Earticle

Ideation is a process of generating new ideas or solutions using online crowd-sourcing technologies. This process has the potential to change the ways by which government agencies innovate and solve problems. Although increasingly more government agencies are implementing online ideation programs to tap into their employees’ ideas and creativity, little is known about the unique challenges and effective practices of such programs. Thus, many government agencies are undergoing trial and error and often reinventing the wheel. This research aims to address this problem. By analyzing a focus group session and four cases of U.S. federal government ideation programs designed for their employees, this research identifies important organizational and technological challenges and effective practices. Furthermore, effective practices are grouped into different phases of ideation process and strategic vs. tactical levels to provide more meaningful and actionable insights. This research is an important step towards building a theoretical foundation for government ideation programs. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

Although knowledge transfer between two different parties occurs in IS development projects, the majority of prior studies focused on knowledge transfer from IT consultants to clients. Considering two parts of knowledge transfer in IS development projects, we must consider both ‘where knowledge is transferred from’ and ‘where it is transferred to’. Therefore, in this study, we attempt to describe two different routes of knowledge transfer, such as knowledge transfer from an IT consultant to a client and knowledge transfer from a client to an IT consultant. In this regard, we have examined the effect of two different routes of knowledge transfer on system implementation success in IS development project. Specifically, we adopted the knowledge stock-flow theory to examine the causal relationship between IT consulting firms and clients in terms of knowledge transfer and eventual system implementation success. Survey data collected from 213 pairs of individuals (both clients and IT consultants) were used to test the model using three different analytic approaches such as PLS (partial least squares) and two types of mediated regression techniques. We found that knowledge transfers partially mediated both the relationships between IT consultants’ IT skills (project members’ business knowledge) and system implementation success. Furthermore, the effects of each knowledge transfer were distinguished by depending on the types of system, such as ERP or groupware. Our attempts have significant implications for both research and practice given the importance of effective knowledge transfer to IT consulting.

The limited literature on Open Source Software (OSS) customers’ adoption does not provide explanations on how OSS services are adopted by customers in the presence of functionally superior commercially licensed software (CLS). This paper aims to uncover the process that shapes customer satisfaction of OSS services in comparison to CLS. Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (EDT) is adapted and integrated with pre implementation factor model that influences software customers’ expectations including cost, reputation, and experience. The constructed research model is empirically validated using a field survey of OSS and CLS database management system (DBMS) customers in Korea. The theoretical contribution of the paper lies on the application of EDT to explain the wide adoption of OSS DBMS services in the presence of functionally superior CLS DBMSs. Furthermore, this paper integrates EDT with pre-implementation factors for customers’ expectations, which has been considered a limitation of the theory. Among the practical contributions, this study draws attention to the substantive differences between OSS and CLS customers’ expectations. Additionally, it offers initial explanations for the differences in customer behavior for OSS and CLS and the way that customers’ expectations and actual performance are mingled together to form customer satisfaction.

The present research aims to identify the relationship between trust and distrust in an online business environment. To clarify the concepts, cognitive–affective personality system theory was introduced, through which five types of psychological units were proposed. In developing the research model based on the theory, technical effectiveness of the system and content truthfulness of the website were selected as two key stimuli for the coding process of online users. Trust and distrust were selected as mediating factors that generate consequent behaviors. Finally, purchase intention served as a final dependent variable. Assuming that trust and distrust emerge in psychologically different stages, this study hypothesized the mutual causal relationship between trust and distrust, indicating that the relationship will be determined by their contextual emphasis on each dimension. To validate, a survey was conducted with 307 online shopping mall users. Results show that stimuli were more significantly associated with trust. Trust is therefore a more cognitive construct than distrust, and the path from trust to distrust is stronger than that from distrust to trust. This finding implies that the cognitive aspect of trust is stronger than that of distrust. Distrust is rather more affectively emerging than trust.

Customers are now demanding ever better service from customer service representatives (CSRs) to create superior customer service. Accordingly, CSRs are required to have more specialized knowledge and abilities of customer service. This study examines the roles of accumulated customer knowledge in electronic knowledge repositories (EKRs), which a firm has developed for customer service over time to enhance CSRs’ work capabilities and work performance, in the context of call centers. To test the proposed research model and hypotheses, we conducted LISREL analysis using 261 responses collected on CSRs working for inbound call centers. The key results are as follows. First, accumulated customer knowledge in EKRs enhances CSRs’ knowledge utilization and service expertise during the customer contact. Second, CSRs’ knowledge utilization reinforces service expertise. Finally, service quality depends on CSRs’ knowledge utilization and service expertise, but it is not directly related to accumulated customer knowledge. Overall, the findings suggest that accumulated customer knowledge in EKRs enhances CSRs’ knowledge utilization and service expertise, and thereby leading to superior service quality.

