MIS主流研究和資格考試[1]——IT value

6 人贊了文章

寫這個帖子有三個目的，第一呢是為了幫助自己準備九月份的資格考試，第二呢是為了給一些對IS感興趣的同學們展示一些IS的主流研究是什麼。第三呢我從第一次上博士課的時候就覺著這種教授和學生之間口口相傳的博士課形式效率太低了，同樣的論文每個人都要讀一遍，寫reviews，下一屆學生再讀一遍然後再寫一遍reviews，從總體的時間上來說實在是太浪費了。要是能有個文章的reviews庫就好了。雖然每個人可能會有自己的文獻管理方式，但是我覺著要是能有這樣一個資料庫，由大家一起維護一起學習會更加有效率。

注意幾點：

1. 我這帖子少部分中文解釋，大部分內容要用英文來寫，第一呢是我最後要用英語答卷子，寫一大堆中文對於準備考試沒什麼幫助，第二呢是我英語水平有限，很多專業辭彙不知道怎麼翻譯，所以就直接貼英文好一些。
2. 每個話題之前我會盡量提幾個該領域裡面的大牛名字，如果是對該領域感興趣同時又在琢磨選誰做導師的話，也可以參考一下我提到的名字。不過有的大牛已經年紀很大了，所以看看就好。
3. 我帖子里的大部分IS話題只在上博士課的時候讀到過幾篇，除此之外並不精通該話題，因此很多寫出來的理解也許會有偏差，也許列出來的論文不夠經典，如果有比較懂該領域的小夥伴看到了，歡迎在留言那裡補充。

IT value

IT value 是IS圈裡常年研究的一個話題，也是我覺著最像「IS論文」的話題。主要探討的一個問題就是，信息技術類的投資對於企業來說是否有好處？如果有好處的話，那整個影響的邏輯鏈是怎麼樣的？這個研究問題可以拓展到組織結構、競爭環境、公司戰略等等理論，也可以套CD模型、博弈論模型等等模型，可以說是IS學術圈裡面最經典也最重要的研究問題。基本上很多大牛都涉足過這個話題並且有成名作，我讀到的人裡面有：Sambamurthury(老大現在不再進行學術研究了，但是依舊會掛通訊作者，同時也還會常常參加各種學術會議)，Hitt, Brynjolfsson, Tambe, Bharadwaj

Brynjolfsson (1996) Paradox Lost? Firm-level evidence on the Returns to Informations Systems Spending.

1) This study uses firm level data on IS spending and supplements it with other inputs and outputs to asses the econometrics model of the contribution of IS to firm level productivity.

2) Previous study uses industry level data, which doesnt allow researchers to distinguish firms within an industry which invest in IT heavily from those with low IT investment. Therefore, we get a paradox about whether IT investment can contribute the productivity.

3) In this paper, marginal product is used as the output in Cobb-Douglas function, and authors show that IS spending has significant contribution to firm output.

Hitt(1996)Productivity, Business Profitability, and Consumer Surplus: Three Different Measures of IT Value

1) Theory of Production: the firm transforms various inputs to outputs, this process is made by a production function.

2) Theory of Competitive Strategy: the impact of IT on barrier to entry is ambiguous : (1) it reduces economics of scale and search cost, which leads to lower industry profit, (2) it may increase the product differentiation, supporting higher profit.

3) Theory of Customer, the purchase benefits confers to consumers.

Authors show that IT input is correlated with substantial increases in net output and consumer surplus, but unrelated to business profit.

Dewan (2000) Information Technology and Productivity: Evidence from Country -Level data

1) Authors use a CD function to test the idea. Output is annual GDP, inputs are IT capital stock, non-IT capital stock, and annual labor hours employed.

2) This paper finds that the returns from IT investments are different between developed country and developing country. For the developed country, returns from IT capital investments are positive and significant , while returns from non IT capital investments are not significant. For the developing countries,the return from non-IT capital are quite substantial , but return from IT capital investment are not significant.

Bresnahan (2002): Information Technology, Workplace Organization, and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence

1) Authors emphasize a concept named Skill-Based Technical Change, which means technical progress that shifts demand toward more highly skilled workers relative to the less skilled.

