Decision, Operations & Information Technologies
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2230
Prior to January 4, 2009, this unit was named Decision & Information Technologies.
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Item A Configurational Approach to Examining the Influence of Information Technology Management and Governance on Organization Performance(2019) Aljazzaf, Salman; Mithas, Sunil; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Information technology (IT) is becoming an increasingly crucial part of modern organizations. This dissertation includes two essays that examine how effective IT management and decision-making structure are associated with better organizational performance. The first essay examines the complementarity between IT management and human resource (HR) management capabilities and discusses the mechanisms through which these two capabilities jointly lead to better organizational performance. The unique contribution of this study is the use of direct measures of IT management and HR management capabilities to estimate their joint impact on organizational performance. Furthermore, I disaggregate HR capability into two specific dimensions: (1) work systems such as employee performance management systems and hiring and promotion systems, and (2) employee learning and development. The main results confirm the complementarity between IT management and both HR management dimensions, and show that work systems more positively moderates the impact of IT management on organizational performance based on financial and market measures. The study is supplemented with a configurational analysis that examines the complex relationships between the organizational capabilities and explain how the complementarity between IT management, work systems, and employee learning varies across sectors and relies also on the presence and absence of other capabilities such as leadership and strategic planning. The study compares the results of the conventional and configurational methods and highlights the unique insights derived from each approach. The second essay discusses the optimal IT reporting structure in a firm, that is, whether the IT head should report to the chief executive officer or some other executive. This study proposes that there are several factors that determine the optimal IT reporting structure such as firm size, industry, IT investment intensity, and whether IT is viewed as strategic to the firm. The study argues that the relationship between these factors and the optimal IT reporting structure is too complex to be represented by linear models that rely on the correlation-based approach. Instead, there is a need to study configurations that lead to better performance based on different combinations of firm-level and industry-level conditions. The study uses a novel configurational approach and a corresponding method, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, to determine the optimal IT reporting structure of different configurations. The study results shed light on the complex relationship between IT reporting structure and the conditions defining various firm configurations. Together the two essays provide new insights on how successful IT management and governance structure lead to organizational success.Item DESIGNING INFORMATION STRATEGIES FOR DIGITAL PLATFORMS: FINDINGS FROM LARGE-SCALE RANDOMIZED FIELD EXPERIMENTS(2019) Shi, Lanfei; Viswanathan, Siva; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The rise of digital platforms has transformed our economy and reshaped consumer behaviors and experiences. While practitioners and researchers have a growing interest in understanding digital platforms, there is still a dearth of research on how platforms can design effective information strategies to mitigate fundamental issues such as information asymmetry and search frictions by leveraging granular data. My dissertation seeks to fill this gap. Specifically, by focusing on significant real-world problems on digital platforms, I aim to examine IT-enabled and analytics-driven information strategies and study the impact of these strategies on the users as well as on the platforms themselves. In collaboration with two different online platforms, I design and conduct three randomized field experiments to investigate the impact of informational interventions and provide actionable suggestions. In Essay 1, I examine incentive strategies for motivating effective mobile app adoptions, by comparing monetary incentives against informational incentives. I find that the usage after app adoption depends on how customers are motivated, and only information induced adoption leads to long-term increase in purchases. In Essay 2, I investigate the role of “verification” when it is made optional, and find that it serves as a very effective signaling device, especially in markets that lack other mechanisms such as reputation systems. I also find that users on the two sides of online platform use the same signal very differently, and that this is attributable to the difference in the credibility of their primary signaling-attribute of each side, viz. income in males and beauty in females. In Essay 3, I examine the effectiveness of three different recommendation systems in two-sided matching platforms with a focus on how the provisioning of potential candidates’ preference information impacts focal user’s decision-making and matching outcomes. I find that compared to “people you might prefer”, users act strategically towards “people who might prefer you” and “people who you might prefer and who might prefer you” by actively reaching out to less desirable candidates, which leads to improved outcomes. In short, the three studies present new empirical evidence of how platforms can leverage information as a tool to design effective incentives, signaling mechanisms and recommender systems to facilitate users’ decision-making, transactions and matching.Item The Interplay Between Social Connections and Digital Technologies: Three Essays Examining Healthy Behaviors and Income Mobility(2018) Liu, Chewei; Agarwal, Ritu; Mithas, Sunil; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the past few decades, digital technologies have profoundly altered virtually every aspect of human life. While the direct impact of digital technologies on individuals’ economic welfare or personal behaviors has attracted considerable attention, the interplay of digital technologies with social