Akie Iriyama

Cloud Computing and Firm Innovation: The Role of Scalability and Heterogeneity in the Face of IT Resource Uncertainties

Cloud computing is an innovation that has gathered a huge amount of interest in the information technology (IT) industry [1]. With its unique characteristics of scalability, consumption based pricing, heterogeneity and standardized services [2, 3], cloud computing is a new procurement model which influences the provision and consumption of IT services in organizations. Capabilities provided by cloud have the potential to support innovations in organizations. Managerial understanding and perceptions about capabilities offered by cloud markets enhances their confidence in engaging in innovative activities. Possibility of anytime access to scalable, heterogeneous IT resources provides safeguards by reducing risks related to innovation. In order to understand the role of cloud in supporting innovative behaviours of firms, we explore prior research on types of innovative activities taken up by firms and conditions under which firms engage in such activities. Strategic innovative actions emerged as a strong underlying theme researched in various streams including organizational learning and strategy [4, 5], innovation [6] and entrepreneurship [7]. However, there is still a need to understand the antecedents of these activities in organizations [8]. Environmental characteristics such as dynamism has been identified as important factors that influence innovation related activities in firms [8-10]. Global competition and dynamic environment is driving organizations to reduce costs, increase profitability and enhance productivity [11]. This environmental dynamism or uncertainty can be characterized by changes in technologies, variations in customer preferences and fluctuations in product demand. Since IT is an integral part of any organizations and supports all the business processes of modern organizations, the uncertainties in the environment percolate to the business processes of the organizations and ultimately impact the IT resource requirements of these business processes. Hence the demand uncertainties in the market translate to the IT resource demand uncertainties at the business process level and the technological uncertainties in the environment correspond to IT resource technological uncertainties at the business process level. Organizations have to thrive in this ever changing and dynamic environment. They have to keep up with the pace of changing technology and continuously innovate to survive in this environment. This imposes enormous pressure on organizations to continuously innovate so as to reduce costs, sustain competitive advantage and improve the bottom line [12]. Specifically research suggests that a reduction in variance-increasing activity within the firm prevents it from registering and/or responding to environmental uncertainty [13]. Organizations have to manage these uncertainties at the business process level and engage in innovation related activities in order to remain competitive and profitable. While we know that environmental uncertainties drive innovative behaviors in firms, we seek to understand how IT supports these innovative behaviors. In this study, we address the following research question: What is the role of demand and technological uncertainties of IT resources in shaping the firms innovative behaviors? And how do services provided by cloud computing enable or support these innovative behaviors?

When Do Vendors Behave Opportunistically?: An Empirical Study of Financial Market Impacts on Firms in IT Outsourcing Relationships

Firms experience knowledge spillovers when working with outsourcing partners. This problem may be more severe when a firm and its rivals enter into outsourcing relationships with the same vendor. In such a network of outsourcing relationships, the common vendor may become the conduit for knowledge leakage from one firm to the other due to its own opportunistic calculus. Rooted in transaction cost economics (TCE), we propose that a vendor will utilize the knowledge gained from focal or rival firms whenever it is in the interest of the vendor to do so, resulting in losses or gains to rivals of a focal firm when the focal firm announces a new contract with the common vendor. Using a sample of 510 IT outsourcing contract announcements, we observed such losses and gains through cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) that accrue to rival firms around the date of announcement of a new IT outsourcing contract by a focal firm. Results support our hypotheses and show negative CARs for rivals that in the past had a relationship with the focal vendor but do not have a current relationship with the vendor. We also find that the rival firm size relative to the focal firm size plays an important role in vendor calculus and resulting knowledge spillovers. Knowledge leaks from a rival to a focal firm, and the rival experiences a negative CAR, when the rival is relatively larger in size compared to the focal firm and is no longer in a relationship with the vendor. However, in contrast, when the rival is relatively larger in size compared to the focal firm and is currently in a relationship with the vendor, knowledge leaks from the focal firm to the rival who experiences a positive CAR.

Connect the Dots, but Deliberately: Intrapersonal Diversity in Function and Genre in Creative Team

Extant research on intrapersonal diversity, i.e., knowledge/experience diversity embedded in individuals, has recognized it as a one-dimensional concept. We argue that such a view is too simplistic...

Investigating the Relationship Between Outsourcing and Innovation

The linkages between outsourcing and innovation are complex. Some findings suggest that outsourcing is a way to generate increased levels of innovation. However, some recommendations extracted from the IT outsourcing literature do not seem to favor innovation through outsourcing arrangements. By understanding the different types of innovation and combining this knowledge with the IT outsourcing body of knowledge, it is possible to conjecture the potential effect of outsourcing on innovation in various circumstances.

INTEGRATING RELATIVE STANDING AND MARKET DISCIPLINE: A COMPLEXITY THEORY PERSPECTIVE OF POST-MERGER AND ACQUISITION EXECUTIVE DEPARTURE

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) typically accelerate target top management team (TMT) executive departures. Market discipline and Relative Standing are two major and competing economic and sociological explanations for this phenomenon which lack a satisfactory theoretical integration. To fill this gap in the literature, we model the M&A market as a complex adaptive system composed of TMTs which rid themselves of executives via self-organized critical processes, generating M&A market-level properties that are emergent, or not easily explained with reference to the individual TMTs. The observation of an emergent power law distribution in target TMT executive retention rates for M&A activities in the United States supports our interpretation.

The emerging transnational dimension of organisational and individual identity: transnational technical communities as economic actors

An important feature of globalisation is the formation of ‘transnational technical communities’, groups of immigrants active in both home and host country technical networks. Viewed through the lens of identity, such communities demonstrate the intriguing interpenetration of individual identities and organisational identity. Further, building on the insight that such communities may be emerging as economic actors in their own right, we conceptualise them as a new type of knowledge conduit between nations. As such, their emergence has important implications for multinational corporations (MNCs), which have hitherto been viewed as the primary knowledge conduit between nations, suggesting the need for MNC managers to pay attention to the evolving identities of their own enterprises.