MIS Distinguished Speaker Series

Temple University

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Sunil Wattal

May 28: Shirley Gregor to speak on Theorizing in the Sciences of the Artificial

By

Shirley Gregor

Professor

Australian National University

May 28, 2010

Speakman Hall 200, 1000am – 1130am

Abstract

This essay extends Simon’s arguments in the ‘Sciences of the Artificial’ to a critical examination of how theorizing in Information Technology disciplines should occur. The essay is framed around a number of fundamental questions that relate theorizing in the artificial sciences to the traditions of the philosophy of science. The paper argues that theorizing in this relatively new form of science should be considered in a holistic manner that links two modes of theorizing: an interior mode with the how of artifact construction studied and an exterior mode with the what of existing artifacts studied. Unlike some representations in the design science movement the paper argues that the study of artifacts once constructed can not be passed back uncritically to the methods of traditional science. Seven principles for creating knowledge in IT disciplines are derived analytically: (i) artifact system centrality; (ii) artifact purposefulness; (iii) need for design theory; (iv) induction and abduction in theory building; (v) artifact construction as theory building; (vi) holistic linking of interior and exterior modes of theorizing; and (viii) recognition of issues with generality. The claim is that consideration of these principles will improve knowledge creation and theorizing in design disciplines, for both design science researchers and also for researchers using more traditional methods and that attention to these principles should lead to the creation of more useful and relevant knowledge. Examples of application of the principles in the area of Decisions Support Systems are provided in support of the arguments advanced.

For a copy of the paper, click here..

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March 5: Amrit Tiwana to speak on The Influence of Software Platform Modularity on Platform Abandonment: An Empirical Study of Firefox Extension Developers

By

Amrit Tiwana

Associate Professor,

Iowa State University

March 5, 2010

Alter Hall 405, 1000am – 1130am

Abstract

With competition increasingly among rival software platforms, retaining third-party developers outside firm boundaries is increasingly important. Such “module” developers often provide critically-differentiating technical innovations and new ideas, thus are vital to a platform’s success. This study addresses the underexplored question of how and why platform modularity—both technical and organizational—influences platform abandonment by developers. We introduce the notion of systems integration costs—which comprise both cross-module integration and module-platform integration—as a key explanatory construct in our nomological network.

We develop three ideas, building on modular systems theory. First, a decrease in systems integration costs decreases the likelihood of platform abandonment by module developers. Second, different facets of technical modularity differentially impact systems integration costs. Third, these relationships are moderated by organizational modularity i.e., how authority over technical decisions is shared between a module developer and the platform owner. Tests using data from developers of 342 modules for Mozilla’s Firefox browser platform largely support the proposed ideas.

April 16: Chris Dellarocas to speak on Double Marginalization in Performance-Based Advertising: Implications and Solutions

By

Chris Dellarocas

Associate Professor,

Boston University

April 16, 2010

Alter Hall 405, 1000am – 1130am


Abstract

An important current trend in advertising is the replacement of traditional pay-per-exposure (pay-per-impression) pricing models with performance-based mechanisms in which advertisers pay only for measurable actions by consumers. Such pay-per-action (PPA) mechanisms are becoming the predominant method of selling advertising on the Internet. Well-known examples include pay-per-click, pay-per-call and pay-per-sale. This work highlights an important, and hitherto unrecognized, side-effect of PPA advertising. I find that, if the prices of advertised goods are endogenously determined by advertisers to maximize profits net of advertising expenses, PPA mechanisms induce firms to distort the prices of their goods (usually upwards) relative to prices that would maximize profits in settings where advertising is sold under pay-per-exposure methods. Upward price distortions reduce both consumer surplus and the joint publisher-advertiser profit, leading to a net reduction in social welfare. They persist in current auction-based PPA mechanisms, such as the ones used by Google and Yahoo. In the latter settings they always reduce publisher revenues relative to pay-per-exposure methods. In extreme cases they also lead to rat-race situations where, in their effort to outbid one another, advertisers raise the prices of their products to the point where demand for them drops to zero. I show that these phenomena constitute a form of double marginalization and discuss a number of enhancements to today’s PPA mechanisms that restore equilibrium pricing of advertised goods to efficient levels.

For a copy of the paper, click here.

