Journal of Strategic Information Systems最新文献

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.

This paper provides an assessing review and agenda for research at the ‘nexus’ between information systems and strategy practice. The review aims to understand the nature of this connection between the two areas, where information systems scholars strive to understand the everyday work of practitioners in organisations and the impact of digital technologies in strategizing, whilst strategy practice scholars seek a greater understanding of such technologies and their use by strategists. Despite a developing body of work relevant to both information systems and strategy practice, and several editorials calling for ‘synergy’, we still collectively know little about the state of knowledge at the nexus. To address this, our review identifies several constructs that provide linkages between information systems and strategy practice to reveal more about the current state of knowledge and to develop a formal definition for a domain which we call digital strategizing. We conclude by outlining an agenda to encourage and accelerate future research on digital strategizing.

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.

Many organizations run their core business operations on decades-old legacy IT systems. Some security professionals argue that legacy IT systems significantly increase security risks because they are not designed to address contemporary cybersecurity risks. Others counter that the legacy systems might be “secure by antiquity” and argue that due to lack of adequate documentation on the systems, it is very difficult for potential attackers to discover and exploit security vulnerabilities. There is a shortage of empirical evidence on either argument. Routine activity theory (RAT) argues that an organization’s guardianship is critical for reducing security incidents. However, RAT does not well explain how organizations might guard against security risks of legacy IT systems. We theorize that organizations can enhance their guardianship by either modernizing their legacy IT systems in-house or by outsourcing them to cloud vendors. With datasets from the U.S. federal agencies, we find that agencies that have more legacy IT systems experience more frequent security incidents than others with more modern IT systems. A 1%-point increase in the proportion of IT budgets spent on IT modernization is associated with a 5.6% decrease in the number of security incidents. Furthermore, migration of the legacy systems to the cloud is negatively associated with the number of security incidents. The findings advance the literature on strategic information systems by extending RAT to explain why the “security by antiquity” argument is not valid and how organizations can reduce the security risks of legacy IT systems through modernization and migration to the cloud.