[AISWorld] JOCEC Special Issue CFP: Organizational Innovation through Information Technology

Tue Oct 19 15:21:47 EDT 2010

SPECIAL ISSUE CALL FOR PAPERS ON

"Organizational Innovation 

through Information Technology"

to appear in the 

Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce

GUEST EDITORS:

Lei Chi, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, chil2 at rpi.edu <mailto:chil2 at rpi.edu> 

K.D. Joshi, Washington State University, joshi at wsu.edu <mailto:joshi at wsu.edu> 

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 15, 2011 

DESCRIPTION:

Innovations are agents of "creative destruction:" they can destroy existing markets and yet often yield vast new market opportunities, substantially changing the competitive landscape in the market.  Innovation can take many different forms at multiple stages along the innovation pathway, for example: developing new ideas or technical solutions that often take the form of patent inventions, new ways of conducting business processes, new product and service introductions, diffusion of newly released products and services, and revenues generated from new product and service sales. Information technology (IT) has become critical for supporting knowledge management initiatives that can enable innovation (Alavi & Leidner 2001; Corso and Paolucci 2001; Holsapple and Singh 2001). IT enables organizations to better manage the creation, dissemination, and usage of knowledge and makes firms more productive and competitive (Davenport, Prusak & Strong 2008). Parameters for linking knowledge management practices and technologies have been introduced in the knowledge chain theory which identifies five first-order knowledge activities (i.e., knowledge acquisition, selection, generation, internalization, and externalization) and four second-order knowledge activities (i.e., leadership, coordination, control, and measurement); see Holsapple and Singh (2001). The empirically-based theory holds that each activity can potentially add value to a firm by increasing its competitiveness through improved productivity, agility, innovation, and/or reputation (PAIR), and that IT can be beneficial in pursuing any of these PAIR directions. While there are many ways an organization can be competitive, innovation is one of the most effective approaches to achieving competitive advantage in today's turbulent environment. Moreover, the urgency of attempting and attaining continuous innovation, with the help of technology tools to manage critical knowledge resources, is at the forefront. Thus, this special issue focuses on the innovation direction. 

An extensive survey of the existing literature on IT and management reveals that there is a conspicuous gap in the research literature about connections between IT and organizational innovation. The bulk of prior studies that examine roles of IT in influencing organizational performance have focused mainly on labor productivity, profitability, and administrative and operational efficiency as the performance outcomes. There is a need for research that systematically examines links between IT and innovation (Holsapple & Luo 1995, 1996) - to better understand IT's actual and potential contributions to supporting, building, and strengthening an organization's innovation capabilities, processes, and/or outcomes.

Emergent literature finds that, contrary to traditional literature which stresses collocation for building trust and consensus for innovation, radical innovation can be achieved through IT without collocation (Malhotra, Majchrzak, Carman, & Lott 2001). There is also evidence that IT can help leverage synergies among disparate knowledge elements distributed across different organizational units (Tanriverdi 2005) and facilitate the recombination of existing knowledge elements for organizational innovation (Majchrzak, Cooper, & Neece 2004). Recently, Joshi, Chi, Datta & Han (2010) have found that IT can greatly augment and enables a set of knowledge management capabilities (referred to as IT-enabled knowledge capabilities), which differentially impact innovation outcomes along the innovation pathway. They find that IT-enabled knowledge capabilities directly influence the patented inventions of a firm, while they also play a critical role in the commercialization of new products and services by facilitating the conversion of patent inventions to new products and services in the market. 

Going beyond an organization's boundaries, technologically-enabled innovation communities appear to be capable of affecting an organization's innovation processes and taking advantage of knowledge shared by customers' in the course of product innovations (Di Gangi and Wasko 2009). There are also indications that some kinds of IT may dampen creativity that underlies organizational innovation (Cheung, Chau, and Au 2008). Moreover, Malhotra and Gosain (2005) show that IT supports inter-organizational relationships along the supply chain and enhances a firm's knowledge creation with partners. Chi, Liao, Han & Joshi (2010) have further examined the role of IT in influencing firm innovation in the alliance network context of the pharmaceutical industry. They find that IT can differentially interact with (complement or inhibit the potential benefits of) network structure to affect pharmaceutical firms' patent inventions. Results from such studies are exciting, as they not only suggest new directions to examine, but also call for more focused and parsimonious investigation of relationships between IT and organizational innovation. Results of such investigation can offer valuable guidance to practice, as well as foundations for subsequent research. 

