MIS Distinguished Speaker Series

Temple University

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Jing Gong

February 2 – Gerald C. Kane to Present “Wikipedia: The Canary in the Coal Mine for Online Collaboration”

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Wikipedia: The Canary in the Coal Mine for Online Collaboration

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Gerald C. Kane

Professor of Information Systems
Carroll School of Management, Boston College

Friday, February 2, 2018

10:30 AM – noon

Speakman Hall Suite 200

 

Abstract

Many companies are increasingly seeking to use online communities for collaboration and innovation.  Perhaps the most robust of these is Wikipedia, the open online encyclopedia that hosts millions of articles in hundreds of languages.  Wikipedia preserves the entire history of collaboration that has taken place over the past 15 years, providing a remarkable environment for studying online collaboration and knowledge creation.  While companies may not be interested in creating a Wikipedia-type platform, per se, the lessons learned in such a massive and robust online community can provide important insights for how to support innovation within companies (i.e. among employees) or across company boundaries (i.e. between employees and customers).

This presentation provides an overview of a 5-year research program investigating collaboration on Wikipedia using multiple methods (funded by National Science Foundation CAREER Award #0953285).  While several of these papers have already been published in top journals, several are still under review.  Nevertheless, the individual papers often overlook the overarching logic and insights provided by the integrated research program. Taken together, these studies suggest that collaboration on Wikipedia can be understood as a complex adaptive system (CAS), which are defined by several features, such as non-linearities, co-evolution, self-organization, and emergent dynamics.

January 26 – Gordon Burtch to Present “Examining the Impact of Ridehailing Services on Public Transit Use”

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Examining the Impact of Ridehailing Services on Public Transit Use

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Gordon Burtch

Assistant Professor, Information & Decision Sciences
Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota

Friday, January 26, 2018

10:30 AM – noon

Speakman Hall Suite 200

 

Abstract

We examine the impact that ridehailing services, such as Uber or Lyft, have had on the utilization of various modes of public transit in the United States via an agency-level analysis. We first evaluate the effects by exploiting the temporally and spatially staggered entry of Uber across the United States to estimate a difference-in-differences model. In doing so, we introduce a novel panel-data matching approach that explicitly seeks to match treated agencies with control agencies that exhibited similar pre-treatment trends in transit utilization over the twenty-four months prior to the arrival of ridehailing services. Our estimates indicate that ridehailing service entry has led to significant reductions in the utilization of road-based, short-haul public transit services, namely city buses, while increasing utilization of rail-based and long-haul transit services, such as subway and commuter rail. We further show that the estimated cannibalization and complementarity effects are attenuated and amplified, respectively, by transit agencies’ pre-existing quality of service. We evaluate the robustness of our results in several ways, such as performing permutation tests and accounting for the entry of multiple ridehailing service operators. For estimates of the city bus impacts, we further consider an alternative, second source of identification, namely a natural experiment in which the Google Maps application incorporated ridehailing services directly into users’ transit / direction recommendations. Here, we show that cities that hosted ridehailing services at the time of the Google Maps change exhibited much larger losses in bus utilization relative to cities that had yet to receive such services, consistent with our main findings. We discuss implications for policymakers and transit operators.

January 19 – Anthony Vance to Present “Using NeuroIS to Improve Security Warning Behavior”

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Using NeuroIS to Improve Security Warning Behavior

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Anthony Vance

Danny & Elsa Lui Distinguished Associate Professor in Information Technology Management
Shidler College of Business, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Associate Professor in Information Systems
Marriott School of Business, Brigham Young University

Friday, January 19, 2018

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM (Note that the time has changed)

Speakman Hall Suite 200

 

Abstract

A popular saying in information security is, “Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time.” However, this statement is unfair—insights from neuroscience show that users’ seemingly lazy or careless security behaviors are not necessarily careless at all, but are a natural consequence of how the brain works.