2) The conceptual framework of this paper is : declines in the price of IT leads to increased adoption and use of IT. In turn, this increases the complementary investments , includes information technology, work organization, and product service. Then these three affect labor demand in the United States. Because firm that adopt these three innovation factors prefer to use more skilled labor (SBTC)

Sambamurthy (2003): Shaping Agility Through Digital Options: Reconceptualizing the role of IT in contemporary firms.

1) Authors use a multi-theoretic lens to argue that IT investment and capability influence the firm performance through three organizational capability: agility, digital options, and entrepreneurial alertness.and strategic processes: capability building, entrepreneurial action, and coevolutionary adaption.

2) IT competence: the organizational base of It resources and capabiiities and describes a firms capacity for IT-based innovation. Elements include IT investment, quality of IT infrastructure, IT human capital, and IS business partnership.

3) Agility is the ability to detect opportunities for innovation and seize those competitive market opportunities by assembling assets ,knowledge, and relationships. Agility comprises three capabilities: customer agility, partnering agility, and operational agility.

4) Digital options are a set of IT-enabled capabilities in the form of digitized enterprise work process and knowledge system. Dimensions of digital options are reach and richness.

5) Entrepreneurial alertness is the capability of a firm to explore its market place, detect areas of marketplace ignorance and determine opportunities for action. Entrepreneurial alertness includes strategic foresight and system insight.

6) The capability building process means integrates IT and business resources into organizational capabilities, The entrepreneurial action underlies the creative combinations of agility and entrepreneurial alterness, The coevolutionary adaptation refers to the fact that firm learn over time and through experience as they develop digital options and agility and launch a variety of competitive actions.

Melville (2004) IT and Organizational Performance: An Integrate Model of IT Business Value

1) This paper develops a model of IT business value based on RBV of the firm that integrates various trends of research.

2) Five concept of IT artifact in IS research: tool view, proxy view, ensemble view, computational view, and nominal view.

3) The RBV theory describes that firm is a bundle of resources within an administrative work, these resources is the basis for competitive advantage. If the company wants to get competitive advantage, its resource needs value, rareness, inimitability, and non-substitutability.

4) Integrated model describes that how IT business value generated : IT resource and organization resource effects the business process, business effects the business process performance, business process performance effects the organizational performance. Outside this model, we have industry characteristics, and trading partner, country characteristics.

Piccoli (2005) Review: IT-Dependent Strategic initiatives and sustained competitive advantage: A review and synthesis of the literature

1) This paper defines the notion of IT-dependent strategic initiative and use it to frame a review of literature on the sustainability of competitive advantage rooted in IS use.

2) Competitive advantage means the value is created in an economic exchange in which the firm partakes is greater than the value that could be created were the firm not to participate

3) Sustainability means a condition where a firms competitive advantage resists erosion by competitor behavior.

4) Theoretical Framework is Response Lag Drivers effect Barriers to erosion recursively, and effect the sustained competitive advantage, modified by competitive environment.

5) Response Lag Drivers is defined as "the time it takes competitors to respond aggressively enough to erode the competitive advantage." it includes : IT Asset, IT capabilities, Complementary Resources, Technology Characteristics, Switching Costs, and Value System Structural

Barrier to Erosion is defined as "when a firms IT-dependent strategic initiative leverages some preexisting IT resources, competitors who dont have ready access to the same resources find it costly and difficult to replicate" It includes: IT Resources Barrier, Complementary Resources Barrier, IT project barrier, and Preemption Barrier.

Tambe (2012) The Extroverted Firm: How External Information Practices affect Innovation and Productivity.

1) External focus means a set of practices that firms use to detect changes in their external operating environment.

2) Main concept model is : Information technology, Decentralization(Self-managed Teams), and External focus (bench marking Project teams) effect each other together, and they combined effects the product innovation, faster product cycle, and higher productivity level. The main contribution of this paper is putting the external focus into the model.

3) This concept model can be used to explain why firms that operate in information rich environments have experienced especially high returns to IT investment

IT Spillover

IT Spillover 屬於IT value 的衍生話題，由於研究IT value 這個問題已經長達十幾年，所以研究者們開始把眼光放到企業外部的整個產業鏈上，由此產生了溢出效應。基本上研究這個話題的人也還是研究 IT Value的那波人以及他們的學生。如果在IS圈子裡做firm level的研究，可以考慮研究這個話題，最近這兩年還是可以發的。

Z Cheng (2007) Industry Level Supplier-Driven IT Spillover

1) This paper examines how an industrys productivity is affected by the IT capital of its suppliers. These supplier-driven IT spillovers occur because of the competition in the supplying industry, quality benefits from suppliers IT investments can pass downstream.