connections remains underexplored. Indeed, regardless of whether formed offline or online, social connections in the form of personal ties and affiliations that have long been the bedrock of human society continue to shape human behaviors and outcomes. To the extent that digitization will only continue to grow in scale and scope, an understanding of such effects is important for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. I address two overarching research questions in my dissertation: (1) Whether, and to what extent digital technologies affect individuals’ economic welfare and habituated behavior, and (2) How social connections such as personal ties and affiliations condition the impact of the digital technologies. My studies are conducted in two distinct contexts: mobile interventions for health, and computer ownership for social and economic welfare. Drawing on diverse bodies of literature and using various econometric methods, I seek to answer questions related to how interventions orchestrated on mobile platforms help individuals form healthy behaviors, and how computer ownership affects long-term income mobility. In the first essay, I show that a social norms intervention on a mobile platform is effective in increasing individuals’ physical activity. In the second study, I investigate how the motivational incentive of reciprocity can be leveraged to promote healthy behavior. Finally, in my third essay, I show that computer ownership generates both private and social returns (IT spillovers) on individuals’ income mobility. All three papers then consider how individuals’ social connections condition the direct effects of digital technologies. The first two studies explore how online social ties and social relationships moderate the impact of mobile interventions, and the third study examines how caste groups affect the positive spillover effects of computer ownership. Collectively, the three studies advance our understanding of the heterogeneous effects of digital technologies on individuals and provide implications for researchers and practitioners.Item Enemies at the Gate? Essays on New Entry Threats in the U.S. Information Technology Industry(2017) Pan, Yang; Gopal, Anandasivam; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Information Technology industry is characterized by constant technological changes, fast clock speed, and hypercompetitive markets. A significant part of this fast-moving dynamic is fed by the high rate of new entry in the form of entrepreneurial ventures. In recent decade, digital platforms accelerate these threats from startups by providing financial and marketing resources. While these developments have led to a significant increase in new entry threats faced by incumbent firms, there is little empirical research that has addressed the consequences of these threats on incumbents. This dissertation aims to fill this gap in the literature. In the first essay, I develop and validate an innovative measure of new entry threat. Then, I show that in the presence of new entry threat, firms tend to reduce their investments in innovation systematically. Further, firms that have a diversified product or technology portfolio, operate in industries with strong network effects, or face high levels of technological cumulativeness invest relatively more in R&D when facing greater new entry threats. The second essay focuses on the impact of new entry threat on the operational performance of firms in the IT industry, and studies how features of the incumbents’ board may help moderate the effects of new entry threat. I provide strong empirical evidence for the theoretical predication of the negative relationship between new entry threats and firm performance. I also show that facing high NET, firms with more independent directors are better able to withstand these threats. In the third essay, I examine the influence of new entry threats on the incumbent’s information disclosure in the IT industry. I find evidence consistent with theoretical prediction that high new entry threats faced by the firm indeed leads to a decrease in the incumbent’s information disclosure. Interestingly, I also find the effect is less pronounced in highly concentrated sub-industries, where actual entry barriers are higher, and more pronounced in the software and services sectors, where proprietary information is more vulnerable. Overall, the three essays contribute to the literature by first creating and validating a measure of new entry threats and linking this measure to specific firm-related strategic decisions within the IT industry.Item ESSAYS ON CUSTOMER ANALYTICS IN MOBLIE ECOSYSTEMS(2017) Lee, Dongwon; Gopal, Anandasivam; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on understanding the value of customer analytics in the mobile channel through three essays. Specifically, I study customer behaviors and technology use in mobile ecosystems. The first essay of this dissertation examines the difference in the effects of recommendation systems across the PC and mobile channels on customer-level decision outcomes and market. I conduct two randomized field experiments and find that the impact of the recommendation systems is higher for the mobile channel than the PC channel on customer-level decision outcomes. With respect to the market, I observe no direct effect of recommendation systems on sales diversity but I find that diversity of both product sales and views are higher on the mobile channels compared to the PC channel. In the second essay, I study the composite effect of mobile push notifications and recommendation systems on views and sales in the context of mobile retailing. While the direct effect of such notifications on the pushed product is to be expected, I find interestingly that the effect of the notification is significantly higher for recommended products, suggesting a complementarity between push notifications and recommendation systems that has not yet been addressed in the literature. Finally, I broaden the scope of my studies in my third essay by studying a context that which has received little attention within the mobile context – charitable giving and cause marketing. I study how mobile devices may be used to encourage charitable giving through cause marketing campaign by conducting a large-scale randomized field experiment, focusing on the influence of push notifications, monetary subsidies, and intertemporal choices of subsidy in mobile cause marketing context. Results of the