In this talk, I’ll show how neuroscience can be used to better understand users’ security warning behavior and design more usable security user interfaces (UI). To illustrate, I’ll share insights from a series of experiments that combine functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), tracking and field experiments. The results reveal the substantial effect of neurobiology on users’ security warning behavior, and suggest practical ways to improve security UI.

Bio

Anthony Vance is the Danny & Elsa Lui Distinguished Associate Professor in the Information Technology Management Department at the Shidler College of Business of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, as well as Associate Professor of Information Systems at the Marriott School of Business of Brigham Young University. He earned Ph.D. degrees in Information Systems from Georgia State University, USA; the University of Paris— Dauphine, France; and the University of Oulu, Finland. His previous experience includes working as a security consultant at Deloitte and as a research professor in the Information Systems Security Research Center at the University of Oulu.

His research focuses on behavioral and neuroscience applications to information security. His work is published in outlets such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). He currently is an associate editor at MIS Quarterly and serves on the editorial board of Journal of the Association for Information Systems.

Research website:

https://neurosecurity.byu.edu

Blog posts summarizing the attached articles:

https://neurosecurity.byu.edu/misq-longitudinal-2018
https://neurosecurity.byu.edu/dti-isr

December 1 – Jui Ramaprasad to Present “The Impact of Price Anchoring on Consumers’ Valuation of Digital Goods”

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The Impact of Price Anchoring on Consumers’ Valuation of Digital Goods

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Jui Ramaprasad

Associate Professor of Information Systems & Desautels Faculty Scholar
Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University

Friday, December 1, 2017

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Speakman Hall Suite 200

 

Abstract

This study examines the role of reference prices as set by different sources in influencing users’ motivation to pay for digital goods. Prior research has shown that a firm can best capture the heterogeneous product valuations of buyers through the implementation of a flexible payment model such as Pay What You Want (PWYW). In the digital goods context, where a user may choose to not pay for a good at all (i.e. pay 0), the use of an external reference price can motivate payment by anchoring one’s decision about the price to pay. This study tests the influence of the source and the level of reference prices on consumers’ willingness to pay in a controlled lab experiment with 853 participants, in the context of purchasing digital songs. We report the results of ANOVA analysis, t-tests and regression analysis and show that a low (high) reference price leads to a lower (higher) willingness to pay than a user’s internal reference price. Interestingly, when the reference price is determined by the site— when it represents the site’s recommended price—it increases one’s willingness to pay as compared to when the price is determined by the site— when it represents the price paid by other users Moderation effects are also reported.

November 17 – Matti Rossi to Present “Engaging Practitioners in IS Research through Action Design Research”

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Engaging Practitioners in IS Research through Action Design Research

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Matti Rossi

Professor of Information Systems

Aalto University of Business, FINLAND and NYU Stern School of Business, USA

Friday, November 17, 2017

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Speakman Hall Suite 200

 

Abstract

Action Design Research is recognized as a way of doing constructive research in close co-operation between practitioners and researchers. The method is based on the recognition that IS research always has a dual mission, namely to (a) add to existing theory, and (b) to produce knowledge to support IS practitioners in solving current and anticipated problems. We can achieve this by promoting research which is based on existing problems in practical settings, aimed at improving the practice and solving problems through designing and implementing IT artefacts. Furthermore, the method supports continues engagement and mutual commitment between practitioners and researchers, which leads into better insights about the effects of the artefacts and their design decisions in organizations, thus allowing for different types of research and practitioner contributions. In this talk I will demonstrate this through examples of real world ADR projects.

Bio

Matti Rossi is a professor of information systems at Aalto University School of Business. He is currently a visiting scholar at NYU Stern School of Business. He is the president of Association for Information Systems. He has been the principal investigator in several major research projects funded by the technological development center of Finland and Academy of Finland. He was the winner of the 2013 Millennium Distinction Award of Technology Academy of Finland for open source and data research.

His research papers have appeared in journals such as MIS Quarterly, Journal of AIS, Information and Management and Information Systems. He has been a senior editor of JAIS and Database, and he is the past editor in chief of Communications of the Association for Information Systems.

