensions, and 59 characteristics. The taxonomy validation was accomplished by conducting semi-structured expert interviews with eleven subject matter experts, followed by a cluster analysis of the interviews, leading to a taxonomy heatmap including practical extensions. This paper's implications are manifold. Firstly, the taxonomy promotes a common understanding of data valuation within an enterprise. Secondly, the taxonomy aids in categorizing, assessing, and optimizing data valuation endeavors. Thirdly, it lays the groundwork for potential data valuation standards and toolkits. Lastly, it strengthens theoretical assumptions by grounding them in practical insights and offers an interdisciplinary research agenda following the taxonomy dimensions and characteristics.

Despite ongoing progress towards gender equality in education, women remain significantly underrepresented in computer science—a field still shaped by stereotypical expectations in our society. This gap is evident in both traditional classroom settings and online learning platforms such as MOOCs, where women face psychological barriers that hinder their learning success. As MOOCs increase accessibility and democratize education, it’s particularly important to address the barriers women face in these platforms. By analyzing 338,459 negative reviews from 8,067 IT and software courses offered by the MOOC provider Udemy, we explored the differences in how men and women experience these online learning environments. Our analysis was complemented by ten expert interviews, which helped us develop key propositions to explain these gender-based differences and derive guidelines to overcome them. Our results reveal that men and women criticize similar topics in IT courses, demonstrating that they do not belong to different user groups. However, differences between male and female reviews emerge within each topic. These differences are reflected in different communication styles, demands and areas of emphasis, shaped by gender-specific backgrounds, socialization processes and stereotypes. To overcome these differences, we propose seven guidelines drawing form Stereotype Threat Theory for designing gender-inclusive online courses that focus on inclusive communication and representation, creating supportive learning environments, and implementing high-quality, bias-aware educational practices. Aiming to foster greater participation and success for women in computer science.

Social commerce (s-commerce), as a new form of e-commerce, has transformed customer behavior with the rise of social networking sites (SNSs). This development has created new opportunities for online businesses seeking to establish customer-centric operations and leverage the power of SNSs by implementing effective customer engagement strategies for a competitive advantage. However, limited effort has been devoted to evaluating the current state of research in this area and consolidating the factors that drive individuals to engage in s-commerce. Therefore, this study conducted a Systemic Literature Review (SLR) to explore existing research on s-commerce and customer engagement, employing a factor derivation approach to identify and categorise the most prominent engagement factors. The findings classify these factors into three key dimensions: social, technological, and motivational. By offering a comprehensive theoretical framework, this study contributes to advancing empirical research and deepening our understanding of the mechanisms that stimulate customer engagement within the s-commerce landscape.

The operations of built environment-related sectors are often run on centralized organizational structures. This centralized approach could lead to operational challenges that restrict efficiency, hinder transparency, and misalign with the community’s interests. The emergence of decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) presents a promising avenue for addressing these issues by leveraging blockchain technology and decentralized governance models. This paper presents a review of DAO, examining its existing applications, limitations, and potential use cases in the built environment. Seven categories of DAO applications in the built environment were identified and discussed. The study also explores DAO’s fundamentals, including its governance characteristics, operational mechanism, limitations and technical implementation, and corresponding challenges. Finally, this study highlights three potential areas in the built environment for future DAO use cases. This article serves as an essential reference for future academics, professionals, and policy regulators interested in learning more about the integrations of DAO in the built environment.

Information Systems (IS) champions enthusiastically promote a digital innovation project throughout its development by obtaining the necessary resources. These individuals shape the innovativeness of an organization, as they initiate digital innovation projects and lead them toward successful completion. We still know little about how these champions can be identified and nurtured in organizations. We follow the Design Science Research approach in developing a framework for nurturing IS champions that can guide human resource practitioners. Our framework offers a strategic view of the champion journey and prescribes recommendations for action. The design decisions were derived from literature on digital innovation and innovation champions, and the framework was subsequently refined and evaluated meticulously. The design underwent two stages based on expert interviews from the IT industry (formative evaluation) and was subsequently evaluated by experts in digital innovation project management and human resource development in the IT industry (summative evaluation). The results demonstrate the feasibility of the framework and offer further insights into the problem and solution space of nurturing IS champions.

The growth of today’s digitalization trend goes along with an active and influential role of other fundamental factors in organizational development (e.g., people, processes). Excelling in these factors boosts efficiency and helps achieve strategic goals, for which support is needed. In recent years, studies concentrate on organizational maturity to describe (and sometimes prescribe) how to gradually progress along these factors by means of different maturity levels. However, those studies focus on examining a set of factors influencing maturity (such as the digitalization of work practices), but are not necessarily comprehensive in factors and sometimes fail to offer concrete measurement instruments for various application purposes. Novelty in our study resides in scrutinizing whether a decision tree approach can help organizations in quickly assessing their current maturity level in addition to the conventional ways of maturity model measurement or scale development studies. We select one maturity model (MM) in this domain and build a decision tree to distinguish an organization’s current maturity level of digital work. We also examine our proposed method in two rounds of a field study within a large public sector organization. Our objective is twofold. First, we extend an existing MM in a relevant domain for which a self-assessment instrument is still lacking. Secondly, from a design-science research perspective, we explore an alternative approach to build and test a straightforward self-assessment artefact in order to extend the literature from a methodological point of view. As a result, practitioners can profit from the provided and easy-to-use self-assessment instrument when digitalizing their work practices.

Given the continuous global degradation of the Earth’s ecosystem due to unsustainable human activity, it is increasingly important for enterprises to evaluate the effects they have on the environment. Consequently, assessing the impact of business processes on sustainability is becoming an important consideration in the discipline of Business Process Management (BPM). However, existing practical approaches that aim at a sustainability-oriented analysis of business processes provide only a limited perspective on the environmental impact caused. Further, they provide no clear and practically applicable mechanism for sustainability-driven process analysis and re-design. Following a design science methodology, we here propose and study SOPA, a framework for sustainability-oriented process analysis and re-design. SOPA extends the BPM life cycle by use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for sustainability analysis in combination with Activity-based Costing (ABC). We evaluate SOPA and its usefulness with a case study, by means of an implementation to support the approach, thereby also illustrating the practical applicability of this work.