Silvia Elaluf-Calderwood

Distributed tuning of boundary resources: the case of Apple's iOS service system

The digital age has seen the rise of service systems involving highly distributed, heterogeneous, and resource-integrating actors whose relationships are governed by shared institutional logics, standards, and digital technology. The cocreation of service within these service systems takes place in the context of a paradoxical tension between the logic of generative and democratic innovations and the logic of infrastructural control. Boundary resources play a critical role in managing the tension as a firm that owns the infrastructure can secure its control over the service system while independent firms can participate in the service system. In this study, we explore the evolution of boundary resources. Drawing on Pickerings (1993) and Barrett et al.s (2012) conceptualizations of tuning, the paper seeks to forward our understanding of how heterogeneous actors engage in the tuning of boundary resources within Apples iOS service system. We conduct an embedded case study of Apples iOS service system with an in-depth analysis of 4,664 blog articles concerned with 30 boundary resources covering 6 distinct themes. Our analysis reveals that boundary resources of service systems enabled by digital technology are shaped and reshaped through distributed tuning, which involves cascading actions of accommodations and rejections of a network of heterogeneous actors and artifacts. Our study also shows the dualistic role of power in the distributed tuning process.

Towards a taxonomy for regulatory issues in a digital business ecosystem in the EU

This article addresses the role of trust and regulation where small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union (EU) make use of e-business in a digital business ecosystem (DBE). We argue that in order for digital business to develop among entrepreneurs in the EU and within different industry sectors and geographical locations, trust and regulation are of critical importance. The article assesses the importance of this argument and focuses on the interplay of regulatory and trust-based issues that need to be accommodated before one can expect SMEs to engage in e-business supported within a DBE environment. It then presents a taxonomy that addresses key regulatory issues and fosters trust. The article proposes the taxonomy as the vehicle for the simplification of a bewildering array of laws, standards, norms and expectations, as well as for the elimination of regulatory overlap and conflict. The contribution of the taxonomy is demonstrated in the last section of the article, where it is empirically tested and applied to SMEs which participated in the EU-funded DBE project.

Innovation and adoption of mobile technology in public organizations: the IBGE case

The use of Mobile and Wireless Information Technologies (MWIT) for provisioning public services by a government is a relatively recent phenomenon. This paper evaluates the results of MWIT adoption by IBGE (The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) through a case study. In 2007, IBGE applied 82,000 mobile devices (PDAs) for data gathering in a census operation in Brazil. A set of challenges for a large scale application of MWIT required intensive work involving innovative working practices and service goals. The case reveals a set of outputs of this process, such as time and cost reductions in service provision, improved information quality, staff training and increased organizational effectiveness and agility.The use of Mobile and Wireless Information Technologies (MWIT) for provisioning public services by a government is a relatively recent phenomenon. This paper evaluates the results of MWIT adoption by IBGE (The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) through a case study. In 2007, IBGE applied 82,000 mobile devices (PDAs) for data gathering in a census operation in Brazil. A set of challenges for a large scale application of MWIT required intensive work involving innovative working practices and service goals. The case reveals a set of outputs of this process, such as time and cost reductions in service provision, improved information quality, staff training and increased organizational effectiveness and agility.

The BlackBerry veil: mobile use and privacy practices by young female Saudis

Purpose – Qualitative and quantitative research on mobile phone use by youth worldwide has been a recurrent theme for social scientists since the early 1990s in the USA, Europe and some parts of Asia. However, very little work is known about this subject contextualized in the often more conservative Arab societies of the Middle East. The purpose of this paper is to provide a foundation for discourse in this area through the study of mobile phone use patterns of a highly educated group of young Saudi women vis-a-vis privacy. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed interpretative approach was used with a quantitative survey initially conducted to gain a broad idea about the social practices around mobile use, followed by the use of a qualitative method (focus groups), aimed to focus the discussion on the concept of privacy and how the participants negotiate their use of mobile services in light of this. Findings – Variable user behaviour was found with regards to privacy, as their own individual view or socie...

Control as a strategy for the development of generativity in business models for mobile platforms

The objective of this paper is to put forward a discussion of how a better understanding of the issues surrounding control can be an important element in the development of generativity strategies in business models for mobile platforms, such as Apples iPhone. Generativity refers to “a technologys overall capacity to produce unprompted change driven by large, varied, and uncoordinated audiences” [29]. In this paper generativity is defined as the ability of a self-contained system to create, generate, or produce new content, structure, or behaviour without additional help or input from the original creators [23]. Although generativity is at the core of Apples expansion model, the company has to keep a tight control on the innovation platforms in order to protect their revenue sources, whilst at the same time ensuring that this does not stifle third party development and the innovation of compelling services. This is part achieved by the controlling access to the platform through the App Store for all actors of the platform ecosystem. It is possible to analyse the relationships between Apple and the other actors of the Apple Mobile Platform and identify through a longitudinal analysis of control the formation of strategies that balance or shift the control between actors, which gives further insight on possible sources of revenue based on the value network defined for such control points.

Modularity and Network Integration: Emergent Business Models in Banking

This paper introduces the concept of modularity in financial services, discusses how new value chains are created and addresses emerging opportunities for innovative business models in the digital economy. We argue that innovation occurred in the banking sector despite the lagging adoption of new operational practices but due to technology drive for new ways to provide services. Banking innovation is commonly a matter of case facilitation vs. lock-in, in which the systemic effects of balancing delay vs. fast progress requires business model choices. In the banking sector, where there is little power stability among stakeholders, asymmetrical periods of dynamism are triggered by the modernization of the systems [13]. The main argument of this paper is that we can use models of modularity and network integration to improve our understanding of sustainable emerging banking practices. This is fundamental when establishing the potential contribution of this sector to digital economy models.