He is a member of IEEE, ACM and AIS.

November 10 – Yuqing (Ching) Ren to Present “The Significance of Task Significance in Online Marketplaces for Work”

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The Significance of Task Significance in Online Marketplaces for Work

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Yuqing (Ching) Ren

Associate Professor & Lawrence Fellow

Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota

Friday, November 10, 2017

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Speakman Hall Suite 200

Abstract

Online marketplaces for work like Amazon Mechanical Turk serve as new platforms to source mundane yet important tasks such as cleaning data or tagging images. While these platforms provide a fast and cost effective way of getting work done, low payment and the lack of face-to-face contact make it difficult for job requesters to motivate and monitor workers. In this study, we explore task significance as a new approach to motivate workers and improve work quality by informing workers of the purpose of the task and who benefits from it. We conducted a laboratory experiment and a field experiment using Amazon Mechanical Turk in which participants proofread either Wikipedia articles to help the public or digitized books to help underprivileged people access e-books. Task significance improved work quality in both experiments, especially when participants recalled the purpose statement information. A majority of participants who received the purpose statement, however, ignored it. Further analysis showed that delivering the purpose statement in rich media formats did not increase the likelihood of recall but worker attributes such as English ability, income levels, and personality traits influenced the likelihood of recall. Compared to task significance, increasing monetary payment by 50% had no impact on work quality. Intrinsic motivation such as task enjoyment had both a direct positive effect on work quality and an interaction with task significance in the sense that workers performed the highest when both types of motivations were high. Overall, our research highlights the promise of task significance as a way to motivate online crowds and also the unexpected challenge of promoting task significance in an online context.

November 3rd – Sabyasachi Mitra to Present “Network Effects and the Value of User Generated Content”

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Network Effects and the Value of User Generated Content

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Sabyasachi Mitra

Professor and Senior Associate Dean of Programs

Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology

Friday, November 3, 2017

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Speakman Hall Suite 200

Abstract

The primary product of many internet firms is their website that generates revenue through advertising, subscription or referral fees. Sky-high valuations of these firms have generated significant interest, debate, and even euphoria among investors and entrepreneurs. Network effects provide the underlying logic behind these high valuations – the idea that the value of participation for an individual user increases exponentially as more users actively participate. Thus, many firms initially focus on generating usage, with the expectation of high revenues and profits later, a premise that is fraught with uncertainty. These firms often rely on a wide variety of user-generated content to attract users to their websites. In this paper, we argue that the type of content on the website affects switching costs for the user and plays an important role in the value of internet firms since high current usage may not translate into future revenue and profits when switching costs are low. We use a grounded approach to classify websites into firm generated content, user contributed content and interaction websites. We collect data about the valuation, traffic and other parameters of such websites from several sources. We argue that interaction websites that provide a platform for interactions between social or interest groups create switching costs for the user more than other types of websites and we demonstrate empirically that network effects in firm value are stronger for interaction websites. Our results indicate that user-generated content has a greater value when created through interactions within social groups. We also demonstrate that the signal of firm quality through venture capital funding has a greater effect on firm value for websites that are based on user-generated rather than firm-generated content because of the inherent uncertainty associated with monetizing user-generated content.

October 27 – Brian Butler to Present “Global is Great…but We Live Here: Understanding the Nature and Implications of Local Information Landscapes”

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Global is Great…but We Live Here: Understanding the Nature and Implications of Local Information Landscapes