2） If the output deflators of supplying industries dont capture the quality improvement from IT , then the output productivity of the supplying industries is mismeasured. In the end, they find that a 10% increase in suppliers IT capital, the average downstream industrys output will increase 70$ million.

Z Cheng (2012) Relative Industry Concentration and Customer-Driven IT Spillovers

1) This paper examines how one industrys productivity is affected by the IT capital of its customers and how this effect depends on industriess relative concentration.

2) The result shows that an increase in a downstream industrys IT capital, there is significant increase in downstream industry output as well as significant increases in upstream industry output. The magnitude of IT spillovers is related to relative industry concentration: a 1% decrease in customers relative industry concentration increases spillovers by 1%

L Xue (2012) Efficiency or Innovation: How Do Industry Environments Moderates the Effect of Firms』 IT Asset Portfolios?

1) This paper examines the impact of IT asset portfolios on two performance outcomes: efficiency and innovation, as well as the moderating effect of the nature of the industry.

2) Industry characteristics include: dynamism, complexity, and munificence.

3) Results show that at lower levels of dynamism, munificence and complexity, IT asset portfolios are associated with a greater increase in efficiency . And, at higher levels of dynamism , munificence and complexity, IT portfolios are associated with a greater increase in innovation.

YB Chang (2012) The Impact of IT-Related Spillovers on Long-Run Productivity: An Empirical Analysis.

1) This paper examines the effect of IT-related spillovers on firm-level productivity improvement over a long-term horizon.

2) Results show that spillover impacts are significant but the magnitude and persistence of the impacts vary. Firms with high IT intensity receive greater spillover benefits from the IT service industry, and they sustain for as long time. The benefits of spillovers received by firms with low IT intensity dont sustain, regardless of the source of spillovers.

3) The most common way to avoid this error problem is finding another measure of IT investment as an instrumental variable, where errors in this second measure are uncorrelated with errors in the original IT investment variable. In this paper, authors remove the measurement error from own IT capital by using alternative measures of IT capital stock as instrumental variable.

P Tambe (2014) Measuring Information Technology Spillovers.

1) This paper focus on the problem that many empirical IT spillover papers overstate the size of IT spillovers. The measurement error in a firms own IT inputs can lead to a significant upward bias on estimates the IT productivity. This error can be 40% to 90%.

2) Because external IT pool measure is often highly correlated with firms IT investments, measurement error can result in a significant upward bias being transmitted to the IT spillover coefficient.

IT Adoption

Adoption 號稱是IS研究里最早的話題，那麼可以說幾乎是發不出論文了。相關的理論比如TAM，TOE之類的理論可以說汗牛充棟。也屬於比較典型的「管理學研究」。我大概在本科的時候就聽過TAM模型，一開始以為是個模型，後來才知道就是個流程圖而已。到了博士課的時候看到了原文以及衍生理論，個人愚見，IS的」理論研究「在這二三十年來都沒有任何突破，還是換湯不換藥的 usefulness，trust，action 構件，只不過換了個馬甲，比如改叫 Darkside of IS，IT healthcare, IS and geology。 文章看上去不一樣實際上還是再講一個用戶是如何接受一個新的IT artifact以及如何受影響的。這也可以部分解釋為什麼IS的論文可以引用經濟學，營銷學，計算機等等期刊的論文，但是極少有其他專業的論文會反過來引用IS的論文，這已經不能用學科發展時間不長來解釋了，只能說」理論貢獻「實在不多。不過我並不做理論研究所以也不是很care這件事，如果有哪位是做IS理論研究的可以來留言指導我一下。我讀過的研究這個話題的教授有：Davis, Ajzen ,Fleischer, Venkatesh(這位教授感覺非常痴迷於做學術，而且幾乎每個季度或者半年都能看到他的新論文發在A刊上，簡直是一台論文製造機), Benbasat, Zmud

Fichman, (1999)The illusory diffusion of innovation: An examination of assimilation gaps

1) New information technology maybe widely acquired , but then only sparsely deployed among acquiring firms. The gap between acquire and deploy is named assimilation gap. This paper develops a general operational measure derived from the difference between the cumulative acquisition and deployment patterns. It also describe how two characteristics increasing returns to adoption and knowledge barriers impeding adoption separately and in combination may serve to predispose a technology to exhibit a pronounced gap.

