International Journal of Information Management最新文献

Digital platforms and innovations have greatly improved the mechanisms whereby the resources needed to start a business can be obtained; yet many at the base of the pyramid still have limited access to them because they remain disconnected. While digital platforms can help to connect the possessors of resources with the entrepreneurs who need them, the mediating processes that those who are not directly represented in such digital spaces need to undergo deserve further attention. This study builds on social identity theory and the identity-based view by considering identity as a relational and resource construct and discussing three identity mediation processes and strategies: connection-, familiarity-, and credibility-building. The evidence for this study was sourced from Rang De, India’s first digital micro credit platform. Understanding the identity mediation whereby disconnected borrowers seeking finance can access resources provides important insights to the emerging field of digital social innovation for business and development.

Despite energy efficiency measures, global energy demand has gradually increased due to global economic growth and changes in consumer behavior. Even if people are aware of the problem and want to change their energy consumption, they have difficulty acting on their attitudes. This is called the attitude-behavior gap. To narrow this gap and reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions, behavioral interventions beyond technological advances must be considered. A promising intervention is nudging, which uses insights from behavioral economics to gently nudge individuals toward more sustainable choices. In this study, we investigate how modifying digital choice architectures with nudges can be used to influence consumer energy conservation behavior in smart home applications (SHAs). We conducted an online experiment with 391 participants to test the effectiveness of the following three digital nudges in an SHA: self-commitment, reminder, and social norm nudge. While the results of a structural equation model indicated no effect on bridging the gap between attitude and behavior, we found the potential to promote energy conservation with two nudge types. Thus, this paper makes substantial contribution to persuasive and information systems-enabled sustainability for a better world in the form of digital nudges for emerging technologies.

With the rising popularity of voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, etc., understanding the service gaps experienced by customers has become imperative. In unison, limited studies are focusing on the perspectives of dissatisfied customers. This research aims to address this gap by suggesting the antecedents of technology irritation and its impact on the overall performance of voice assistants. The study uses a mixed-methods approach by analyzing the data gathered from user interviews, online reviews from users, and also empirical surveys. The qualitative study, capturing both etic and emic perspectives, found problems related to responsiveness, usability, platform, connectivity, and compatibility of VAs. While the empirical study revealed that utility gratification and service quality have a significant impact on technology irritation. The findings also show that customers from negative high and low arousal emotion groups have varying perceptions about utility gratifications.

Open data is considered an important resource to stimulate innovation and create economic and social value. Open data researchers have examined the importance of data publication by public bodies, but in contrast, much less attention has focused on how open data is exploited. In this paper, we aim to provide insight into the actions of platforms to assist open data exploitation by transformational entrepreneurs, which systemically facilitate transformation in socio-economic development. Our findings investigate two types of mechanism, reflecting the openness of the data movement and the competitive commercial need for closure. First, inclusion mechanisms are social mechanisms of the open data ecosystem which seek to attract a broad range of potential collaborators through supporting entrepreneurs to innovate with open data. Second, exclusion mechanisms are deployed to filter collaborators, to identify those who are seen by platforms to be more likely to successfully exploit their data, or develop revenue sharing relationships. We reveal how these mechanisms are used at different stages of the innovation process, to initially attract a wide pool of collaborators, before seeking to reduce them to better target limited resources. Despite ‘openness’ being a key requirement of open data publication, for successful transformational entrepreneur exploitation, it requires dimensions of closure.

A company’s digitalisation journey spans multiple dimensions and processes. However, studies of digital maturity have focused only on certain parts of the process. This study presents a method capable of fully capturing a company’s level of digital maturity. A DP2 indicator of digital maturity was constructed. This indicator is based on responses to a company survey of digitalisation in different business areas and processes. Companies with the highest degree of digitalisation are the oldest and largest (most employees). Differences between companies and sectors can be explained by the level of digitalisation in terms of digital management intensity, departmental agility and digital orientation.

There has been an increased usage and popularity of digital platforms during the COVID-19 crisis. This has resulted in many new types of digital platforms emerging that are tied to specific localities and based on emergent needs. This article presents the results of a study on the ClickforVic digital platform that was started during the first 2020 lockdown in Melbourne, Australia as a way for country farmers to connect with urban consumers. The study is premised on transformational entrepreneurship theory that enables a focus on the societal changes that have resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic. A semi-structured in-depth interview approach was utilised to understand how farm entrepreneurs perceived the digital platform and how this contributed to transformational entrepreneurship outcomes. The study is amongst the first to incorporate a digital platform, farm entrepreneurship, transformational entrepreneurship and COVID-19 perspective. The findings suggest that farm entrepreneurs are driven by financial, social and community goals during a crisis that influences their usage of digital platforms. As a consequence, the findings contribute to managerial practice and policy debate by highlighting the way digital platforms can be used in times of crisis to produce transformational entrepreneurship outcomes.

