Journal of Strategic Information Systems最新文献

Architectural theory of digital innovation contends that, to enhance physical products with digital capabilities, a layered modular architecture is required. This architecture hybridizes hierarchically arranged components of physical products with modules of digital functionality configured into layers. Despite considerable research adopting this architectural perspective on digital innovation, questions of how this hybrid architecture is accomplished organizationally and technologically lack both conceptual clarity and empirical illustration. Noting pervasive tensions that characterize digital innovation efforts and the contradictions between hierarchical and layered modular configurations, this paper seeks to answer the following research question: Given that the layered modular architecture needs to hybridize modular arrangements with opposing logics, how is it accomplished?

Employing the concepts of digitalization, physical product hierarchy and digital control system to better theorize a product architecture’s movement from a modular to a layered modular architecture accompanied by organizational structures that enable this change, we abductively analyze the increasing digitization of a car’s Driver Information Module (DIM) over a 10 year period. We conclude by proposing three transformations through which the layered modular architecture is accomplished.

This paper investigates how Information Technology (IT) leveraging capability supports buyer-supplier collaboration in New Product Development (NPD). IT-leveraging capability is defined as the ability to effectively use IT functionalities to support IT-enabled NPD activities. We consider three dimensions of this capability: effective use of Project and Resource Management Systems (PRMS), effective use of Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) and effective use of Cooperative Work Systems (CWS). We consider the dynamics between these three dimensions, which have usually been treated as equal. Using an in-depth case study approach, we show that effective use of KMS and CWS are key dimensions to support collaboration, creating a unique source of competitive advantage. On the other hand, while effective use of PRMS does not help to create differentiation it is important to support the coordination of KMS and CWS. Furthermore, the three dimensions have different intensities of contribution depending on the NPD stage and supplier involvement configuration.

Research on alignment between business strategy and information technology (IT) strategy has generated extensive insights over the last three decades. That research has focused primarily on the fit between business and IT strategies, while cross-domain alignment, i.e., alignment between business strategy and IT infrastructure components, has received far less attention. Further, previous studies have focused on the implications of alignment for firm performance while the effects of cross-domain alignment on business unit performance in multi-business organizations (MBOs) are yet to be examined. This issue is important as IT infrastructures are evolving rapidly. Specifically, MBOs are increasingly turning to corporate IT platforms to support a common set of shared IT needs, while still allowing individual business units to manage unique aspects of their own IT needs through local IT applications. Extending prior research, this study proposes that performance of business units in MBOs is influenced by two complementary forms of cross-domain alignment, viz., alignment between the corporate IT platform and the corporate business strategy, and alignment between the business unit’s portfolio of IT applications and its business strategy. Using data from a global survey of 120 organizations, we find evidence that complementarity between these two forms of cross-domain alignment creates a joint positive effect on business unit performance. We also find that this effect varies with the extent of process digitization within business units. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The Journal of Strategic Information Systems (JSIS) was first published in December 1991 by Robert D. (Bob) Galliers, its founding Editor-in-Chief (EiC), following an invitation to establish the journal by Butterworth Heinemann in 1989. Bob invited Sirkka Jarvenpaa to join him as co-Editor-in-Chief in 2000. In 2018, Bob and Sirkka jointly decided it was time, and after three and two decades at the helm respectively, announced they would both step down from their EiC roles at the end of that year. Bob and Sirkka, the Senior Editors and Elsevier endorsed Guy Gable to assume the role of Editor-in-Chief commencing January 2019. In this reflection, Guy interviews Bob Galliers on the ‘changing of the guard’; the journal’s past and future, and the topic of Strategic Information Systems more broadly.

We believe the history of JSIS as reflected in Bob's ruminations is insightful for the Journal's readers and the IS community. From the discussion we learn how an academic journal was guided to success by focusing on the vision, the strategic choices and actions, the team composition and the ability to adapt and lead in a constantly changing environment, where the technology developments challenge organizational structures, markets and society. A set of well-thought through strategic choices, initially made by Bob and later in collaboration with Sirkka and the rest of the editorial team, led the Journal to the top of the research field by gaining respect from scholars in the underlying research areas, i.e., IS management, Strategy and Organization Science.¹

Workplace technologies are more central to working in organisations than ever before. These technologies began as instrumental aids to support office work of individuals but have since also become the basis for social interactions and community building in organisations and more recently become able to perform managerial roles with the use of advanced AI capabilities. Our call for papers to this special issue invited original studies to go further and advance our thinking on the strategic implications of this layered evolution of workplace technologies on work and the structure of organisations. In this introduction, we synthesise the main themes from the special issue, and also ongoing dialogues with the growing community at the regular AIS / IFIP 9.1 workshop on the Changing Nature of Work. A key observation is that the work involved in configuring emergent Digital/Human configurations, is vastly under-reported and poorly understood. Paradoxically, this configuring work is the most demanding and critical in the shaping of modern organisations. We suggest that this type of largely invisible work requires engagement beyond the level of execution or even the meaning of work, it requires intervening with third order effects that get to the core of what an organisation is. We highlight the challenges for organisations in dealing with third order change, particularly because these effects are beyond existing frames of reference and require more dynamic and supple responses based on the values, purpose and intent dominant in the organisation – we describe this as structural digital work. Leaders that are unable or unwilling to engage with effects at this level, and this type of work, will miss identifying core opportunities and risks associated with digital transformation in organisations. We also reflect on the value of current theories and methods used to research this important and emergent phenomenon.