Mobile platforms as convergent systems – analysing control points and tussles with emergent socio-technical discourses

In the field of information systems, mobile platforms as convergent systems represent a new direction for research. To date, platforms have been defined in terms of their composition as physical infrastructure (Gawer, 2009). However, the emergence of new digital and convergent services (e.g. VoIP, IPTV, etc.) as well as overlapping physical mobile telecommunications infrastructures provides the foundations for complex mobile platforms (Herzhoff, 2009e and 2011). Consequently, mobile platforms appear to be more complex than earlier work might indicate. For the purposes of this chapter, and as an initial step to understand what a mobile platform is, the authors draw on the idea of mobile platforms as defined by Tiwana et al. (2010). They provide a richer definition that includes the complexity of all the contributors to a mobile platform. Together, they form a digital ecosystem (Tiwana et al. 2010) where multiple actors act and interact. A digital ecosystem includes a platform that serves as a core on which others can build modules that are designed to extend the service possibilities of the platform. It also includes various social actors who build the platform and various modules and a regulatory regime including standards that bind these heterogeneous actors together. In this context, control is a major factor in trying to understand the interactions between the many actors concerned within the ecosystem (Tiwana et al. 2010). However mobile platforms need to be understood as more than just convergent technical systems, which mix multiple layers of physical and digital infrastructures for the creation and distribution of products and services. Mobile platforms also need to be understood in terms of the socio-technical discourses that play out through control points and tussles between the actors in the platform ecosystem. Case studies of service convergence (e.g. VoIP, network sharing, mobile application markers, etc.) on platforms provide examples of tussles and control points, around which tussles unfold. Solving these tussles requires a reframing of controls points as sociotechnical objects which are driven by the need to share resources and content over networks. In other words, control points as socio-material objects (Orlikowski and Scott, 2008) integrated into a socio-technical system (Herzhoff et al, 2009c). We believe that the technical evolution of mobile platforms will benefit from both a socio-technical and a technical

Convergence in action

The conceptual framework for understanding the logical Internet is based on the construction of a horizontal, layered architecture, which differentiates between physical-, data link-, network-, transport-, and application layers (Woodard and Baldwin, 2008). This is different from the telecommunication networks model where a new service traditionally used to require new network architecture to be established (Yoo, 2012). However, the digitalization of services and products offered over the telecom infrastructure allows us to observe an emergent phenomenon of increased vertical integration on the Internet as well as the creation of further service specialization opportunities for telecom operators and users (Liebenau et al., 2011). We propose in this paper that this development and change in the way services are provided, leads to a new type of Internet - an addition to the current best effort Internet.We illustrate our proposition by presenting the case study of the Internet in Norway, analysing 166 of the approximately 40.000 independent AS numbers registered worldwide as catering for end-to-end services. The paper categorizes the Norwegian AS numbers according to size and type of services. Through our analyses two major groups of actors can be identified, each of them seeking to gain strategic advantage from the current Internet traffic growth:(1) Content providers and hosts seek to have a highly reliable network access with a minimal set of traffic or transmission costs. One action is to acquire AS numbers and use settlement-free peering agreements for distribution of their traffic, which is possible in traffic exchange regimes rooted in symmetry, slowly becoming asymmetric;(2) Internet access providers (IAPs) seek to take control over incoming traffic growth by hosting content within their own network and thereby to rebalance traffic and create new revenue streams with content hosting and premium end-to-end connection on-net. Our findings support the hypothesis that Internet is becoming both more vertically integrated and converged, and more specialized or modularized (Clark et al., 2004).

Structural Narrative Analysis as a Means to Unfold the Paradox of Control and Generativity that Lies within Mobile Platforms

Mobile platform owners are faced with a tension. On one hand they foster generativity to enable third parties to innovate compelling services. On the other hand they regulate innovation on their platforms in order to protect their commercial interests. This tension leads to complex interactions between platform owners and third parties as they negotiate the extent and nature of innovation. This paper outlines on-going research that applies structural narrative analysis in order to simplify these complex interactions into sequences of simpler generic generative and controlling actions. It is intended that these simplified structured sequences of actions will facilitate the identification of the mechanisms that explain how platform owners manage innovation and the paradox of control and generativity. The approach to analysis is illustrated using empirical data concerning interactions that have occurred on the Apple iPhone and Google Android platforms. This data is sourced from blogs reporting events in the mobile industry.

Towards a Value Chain for Mobile Value Services for Charities

This paper presents a case study on the use of mobile digital services through smart phones to enhance known value chains by increasing the lateral margin value of services in the charity industry. Based on empirical data gathered from research, surveys and interviews, detailed recommendations and considerations for the design of mobile digital services are discussed: location services, in particular, are identified as relevant both to increase user-friendly navigation and to offer relevant services or information to users. Moreover, ensuring adequate privacy and security settings is seen as crucial to adding value in established service value chains. Using the findings and the concept of the charity value chain, the paper identifies four main design cues which were considered in the implementation of the Loc Aid application: awareness and information, trust, transparency, and convenience. The paper discusses each in more detail, and provides examples and arguments for considering these when implementing mobile applications.