April 2: Anindya Ghose to speak on Estimating Demand in the Hotel Industry by Mining User-Generated and Crowdsourced Content

By

Anindya Ghose

Assistant Professor,

Stern School of Business, NYU

April 2, 2010

Alter Hall 746, 1000am – 1130am

Abstract

User-Generated Content (UGC) is changing the way consumers shop for goods. It is increasingly being recognized that the textual content of product reviews is an important determinant of consumers’ choices, over and above any numeric information. Similarly, websites that facilitate the creation of social tags by users can influence the desirability of a product or service. Moreover, one can harness the collective wisdom of the crowds by eliciting consumer opinions through on-demand user-contributed surveys. Based on a unique dataset of hotel reservations over a 3-month period from Travelocity.com, we estimate the demand for hotels using a structural model that incorporates information from different kinds of UGC. Data on UGC is obtained from three sources: (i) text of hotel reviews from two well-known travel search engines, Travelocity.com and Tripadvisor.com, (ii) social geo-tags identifying the different location-based attributes of hotels from Geonames.org, and (iii) on-demand user-contributed opinions on the most important hotel characteristics from Amazon Mechanical Turk. These data sources are merged with satellite images of the different hotel locations to create one comprehensive dataset summarizing the location and service characteristics of the hotels in our sample. We use text-mining techniques to incorporate textual information from user reviews in our estimation. We supplement these methods with image classification techniques and on-demand user-generated annotations. We estimate a two-step random coefficient structural model to infer the weight that consumers place on different location and service-related features of hotels. We also quantify how the extent of subjectivity, readability, complexity and other stylistic features of user-generated reviews affect hotel room sales. We use these estimates to compute the average consumer surplus from transactions in each hotel. Based on the estimation of consumer surplus, we propose a new ranking system for displaying hotels in response to a search query on a travel search engine. By doing so, one can provide customers with the “best-value” hotels early on, thereby improving the quality of online hotel search compared to existing systems. Several experiments with users suggest that our ranking system does better than existing systems.

For a copy of the complete paper, please email swattal@temple.edu

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February 19: Chris Forman to speak on The Internet and Local Wages: Convergence or Divergence?

By

Chris Forman

Associate Professor,

Georgia Institute of Technology

February 19, 2010

Alter Hall 405, 1000am – 1130am

Abstract

Did the diffusion of the Internet lead to convergence or divergence of local wages? We examine the relationship between business use of advanced Internet technology and regional variation in US wage growth between 1995 and 2000. We show that business use of advanced Internet technology is associated with wage growth but find no evidence that the Internet contributed to regional wage convergence. Advanced Internet technology is only associated with wage growth in places that were already well off in terms of income, education, population, and industry. Overall, advanced Internet explains one-quarter of the difference in wage growth between these counties and all others.

For a copy of the paper, click here.

Molly Wasko to speak on Network Governance in Open Source Software Development

By

Network Governance in Open Source Software Development

Molly Wasko

Associate Professor, Department of Management
College of Business, Florida State University

January 29, 2010

Alter Hall 405, 1000am – 1130am

Abstract

Open source software (OSS) development projects are typically comprised of a network of volunteers bound together by social structures rather than contractual obligations.  Understanding how OSS projects engage in self-governance, by relying on social influences to coordinate the efforts of individuals through technology-enabled network forms of organization, has become increasingly important for organizations seeking to make sense of the future of knowledge-intensive work.  Based on the theoretical framework of network governance, this study examines 1) whether social controls and trust influence coordination and conflict management among open source software project members, and 2) whether coordination and conflict management affect project success.  Using survey, social network and objective data from 39 open source projects, this study empirically tests a path model examining 1) the influence of structural embeddedness (the centralization and density of the discussion forum communication network) on the development of social controls (restricting access to the development team, the use of collective sanctions and concern about individual reputation) and on the development of relational ties between network members (trust); 2) the impact of social controls and trust on the project’s coordination (expertise and project) and conflict management; and 3) the influence of coordination and conflict management on project success.  The results indicate that higher levels of density in the communication network predict greater concerns about individual reputation in the network.  Contrary to expectations, higher network density is related to less restricted access to the development team, and network centralization has a negative relationship with concern about reputation.  Restricted access, concern about reputation, and trust lead to better coordination.  The results also provide evidence that better coordination enhances project success, but not the ability to manage conflict within the project.

For a copy of the full paper, click here.


Michael Smith to speak on Converting Pirates without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy

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Converting Pirates without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy

Michael Smith

Heinz Career Development Associate Professor of Information Systems and Marketing
Heinz College’s School of Information Systems and Management, Tepper School of Business
Carnegie Mellon University

December 4, 2009

Alter Hall 405, 1000am – 1130am

Abstract

The availability of digital distribution channels for media content has raised several important questions for marketers, notably whether the use of digital distribution channels will significantly cannibalize physical sales and whether legitimate digital distribution channels will be able to dissuade consumers from using (illegitimate) digital piracy channels. We address these two questions using the removal of NBC content from Apple’s iTunes store in December 2007, and its restoration in September 2008, as natural shocks to the supply of legitimate digital content, and analyzing its impact on demand through BitTorrent piracy channels and the Amazon.com DVD store.