experiment demonstrate that push notifications have a remarkably high effect on donation outcomes. Contrary to previous findings from offline contexts, I find that donation decision and donation amount are significantly higher with rebate subsidies, compared to matching subsidies. Taken as a whole, this dissertation contributes to a better understanding of customer behavior and the role of the technology use in the mobile ecosystem.Item VOX POPULI: THREE ESSAYS ON THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR VALUE CREATION IN SERVICES(2016) Mejia, Jorge; Gopal, Anandasivam; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Prior research shows that electronic word of mouth (eWOM) wields considerable influence over consumer behavior. However, as the volume and variety of eWOM grows, firms are faced with challenges in analyzing and responding to this information. In this dissertation, I argue that to meet the new challenges and opportunities posed by the expansion of eWOM and to more accurately measure its impacts on firms and consumers, we need to revisit our methodologies for extracting insights from eWOM. This dissertation consists of three essays that further our understanding of the value of social media analytics, especially with respect to eWOM. In the first essay, I use machine learning techniques to extract semantic structure from online reviews. These semantic dimensions describe the experiences of consumers in the service industry more accurately than traditional numerical variables. To demonstrate the value of these dimensions, I show that they can be used to substantially improve the accuracy of econometric models of firm survival. In the second essay, I explore the effects on eWOM of online deals, such as those offered by Groupon, the value of which to both consumers and merchants is controversial. Through a combination of Bayesian econometric models and controlled lab experiments, I examine the conditions under which online deals affect online reviews and provide strategies to mitigate the potential negative eWOM effects resulting from online deals. In the third essay, I focus on how eWOM can be incorporated into efforts to reduce foodborne illness, a major public health concern. I demonstrate how machine learning techniques can be used to monitor hygiene in restaurants through crowd-sourced online reviews. I am able to identify instances of moral hazard within the hygiene inspection scheme used in New York City by leveraging a dictionary specifically crafted for this purpose. To the extent that online reviews provide some visibility into the hygiene practices of restaurants, I show how losses from information asymmetry may be partially mitigated in this context. Taken together, this dissertation contributes by revisiting and refining the use of eWOM in the service sector through a combination of machine learning and econometric methodologies.Item ENGINEERING DIGITAL SHARING PLATFORM TO CREATE SOCIAL CONTAGION: EVIDENCE FROM LARGE SCALE RANDOMIZED FIELD EXPERIMENTS(2016) Sun, Tianshu; Viswanathan, Siva; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Peer-to-peer information sharing has fundamentally changed customer decision-making process. Recent developments in information technologies have enabled digital sharing platforms to influence various granular aspects of the information sharing process. Despite the growing importance of digital information sharing, little research has examined the optimal design choices for a platform seeking to maximize returns from information sharing. My dissertation seeks to fill this gap. Specifically, I study novel interventions that can be implemented by the platform at different stages of the information sharing. In collaboration with a leading for-profit platform and a non-profit platform, I conduct three large-scale field experiments to causally identify the impact of these interventions on customers’ sharing behaviors as well as the sharing outcomes. The first essay examines whether and how a firm can enhance social contagion by simply varying the message shared by customers with their friends. Using a large randomized field experiment, I find that i) adding only information about the sender’s purchase status increases the likelihood of recipients’ purchase; ii) adding only information about referral reward increases recipients’ follow-up referrals; and iii) adding information about both the sender’s purchase as well as the referral rewards increases neither the likelihood of purchase nor follow-up referrals. I then discuss the underlying mechanisms. The second essay studies whether and how a firm can design unconditional incentive to engage customers who already reveal willingness to share. I conduct a field experiment to examine the impact of incentive design on sender’s purchase as well as further referral behavior. I find evidence that incentive structure has a significant, but interestingly opposing, impact on both outcomes. The results also provide insights about senders’ motives in sharing. The third essay examines whether and how a non-profit platform can use mobile messaging to leverage recipients’ social ties to encourage blood donation. I design a large field experiment to causally identify the impact of different types of information and incentives on donor’s self-donation and group donation behavior. My results show that non-profits can stimulate group effect and increase blood donation, but only with group reward. Such group reward works by motivating a different donor population. In summary, the findings from the three studies will offer valuable insights for platforms and social enterprises on how to engineer digital platforms to create social contagion. The rich data from randomized experiments and complementary sources (archive and survey) also allows me to test the underlying mechanism at work. In this way, my dissertation provides both managerial implication and theoretical contribution to the phenomenon of peer-to-peer information sharing.Item PRECIPITATING HEALTH BEHAVIOR CHANGE: THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT(2015) Wolcott, Vickee Lynn; Agarwal, Ritu; Gao, Guodong; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Health behaviors represent the largest determinant of a person’s health and impact healthcare practice and delivery. Responding to the need to uncover mechanisms that instigate health behavior change, in this dissertation I investigate the effects of two important drivers of variation: