Knowledge that Transforms

(2005). Special Section: Context-Driven Information Access and Deployment. Journal of Management Information Systems: Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 7-9.

Information that is stored digitally is at risk for being irretrievably lost if either the methods used to retrieve the bitstream or the methods used to interpret the bitstream are lost. The Digital Rosetta Stone (DRS) model was developed as a conceptual framework for capturing and maintaining the methods necessary to retrieve digital information stored on obsolete media and to properly interpret it, though the software used to create it may also be obsolete. However, the community of those professionals concerned with this issue had not yet assessed this conceptual model. This study used the Delphi method to explore these issues with those responsible for maintaining access to digital data. Overall, the Delphi group expressed concerns about the practicality of developing the DRS, but agreed that it is an important concept that should be explored further. If found to be technologically feasible and economically desirable, the DRS could well lead to a long-term solution for recovering information that would otherwise be impossible to recover.

(2005). Special Section: Information Systems in Competitive Strategies: Offshoring, Risk Management, Strategic Pricing, E-Sourcing, and Standards. Journal of Management Information Systems: Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 7-13.

(2005). Special Section: Human-Computer Interaction Research in Management Information Systems. Journal of Management Information Systems: Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 9-14.

Strategic sourcing, defined as a firm's key business process to identify, evaluate, configure, and negotiate purchases in important spend categories while managing long-term supplier relationships, is playing a significant role in sourcing strategies. The adoption of e-sourcing, defined as the use of business software (for example, using application service providers to conduct online procurement auctions) to automate or augment the aforementioned key business process, has been growing rapidly in recent years. One often-cited benefit of e-sourcing is the predicted savings, which is appealing, given the increasing pressure on cost competitiveness faced by firms. Using queuing techniques, this paper develops an economic model that captures fundamental trade-offs in a firm's e-sourcing business process as characterized by communication complexity, frequency of use, and cost of delay. This allows comparisons of two widely adopted structures for e-sourcing: the centralized structure versus the decentralized structure. Conditions under which the centralized structure is favored over the decentralized structure and vice versa are identified and illustrated with numerical examples and case evidence. These findings are robust in other settings. The paper concludes with a discussion of managerial implications.

Despite their potential to significantly reduce transaction costs for both buyers and sellers, e-marketplaces have struggled. Recent literature has examined the value propositions of e-marketplaces and proposed conceptual frameworks for their analysis. In this research, we move beyond conceptual analysis by developing a game-theoretic model of return-on-investment (ROI)-driven e-marketplace participation growth. This model provides insights into expected e-marketplace growth and participation, and can be used to determine both the viability and expected long-run size of a given e-marketplace. Our results indicate that the pricing policy of the e-marketplace intermediary can affect the rate at which participation grows and, therefore, sentiment about its prospects. We focus on e-marketplaces that add value to buyers and sellers by increasing the efficiency of administrative tasks but also simultaneously add value to buyers and reduce value to sellers by lowering prices for goods purchased. Value to participants in these e-marketplaces is determined by the volume of transactions that can be conducted using the e-marketplace, resulting in a two-sided network effect--buyers reacting to sellers and sellers reacting to buyers. The game-theoretic model identifies an e-marketplace equilibrium at which participation growth is predicted to stop.

papers in the areas of neural networks, combinatorial optimization, and data mining, and regularly acts as a consultant to industry in the area of data mining.

As products on the Web are continually enhanced through "free" Web-based services that add to the product purchase experience, it is important to understand how these free services may affect pricing and customer retention strategies of an online vendor. This paper argues that product competition on the Web is not for generic products but, rather, for expected and augmented product bundles. Our findings point out that even in the absence of price premiums, variance in the ability to offer online services can affect pricing strategies and possibly contribute to online price dispersion. We then go on to suggest that online services affect a vendor's customer retention strategy as they influence the design of the augmented product. We characterize an online vendor's selection of augmenting services as a knapsack problem, and recommend that the online vendor should not only periodically reevaluate the set of services offered to satisfy the expected product requirements, but also assess the customer retention ability of his augmented product. A service does not contribute to customer retention when it has either lost its value to the customer or become required as a part of the expected product. Our solution recommends that a vendor should include new services based on the cost-to-value ratio of each service so as to remain above the loyalty threshold of a consumer. The results from our model partially explain the variety in product offerings of many online vendors, whose competency in providing Web-based services allows them to vary the generic product.

This paper reports the results of an experiment investigating the differences between budget negotiations conducted on an electronic negotiation support system (NSS) and those conducted face-to-face. The negotiation setting consisted of a supervisor and a subordinate negotiating a performance budget for the subordinate. Results revealed that when supervisor performance expectations were incongruent with subordinate capability, face-to-face negotiations hit impasse at a significantly higher rate than NSS negotiations. These results held regardless of the amount of concession needed to reach consensus, and they support the contention that single-issue distributive negotiations, such as budget negotiations, can benefit from the use of an NSS. In a secondary analysis of subordinate performance after the budget negotiation, we found that NSS subordinates perceived more task conflict, which positively influenced postnegotiation performance, whereas face-to-face subordinates perceived less relational conflict, which worked through satisfaction to positively influence postnegotiation performance. This result adds to the literature by clarifying the roles that communication mode plays in a negotiation and a negotiation's aftermath.

The capabilities of network technologies have facilitated the growth of electronic commerce. Major issues--notably, security and product quality uncer-tainty--still pose serious challenges to the further adoption of electronic commerce. Traditional market transactions have a long history and well-understood protections for buyers and sellers. In the electronic markets, formal and informal mechanisms such as trusted third parties (TTP) have emerged trying to ensure safe transactions. In this paper, we investigate under what conditions people will stick to the traditional market and face-to-face transactions, and under what conditions electronic transactions will be the convention of the future. Of particular interest is the role of TTPs in facilitating online transactions. Using evolutionary game theory, we present an analytical model of buyer and seller choices and examine which patterns of transactions can be sustained. We further study how the traders' adaptive behavior may influence the outcome of the market evolution. Through this analysis, we demonstrate that the market will show divergence: for commodity products, electronic transactions through TTPs will get established as the convention for market transactions when traders use historical information about other traders' past strategies. For "look and feel" products, the market evolution depends on the initial distribution of the transaction strategies in the population.