Information Systems Strategy

The paper depicts the current state of IS strategy research with the aim of identifying research needs as well as appropriate ways to study IS strategy in the future. To this end, the paper introduces the results of an extensive analysis of academic literature on IS-strategy. In addition, it sheds light on current practice as uncovered in case-study research and through in-depth interviews with IS strategy professionals. A comparison reveals that the issues prevalent in practice and the ones traditionally focused on in the academic debate on IS strategy often vary considerably. A conspicuous attempt to fill this is the so-called “Strategizing” framework put forward by Robert Galliers. This framework, which is receiving increasing attention in the current academic debate, calls for a practice turn in IS strategy research in that it treats strategy as something people or, more precisely, IS strategists do. In addition, by identifying the challenges and problems IS strategists are faced with, the framework intends to better reflect the new planning conditions which are often seen as characteristics of the information age. The framework distinguishes three general problem domains of IS strategizing: exploration, exploitation, as well as implementation and change management.     

Negative customer engagement behaviour: the interplay of intensity and valence in online networks

ABSTRACT

Recent marketing and service research highlights the detrimental impact of negative customer engagement behaviour (CEB) in online social networks. Nevertheless, the extant literature captures the impact of what customers say about service providers in their negative reviews and fails to provide any understanding of different intensity levels of negative engagement. This article marks the first attempt to provide a more nuanced view of negative CEB by investigating the impact of six forms of negatively valenced influencing behaviour (NVIB) using two online experiments. Our results provide new insights into intensity levels of NVIB and how they are moderated by positive reviews. Practically, this paper addresses one of the challenges for service providers in managing NVIBs, centred on understanding the heterogeneity of its forms. The results suggest that managers use semantic tools to detect the intensity levels of NVIB and to prioritise handling and/or mitigating the more intense NVIBs when they occur.     

Governments,Exports and Growth: Responding to the Challenges and Opportunities of Globalisation

We live in an increasingly globalised world. Trade has consistently grown faster than GDP and has been an important driver of world growth. What role should government play in this process? This paper considers the rationale for government action and the merits of various policies focusing on the UKs experience: the benefits of openness to trade and overseas investment and the merits of tackling barriers that discourage greater participation by firms in international markets. It also considers whether this approach needs to be adapted given current trends in globalisation, concluding that a continued emphasis on openness and addressing market failures will be welfare enhancing.     

Human capital externalities Evidence from the transition economy of Russia1

The paper tests for the existence of human capital externalities using a micro‐level approach: the Mincerian wage regression augmented with the average level of education in cities. To solve identification problems arising from the endogeneity of average education, the study exploits a natural experiment provided by the process of economic transition: average education at the end of communism can be seen as exogenous in respect of wages prevailing after the start of transition. Our empirical results based on the RLMS data show that a 1 percentage point increase in the share of city residents with a university degree results in an increase of wages of city residents by about 1 percent.     

Evidence of Information Spillovers in the Production of Investment Banking Services

We provide evidence that firms attempting IPOs condition offer terms and the decision whether to carry through with an offering on the experience of their primary market contemporaries. Moreover, while initial returns and IPO volume are positively correlated in the aggregate, the correlation is negative among contemporaneous offerings subject to a common valuation factor. Our findings are consistent with investment banks implicitly bundling offerings subject to a common valuation factor to achieve more equitable internalization of information production costs and thereby preventing coordination failures in primary equity markets.     

Book reviews

Review of Industrial Organization -