Claudia Dossena

IS and Organization for Online Corporate Reputation Management

According to the Resource Based View, corporate reputation is seen as a core resource and a major factor in gaining competitive advantage. Thanks to the development of Web-based technologies, stakeholders can easily spread their own perspective about an organization, its products, services, brands, members, and so forth, affecting its corporate reputation. This work examines the Web side of corporate reputation conceptualized as ‘online corporate reputation’ and the exploitation of IT (Online Reputation Management Systems) to support the related management practices. Based on the experience developed by an Italian leading e-service provider, the authors highlight a promising field of practice and research from IS management and organizational perspectives.

Solar System. A New Way to Model Online Communities for Open Innovation

Online communities are becoming an important way to support innovation through an open approach. Knowledge shared in online communities can be explored and exploited through adequate absorptive capacities. The chapter explores which factors allow an assessment of a firm’s absorptive capacity to exploit an online community as a source of innovation.

E-Marketplaces for Professional e-Services: Trust, Reputation and Performance

Currently, Professional Service Firms (PSFs) are becoming more and more important in a ‘knowledge-worker based’ society. This trend is supported by the development and diffusion of web-based technologies, encouraging firms to outsource a wider variety of business functions, especially those not included in the company’s core competencies. Many web-based platforms offering services for contractor management in the field of professional e-services emerged in these years. Reputation mechanisms are arising as key components for them because they help to build trust and to favour cooperation among loosely connected and geographically dispersed economic agents. In this work, we aim at exploring the relationship between online reputation of professionals (individuals, groups or PSFs, in brief PSFs) and their performance. We exploit one of the most widely used Web platforms for professional e-services and contractor management in the world, Elance. We try to reduce the research gap due to the fact that few previous works focused on e-marketplaces where rated and tested PSFs offer their e-services.

A Strategic and Organizational Perspective for Understanding the Evolution of Online Reputation Management Systems

Online Corporate Reputation is a strategic but quickly damageable resource for firms and requires a fast detection of possible threats as well as proactive interventions. Through a longitudinal case-study, our aim is to depict the evolution of Online Reputation Management Systems, i.e. IS for online CR management, as an interplay among developments of technology, organizational needs and strategic postures. Some research propositions for future works are proposed as well as some methods and good practices for online CR management.

Intersecting Technical Knowledge, Marketing Experience and Customer Activities to Innovate

Firms are constantly looking for more effective ways to improve their products and services. Recent studies have outlined the benefits of opening the innovation process to external knowledge sources. The creative and innovation locus can lie also outside the firm, in places where technical knowledge, marketing experience and customer activities intersect. The Web 2.0 and the online communities, favoring the communication and the collaboration among firms and their customers, become an important way to support the creativity and the development of innovative ideas through social interactions. We have selected a case study of a multinational firm that exploits an online community and other social platforms to improve its practice of innovation.