MIS 9003 – Prof. Min-Seok Pang

Leting Zhang

Leting Zhang holds a M.S in Management Science and Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2017 and a B.S in Information Management and Information Systems from Hubei University of Technology in 2014. Before joining the program, Leting has research experience in social media and cybersecurity, she worked at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Singapore Management University as a research assistant. Her current research interests include the information economics, cybersecurity, social media and machine learning.

Week 13- Reading Summary – Leting Zhang

Angst, C.M., Block, E.S., D’arcy, J. and Kelley, K., 2017. When do IT security investments matter? Accounting for the influence of institutional factors in the context of healthcare data breaches. MIS Quarterly, 41(3), pp.893-916.

Although organizations take numerous approaches to secure their IT asset, data breach incidents still happen very frequently across industries. To investigate the underlying reasons, this study examines the effectiveness of IT  security investment in the healthcare industry through the lens of Neo – institutional theory, specifically,  how symbolic adoption and substantive adoption influence the success of security investment, what kinds of institutional factors  associated with the two types of adoptions, why IT security investment has a delayed effect.

According to the institutional theory, the motivation to adopt a practice is not only by actual benefit, but also to seek legitimacy in the social structure. In most cases, this pressure can result in symbolic adoption, which means practice would not be fully implemented and their benefit would not be maximized. However, symbolic adoption and substantive adoption can not be observed directly, so the paper suggests several organizational characteristics that can predict each type of adoption. Combining with theory and available data,  the study proposes that these characteristics can contribute to symbolic adoption: 1. members of smaller health systems; 2. long  established; 3. smaller size; 4. for-profit; 5. teaching ; 6.faith-based;7. less entrepreneurial ; then it further suggests 1. more IT security investment will reduce breaches; 2. substantive adoption will enhance the effectiveness of IT security investment over time; 3.symbolic  adoption will decrease the effectiveness of IT security investment in the over time.

It collects hospital level data from HIMSS and data breach incidents from different sources. Then, it uses a growth mixture model (GMM) for dichotomous outcomes to test hypotheses. A part of hypotheses are supported by the results.

Week12- Reading Summary- Leting Zhang

Bhargava, H. K., & Mishra, A. N. (2014). Electronic medical records and physician productivity: Evidence from panel data analysis. Management Science60(10), 2543-2562.

This paper examines the impact of EMRs on physician productivity. There are two specific questions: 1. Does physician productivity change over time as a result of EMR implementation? 2. Does this impact differ for physicians of different specialties?

The conceptual foundations for this study mainly based on three streams of literature. The first is physician productivity, WRVUs are used to measure it. they are relative value units generated for clinical activities; the second stream is IT- Enabled productivity, extant research shows there may be significant differences between IT’s impact during short-term and long-term; the third stream is Task-Technology Fit, the paper points out the two main functions of EMRs are information review and information entry, given that physicians of different specialities have different demand for the EMRs, the productivity impacts of EMRs on them are likely  to vary.

This study uses data includes monthly physician schedule and production in a healthcare system from 2003 to 2006, in the period, EMR system was implemented across clinics. Some exploratory data analyses show EMR’s impacts on productivity are significantly different in first months and after six months, then they estimated the learning period empirically. Next, they use OLS to estimate the model which accounts for the heterogeneous in physicians and clinics. Lastly, they use  Arellano- Bond system GMM estimation which eliminates bias from unobserved heterogeneity by first-differencing and from endogeneity by using instrumental variables of available lags and levels.

Results show 1. FPs and Peds are less productive in the stable phase in comparison to IMs. The net impact of EMRs is better on IM than FPs and Peds. 2. FPs and Peds experience a decrease in productivity compared to IMs in the learning phase.

Week 11 -Reading Summary – Leting Zhang

Atasoy, H., Banker, R. D., & Pavlou, P. A. (2016). On the Longitudinal Effects of IT Use on Firm-Level Employment. Information Systems Research, 27(1), 6-26.

This study examines how IT use affect firm-level employment, more specifically, how web and enterprise applications differentially play a role in the firm’s employment, how firm size, the average skill level of its employees,  industry technology intensity, as moderators influence IT impacts on employment.

In the theory part, the paper specifies three mechanisms behind this impact: productivity gains, make versus buy decisions, labor complementarity versus substitution. then differentiating enterprise applications and web applications, because the implementation of enterprise applications require more investments and organizational change, so it takes more time to materialize them compared to web applications. Next, it illustrates moderator’s role, specifically, the materialization of IT is more slowly in larger firms; IT use would have a stronger role in employment for firms with high level of skills and firms in the high-tech industry.

