Information Systems Journal最新文献

An increasing number of companies have implemented digital platforms to attract complementors who create innovations on the platform. Establishing such digital platforms is a challenge for incumbent companies because they lack related experience and capabilities. In particular, boundary resources that are the interface between the platform and complementors need to be well-designed to attract complementors and keep them engaged. We propose that lead complementor involvement helps incumbent companies to improve the design of the platform boundary resources. In a multi-year action research study, we established lead complementor involvement in the boundary resource design of a digital platform for automotive onboard apps at the BMW Group and evaluated how boundary resources improved. Along three episodes, we illustrate that lead complementor involvement was effective and we summarise our findings in four propositions: (1) lead complementor involvement facilitates platform emergence for incumbent companies by enhancing boundary resource design, (2) lead complementor involvement is more efficient in higher platform layers, (3) lead complementor involvement is facilitated by an increase of intensity and frequency of interactions between complementors and platform owner and (4) establishing a complementor community helps to continuously identify opportunities for lead complementor involvement. We contribute to the information systems literature on platform emergence and design by focusing on the process of designing boundary resources and by considering the heterogeneity of complementors. Furthermore, we contextualise the concept of lead user involvement in the domain of digital platforms and compare and contrast lead complementors and lead users.

Simultaneous exploration and exploitation (i.e., exploration–exploitation) can help a firm address short-term environmental requirements and ensure long-term environmental viability. Exploration–exploitation, however, challenges organisational practices because they compete for resources and time. While business analytics (BA) offers the potential to overcome these challenges, research to date offers very limited insights into how BA capabilities interact with ambidextrous capabilities to realise environmental value. We address this issue by conducting a comparative case study at a bank and at a real-estate trust through the theoretical lens of dynamic capabilities. We develop a process model to explain how BA powers ambidextrous practices to achieve sustainability outcomes over time. We uncover two mechanisms: a BA-powered context shaping mechanism by which BA powers contextual ambidexterity at the employee level using data availability, timeliness, and analytics culture; and a BA-powered resource linking mechanism by which BA powers structural ambidexterity at intra- and inter-organisational levels using holistic insights and analytics leadership. Our model highlights the contextual factors that condition the extent to which a firm moves along the continuum of exploration–exploitation. We also define a new dimension of sustainability outcomes which we label eco-awareness to explain how BA shapes employees' environmental alertness and enables the paradigm shift in an organisation's sustainability mindset.

We explore if misinformation from political elites (i.e., members of the US Congress) and extreme partisan information from media outlets generate greater engagement than accurate information and non-extreme partisan information. We also investigate how exposure to these information types leads to negative emotions (e.g., anger) in individuals and its association with attitude polarisation. To this end, we analysed fact-checked tweets from political elites, tweets from media outlets and replies to those tweets. Together, these tweets received more than 100 000 replies and were shared more than two million times. We also conducted two online experiments. Our field studies reveal that misinformation and extreme partisan information are associated with higher levels of negative emotions and greater engagement than accurate information and non-extreme partisan information. Our data also show that—while negative emotions in response to extreme partisan information are higher among social media users at the ideological extreme than those at the ideological centre—there is no difference in the two groups' level of negative emotions in response to misinformation. The online experiments demonstrate that exposure to misinformation and extreme partisan information elicits stronger negative emotions than exposure to accurate information and non-extreme partisan information. These negative emotions, in turn, contribute to attitude polarisation. Our work makes practical and theoretical contributions concerning social media information sharing, negativity and political polarisation. We also provide future research avenues with associated research questions.

Big Tech companies such as Alphabet (Google), Apple, Meta (Facebook), Alibaba, and Tencent have repeatedly demonstrated their capability to integrate multiple digital platforms successfully. However, the grasp of how multi-platform integration strategies are articulated and the potential benefits they bring forth remains limited. Previous research has predominantly focused on launch, growth, and competition strategies for single platforms, prompting us to develop a typology of four multi-platform integration strategies: collection, consolidation, symbiosis, and assemblage. For each strategy, we examine what complementarities are generated and provide real-world examples. Subsequently, we delve into a discussion of the limitations and implications associated with the integration of multiple digital platforms. We conclude by proposing avenues for future research on multi-platform integration strategies.

Work is increasingly being organised via online platforms outside guiding organisational structures. Instead of having colleagues at work, crowd workers connect in online communities. We investigate how crowd workers build professional holding environments in online communities to compensate for the lack of organisational structures and we consider how they craft their crowd work activities to enhance their work experience and reduce its long-term precarity. Following a qualitative research design, this paper uses 675 forum interactions collected across six online communities. Based on our findings, we propose the concept of professional holding environments and provide a model for building such holding environments and job crafting in online communities. We thereby expand previous research on holding environments comprised of family members and friends by revealing the impact of professional online communities and their role in professionalisation and crafting supportive social structures in online crowd work.

