Knowledge that Transforms

Cybersecurity failures are increasingly costly, prompting companies to recruit CIOs from other firms to their boards. This study examines whether there any impacts on a firms’ cybersecurity when (a) firms allow their own CIO to serve on an outside board; and (b) when firms appoint a CIO from another company to their own board. Using CIO-firm-year observations, we compare two pathways: (1) receiver firms that appoint an external CIO to their board, and (2) sender firms whose own CIO serves on another company’s board. The findings show asymmetric effects. Receiver firms experience fewer data breaches, suggesting that external CIOs effectively transfer cybersecurity expertise and practices. In contrast, sender firms face higher breach risk, as CIOs who serve externally appear to prioritize educating the recipient firm over acquiring new insights for their home firm. This risk intensifies when the external firm lacks strong cybersecurity practices but is mitigated when the home firm has a dedicated CISO. Conversely, receiver firms benefit most when the sending firm has strong cybersecurity capabilities—or even a past breach—because negative events create valuable lessons. The results offer actionable implications: firms should strategically recruit outside CIOs to improve board-level cyber capabilities and carefully weigh the risks before permitting their own CIOs to serve externally. Policymakers should consider mechanisms that incentivize effective cybersecurity knowledge transfer across board interlocks.

This study develops a practice-relevant theory explaining why some information technology (IT) unavailability incidents lead to severe and prolonged organizational consequences. By redefining IT unavailability as unmet demand for IT resources rather than simple system downtime, the paper shows how disruptions cascade through information capacity deficits and business capacity deficits, ultimately impairing critical services, affecting clients, and damaging organizational reputation. An analysis of 28 real-world IT unavailability incidents reveals that three reinforcing feedback loops (IT inertia, information inertia, and business inertia) can intensify service disruption, delay recovery, and amplify downstream impacts.

More than 90% of medical devices in the United States are approved through the Food and Drug Administration’s 510(k) pathway, primarily based on demonstrating the equivalence of new devices (known as applicant devices) to previously cleared devices (known as predicate devices). However, safety concerns are raised as applicant devices cleared this way may be more prone to recalls that relate to substantial patient harm and financial strain on the healthcare system. In response, this work introduces a data-driven information technology approach to predict medical device recalls, aiming to alleviate these safety concerns by augmenting human decision making. The approach primarily uses the characteristics of the network formed by predicate device citation relationships (predicate network). It uses deep learning to tackle three design challenges: learning the predicate network structure, capturing the temporal patterns of predicate network characteristics, and accounting for dependencies across the predicate citation history. Based on 45,398 medical devices cleared between 2003 and 2020, the approach substantially improves recall prediction accuracy and timeliness compared with existing state-of-the-art approaches. The improved recall-prediction performance and insights into performance variations across device categories provide opportunities to preemptively react to potential recalls and improve the safety of devices cleared through the 510(k) pathway.

Practice- and Policy-Oriented Abstract Affiliate marketing on social media involves content creators posting product reviews with affiliate links, through which they earn a commission from resulting purchases. The FTC’s disclosure guidelines require creators to reveal affiliate relationships alongside product reviews. This paper examines how the FTC policy affects viewer engagement with affiliated content, defined as product review videos containing affiliate links. We find that after the FTC policy implementation, viewer engagement with affiliated content significantly decreases relative to nonaffiliated content. However, affiliation disclosure moderates this effect: after the policy, affiliated content with disclosures receives higher engagement than affiliated content without disclosures. The mitigating effect of disclosures varies across content creator and video characteristics. The mitigating effect is more pronounced for more experienced creators, more popular creators, and more negative videos. This paper provides important empirical evidence on disclosure policies’ effects on viewer engagement, addressing a notable gap in the literature. Our findings also have important implications for policymakers designing effective disclosure regulations, content creators managing compliance while maintaining viewer engagement, and social media platforms implementing disclosure features. This paper finds that whereas disclosure policies may lower engagement with affiliated content, proper disclosures can signal credibility and increase engagement.