This study uses a firm-level survey from TurkStat which has several advantages, compared to other commonly used datasets, it is more representative, more granular and it covered smaller firms. Fixed effects model is used to examine the relationship between IT usage and employment. It also uses several strategies to deal with endogeneity, including using a series of control variables, analyzing the timing of changes in IT use and employment, and generalized propensity score. The results are robust.

The paper has several conclusions. Firstly, there is a positive relationship between IT use and firm-level employment on average; furthermore, the effect of enterprise applications is lagged, but the use of web application materialize in the current year; the longitudinal impact led by the use of enterprise application  is more salient in larger firms with higher average wages in high-tech industries, while the current effects of the use of web application are more pronounced in small firms. It provides several implications for public policy.

Week 9- Reading Summary-Leting Zhang

Pang, M.-S., Tafti, A., & Krishnan, M. S. (2014). Information Technology and Administrative Efficiency in U.S. State Governments: a Stochastic Frontier Approach1. MIS Quarterly, 38(4), 1079-A16. 

In recent decades, IT has become an indispensable tool for major strategic initiatives in state governments, but whether these efforts improve the administrative efficiency remain is unknown. In order to get a better understanding of IT’s impact on the public sector, this study estimates the relationship between IT spending and cost efficiency in U.S. state government.

IT investments in government organizations can lead to cost efficiency improvements in two ways:  reducing human labor and enhancing the productivity of the administrative process; automating digitized business and increasing transparency and accountability in administration. Furthermore, the study proposes three moderating factors from economic, demographic and political environments respectively, specifically, given in the states with more private-sector IT industries or a larger share of rural population or more divided government, the positive of IT would be stronger.  Then authors leverage several public data sources and use a two-stage estimation approach to analyze data. Because there is not a collective output measure for state government, and production of public service is exogenous, the study uses cost function and to posit state governments attempt to limit the use of inputs accordingly. In the first stage, they measure the cost efficiency of state governments in a stochastic frontier analysis with a translog cost function; in the second state, they regress the estimated efficiency on IT measures and other exogenous factors that are used in previous literature. The estimated results support all of their hypothesis.

The study offers meaningful policy implication, specifically, the results justify states governments’ investment in IT. It also contributes to the IS by integrating research from IS, political sciences, and public economics, expanding the boundary of IT value research to the public sector.

 

Week 8- How to become a productive writer?

P: professor S: students

P: Ph.D. students need a variety of skills, but writing skill may be the most important one. How many time did you spend on the literature review?

S: Reading and writing take a pretty long time.

P: I spent almost 5 hours on writing a 2 pages grant proposal from scratch, but 2 hours were spent on Facebook, Twitter, and some websites.  The difficulty in starting writing on a blank page is called “Writer’s block”. Do you have the similar experience and how you overcome it?

S: Before I write, I would think in my mind and organize some ideas, it could help me start writing soon.

S: I would start with small paragraphs.

P: Are there any other strategy to fix “Writer’s block”?

S: For me, talking with others could help me to generate ideas and frame my thought.

S: Making an outline takes a lot of time, and it would be modified several times. I would rather write and don’t think too much.

S:  As for me, Mindmap is a good tool to help me build a framework for a paper, it can also catalyze my writing.

M: Right. There are many strategies. I want to recommend a book to you in terms of  how to improve writing,  <How to Write a Lot>. A good practice is writing every day, even only a small paragraph.  Back to the “Writer’s block”, the most difficult part is the start, writing on a blank page. To overcome it, I would go to a Starbuck or an unfamiliar place, then start writing. Because it is said that in a new environment, people would become more productive. Another strategy is writing on Sunday evening. Thirdly, just writing. Because writing is an iterated process, thus do not read any literature, just use my own mind to write and revise it over and over again. You can never expect writing a good article from one shot.

S: Sometimes, surfing the internet during writing is not necessarily a bad thing, I can copy-paste a few useful sentences and paragraphs, they can be used in my article and help me create new ideas.

P: Yes. Another book I want to recommend is <To the Point: A Dictionary of Concise >. Writing a lot doesn’t mean write well. For many journals, they have explicit page length limits. In the near future, you would find it’s more difficult to write a concise paper. However. the trend is that shorter papers are more preferred by editors.

P: Non-native speakers pay more attention to the grammars and expressions, which could be an advantage. Another thing is that Fox school provides proofreading, you can use it to polish your papers.

S: Some reviewers criticize the logical flow in my paper, how to improve that aspect?

P: It’s more like a problem of logic and theory.