2) Increasing Returns to Adoption means some technologies become much more valuable to a given adopter to the extent that others also adopt. Such technologies are said to be subject to increasing returns to adoption.

3) Knowledge Barriers mean some kings of technologies , adoption and use is hindered by the effort of organizational learning required to obtain necessary knowledge and skills

Jasperson (2005) A Comprehensive Conceptualization of Post-Adoptive Behaviors Associated with Information Technology Enabled Work Systems

1) This paper proposes an integrative research model for post-adoptive IT use behavior.

2) Feature-centric view of IT adoption and use emphasizes on post-adoption after organizational application adoption decision and individual application adoption decision. Post adoptive behaviors have three dimensions: individual feature adoption decision, individual feature use, and individual feature extension.

3) The two-level conceptual model of post adoptive behavior has three theoretical lenses (1) psychologists argue that cognitive scripts drive habitualized individual behavior (2) Punctuated equilibrium theory proposes that deep structures remain relatively stable because of path dependencies. IT use reflects patterns of routine use punctuated by episodes of change activity. (3) Structuring theory suggests that human agents initiate interventions to modify technology structures and organizational structure as both objective and subjective aspects of social reality.

4) Conceptual Framework: Work System Outcomes effect Work Systems sensemaking, effect work system intervention, effect work system outcomes. Individual cognition effects post adoptive intentions, effect post-adoptive behaviors, effect technology sensemaking, effect individual cognition and worksystems intervention.

Burton (2006), Reconceptualizing System Usage: An approach and empirical test

1) This paper reviews how system usage has been conceptualized at a high level in four IS domains : IS acceptance, IS implementation, IS success, and IS for decision making. Systems usage always involves a system, but authors argue that researchers can and should choose relatively rich measures to capture more or less of its use in a particular context, including user and task.

2) This paper clarifies the richness of system usage measures, demonstrates how different aspects of usage can be integrated to derive a more complete , contextualized construct, and reports on an empirical test that validates the proposed approach. An inappropriate choice of usage measures can lead researchers to draw opposite conclusion in an empirical study.

Tucker(2008) Identifying Formal and Informal Influence in Technology Adoption with Network Externalities

1) Authors try to find that which user characteristics confer the greatest netwrk benefits on other potential adopters.They find that adoption by either managers or workers in boundary spanner positions has a large impact on the adoption decisions of employees who wish to communicate with them. Adoption by ordinary workers has a negligible impact.

2) This paper suggests that firms should target those who derive their informal influence from occupying key boundary spanning positions in communication networks, in addition to those with sources of formal influence, when launching a new network technology.

Angst, (2010) Social Contagion and Information Technology Diffusion: The adoption of electronic medical records in U.S Hospitals.

1) This paper uses social contagion theory to study the dynamic, temporal process of the adoption behaviors. Prior researches assumed that the adopting decision is a function of its internal resources and traits. However, nonadopters are influenced by adopters over time, and they influence the actions of other nonadopters after their own adoption.

2) Social contagion means the collective rather than individual ind takes preceden as a determinant of behavior

3) Authors find that with respect to susceptibility to influence, greater hospital sie and age are positively related to the likelihood of adoption for nonadopters, whereas younger hospitals are associated with greater infectiousness for adopters.

Gangwar (2014). Review on IT adoption: insights from recent technologies.

1) This paper review the literature on IT adoption in organization. It also try to identify the key parameters to integrate TAM and TOE for firm level IT adoption.

2) The main finding of this paper is TAM has high capability to explain the technology adoption while the significance of TOE is similarly recognized in explaining technology adoption. The integration of TAM and TOE can improve their explanatory power in technology adoption.

3) There are a lot of adoption papers in this field. TRA (Ajzen), TPB(Ajzen), and UTAUT (Venkatesh) are developed for predict individual adoption. On the contrary, TAM (Davis) and TOE (Fleischer) are widely used in studying technology adoption at organizational level. Main predictors are perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use,