Journal of Strategic Information Systems最新文献

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.

Although cloud computing is associated with organizational agility, anecdotal evidence points to resistance to cloud computing by employees in information technology (IT) units. We explored the links between software as a service (SaaS) and organizational agility by conducting two stages of interviews with key informants in large organizations, and by employing affordance and inertia-theoretical lenses. Two basic affordances emerged from the retroductive data analysis – implementing quickly and sourcing independently – which in turn yielded two higher-level affordances: trialing alternatives and self-organizing business teams. We developed a model that explains how and why these four affordances enhance agility by accelerating the sensing-to-acting process of organizations. We also describe how five categories of organizational inertia in IT units hinder agility. Our main contribution is how adopting SaaS applications enables organizational agility while highlighting the role of IT unit inertia in SaaS affordance actualization processes.

Information systems (IS) strategizing is particularly challenging for established organizations because of their historical conditions. The question of how established organizations can effectively manage their historical conditions in IS strategizing remains under-explored. To address this question, we conducted a case study tracing the history (1960–2020) of an established organization in the building and construction industry. Through the analysis, we found four systems: accounting management system, business communication system, knowledge management system, and community collaboration system, as the historical conditions that formed an IS imprint, which was later managed and reproduced during IS strategizing. Using the imprinting lens, we developed an understanding of: (1) the formation of the IS imprint at the organizational foundation; and (2) the reproduction of the IS imprint, considering imprint-as-resource and imprint-as-constraint during IS strategizing. We contribute to the literature by providing an understanding of how historical conditions inform IS strategizing in the long term and by applying the imprinting lens to uncover the process through which an IS imprint is strategically managed and reproduced beyond the founding phase. The insights developed from this study are transferable to similar organizational contexts for managing historical conditions in IS strategizing.

AI-based technologies have changed the nature of the symbiosis between humans and AI, and so strategic management of human-AI interaction in organizations requires deeper ethical considerations. Aligning AI with human values requires a systematic understanding of the ethical management of human-AI interaction. We conduct a theoretical review, from a sociotechnical perspective, and analyze ethical management of human-AI interaction through the lens of sociomateriality. Our systematic approach helps explain and clarify the interdependencies between two ethical perspectives – duty and virtue ethics – in sociotechnical systems. We also provide a theoretical framework that leads to seven avenues for future research.