S: Think about hamburger, your paper has different layers but you should make the transition as smooth as possible.

P: Ture, and remember, always think from a reader’s view.

 

 

Week8 – Reading Summary -Leting Zhang

Tiwana, A., Kim, S. K., & Kim, S. K. (2015). Discriminating IT Governance. Information Systems Research, 143(December 2015). 

Based on the idea that different types of IT assets must be governed different, the paper examines an interesting research question: how does the interplay between firms’ IT governance choices and departmental peripheral knowledge influence IT strategic agility?

The theoretical foundation is Jensen and Meckling’s theory, the central idea is that decision rights must be colocated with the knowledge needed to make those decisions when the two are not colocated, there are delegation solution and transmission solution.  In the IT context, both the delegation and transmission solution should be used,  increasing the peripheral knowledge is also important in tandem with IT governance. Then they propose, For the IT apps, which are often uniquely tailored to different functions, JM’s delegation solution could minimize problems like agility-imperiling delays. Then, with more business knowledge, IT unit could better help line functions, which could increase the strategic agility. However, for IT infrastructure decision which requires deep technical expertise and holistic understanding, JM’s delegation solution implies the centralization of IT infrastructure governance is an optimal strategy. In the meantime, with the increase in line function’s technical knowledge, the strategic agility could be promoted.

In order to test these hypotheses, the authors design a survey and collected matched-pair data from senior IT managers and line function managers in 105 U.S firms. Data on IT strategic agility were collected from line function managers, other variables come from IT managers. Constructs in surveys are based on prior literature. After testing their validity, they use  Garen’s two-stage econometric techniques to analyze the data. In the first stage, they evaluated the endogeneity concern by Hausman test. In the second stage, they use a three-step hierarchical weighted least squares (WLS) model to test hypotheses.They also solve some main endogeneity concerns.  The paper’s main contributions are showing 1. IT governance enhances IT strategic agility only when it is discriminatingly aligned with departments’ peripheral knowledge; 2. governance-contingent nature of which department needs peripheral knowledge.

Week7- Reading Summary -Leting Zhang

Given the sourcing trends are unexamined fully, the paper establishes two research goals:1. assess whether organizations are trending toward one sourcing approach over another;2. examine the extent to which organizational antecedents influence the relative rate at which organizations move toward a specific IS sourcing configuration.  Specifically, what’re the answers in the context of healthcare and sourcing decision within EMRS (Electronic Medical Record Systems).

Under the theoretical framework of institutional theory, the authors identify several factors that may impact institutional pressures and therefore influence the adoption decision. 1.strategic orientation, more specifically, whether a hospital is for-profit or not, teaching or not; 2. formal structure, including hospital size and hospital health system size; 3. Case complexity. It mainly uses two data sources: HIMSS database and HospitalCompare database. Thus they can capture the modules that were integrated into the EMRS, the associated suppliers and the contract year, then they can construct the patterns of implementation over year.Then they code sourcing strategies and compare sequence similarities using a matching algorithm by R. Every hospital receives a score based on how many moves it would take to transform its sequence into the prototypical single-sourcing sequence. For the independent variables part, they mainly focus on five variables, which are antecedent, and their interaction with time. The result shows there is not a statistically significant interaction between time and FP hospital; teaching hospitals move toward single-sourcing more quickly; Hospital with higher CMI is more slowly in adopting single sourcing.As their hypotheses put, the size of a hospital has a statistically significant negative interaction with time, but it is not the case for the size of the hospital system. They also give reasonable explanations for the inconsistency.

The paper has several theoretical and managerial contribution. For example, it uses a novel sequence analysis approach to quantifying sourcing configurations. What’s more, it illustrates the how institutional factor influence sourcing strategy factors.

 

Week6-Reading Summary- Leting Zhang

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 had a pervasive influence on forms. Among many articles, SOX section 404 highlights the importance of controls related to the financial reporting function of management information systems, it requires a regular assessment of the quality of the financial reporting function, which provides conditions for this research.

This paper examines how weakness in IT controls impact the quality of the information and cause poor forecasts. It also investigates how this relationship varies by the type of IT material weaknesses reported.