This article^1,2 has two aligned aims: (i) to espouse the value of a strategic research orientation for the Information Systems Discipline; and (ii) to facilitate such a strategic orientation by recognising the value of programmatic research and promoting the publication of such work. It commences from the viewpoint that Information Systems (IS) research benefits from being strategic at every level, from individual researcher, to research program, to research discipline and beyond. It particularly advocates for more coordinated programs of research emphasising real-world impact, while recognising that vibrant, individual-driven and small-team research within broad areas of promise, is expected to continue forming the core of the IS research ecosystem. Thus, the overarching aim is the amplification of strategic thinking in IS research – the further leveraging of an orientation natural to the JSIS community, with emphasis on research programs as a main strategic lever, and further considering how JSIS can be instrumental in this aim.

Recent years have seen heightened interest in how information technologies (IT) are changing the nature of work in strategy and in the work of strategists. This paper highlights four ‘modes of open strategizing’ which represent the digital work activities of strategists, who in our case are top managers involved in developing and implementing a new five-year strategy at a large professional association. Top managers adopted an open strategy approach and included their organizational community in shaping a future direction for the professional association. Whilst IT-enabled openness in strategy has received significant interest recently, few studies have focused on the specific (digital) work practices of strategists and subsequently connected this to notable outcomes such as organizational transformation. We therefore respond to this by connecting the four outlined modes we identify to show realized strategic outcomes of digital work and how it can transform organizations.

Advanced workplace technologies are increasingly used alongside traditional enterprise software packages (such as enterprise resource planning) in the workplace. However, we have only limited understanding of how different kinds of technologies are used to dynamically shape work routines and fluidity in a digital workplace. We conducted an in-depth six-year study of the use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system by a large information technology service provider company. The company used the system to manage its global staffing processes. We explored how the users of this system sought to achieve the fluidity needed to do their work. Our findings show that users balance two patterns of routine performance through different technologies with varying degrees of malleability: one to generate fluidity and another to generate stability. We call this process ‘generative balancing’. Our research contributes to the literature on workplace technologies and ERP use by providing insights into how the use of technologies with different degrees of malleability helps to craft digital workspaces and enables users to deal with tensions between accomplishing local-level performance and realizing corporate-level strategic intents.

How do configurations of humans and algorithms evolve as firms adopt artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and what are the implications for work and organization? We explored these questions through a two-year long case study of an organization in the international maritime trade that introduced automated algorithmic support for data analysis and prediction work. Drawing on a human–machine configuration perspective, we found that humans and the algorithm were configured and reconfigured in multiple ways over time as the organization dealt with the introduction of algorithmic analysis. In contrast to replacing human work, the emergent configurations required new roles and redistribution of extant expertise to augment and improve the accuracy of the algorithm. Our analysis suggests that the new configuration resembled a human-in-the-loop pattern, comprised of both the augmentation work of auditing (i.e. the generation of a ground truth and assessment of the algorithmic output against this) as well as the work of altering the algorithm and the data acquisition architecture. Our research points to the strategic importance of a human-in-the-loop pattern for organizational reflexivity to ensure that the performance of the algorithm meets the organization’s requirements and changes in the environment.

Organizations are increasingly digitalizing the work associated with information exchange by using enterprise social media. However, social media’s openness to outsider users poses significant challenges to maintaining alignment between social media logic (or platform logic that guides decisions and actions on the platform) and the dominant organizational logic. Through an in-depth, longitudinal, abductive study of three successive social media implementations in a single organization, I explore the process of maintaining (or losing) social media alignment and its long-term consequences on the nature of the work. The paper shows that digitalization exposes the work to continuous adjustment within and across three elements of digital work: digital infrastructure work (embracing new uses of the platform at the user level), digital strategy work (redesigning governance policies), and aligning work (fitting uses with the platform logic underlying digital work). The findings show that despite initial social media alignment, through continuous coevolution of these three elements, the platform logic underlying digital community work eventually drifted away from supporting the organization’s original logic of cohesion to supporting an alternative logic of inclusivity. Accordingly, a process model of platform drifting has been developed. By taking a closer look at actual practices, the paper contributes to digital work research by identifying distinct elements of digital work involved in social media (mis)alignment and illustrates the profound, long-term consequences of social media on the nature of the work.