Journal of Strategic Information Systems最新文献

This paper discusses two opposing narratives of digitalization. Both these narratives are found in existing literature, and the paper understands them as the utopic and dystopic narratives of digitalization. The former expresses unbridled enthusiasm about the bright side of digitalization, while the latter is predominantly pessimistic, and primarily focuses on the undesirable aspects of digitalization. Observing that scholars tend to subscribe to either one or the other narrative, this paper proposes a more middle ground where these competing narratives can be balanced to usher in a better digital future.

Literature reviews serve diverse purposes, including description, understanding, explanation, and testing. Traditionally – before online databases, full-text search availability, and AI-based search tools – identifying relevant sources might have been considered a valuable contribution. However, top-tier information systems (IS) journals now demand more than descriptive reviews; they require authors to move beyond summarizing existing knowledge toward proposing innovative research directions, important research questions, new concepts, and interesting linkages among concepts. Despite adhering to rigorous methodological guidelines, many authors struggle to make conceptual leaps, that is, to elevate their literature reviews beyond description, to achieve a profound understanding, to provide explanations, or to develop a model. Authors may mistakenly prioritize hard work – like thorough literature search, analysis, and organization – over hard thinking, which is crucial for advancing theoretical contributions. With this in mind, I adopt the view that the literature is indeed qualitative data. I suggest that approaches that help make conceptual leaps in qualitative research can benefit literature review authors searching for inconsistencies in the extant literature and developing new questions, concepts, and linkages. Drawing upon qualitative research (Klag, M., and Langley, A., 2013. Approaching the conceptual leap in qualitative research. International Journal of Management Reviews. 15 (2), 149–166.), I unpack the process of conceptual leaping in the conduct of literature reviews. This process involves navigating dialectic tensions between knowing and not knowing, engagement and detachment, deliberation and serendipity, and self-expression and social connection. Effectively managing these tensions can help authors increase the impact and innovativeness of their literature reviews.

Triggered by events such as the murder of George Floyd, the last few years have witnessed the revival of the Black Lives Matter movement, the #metoo movement and other collective initiatives that support LGBTQ + communities and other historically disadvantaged groups. At the same time, the widespread and still growing capabilities of automated systems for decision-making – such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the more recent generative AI (GAI) – have surfaced a multitude of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) issues in various organizational and social settings. In this editorial, we lay out ideas on how the IS community can react, make an important difference, and offer substantial theoretical and practical contributions to social justice. We also provide guidance to prospective JSIS authors whose research concerns the consideration of DEI issues in the strategic design, deployment and use in practice of information systems with embedded emerging, automated, algorithmic-based technologies.

The field of Information Systems continues to change rapidly. The business landscape is being altered by rapid technology development, innovative business models, and a sustained business interest in digital transformation (Marr 2023). This offers an amazing terrain for researchers. We looked back at what was published 20 years ago in JSIS and compared it to current publications. The following pages provide two snapshots of JSIS content during these periods, as well as some reflections on the evolution of research published in JSIS.

Software patents have been shown to have a positive effect on the patenting firm’s market value. Although there is anecdotal evidence that software patents of a focal firm can adversely affect its rival firms, there is a paucity of empirical research on such competitive impacts of software patents. In order to advance our understanding of the competitive impact of software patents, we investigate the impact of a firm’s software patents on rivals’ market value using data from the US IT industries. Importantly, we consider heterogeneity across firms, in terms of their ability to successfully commercialize their patented invention, which has not been studied. Drawing upon resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capability perspective, we examine how rival firm’s R&D capabilities might moderate such a competitive relationship. Furthermore, we theorize that firms must have supportive marketing and operations capabilities if they are to commercialize software patents and generate significant value. Specifically, our analysis of a large unique panel dataset of 563 IT firms in the United States during the period 2003–2012 indicates evidence of negative impacts of a focal firm’s software patent stock on its rivals’ market value. However, if rivals have sufficient R&D capabilities, they can mitigate the negative impacts of the focal firm’s software patents. Moreover, we find that marketing and operations capabilities indeed ensure that software patent stock has strong positive impacts on the forcal firm’s market value. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Internal boundaries between information systems divisions have traditionally caused friction and frustration, and negatively affected IT staff job satisfaction. Adopting open source development principles and processes within a corporate environment, what has been labeled ‘inner source,’ is now part of a larger management strategy to break down silos and promote innovation, collaboration, cooperation and communication across divisions of an organization. In this article we argue that inner source emphasizes the importance of relationships between developers and teams interacting across intra-organizational boundaries. We posit that inner source helps to create social capital, which in turn links to higher levels of job satisfaction. We use a sequential mixed-methods approach to test a theoretical model by combining quantitative survey data collected at one IT organization with qualitative data based on interviews with professionals from six organizations that adopted inner source. The results suggest that employees who participate in inner source projects develop more social interaction ties with others and have higher levels of shared understanding of software projects. Furthermore, we confirm that social interaction ties and a shared understanding link to a higher degree of trust. Finally, this study provides evidence that social capital mediates the link between participation in inner source and job satisfaction, implying that an inner source strategy can offer benefits to organizations. Enriched with the findings from the qualitative interviews, we then identify a number of implications for managers.

We examine how firms configure alliance portfolios—that is, networks of partnering firms—in order to exchange, share, or codevelop the capabilities they require to engage in digital innovation. We analyze data from 550 U.S. firms and the strategic alliances they formed within and across industrial sectors to study how the configuration of alliance portfolios in terms of size, degree of exploration, internationality, and competition affects the volume and quality of digital patents. We find that alliances appear to be an effective means, yet alliances for digital innovations require a different configuration when compared with alliances for non-digital innovations. Large and explorative alliance portfolios help with the creation of digital innovations while international alliances and alliances involving competitors do not. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on digital innovation and alliances. We also distill practical advice to executives charged with making strategic decisions about inter-firm partnerships.

Digital social innovation (DSI) offers incumbents a strategic field of action to leverage the opportunities of digital technologies to address pressing societal challenges. By proposing a taxonomy and 12 clusters of incumbents’ DSI initiatives based on a sample of 296 real-world objects, we develop a unified understanding of DSI and its characteristics. This lays the foundation for further theorising on DSI from an incumbent perspective and for researchers to shape the DSI field. The taxonomy provides incumbents with an orientation to realise DSI’s rich strategic potentials throughout the DSI ideation process and in assessing DSI types.