User,Use & Utility Research

Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) is at a turning point. Planning, designing, developing and operating IT used to be a management task of a few elites in public ad-ministrations and corporations. But the continuous digitization of nearly all areas of life changes the IT landscape fundamentally. Success in this new era requires putting the human perspective – the digital user – at the very heart of the new digitized service-led economy. BISE faces not just a temporary trend but a complex socio-technical phenomenon with far-reaching implications. The challenges are manifold and have major consequences for all stakeholders, both in information systems and management research as well as in practice. Corporate processes have to be re-designed from the ground up, starting with the user’s perspective, thus putting usage experience and utility of the individual center stage. The digital service economy leads to highly personalized application systems while organizational functions are being fragmented. Entirely new ways of interacting with information systems, in particular beyond desktop IT, are being invented and established. These fundamental challenges require novel approaches with regards to innovation and development methods as well as adequate concepts for enterprise or service system architectures. Gigantic amounts of data are being generated at an accelerating rate by an increasing number of devices – data that need to be managed. In order to tackle these extraordinary challenges we introduce ‘user, use & utility’ as a new field of BISE that focuses primarily on the digital user, his or her usage behavior and the utility associated with system usage in the digitized service-led economy. The research objectives encompass the development of theories, methods and tools for systematic requirement elicitation, systems design, and business development for successful Business and Information Systems Engineering in a digitized economy – information systems that digital users enjoy using. This challenge calls for leveraging insights from various scientific disciplines such as Design, Engineering, Computer Science, Psychology and Sociology. BISE can provide an integrated perspective, thereby assuming a pivotal role within the digitized service led economy.     

A quantitative determination of the food security status of rural farming households in the Northern Province of South Africa

The majority of South Africans living in rural areas are food insecure despite high levels of national food self-sufficiency. The household food security position of two groups of rural farming households in the Venda region was evaluated quantitatively: one group produces vegetables that are sold or consumed locally, the other group produces cash crops – mangoes and other subtropical fruits. Using the collected data, food availability and energy, protein and fat requirements were calculated and balances derived. It was found that more than 80 per cent of the households had a negative balance of energy, protein and fat intake. The average energy, protein and fat coverage consumption was the same for both groups of farmers. A number of agricultural determinants were tested, but only non-agricultural determinants were found to be significant. These include household size, household (food) expenditure and proportion of the budget spent on food.     

Forces exerted by jumping children: a pilot study

Abstract

This article reports on a pilot study of the loads exerted vertically by children when jumping. The subjects of the study were 17 children, aged from two to twelve years. Measurements were made using video recordings and a force-plate. The influence of the stiffness of the base and of jumping with and without shoes was investigated. Knee flexion, push-off force (thrust) and the ratio between push-off force and body weight (relative thrust) were analyzed. Measurements of the knee flexion showed a certain consistency for each child. The angle of knee flexion during push-off follows a bimodal distribution with maxima at 60^° and 90^°. The results for relative thrust suggest a close relationship between push-off force and body weight.     

Statistical Analysis of Choice Experiments and Surveys

Measures of households' past behavior, their expectations with respect to future events and contingencies, and their intentions with respect to future behavior are frequently collected using household surveys. These questions are conceptually difficult. Answering them requires elaborate cognitive and social processes, and often respondents report only their “best” guesses and/or estimates, using more or less sophisticated heuristics. A large body of literature in psychology and survey research shows that as a result, responses to such questions may be severely biased. In this paper, (1) we describe some of the problems that are typically encountered, (2) provide some empirical illustrations of these biases, and (3) develop a framework for conceptualizing survey response behavior and for integrating structural models of response behavior into the statistical analysis of the underlying economic behavior.     

The Relations among Organizational and Distribution Forms and Capital and Asset Risk Structures in the Life Insurance Industry

This article is the first step toward integrating in a single framework two previously separate lines of research on major structural decisions of life insurers. The literature has previously studied the relation between capital structure and asset risk on the one hand, and the relation between organizational form and distribution system on the other hand, without integrating them. Using life insurer data for 1993–1999, we model the four key insurer decisions of capital structure, asset risk, organizational form, and distribution system as endogenous choices in a single interrelated set of simultaneous equations. The model assesses the nature of the interactions among these decisions. The model also assesses the impact of insurers' fundamental business strategy (treated as predetermined) on these choices. The business‐strategy hypothesis views other key decisions as jointly determined and driven by the fundamental business strategy, once the latter is set in motion. Confirming previous studies, we find a positive relation between capital ratios and asset risk. We also find an association in the simultaneous context between stock ownership and brokerage distribution, which was not found in prior studies. Stock ownership is related to greater financial and asset risk taking, whereas brokerage distribution is associated with lower risk taking. These and other results are interpreted in light of several theories, including transaction‐cost economics (TCE), agency theory, and regulatory and bankruptcy cost avoidance. Deriving from these theories, the finite risk paradigm emerges as the most comprehensive interpretation of the results, as opposed to the risk‐subsidy hypothesis of the impact of guarantee funds. We also find support for the notion that the business strategy drives the capital and distribution decisions, as predicted by TCE.     

The co‐evolution of capabilities and transaction costs: explaining the institutional structure of production

This paper proposes that transaction costs and capabilities are fundamentally intertwined in the determination of vertical scope, and identifies the key mechanisms of their co‐evolution. Specifically, we argue that capability differences are a necessary condition for vertical specialization; and that transaction cost reductions only lead to specialization when capabilities along the value chain are heterogeneous. Furthermore, we argue that there are four evolutionary mechanisms that shape vertical scope over time. First, the selection process, itself driven by capability differences, dynamically shapes vertical scope; second, transaction costs are endogenously changed by firms that try to reshape the transactional environment to increase their profit and market share; third, changes in vertical scope affect the nature of the capability development process, i.e., the way in which firms improve their operations over time; and finally, the changes in the capability development process reshape the capability pool in the industry, changing the roster of qualified participants. These dynamics of capability and transaction cost co‐evolution are illustrated through two contrasting examples: the mortgage banking industry in the United States, which shows the shift from integrated to disintegrated production; and the Swiss watch‐manufacturing industry, which went from disintegration to integration. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pure vs. mixed commodity bundling

In the commodity bundling literature, pure bundling is ruled out as a uniquely optimal strategy because mixed bundling is always (weakly) better. This paper provides a theoretical distinction between the two pricing schemes. The distinction relies on the degree of consumer heterogeneity in reservation prices. While there is a lack of empirical evidence on commodity bundling pricing schemes due to the difficulties in measuring consumer heterogeneity, we circumvent this problem by examining firm heterogeneity. Specifically, we use data from the newspaper industry in which some two edition newspaper firms are mixed bundlers and others are pure bundlers.