The material weakness is defined as a control deficiency that results in a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of financial information will occur without the being detected or corrected. The paper highlights the importance of IT in producing meaningful financial reports. Thus IT weaknesses will have a significant negative impact on data quality. So they propose for firms with SOX 404 IT material weakness will have lower management earnings forecast accuracy, comparing to firms have effective internal controls and non-IT material weakness.  In order to investigate the different impacts caused by different IT material weakness, the author classifies the control weakness into three categories: 1. data processing integrity; 2. system access and security; 3. system structure and usage. It proposes that IT material weakness related to the data processing integrity category will have the greatest negative impact on information quality and forecasting accuracy.  Their research model is OLS regression. The dependent variable is management forecast error, the focal independent variables are whether a firm has IT material weakness and the dimensions the weakness in. They collect data on SOX 404 report, financial report and forecast, the time span is 2004 to 2008. After a series of robustness check, the hypotheses are supported.

This paper contributes to the IS literature by providing evidence linking overall IT controls and their relative quality dimensions to the quality of management decision outcome.

Week 5- Reading Summary- Leting Zhang

Project managers’ ability always affects the performance of software project directly, especially in the case of offshored software projects which spans locational and organizational boundaries, engendering greater information gaps and higher uncertainties, practical intelligence (PI) of PMs can be significantly helpful in solving difficulties and challenges.

The paper considers projects from an information processing perspective. Specifically, offshored software projects are prone to gaps between information processing needs and capabilities that pose severe management challenges, often lead to unexpected impediments to project success. In order to mitigate the negative effects of incomplete information, projects can use approaches like standard project management techniques, select appropriate PMs and team members.

Then the authors adopt the taxonomy of PI for IT professionals to that for PMs. They use four metrics to evaluate it, tasks, career, self, and others.  Then, they consider that PM’PI may benefit projects differently based on the projects’ features.  One of them is project complexity which consists of technological complexity and organizational complexity. A more complex project impose more severe information processing challenges, therefore requiring a higher PI for PM. Specifically, higher project complexity would increase the information needs of a project; In contrast, higher familiarity with the task and between stakeholders would increase the information capabilities in a project. Project complexity consists of technological complexity and organizational complexity.

The authors conduct a field study at a leading software outsourcing vendor in India. Then, they use the critical incidents approach to assess PM’S PI and collect data on more than 500 software outsourcing projects, those data including the complexity, familiarity, outcomes of each project and a series of control variables. OLS regression models are established to test hypotheses, results support most of the hypotheses.

This paper has several contributions. It demonstrates the project performance effects of PI and in the certain context of offshore outsourcing, it also conceptualizes and quantifying PM’s PI, and examine its efficacy in different contexts.It also has practical implications in choosing and training PM.

Week 4- Reading Summary – Leting Zhang

Tanriverdi, H., & Uysal, V. B. (2011). Cross-business information technology integration and acquirer value creation in corporate mergers and acquisitions. Information Systems Research, 22(4), 703-720.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are common and important economic activities across many sectors of the economy. However, the role information technology plays in the process is ambiguous. This paper tends to investigate why and how cross-business information technology integration(CBITI)  capability of an acquirer increase value for shareholders in M&A.

The main theory lies in the cross-business organizational integration, which could create additional value over and above the sum of the two firms’ individual value. In the scenario,  cross-business IT integration could coordinate the create-creation process. The paper specifies there are five CBITI, 1. integration of IT infrastructures; 2. integration of IT applications and data; 3. integration of IT human resource management practices; 4. integration of IT vendor management; 5. integration of IT strategy-making practices.  Then it also explains four major causal mechanisms behind the value-creation: 1.  generating IT cost savings; 2. minimizing potential disruptions to business operations; 3.  enabling the realization of business synergies; 4.  enabling regulatory compliance and reduce costs of compliance. The paper also points out that different complementary resources of different industries could offer significant synergy potential. Based on these theories, it proposes that the CBITI level of an acquirer positively affects the performance of the acquirer in a new acquisition, and it positively affects the abnormal stock returns of the acquirer, the industry relatedness of target moderate the relationship between CBITI level of an acquirer and performance of it in a new acquisition, both in the short run and long run.

It collects data from different sources including a survey and different databases. Then they use the event study methodology to measure forward-looking expectations of the capital markets about the impact CBITI has. The hypotheses are supported by the results.  This study contributes to the M&A literature in IS, finance etc and has important implications for CIO.

Week 3 – Reading Summary – Leting Zhang

Rai, A., Arikan, I., Pye, J., & Tiwana, A. (2015). Fit and Misfit of Plural Sourcing Strategies and IT-Enabled Process Integration Capabilities: Consequences of Firm Performance in the US Electric Utility Industry. Mis Quarterly39(4), 865-885.

Plural sourcing is a strategy used commonly in industry. It involves a firm’s simultaneous use of multiple modes of governance to source a good or service. This paper investigates an interesting question in terms of the interactions between IT capabilities and plural strategies, and how the interaction influence a firm’s performance.

