Journal of Strategic Information Systems最新文献

Digital business model innovation (BMI) is critical to achieving and sustaining competitiveness in technology-driven environments. In those environments, firms must not only sense changes to identify opportunities but also effectively seize them in BMI. Therefore, sensing and seizing cannot be considered as isolated dynamic capabilities, but must be combined for successful BMI. However, research on sensing and seizing does not offer compelling suggestions for firms that struggle with connecting both while pursuing digital BMI. We use qualitative configurational analysis (QCA) to analyze a sample of 49 case studies on digital BMI to identify the antecedents that firms sense before seizing these changes with digital BMI. Based on ten configurations of sensing (represented by six antecedents) and seizing (represented by four BMI types), we explain the relationship between sensed antecedents and seized digital BMI. In addition, we derived four variables that explain “what” and “how” firms connect sensing and seizing. Based on the sensing-seizing connection, we introduce consolidating BMI as a new type of BMI unique to the digital context. This novel type enables firms to exploit and explore new BMs and subsequent digital BMIs through the means of digital infrastructure. This study extends the understanding of how different business models emerge and how firms create digital BMIs.

This research examines how organizations can achieve effective information systems (IS) use by aligning internal IS resources with embeddedness in the IS outsourcing network. Leveraging the empirical opportunity of large-scale organization-wide meaningful use attestation of electronic health records, we conducted a longitudinal analysis of US hospitals from 2013 to 2017. We found that an organization’s network embeddedness amplifies the positive relationship between IS resources and effective IS use. We also identify different impacts depending on network embeddedness types and organization sizes. We found positive moderating effects of structural and positional embeddedness. However, junctional embeddedness has no direct or moderating effect on IS use. In addition, the moderating effects manifest differently for different-sized organizations – i.e., structural embeddedness has a stronger positive moderating effect for large organizations, while positional embeddedness’ positive moderating effect is stronger for small organizations. We also found heterogeneous direct effects of structural and positional embeddedness on organizational IS use. Solely depending on structural embeddedness will result in lower IS use, which is more prominent for small organizations. Positional embeddedness has a negative direct effect on small organizations’ IS use but positively relates to large organizations’ IS use. This research highlights the role of network embeddedness in facilitating IS use and offers a nuanced understanding of its impacts. Our findings also provide practical implications for organizational IS use through strategic IS outsourcing.

The nature, scope, and impact of digital transformation reaches well beyond the boundaries of a single firm. This suggests information systems research should consider how digital transformation unfolds within business ecosystems that consist of multiple interdependent firms, and how this process can ideally be managed. We pursue this research opportunity by introducing orchestration as a concept through which to view digital transformation in business ecosystems, and by presenting empirical insights from a longitudinal in-depth case study that highlights how a focal firm became the orchestrator of digital transformation in its business ecosystem. We explain that becoming an orchestrator of digital transformation occurs through three distinct phases: initiating, opening-up, and integrating. We also identify the interplay of activities by which a focal firm strategizes, mobilizes, and aligns other actors and their resources, as it orchestrates the digital transformation of its business ecosystem. We conclude by outlining how our work serves as an important foundation for future information systems research and offer managerial guidelines outlining how to orchestrate digital transformation processes within business ecosystems.

Driven by environmental uncertainty, many organizations today attempt to achieve agility at scale. However, given the variety and complexity of these efforts, there is currently a limited understanding in terms of their most relevant configurations, especially over the process of change. Based on an iterative taxonomy development approach grounded in design science, we present a taxonomy to structure, configure, and update scaling agility. The resulting multi-dimensional classification system offers an integrative view on elements only selectively considered in prior research. While offering a conceptual anchor for further research, we also provide specific configurations covering three different stages of scaling agility.

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are rapidly changing the competitive landscape. In the search for an appropriate strategic response, firms are currently engaging in a large variety of AI projects. However, recent studies suggest that many companies are falling short in creating tangible business value through AI. As the current scientific body of knowledge lacks empirically-grounded research studies for explaining this phenomenon, we conducted an exploratory interview study focusing on 56 applications of machine learning (ML) in 29 different companies. Through an inductive qualitative analysis, we uncover three broad types and five subtypes of ML value creation mechanisms, identify necessary but not sufficient conditions for successfully leveraging them, and observe that organizations, in their efforts to create value, dynamically shift from one ML value creation mechanism to another by reconfiguring their ML applications (i.e., the shifting practice). We synthesize these findings into a process model of ML value creation, which illustrates how organizations engage in (resource) orchestration by shifting between ML value creation mechanisms as their capabilities evolve and business conditions change. Our model provides an alternative explanation for the current high failure rate of ML projects.

Immersive virtual reality (VR) that utilizes head-mounted displays (HMD) is one of the key emerging technologies of the 21st century and has drawn keen attention from consumers, practitioners, and scholars in various disciplines. Nevertheless, the information systems (IS) discipline has neglected immersive VR, given that only a handful of studies have been published in mainstream IS journals. However, the recent advancements in immersive VR technology provide new opportunities for organizations and IS researchers. In light of these points, we reviewed the immersive VR literature to provide a holistic view of opportunities and challenges for organizations and future research directions for the IS field. By examining the technical capabilities of immersive VR and the previous literature, we identified five affordances: embodiment, interactivity, navigability, sense-ability, and create-ability. Our review of the 151 studies from the IS and related fields synthesized how these affordances were utilized in various research domains. Guided by the affordance-actualization theory, we also identified the strategic opportunities and challenges that come with implementing VR. The actualization of immersive VR affordances in organizations is indeed a fruitful area for IS scholars as there are various venues to move the IS field as well as the VR research in the organizational context forward.

The paper develops a conceptual framework to study the constructs of information technology (IT)-supported value co-creation and co-destruction through shared processes of social interaction and resource integration as mediated by IT and embedded in interactive value formation practices. In particular, the elements of social interaction and resource integration are identified, and the role of IT is discussed. We conduct a systematic literature review and analyze the data using the service system perspective. Our research contributes by identifying the constructs of value-creating phenomena enabled by IT from the service system perspective and presenting a research agenda for further studies.

Competition in the Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry is increasingly moving from being motivated by cost savings towards strategic benefits that service providers can offer to their clients. Innovation is one such benefit that is expected nowadays in outsourcing engagements. The rising importance of innovation has been noticed and acknowledged not only in the Information Systems (IS) literature, but also in other management streams such as innovation and strategy. However, to date, these individual strands of research remain largely isolated from each other. Our theoretical review addresses this gap by consolidating and analyzing research on strategic innovation in the ITO and BPO context. The article set includes 95 papers published between 1998 and 2020 in outlets from the IS and related management fields. We craft a four-phase framework that integrates prior insights about (1) the antecedents of the decision to pursue strategic innovation in outsourcing settings; (2) arrangement options that facilitate strategic innovation in outsourcing relationships; (3) the generation of strategic innovations; and (4) realized strategic innovation outcomes, as assessed in the literature. We find that the research landscape to date is skewed, with many studies focusing on the first two phases. The last two phases remain relatively uncharted. We also discuss how innovation-oriented outsourcing insights compare with established research on cost-oriented outsourcing engagements. Finally, we offer directions for future research.