This paper addresses how weak and strong signals affect venture capital funding acquired by digital startups at their early stage in various industries of China. We also articulate the interaction mechanism of these strong and weak signals by demonstrating their complementary or substitutive effects in alleviating information asymmetry on startup quality, which can help digital startups secure venture capital financing. Drawing on signalling theory and institutional legitimacy theory, we introduce application (app) downloads as a novel strong signal that can reduce market legitimacy concerns, and previous-round venture capitalist reputation as a traditional strong signal that mitigates regulatory legitimacy concerns. We treat founders' startup and IT experience as weak signals, as they provide rhetorical and indirect information indicating a startup's potential to establish regulatory and market legitimacy. The study empirically investigates our hypotheses using data of 163 digital startups in various industries of China. Results confirm the positive relationships between strong signals and venture capital funding secured by a digital startup. Furthermore, signals of similar strength are found to complement each other's effects in certain situations, while strong signals can reduce the effects of weak signals on a digital startup's financing performance under specific conditions that create these mixed effects. Implications for digital startup research and practice as well as limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.

In recent years, the proliferation of self-established and third-party online tourism platforms has impacted the visitor economy and social welfare sustainably. Tourism enterprises face the key decision of whether to join third-party platforms or sell tourism services/products directly to consumers. Some researchers have addressed issues about online tourism platforms, but none analyse the internal mechanism and operational management, or the impact of the online tourism platform on sustainable economic growth and social welfare. To fill this gap, we establish an analytical model to explore the optimal tourism marketing and operational management of online tourism platforms for non-profit tourist attractions and for-profit tourism enterprises, which can help guide the decisions of managers. We construct a game-theoretical model in which competing tourism attractions can choose only solo or dual online tourism platform promotion. When competition on a third-party platform is intense, for-profit tourism enterprises benefit from dual platforms. We further illustrate that with high competition, non-profit tourist attractions provide higher social welfare when offering tourism products/services on both self-established and third-party tourism channels. However, with lower competition, third-party tourism platforms harm social welfare if the tourism service/product quality is extremely high or low. Under a decentralised structure, we find that related tourism enterprises prefer to follow and collaborate with their tourist attractions' channel selection when competition in the third-party platform is not fierce. This result indicates that a third-party tourism platform improves the visitor economy and social welfare if the tourist attraction collaborates with its tourism-related enterprises through the online tourism platform.

To improve organisational safety and enhance security efficiency, organisations seek to establish a culture of security that provides a foundation for how employees should approach security. There are several frameworks and models that provide a set of requirements for forming security cultures; however, for many organisations, the requirements of the frameworks are difficult to meet, if not impossible. In this research, we take a different perspective and focus on the core underlying competencies that high-reliability organisations (HROs) have shown to be effective in achieving levels of risk tolerance consistent with the goals of a security culture. In doing so we draw on high-reliability theory to develop a Security Culture Model that explains how a firm's supportive and practical competencies form its organisational security culture. To refine and test the model, we conducted a developmental mixed-method study using interviews and survey data with professional managers involved in the information security (InfoSec) programs within their respective HROs. Our findings emphasise the importance of an organisation's supportive and practical competencies for developing a culture of security. Our results suggest that organisations' security cultures are a product of their InfoSec practices and that organisational mindfulness, top management involvement and organisational structure are key to the development of those practices.

The influence of physicians' knowledge sharing on patient satisfaction in online medical consultations (OMCs) has received extensive attention in recent years. However, patient gratitude in OMCs, another crucial outcome for physicians' knowledge sharing, has largely been overlooked. To address this gap, this study attempts to distinguish patient satisfaction from gratitude in OMCs and elucidate the relationship between the sharing process and outcomes. Drawing on the affect theory of social exchange, this study proposes a model that investigates the relative effects of physicians' informational and emotional support during the knowledge-sharing process on patient satisfaction and gratitude, as well as the contingent roles of physicians' professional seniority and patients' disease severity. The research model is tested by using data from a well-known online health platform in China. The results indicate that patient gratitude is associated with a more favourable service evaluation than satisfaction in OMCs. Physicians' informational support has a greater effect on patient satisfaction than emotional support, while emotional support has a greater effect on patient gratitude than informational support. Moreover, professional seniority and disease severity positively and negatively moderate the relationship between emotional support and patient gratitude, respectively. A survey-based experiment is also adopted to validate the research model with self-reported perceptual measures. This study contributes to the literature on patient gratitude, online healthcare service evaluation, knowledge sharing, and the affect theory of social exchange.