We address these questions using two large datasets from Mininova and Amazon.com documenting levels of piracy and DVD sales for both NBC and other major networks’ content around these events. We analyze this data in a difference-in-difference model and find that NBC’s decision to remove its content from iTunes in December 2007 is causally associated with an 11.2% increase in the demand for pirated content. This is roughly equivalent to an increase of 49,000 downloads a day for NBC’s content and is approximately twice as large as the total legal purchases on iTunes for the same content in the period preceding the removal. We also find evidence of a smaller, and statistically insignificant, decrease in piracy for the same content when it was restored to the iTunes store in September 2008. Finally, we see no change in demand for NBC’s DVD content at Amazon.com associated with NBC’s closing or reopening of their digital distribution channel on iTunes.

For a copy of the full paper, click here.


Il-Horn Hann to speak on Forecasting the Sales of Music Albums: A Functional Data Analysis of Demand and Supply Side P2P Data

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Forecasting the Sales of Music Albums: A Functional Data Analysis of Demand and Supply Side P2P Data

Il-Horn Hann
Associate Professor of Information Systems
RH Smith School of Business
University of Maryland

November 20, 2009

Alter Hall 405, 1000am – 1130am

Abstract

We predict the sales of music albums by utilizing demand and supply side P2P data using a functional data
analysis (FDA) approach. We find that the characteristics of the functional form of downloading behavior explain
first-week sales by more than 60% after controlling for album characteristics. By updating our forecasts from 4
weeks to 1 week prior to the album release date, we examine the dynamic changes across different quantiles of
the sales-distribution for the demand- and supply-side P2P data. We find that the gap between downloading
effect on sales among high-quantile vs. low-quantile albums reach the highest level one week before the release
date.

For a copy of the full paper, click here.

Eric Clemons to speak on How Information Changes Consumer Behavior And How Consumer Behavior Determines Corporate Strategy

By

How Information Changes Consumer Behavior And How Consumer Behavior Determines Corporate Strategy

Eric Clemons

Professor of Operations and Information Management
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania

November 6, 2009

Alter Hall 405, 1000am – 1130am

Abstract

Information availability has increased consumers’ informedness, the degree to which they know what is available in the marketplace, with precisely which attributes and at precisely what price. This informedness has altered the demand side of market behavior: customers now discount more heavily when comparable products are available from competitors and when products do not meet their wants, needs, cravings and longings, but they no longer discount as heavily when purchasing unfamiliar products. Changes in the demand side are producing comparable changes in the supply side: firms earn less than their expectations when competing in traditional mass market fat spots, while earning far more than previously when entering newly created resonance marketing sweet spots. We trace the impact of hyperdifferentiation and resonance marketing on strategy, with a clear progression from a limited number of fat spots, through reliance upon line extensions, and ultimately to fully differentiated market sweet spots.

For a copy of the full paper, click here.

Arun Rai to speak on Leveraging IT Capabilities and Competitive Process Capabilities for Interorganizational Relationship Portfolio Management

By

Leveraging IT Capabilities and Competitive Process Capabilities for Interorganizational Relationship Portfolio Management

Arun Rai

Regents’ Professor and the Harkins Chair in Information Systems
Robinson College of Business
Georgia State University

October 30, 2009

Alter Hall 405, 1000am – 1130am

Abstract

Firms are increasingly dependent on external resources and are establishing portfolios of interorganizational relationships (IRs) to leverage them for competitive advantage. However, the system of IT and process capabilities that firms should establish to dynamically manage IR portfolios are not well understood. We draw on the competitive dynamics perspective and resource dependency theory, and on the literatures on IT business value, interorganizational systems and interorganizational relationship management, to theorize how key IT structural capabilities (IT integration and IT reconfiguration) and competitive process capabilities (process alignment, partnering flexibility and offering flexibility) operate as a system of complements. We also theorize why a firm’s IR portfolio moderates the effects of the structural IT capabilities on the competitive process capabilities, and why a firm’s environmental turbulence moderates the effects of complementary process capabilities on competitive performance. We test our model using survey data from 318 firms in four industries. Our results provide broad support for the position that IT and process capabilities are interdependent and operate as a system of complements, that the relationship between the structural IT capabilities and the competitive process capabilities is contingent on IR portfolio concentration, and that the competitive advantage derived from the complements of competitive process capabilities is contingent on environmental turbulence. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of how firms should develop a complementary system of IT structural capabilities and competitive process capabilities to dynamically manage IR portfolios and leverage external resources.

For a copy of the complete paper, please send an email to swattal@temple.edu