Producing competitive advantage from an infrastructure technology: The case of cloud computing

To determine the viability of cloud computing as a source of competitive advantage, we integrate the theory of diffusion of innovations and the theory of dynamic capabilities to synthesize the strengths of these theories into a framework. The theoretical framework with 13 propositions would enhance conceptual understanding of strategic initialization of cloud computing and its outcomes and should serve as a foundation for further theoretical and empirical investigations.     

Organizational IT Maturity (OITM): A Measure of Organizational Readiness and Effectiveness to Obtain Value from Its Information Technology

Enterprises often assign little strategic value to IT and resist additional investment. CIOs find that profitable IT deployment is blocked. The business/IT misalignment may stem from the lack of IT use maturity within the enterprise. In this article, the authors concentrate on what has to be done on the enterprise side to enable this maturation with an approach that isolates and describes useful factors that enable a business to become more mature with respect to IT.     

Board-Level Information Technology Governance Effects on Organizational Performance: The Roles of Strategic Alignment and Authoritarian Governance Style

ABSTRACT

We report on two empirical studies that explore key factors that help translate information technology governance by the board of directors into organizational performance. The first study shows that strategic alignment partially mediates the effect of board-level information technology governance on performance. The second study demonstrates that authoritarian governance style negatively moderates the effect of board-level information technology governance on performance. Together, these studies open up the black box between board-level information technology governance and organizational performance.     

The questionable promise of social media for education: connective learning and the commercial imperative

Facebook and other social media have been hailed as delivering the promise of new, socially engaged educational experiences for students in undergraduate, self‐directed, and other educational sectors. A theoretical and historical analysis of these media in the light of earlier media transformations, however, helps to situate and qualify this promise. Specifically, the analysis of dominant social media presented here questions whether social media platforms satisfy a crucial component of learning – fostering the capacity for debate and disagreement. By using the analytical frame of media theorist Raymond Williams, with its emphasis on the influence of advertising in the content and form of television, we weigh the conditions of dominant social networking sites as constraints for debate and therefore learning. Accordingly, we propose an update to Williams' erudite work that is in keeping with our findings. Williams' critique focuses on the structural characteristics of sequence, rhythm, and flow of television as a cultural form. Our critique proposes the terms information design, architecture, and above all algorithm, as structural characteristics that similarly apply to the related but contemporary cultural form of social networking services. Illustrating the ongoing salience of media theory and history for research in e‐learning, the article updates Williams' work while leveraging it in a critical discussion of the suitability of commercial social media for education.     

The IT Value Hierarchy: Using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a Metaphor for Gauging the Maturity Level of Information Technology Use within Competitive Organizations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a hierarchy of progressive IT maturity using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a metaphor for articulating the increasing value that can be derived by the application of Information Technology within competitive organizations. The authors refer to this maturity model as the IT Value Hierarchy. Each level of the IT Value Hierarchy is described using examples and comparisons to Maslow's Hierarchy. The model can be used by IT executives as a framework for better explaining and discussing the value of increasingly sophisticated Information Technology use within the enterprise.     

The IT Value Hierarchy: Using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a Metaphor for Gauging the Maturity Level of Information Technology Use within Competitive Organizations

The purpose of this paper is to present a hierarchy of progressive IT maturity using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a metaphor for articulating the increasing value that can be derived by the application of Information Technology within competitive organizations. The authors refer to this maturity model as the IT Value Hierarchy. Each level of the IT Value Hierarchy is described using examples and comparisons to Maslow's Hierarchy. The model can be used by IT executives as a framework for better explaining and discussing the value of increasingly sophisticated Information Technology use within the enterprise.     

The Latent Variable Data Model for Exploratory Data Analysis and Visualisation: A Generalisation of the Nonlinear Infomax Algorithm

This paper presents a generalisation of the nonlinear 'Infomax' algorithm based on the linear latent variable model of factor analysis. The algorithm is based on an information theoretic index for projection pursuit which defines linear projections of observed data onto subspaces of lower dimension. This is applied to the visualisation and interpretation of complex high dimensional data and is empirically compared with the recently developed Generative Topographic Mapping.