The growing popularity of mobile application has led to researchers and practitioners needing to understand users’ mobile application download behaviors. Using large-scale transaction data obtained from a leading Korean telecommunications company, we empirically explore how application download rank, which appears to users when they decide to download a new application, affects their extended mobile application download. This terminology refers to downloading an additional application in the same category as those that they have already downloaded. We also consider IT characteristics, user characteristics, and application type that might be associated with the extended application download. The analysis generates the following result. Overall, a higher rank of a new application encourages the extended application download, but the linear relationship between the rank and the extended application download disappears when critical rank points are incorporated into the model. Further, no quadratic effect of rank is found in the extended application download. Based on the results, we suggest theoretical and managerial implications.

Forecasting daily box-office performance is critical for planning the distribution of marketing resources, and by extension, maximizing profits. For certain movies, the number of viewers increases rapidly at the beginning of their theatrical run, and the increments slow down later. Other movies are not popular in the beginning, but the audience sizes grow rapidly afterward. Thus, the audience attendance of movies grow in different trajectories, which are influenced by various factors including marketing budget, distributors, directors, actors, and word of mouth. In this paper, we propose a method for predicting the daily performance trajectory of running movies based on the hierarchical linear model. More specifically, we focus on the effect of online word of mouth on the shape of the growth curves. We fitted the mean trajectory of the cumulative audience size as a cubic function of time, and allowed the intercept and slope to vary movie-to-movie. Moreover, we fitted the linear slope with a function of online word of mouth predictors to help determine the shape of the trajectories. Finally, we provide performance predictions for individual movies.

Many studies have focused on the prediction of corporate credit rating using various data mining techniques. One of the most frequently used algorithms is support vector machines (SVM), and recently, novel techniques such as SVM+ and SVM+MTL have emerged. This paper intends to show the applicability of such new techniques to multi-classification and corporate credit rating and compare them with conventional SVM regarding prediction performance. We solve multi-class SVM+ and SVM+MTL problems by constructing several binary classifiers. Furthermore, to demonstrate the robustness and outstanding performance of SVM+MTL algorithm over other techniques, we utilized four typical multi-class processing methods in our experiments. The results show that SVM+MTL outperforms both conventional SVM and novel SVM+ in predicting corporate credit rating. This study contributes to the literature by showing the applicability of new techniques such as SVM+ and SVM+MTL and the outperformance of SVM+MTL over conventional techniques. Thus, this study enriches solving techniques for addressing multi-class problems such as corporate credit rating prediction.

Prior research has emphasized the significant effect of service orientation on organizational performance. However, little research on service orientation has been conducted in the financial field, including the investment management service industry in which high quality service for clients is required. In this paper, we propose a research model that centers on the concept of service orientation as a type of dynamic capability affecting firm performance. The research variables include job competency, risk management capability, operational capability, service orientation, and service performance. We assume that service orientation partially mediates the effects of risk management capability and operational capability on service performance. To test the model, we collected data from 391 fund managers in 86 teams (37 investment management companies) and analyzed it with partial least squares (PLS) method. Each of the 391 fund managers was asked to answer team level measures, which is effective for team level analysis. We find that job competency positively affects both risk management capability and operational capability, which in turn affect service orientation. Risk management capability and operational capability are assumed to directly affect service performance. However, risk management capability does not influence perceived service performance, whereas operational capability does affect it. This result indicates that risk management capability does not directly affect service performance. However, via service orientation, considering that risk management inconveniences customers and is geared to enhance service orientation, service performance is positively affected. Operational capability does not influence service orientation, whereas it affects perceived service performance. This result reveals that operational capability directly affects firm performance. As expected, service orientation significantly affects the service performance perception of fund managers. This study contributes to the literature by introducing service orientation to the financial industry and measures and tests team-level service performance. Our findings also provide insights to practitioners because to enhance team performance, managers must focus on service orientation in addition to operational capability.