The research model is built on transaction cost economics, coordination costs, and IT capabilities.  It also introduces a new concept – Market Sourcing Intensity, which indicates the extent of a firm source from the market. The higher the market sourcing intensity is, the more necessary for a firm to coordinate with other firms, otherwise, a firm should pay more attention to its vertical organizations. The core idea behind the research model is that of discriminating alignment between the development of IT capabilities and changes in adopted plural sourcing strategies. Specifically, there is a fit between IT-enabled interfirm process integration capability and high MSI, IT-enabled intrafirm process integration capability and low MSI. The fit could improve the firm performance, but misfit could cause penalty.

The paper is situated in the U.S. electric utility industry. It collects data from several sources, including industry files from authority, financial and accounting information from WRDS. What’s more, it classifies IT investment into five types firstly and then aggregates them into three types: inter, intra and infra. Also, it uses return on assets (ROA) as a measure of firm performance. Then pooled OLS equations are established and the results support hypotheses.  This study has implications for the understanding of business value from IT-enabled process integration capabilities and the management of plural sourcing, and put importance on the alignment between these two important factors.

 

Week 2- Reading Summary- Leting Zhang

Baker, G. P., & Hubbard, T. N. (2004). Contractibility and asset ownership: On-board computers and governance in US trucking. The Quarterly Journal of Economics119(4), 1443-1479.

How informational capabilities affect the boundaries of the firm, specifically, the ownership of assets? In the context of U.S. trucking, the paper investigates the impact of OBD(On-board computers) adoption on two kinds of ownership by changing the contracting environment.

The analytic framework  is based on property rights theories, it expalains how contractual incompleteness can affect the comparative advantage of using an owner-operator for a haul relative to a company driver.   There are two main costs two ownerships face,  company driver has higher agency costs compared to owner driver who faces a higher bargain costs.  Agency costs are from the seperation between residual right and residual claimant.  Bargain costs are from the inefficiencies associated with bargaining over the truck’s use. However the OBD could reduce the agency costs.  Based on the framework, the paper proposes that (1). longer hauls are more likely to be completed by owner-operators; (2) unidirectional hauls are more likely to be carried by owner-operator; (3) driver-ownership should decline with OBC adoption; (4) the relationships between OBC adoption and ownership should be stronger for long hauls than for short hauls.

In the analysis part, the paper uses Truck Inventory and Use Surveys from 1987 and 1992. Firstly it examines cross-sectional relationships and test the first two hypotheses, then it constructs cohorts and take several approaches including first difference estimation, instrumental variables to solve the endogeneity and test the main hypotheses.

The results suggests that improved contracting, using on-board computers in the context, leads to more integrated asset ownership. In another word, the changes in monitoring technology could change the industry structure in this sector. The implications could also be applied to other sector, like medicine.

Week 1 Reading Summary -Leting Zhang

Kim, K., Mithas, S., & Kimbrough, M. (2017). Information technology investments, and firm risk across industries: Evidence from the bond market. 

When firms in U.S. make decision in IT investment, it is necessary for them to evaluate the impact on their bond, because bond markets are the single laregest financial sources for U.S. firms. However, how bondholders view IT investment is little known. This paper tends to investigate the problem from two perspectives : 1.  the association between IT investments and two measures, initial bond rating and yield spreads, for newly issued bonds; 2.  how these associations vary across industries.

The paper examines research questions through the lens of real option thoery (e.g. Benorach 2002; Fichman et al. 2005) .  Decision maker face the trade off betweem the benefits and risks IT may bring. In the context of this paper, bondholders play the role of decision maker, on one hand, IT investment may increase cash flow of a firm, on the onther hand, they also consider several riskiness associated with IT.  Furthermore,  the paper focuses on three broad industry categories based on the differing strategic roles of IT (Anderson et al. 2006; Banker et al. 2011) : 1. automate, 2. informate, 3. transform.  It discusses industry heterogeneity in IT investment risks which are classified into (Benaroch 2002) : 1. firm-specific risks, 2. competition risks, 3. market risks. It points out transform industries are more likely to face higher risk from IT investment than other two thus negatively influence the bond evaluation.

It uses data from financial database and InformationWeek database. Empirical models  are established to examine the research questions.

The main findings are bondholders perceive the impact of IT ivestments on bond ratings and yield spreads differently across industries. They view IT investment in automate and infomate industires more favorably than those in transform industries. Becuase bondholders’ aversion to the riskiness and the lack of collateralizability of IT investments.