This study compares two conceptual (resource-centered and contingency-based) and two analytical (linear and nonlinear) approaches that can be used to assess the strategic value of information technology. Two hypotheses related to these approaches are developed and tested based on matched survey data collected from the CEOs and CIOs of 110 firms. The results indicate that the resource-centered and contingencybased approaches provide complementary understanding of 1 Ritu Agarwal was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Christina Soh was the associate editor. Yolande E. Chan and Vijay Sethi served as reviewers. The third reviewer chose to remain anonymous. the strategic value of IT. On the one hand, the contingencybased approach is better at explaining the impact of costrelated IT applications on firm performance. Alignment between business strategy and information systems strategy on cost reduction was found to have a significant negative association with firm expense. On the other hand, the resource-centered perspective has a stronger predictive ability of IT impact on firm revenue and profitability. Our results indicate that investments in growth-oriented applications were directly and positively related to firm revenue. An ANOVA test indicates that the nonlinear approaches provide additional insights that help to better understand the relationship between alignment and performance. The response surface method (RSM) shows that high-end strategic alignment (i.e., fit occurring when business strategy and IT strategy are both high) leads to superior performance compared to lowend strategic alignment (i.e., fit occurring when business strategy and IT strategy are both low). We discuss the implications of this study for research and practice and conclude with suggestions for future research directions.
Drawing on the rational addiction framework, this study explores the digital vulnerabilities driven by dependence on mobile social apps (e.g., social network sites and social games). Rational addicts anticipate the future consequences of their current behaviors and attempt to maximize utility from their intertemporal consumption choices. Conversely, myopic addicts tend toward immediate gratification and fail to fully recognize the future consequences of their current consumption. In lieu of conducting self-report surveys or aggregate-level demand estimation, this research examines addictive behaviors on the basis of consumption quantity at an individual level. To empirically validate rational addiction in the context of social app consumption, we collect and analyze 13-month, individual-level panel data on the weekly app usage of thousands of smartphone users. Results indicate that the average social app user conducts herself in a forward-looking manner and rationally adjusts consumption over time to derive optimal utility. The subgroup analysis, however, indicates that substantial variations in addictiveness and forward-looking propensities exist across demographically diverse groups. For example, addictive behaviors toward social network sites are more myopic in nature among older, less-educated, high-income groups. Additionally, the type of social app moderates the effects of demographic characteristics on the nature of addictive behaviors. We provide implications that policymakers can use to effectively manage mobile addiction problems, with the recommendations focusing on asymmetric social policies (e.g., information- and capacity-enhancing measures).
Psychology. His current research interests include team processes and effectiveness in organizational settings, innovation implementation at the individual and team levels of analysis, individual and contextual determinants of individual and team creativity, and effects of social networks on knowledge and creativity in organizations.KIMIN KIM is a Ph.D. candidate in the faculty of management at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He is currently working on his Ph.D. dissertation, which examines the social capital aspects of interorganizational networks. His research interests include the sociological investigation of intra-and interorganizational networks, network dynamics, and the strategic implications of corporate collaboration networks.ABSTRACT: From the social network perspective, this study explores the ontological structure of knowledge sharing activities engaged in by researchers in the field of information systems (IS) over the past three decades. We construct a knowledge network based on coauthorship patterns extracted from four major journals in the IS field in order to analyze the distinctive characteristics of each subfield and to assess the amount of internal and external knowledge exchange that has taken place among IS researchers. This study also tests the role of different types of social capital that influence the academic impact of researchers. Our results indicate that the proportion of coauthored IS articles in the four journals has doubled over the past 25 years, from merely 40 percent in 1978 to over 80 percent in 2002. However, a significant variation exists in terms of the shape, density, and centralization of knowledge exchange networks across the four subfields of IS-namely, behavioral science, organizational science, computer science, and economic science. For example, the behavioral science Downloaded by [Universität Osnabrueck] at 00:32 27 May 2015 266 OH, CHOI, AND KIM
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