To stimulate advances in the understanding of links between IT and organizational innovation, we are producing this special issue of the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce. Our aim is to publish solid, fresh, innovative work that will make a difference for future research and practice. We encourage cross-disciplinary research. Possible topics for the special issue include (but are not limited to):  

·         Empirical studies of roles of IT in one or more stages of innovation

·         Theoretical modeling of effects of IT on organizational innovation

·         Experimental studies or computer simulations of roles of IT in innovation

·         Case studies of effects of specific IT systems on organizational innovation

·         Ways to measure IT-induced organizational innovation

·         Creativity support systems

·         Innovative organizational decision making through the use of business intelligence systems

·         Roles of IT in influencing innovation in the networked environment

·         Roles of IT in an initial brainstorming stage of innovation in organizations

·         Roles of IT in commercialization of an organization's innovations (i.e., converting initial ideas to goods/services)

·         Role of IT in innovation diffusion within organizations

·         Roles of IT in customer innovation (e.g., in engaging customers in the goods/services design processes, or in reaching customers and arranging distribution channels for the new goods or services)

·         Roles of IT in supporting partnerships for innovation

·         Roles of IT in innovation within healthcare organizations

·         Using IT to enable or foster inter-organizational innovation (e.g., in supply chains) 

·         Innovation in the IT industry 

IMPORTANT DATES:  

Authors are encouraged to submit a one-page brief description of the proposed research to the guest editors by December 20, 2010 for feedback about the relevancy or fitness of the proposed research to the special issue. The proposal is not a prerequisite for submitting a paper for the special issue.

Initial submission - 2/15/2011

1st round decision - by 4/30/2011

2nd round revision due:

           Standard - 7/30/2011

           Fast track - 6/30/2011

2nd round decisions:

           Standard - by 8/30/2011

           Fast track - by 7/30/2011

Final paper due:

           Standard - by 9/8/2011

           Fast track - by 8/8/2011

SUBMISSION: 

Papers should be submitted as WORD files to the guest editors at chil2 at rpi.edu <mailto:chil2 at rpi.edu>  and joshi at wsu.edu <mailto:joshi at wsu.edu> .

SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD:

Partick Y.K. Chau, University of Hong Kong

Lynne Cooper, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Avi Datta, Washington State University

Paul M. Di Gangi, Western Carolina University

Yulin Fang, City University of Hong Kong

Terri Griffith, Santa Clara University

Shu Han, Yeshiva University 

Edward Hartono, University of Alabama at Huntsville

Murray Jennex, San Diego State University 

Darin A. Ladd, Air Force Institute of Technology

Wenhong Luo, Villanova University 

Xun Li, Nicolls State University

Ann Majchrzak, University of Southern California

Kent Marett, Mississippi State University

Roland Mueller, University of Twente

Karma Sherif, Texas Southern University

Eileen Trauth, Penn State University

Xinlin Tang, Florida State University

Jiming Wu, California State University at East Bay

REFERENCES:

Alavi, M., D.E. Leidner. 2001. Knowledge management and knowledge management systems: Conceptual foundations and research issues. MIS Quarterly 25(1) 107-136.

Cheung, P.K., Chau, P.Y.K ., and Au, A.K.K. (2008). Does knowledge reuse make a creative person more creative? <http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0167923607000292>  Decision Support Systems <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01679236> , 45(2) 219-227. 

Chi, L.; Liao, Y.C.; Han, S.; Joshi, K.D. (2010) Alliance Network, Information Technology, and Firm Innovation: Findings from the Pharmaceutical Industry. Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems, St. Louis.

Corso, M. and Paolucci, E. 2001. Fostering Innovation and Knowledge Transfer in Product Development through Information Technology. International Journal of Technology Management 22(1-3) 126-148.

Davenport, T.H., L. Prusak, B. Strong. 2008. Putting Ideas to Work: Knowledge management can make a difference-but it needs to be more pragmatic. MIT Sloan Management Review, Business Insights Online, 47(3), http://ai.arizona.edu/mis480/other_materials/4_Putting-Ideas-to-Work.pdf

Di Gangi, P.M. and Wasko, M. (2009). Steal my idea! Organizational adoption of user innovations from a user innovation community: A case study of Dell IdeaStorm <http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0167923609000888> . Decision Support Systems <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01679236> , 48 (1) 303-312.

Holsapple, C. W. & Luo, W. (1995). Dependent variables for organizational computing research. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 5 (1), 31-51.  

Holsapple, C. W. & Luo, W. (1996). A framework for studying computer support of organizational infrastructure. Information & Management, 31 (1), 13-24.

Holsapple, C. W. & Singh, M. (2001). The knowledge chain model: Activities for competitiveness. Expert Systems with Applications, 20 (1), 77-98.

Joshi, K.D.; Chi, L.; Datta, A.; Han, S. September 2010. Changing the Competitive Landscape: Continuous Innovation through IT-based Knowledge Capabilities. Information Systems Research, 21(3), 472-495.

Majchrzak, A.; Cooper, L.P.; and Neece, O.E. 2004. Knowledge Reuse for Innovation. Management Science, 50(2), 174-188.

Malhotra, A.; Majchrzak, A.; Carman, R.; and Lott, V.  2001. Radical Innovation without Collocation: A Case Study at Boeing-Rocketdyne. MIS Quarterly, 25(2), 229-249.

Malhotra, A., Gosain, S., and El Sawy, O.A. 2005.  Absorptive capacity configurations in supply chains: Gearing for partner-enabled market knowledge creation. MIS Quarterly, 29(1), 145-187.

Tanriverdi, H. 2005. Information Technology Relatedness, Knowledge Management Capability, and Performance of Multibusines Firms. MIS Quarterly, 29(2), 311-334.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lei Chi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems
Lally School of Management and Technology
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Phone (O): 518-276-2768
Fax: 518-276-8661
E-mail: chil2 at rpi.edu