David Sundaram

Do online social networks support decision-making?

The rapid adoption of online social networks (OSN) across different stakeholders raises several interesting questions on different facets of its dynamics. Properly governed and designed OSN can play an important role in supporting different types of decision making (DM), as they provide their participants/stakeholders various forms of support, ranging from the instrumental to the emotional and informational. The synergy of these themes provides an innovative and unique perspective on the actual process of DM within OSN. We use online survey method to address the potential utilization of OSN as a support tool for the DM process. Our results indicate that OSN support and empower users in their decision making process specifically in three key phases that include Intelligence, Design and Choice. Our results also reveal that different types of users (observers, seekers and advisers) have significantly different participation styles, which in turn have an impact on the efficacy of the DM process. We discuss policy implications for OSN designers based on results from this study. How OSN is used as a support tool for DMWhich DM phases are most used by OSN users for DMHow different stakeholder participation styles influence the support for DM phases through OSN useRelated policy implications for developers of OSN Web sites

Mobile environments and innovation co-creation processes & ecosystems

The process of value creation was traditionally driven almost exclusively within the firm. Product design and production were performed with minimal input from consumers, and the role of the consumer was witnessed only at the end of the product development process. Co-creation is generally considered by innovative firms that seek to achieve or maintain strategic competitiveness in the marketplace as a highly valuable progression in open innovation. Although extensive research results exist on innovation co-creation between firms and consumers, a coherent understanding of the application of such co-creation in mobile environments is missing in the literature. We consider opportunities that mobile technologies introduce to further develop co-creation. Based on an extensive literature review of innovation co-creation processes and ecosystems, we identify the key problems, issues, and requirements. We then develop an innovation co-creation framework with two levels of abstraction to organize the enablers, capabilities, and characteristics. We then suggest a roadmap with four stages for realizing a mobile innovation co-creation ecosystem.

Do decision-making structure and sequence exist in health online social networks?

Decision-making process has been explained through several models over the years. Among these, the rational and anarchical models have emerged as important representations of decision-making dynamics. The rational model and its variants of decision making emphasize recognized phases and sequence among them, while anarchical models focus on the lack of structure and sequence in many real-world decision-making contexts. In order to observe the existence of these phases and their sequence, it is critical to choose non-trivial situations in which the underlying dynamics of decision-making process are readily visible. To this end, we consider decision-making (DM) in Health Online Social Networks (HOSN) and verify the existence of recognized phases and the sequence in which these phases are reached. We use netnography to explore the potential of HOSN as a support tool for decision-making process. Our results confirm, extend, as well as challenge existing knowledge. Results confirm that HOSN support and empower users during their decision-making process in three specific key phases that include Intelligence, Design and Choice. We extend existing knowledge by suggesting two new phases in the decision making process that is integral to HOSN conversations, namely emotional support and sharing experiences. Our results challenge purely rational and anarchical models by recognizing the interweaving of anarchical decision sequences within the structure of rational decision making phases. These results have significant practical implications for the design of HOSN that support blended decision making processes by leveraging the wisdom of crowds. We consider decision-making (DM) in Health Online Social Networks (HOSN).We verify the existence of recognized phases and their sequence.Our results confirm, extend, as well as challenge existing knowledge.We provide practical implications for the design of HOSN.

Towards an Adaptive Visualization System in Context-Aware Environments

To provide good visibility of present and potential future contexts and improve system usability and effectiveness, context-aware systems need support for developing effective visualizations of both context and user problem data. However, it is quite difficult to maintain visualization effectiveness across different problem domains, stakeholders, purposes and/or time. Although many existing visualization techniques can provide reasonable support for developing visualizations effective under a certain context, they are still weak for maintaining visualization effectiveness under varying contexts. To address these problems and requirements, this paper discusses contextual factors that may affect visualization effectiveness and proposes a context adaptive visualization framework to guide the development of visualization systems that can be embedded in or used together with context-aware systems in order to develop and maintain effective visualizations. Furthermore, it demonstrates an implementation of the proposed framework through a sequence of context-driven visualizations.

Adaptive Sustainable Enterprises

Enterprises that want to compete in today’s dynamic markets need to be able to respond to the ever-increasing rates of change. At the same time enterprises strive to be ever more sustainable in terms of economic, environmental, societal, and cultural concerns. Enterprises are being challenged at all levels to meet the demands for sustainability and in a manner that can handle the complexity that is present. In this paper we suggest that enterprises need to integrate sustainability objectives with adaptive approaches to manage complexity and uncertainty. The overarching objective of the research is to explore how an enterprise can become both adaptive and sustainable by interweaving the deliberate and emergent in the context of strategy, organization, process, and information. This research seeks to model and develop several artefacts that assist with responses to complexity and uncertainty while also supporting goals of sustainability. In particular, we propose context aware adaptive and sustainable concepts, framework, lifecycle, architecture, and a prototypical implementation.

Design and Implementation of Sustainable Social Shopping Systems

Sustainability is one of the most often discussed topics in our society. Although no one argues that individuals are the main players in changing society and the environment, individuals have always been treated as just actors and decision makers who transform the organizational, societal, national, and/or global sustainability practices. However, our fundamental belief is that individual and personal sustainability are at the heart of organizational and societal sustainability. One of the key activities that humans undertake that has an overwhelming influence on the economic, environmental, and health facets of their life is shopping. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using the concepts and principles of decision-making, habit formation, social networks, and benchmarking to influence consumer behavior towards sustainable shopping. We propose a framework and architecture for Sustainable Social Shopping Systems. We are in the process of prototyping and implementing them in the context of a purely online supermarket.

Cloud-Based Contextually Aware Adaptive Systems for Enterprise Transformation

More than ever before, enterprises nowadays are faced with an environment characterised by asynchronicity, complexity, and uncertainty. We see three major shortcomings of many current approaches of enabling enterprises to adapt under these conditions: the proposed processes and systems often do not deal with the whole context surrounding the enterprise; enterprises still follow rather deliberate approaches when dealing with strategy and its execution; and decisions are limited in terms of their reach and range. Cloud computing has particular characteristics that address these shortcomings. In this paper we propose Cloud-based contextually aware adaptive lifecycle models, frameworks, and architectures that enable networked and virtual enterprises to learn, adapt and be transformed.

Contextually Aware Adaptive Systems for Enterprise Transformation

More than ever before, enterprises nowadays are faced with an environment characterised by asynchronicity, complexity, and uncertainty. We see three major shortcomings of many current approaches of enabling enterprises to adapt under these conditions: the proposed processes and systems often do not deal with the whole context surrounding the enterprise; enterprises still follow rather deliberate approaches when dealing with strategy and its execution; and decisions are limited in terms of their reach and range. Complex adaptive systems, and in particular autonomic systems, provide concepts and principles that could be leveraged to address these challenges. Furthermore, agent oriented implementation approaches could be harnessed to realise contextually aware and adaptive enterprise systems. In this paper we propose an adaptation lifecycle model, an agent oriented framework and architecture that enable enterprises to learn, adapt and be transformed.