Recent research call for action on digital sustainability research could potentially contribute to achieving United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In this opinion piece, we specifically focus on artificial intelligence (AI) as a technology that could help achieve digital sustainability. We identify six dimensions related to AI grounded in past literature: sensemaking, relationships among actors in the supply chain, green creativity skills, metrics, strategies, and AI tool improvement. We conceptualize several propositions for these six dimensions, highlighting the nuances associated with AI for digital sustainability to provide clear directions for future research.

Statistical controls can ensure accurate estimates of causal effects in the evaluation of alternative explanations. However, the research method literature has raised concerns about the appropriate use of control variables (CVs). In this paper, we propose guidelines for the appropriate use of CVs in IS research. We review the use of CVs in statistical control articles published in MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, and Journal of the Association for Information Systems between 2015 and 2019. We review a total of 298 articles and closely examine 72 of them. On average, the articles used 5.63 CVs; 65.3% of the articles did not provide a rationale for their choice of CVs, 58.3% did not report the reliability and validity of their CVs, and none included CVs in their hypotheses. To remedy this situation, we discuss an article that exemplifies the proper use of CVs in IS research and make six recommendations for the proper use of CVs. For IS researchers, this paper advances the understanding of the proper use and reporting of CVs. For IS journal editors and reviewers, it provides recommendations for evaluating the use of CVs in empirical IS research. Ultimately, the proper use of CVs strengthens causal arguments and may even improve the generalizability of findings.

This article explores ethical issues raised by generative conversational AI systems like ChatGPT. It applies established approaches for analysing ethics of emerging technologies to undertake a systematic review of possible benefits and concerns. The methodology combines ethical issues identified by Anticipatory Technology Ethics, Ethical Impact Assessment, and Ethical Issues of Emerging ICT Applications with AI-specific issues from the literature. These are applied to analyse ChatGPT's capabilities to produce humanlike text and interact seamlessly. The analysis finds ChatGPT could provide high-level societal and ethical benefits. However, it also raises significant ethical concerns across social justice, individual autonomy, cultural identity, and environmental issues. Key high-impact concerns include responsibility, inclusion, social cohesion, autonomy, safety, bias, accountability, and environmental impacts. While the current discourse focuses narrowly on specific issues such as authorship, this analysis systematically uncovers a broader, more balanced range of ethical issues worthy of attention. Findings are consistent with emerging research and industry priorities on ethics of generative AI. Implications include the need for diverse stakeholder engagement, considering benefits and risks holistically when developing applications, and multi-level policy interventions to promote positive outcomes. Overall, the analysis demonstrates that applying established ethics of technology methodologies can produce a rigorous, comprehensive foundation to guide discourse and action around impactful emerging technologies like ChatGPT. The paper advocates sustaining this broad, balanced ethics perspective as use cases unfold to realize benefits while addressing ethical downsides.

With the prevalence of social media networks (SMNs) as platforms for community engagement, substantial attention from academics and practitioners has been paid to investigating the antecedents and consequences of community engagement. Yet, more research is needed to understand the motivations/de-motivations of this concept and its behavioral consequences. Against this backdrop, this study builds on several research streams, including the adapted framework from Hollebeek and Macky, supported by the uses-and-gratifications (U&G) theory and the social exchange theory, and proposes a new framework that explains key individual-level antecedents and first-, second-, and third-tier consequences. This study then goes a step beyond and validates our proposed framework from a cross-national perspective. Data were collected from tourists in the United States and China and analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings suggest that perceived anonymity triggers three levels of tourist community engagement (i.e., “consumption” “contribution” and “creation” in SMNs, while these levels enhance cold and hot brand relationship quality (BRQ). Cold and hot BRQ boost trip decision-making and cross-buying decisions. There are some differences between the American (group 1) and the Chinese (group 2) tourists. For example, in the relationship between perceived anonymity and the three levels of engagement, the effects were stronger for group 1. However, the effect of creation on hot BRQ, and the effect of cold BRQ on cross-buying decisions were stronger for group 2. These findings contribute to the existing research and practice of SMNs as platforms for community engagement in the tourism context.