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Brian Butler

Professor and Senior Associate Dean

College of Information Studies, University of Maryland

 Friday, October 27, 2017

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Speakman Hall Suite 200

Abstract

While much has been written over the past several decades about the ability of information and communication technologies to “eliminate distance”, the reality is that most people continue to live and work in geographically bounded communities that they think of as their local environment. Yet, despite the importance of place and space in our lives and organizations, the information systems literature has little or nothing to say about the systems that underlie local communities. There is a slowly growing body of work which considers government and public sector IT infrastructures, but these studies tend to focus on systems that exist within organizations. Work about community information infrastructures moves beyond the organizational “box”, but it has a strong focus on the technological infrastructures that communities create (or fail to create). While useful, these studies typically stop short of examining the information that is actually available through these systems – and as such they provide limited perspectives on the ultimate usefulness and impact of community systems.  Drawing from initial studies of community information landscapes, I will present some early empirical results that suggest that despite popular beliefs that we live in a “networked world”, in many cases finding information about local events, activities, opportunities, and organizations continues to be a challenge.  From this work, the concept of geographically defined gaps in available information (i.e. information deserts) is developed as an alternative conception of digital inequality.

Bio

Brian Butler is Professor and Senior Associate Dean at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Over the past several years, he has provided operational leadership at the UMD iSchool, overseeing a $1 million facilities expansion and leading launch of an undergraduate Information Science program that after 2 years now has more than 400 students. He joined the iSchool in 2012, where he has also been Director of the Master of Information Management (MIM) program, Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information (CASCI), and Interim Dean. His research has focused on developing theories and techniques that enable groups, communities, and organizations to harness the full potential of new technologies. His recent work examined the role of local information institutions and infrastructures in community resilience.  Butler’s research and community-building work have been funded by federal agencies, foundations and corporations that include National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Microsoft Research, Yahoo! and Intel. His work has been published in Organization Science, Information Systems Research, ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, The Journal of Medical Internet Research, and The Journal of the Association of Information Science and Technology. From 1998-2011, Butler held academic appointments in the Katz Graduate School of Business and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned a BS in Mathematics/Computer Science, a MS in Information Systems, and a PhD in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University.

September 29 – Amrit Tiwana to Present: “Platform Synergy: Architectural Origins and Competitive Consequences”

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Platform Synergy: Architectural Origins and Competitive Consequences

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Amrit Tiwana

Professor of Management Information Systems

Terry College of Business, University of Georgia

 Friday, September 29, 2017

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Speakman Hall Suite 200

Abstract

The internal architecture of apps has yet to receive attention in platform studies, which predominantly study apps’ platform-facing, external architecture. We develop a theory of how the interplay between an app’s internal and external architecture shapes its ability to leverage the platform to outcompete rival apps. Primary and archival data spanning four years from 618 BlackberryOS apps show how internal architecture’s complementarity with external architecture influences an app’s competitive lead. Apps fare better in a competitive race when they are modular monoliths—externally modular but internally monolithic.

Bio

Amrit Tiwana (people.terry.uga.edu/tiwana) is a Professor of MIS at UGA’s Terry College of Business. He serves or has served on the boards of Information Systems Research, Strategic Management Journal, MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. His work has appeared in various MIS, strategy, software engineering, finance, and marketing journals including ISR, MISQ, JMIS, SMJ, and ACM Transactions on Software Engineering.

September 15th – Indranil Bardhan to Present: “Measuring Relative Performance of Accountable Care Organizations: The Role of Health Information Technology”

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Measuring Relative Performance of Accountable Care Organizations: The Role of Health Information Technology

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Indranil Bardhan

Professor of Management Information Systems

Jindal School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas

 

 Friday, September 15, 2017

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Speakman Hall Suite 200

Abstract

We propose and test a new framework to study the performance of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), a new type of healthcare delivery organization which was established by CMS. We develop a novel conceptualization of ACO performance, based on their ability to use health care resources to maximize patient health outcomes. Our approach draws on data envelopment analysis (DEA) to estimate the relative efficiency of ACOs. We address two research questions: (a) what is the impact of ACO size on performance, and (b) does health IT moderate the impact of size on ACO performance? We test our models using a nationwide sample of ACO data, using a two-stage DEA and regression approach. We find that larger ACOs are likely to exhibit lower performance relative to smaller ACOs. We also find that usage of electronic health records mitigates the negative impact of ACO size on performance. Our results suggest a closer look at the impact of health IT to improve patient care coordination and quality outcomes.