health information technology and social health influence. I conduct empirical analyses using a unique medical and administrative dataset on 820,000 U.S. Army soldiers over four years. In the first study, I examine the effects of a patient portal implemented by the Army in 2011. Patient portals are used to facilitate greater patient engagement with health and increase patient activation, defined as the ability and desire to improve one’s health. A critical, overlooked factor is the reciprocal of patient activation: “provider activation,” the provider's knowledge and desire to get patients more activated. I examine the discrete and complementary effects of patients’ healthcare needs and provider activation and demonstrate each significantly impact patient activation. Using a novel matching method to minimize selection bias, I investigate the impacts of a patient portal on healthcare utilization and outcomes. Patient portal usage is shown to complement healthcare utilization, improve access to services, and increase medication adherence. In study two, I investigate social health influence within Army units. Large variations in health behaviors have been observed across different locations. I assert this variation is a result of distinct “health cultures” or norms of health behaviors, influencing individual soldier behaviors. To examine the effect of these health cultures on soldiers’ health behaviors, while minimizing selection bias, I exploit a unique feature of the Army: the exogenous assignment of soldiers to units. The hierarchical structure inherent to the Army provides an opportunity to examine leader and subordinate effects, in addition to peer effects, which I demonstrate have significant, differential impacts on the spread of obesity, tobacco use, and alcohol abuse. This dissertation contributes to the field’s understanding of drivers of health behavior change, through the examination of patient and provider activation and the role of social influence in health behaviors. It offers important recommendations for policy makers seeking to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare systems.Item The Transformational Role of IT in Entrepreneurship: Crowdfunding and the Democratization of Access to Capital and Investment Opportunity(2014) Kim, Keongtae; Hann, Il-Horn; Viswanathan, Siva; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation examines the strategic impacts of IT-enabled platforms on entrepreneurial and innovation activities. Specifically, I explore the behaviors of both investors and entrepreneurs in online crowdfunding markets that have the potential to democratize access to capital and investment opportunities. In my first essay, I examine the role of experts in a crowdfunding market. While conventional wisdom considers a crowdfunding market as a mechanism to democratize decision making and reduce reliance on experts, I find that experts still play a pivotal role in these markets. In particular, I find that the early investments by experts serve as credible signals of quality for the crowd, and have a significant impact on the crowd's investment decisions. In my second essay, I analyze whether crowdfunding democratizes access to capital for entrepreneurs. I find that difficult access to credit from traditional sources induces entrepreneurs to rely more on crowdfunding as a viable alternative, while this effect varies across project types and across areas. In each essay, I analyze micro-level data from online crowdfunding markets with a variety of econometric methods. The results have important theoretical and practical implications for questions ranging from the design of online crowdfunding markets to competition between online and offline channels for funding and regional dynamics of crowdfunding.Item INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS, INDIE SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS AND PLATFORM GOVERNANCE(2013) Qiu, Yixin; Gopal, Anandasivam; Hann, Il-Horn; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This two-essay dissertation aims to study institutional logics in the context of Apple's independent third-party software developers. In essay 1, I investigate the embedded agency aspect of the institutional logics theory. It builds on the premise that logics constrain preferences, interests and behaviors of individuals and organizations, thereby determining the appropriate and legitimate decisions and actions of actors. In the meantime, most social actors operate in fields characterized by multiple institutional logics where contradictions exist, allowing individuals and organizations with opportunities for negotiation and change through exploitation or management of these contradictions. I specifically study two competing institutional logics: professional and market logics when they are experienced simultaneously by independent iOS app entrepreneurs. Using participant observation and semi-structured interviews, I delineate the ways in which logic tension is reconciled through mechanisms of logic synthesis in three entrepreneurial areas - app ideation, app execution and app marketing, and conditions which facilitate or inhibit logic synthesis. In essay 2, I study the emergence and evolution of field-level logics in the context of Apple's desktop developers - Mac indies. Following the cultural emergence model of field-level logics in Thornton et al. (2012), and the argument that "field-level logics are both embedded in societal-level logics and subject to field-level processes that generate distinct forms of instantiation, variation, and combination of societal logics" (p148), I particularly examine the relationship between resource environment and the emergence and evolution of field-level logics. Taking advantage of a critical change in developers' resource environment - Apple's opening of the iOS App Store and subsequently the Mac App Store, and hence its governance model shifting from mainly a technological platform to a platform that includes a market exchange place, I identify developers' logics before and after the change, namely, the software ecosystem logic and platform ecosystem logic. Two ideal types are constructed for the logics along elemental categories, and a content analysis demonstrates the logic shift pattern as resource environments change. A further analysis of the two logics suggests that the software ecosystem logic and platform ecosystem logic are in contestation at this early stage of institutional change.