Practice- and Policy-Oriented Abstract (for Research Spotlight) Low-wage workers often face liquidity constraints, relying on costly short-term credit options such as payday loans. On-demand wage access (OWA) platforms offer a promising alternative by allowing workers to access earned wages before traditional pay cycles. This study examines whether OWA enhances financial engagement among low-wage workers and investigates the mechanisms driving these effects. Using transaction data from about 4,000 users of a U.S.-based OWA platform, we employ a difference-in-differences approach with staggered adoption to identify behavioral changes. To enrich our analysis, we supplement these data with evidence from an online experiment, a survey of OWA users, and semistructured interviews exploring psychological and contextual mechanisms. Our findings show that OWA adoption increases monthly saving frequency by 3.7%, time spent monitoring financial dashboards by 12.9%, and goal-setting activity by 1.3%. These effects are amplified in regions with lower minimum wages or limited banking access but weakened among users who frequently incur fees for instant withdrawals. We identify self-empowerment—beyond mere self-efficacy—as the key mechanism enabling a shift from reactive to proactive financial management. By demonstrating how digital affordances foster behavioral change within structural constraints, this research offers actionable insights for employers, OWA providers, and policymakers seeking to promote financial inclusion.

Many digital platforms encourage small business owners to “claim” their pages to improve visibility and connect with customers. Yet, despite its apparent benefits and zero financial cost, many pages remain unclaimed. Using a unique data set from Yelp and a staggered difference-in-differences design, this study reveals a hidden downside of business page claiming; average customer ratings drop by 10.3%, driven by more one-star reviews and fewer five-star reviews. Customers also write longer, more negative reviews and address owners more directly about service issues. These findings indicate that claiming a business page signals owner presence and raises customer expectations for responsiveness, which many small businesses may not be equipped to meet. For practitioners, the results highlight that business page claiming, although free, is not costless; it creates reputational risk if service quality or responsiveness falls short of heightened expectations. Owners should claim their pages only when ready to actively monitor feedback or engage in managerial responses. Platforms should also communicate these potential consequences to businesses and design tools that help owners manage customer interactions more effectively.

This study examines how artificial intelligence (AI), specifically neural facial reenactment (NFR), can address the limitations of dubbing and subtitling in adapting foreign films. Using action design research and guided by presence theory, we codeveloped and evaluated an NFR process during the English adaptation of the Polish feature film The Champion. Unlike conventional dubbing, which often disrupts immersion through poor lip-sync or script changes, NFR preserves the original actors’ performances, aligning them with new dialogue. Independent broadcast-quality assessments confirmed technical validity, and subsequent commercial distribution on a major streaming platform demonstrated scalability and audience acceptance. From this process, we derived six design principles: avoid forced script changes, respect creative intent, minimize intrusive technology, reduce training data requirements, enable flexible audience access, and codesign with existing creative structures. These principles offer a replicable template for the responsible researching and developing of AI in information systems. For practice, the findings show that NFR can improve cultural accessibility and create new creative and technical roles rather than displacing talent. For policy, the study highlights the importance of codesign, transparency, and preserving artistic integrity when integrating AI into global cultural products.

Software platforms rely on a core-periphery structure; platform owners provide foundational code that third-party developers extend with complementary software. This structure creates strong incentives for platform owners to cooperate with third-party developers. Yet, platform firms, like Apple, intermittently expand their core by integrating peripheral functionality—for instance, flashlight or screen-time tracking in iOS. If ecosystems thrive on cooperation, why do platform owners expand into niches at the apparent expense of developers? Using a comprehensive data set of all Apple iOS core expansions from 2012 to 2020, we find that expansions systematically target underperforming niches—those with low user satisfaction, limited innovation activity, and high market concentration. Stand-alone apps tend to occur in niches with low innovation, whereas integrated core features focus on niches with low user satisfaction and high concentration. For policymakers, these insights inform regulatory discussions on platform power and the design of public interventions. For platform owners and third-party developers, the findings highlight characteristics of ecosystem niches that are vulnerable to core expansion, supporting strategic decisions regarding cooperation, competition, and innovation investment. By linking niche characteristics to core expansion strategies, this study provides actionable guidance for regulating and managing evolving platform ecosystems.