Internet computing as a disruptive information technology innovation: the role of strong order effects1

How Does Organizational Unlearning Influence Product Innovation Performance? Moderating Effect of Environmental Dynamism

Product innovation integrates technology, knowledge, management practices, and market innovation, making it essential to gain a competitive advantage. Effective management of dynamic knowledge, which is the foundation of and driving force for product innovation, is a powerful tool that allows a firm to successfully innovate, adapt to environmental changes, and improve its competitiveness. In the "nanosecond age," unlearning and learning in an organization is crucial to a firm's ability to promptly update its organizational knowledge and maintain innovation vitality. Based on the dynamic knowledge management perspective, this study integrates and constructs a theoretical model with environmental dynamism as the moderating variable, discusses the impact of organizational unlearning on product innovation performance, and empirically analyzes 208 valid questionnaires in the Yangtze River Delta using the multiple regression method. The results show that organizational unlearning shares a positive relationship with dynamic capabilities and product innovation performance. Dynamic capability is positively related to product innovation performance and has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between organizational unlearning and product innovation performance. Environmental dynamism shares a positive moderating effect on the relationship between organizational unlearning and product innovation performance. This study deepens the existing research on the factors that influence product innovation performance, which may help firms improve their dynamic knowledge management and product innovation performance.

The Pursuit of Innovative Theory in the Digital Age

Grover & Lyytinen (2015) urged to reassess the Information System (IS) field’s exclusive dependence on reference theories and to engage more in blue-ocean theorizing. From its inception, such need has been latent in the field, because it deals with novel, fast changing, complex, and systemic phenomena that is hard to account with received theory. We note in this essay that the need for innovative theorizing is heightened given the unprecedented, pervasive digitalization of contemporary society, accelerated by ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In this essay, we scrutinize further the idea of blue-ocean theorizing and review the characteristics, impediments, and merits of developing innovative theory. We define endeavors toward such theory as collectively endorsed cognitive processes which increase variance and novelty of theoretical accounts of IS phenomena. These push to deviate from the field’s established theoretical (canonical) core by relaxing six assumptions that guide dominant, legitimate forms of the field’s theorizing. We identify and review institutional barriers that curb the development of innovative theory. In conclusion, we offer guidelines for how the field and its stakeholders can productively engage in developing and evaluating innovative theory.

Knowledge-oriented leadership, knowledge management behaviour and innovation performance in project-based SMEs. The moderating role of goal orientations

Purpose

This study aims to examine the association of knowledge-oriented leadership (KOL), knowledge management (KM) behaviour and innovation performance in project-based small and medium-sized enterprises. It investigates the moderation of goal-orientation in the relationship of KOL with knowledge-acquisition, transfer, documentation and application.

Design/methodology/approach

Data are collected from 215 employees in 32 small project-based software firms in Pakistan. Partial least square is used to test the hypotheses.

Findings

KOL is positively associated with KM behaviour and innovation performance. KM mediates the relationship of KOL and innovation performance. Furthermore, goal orientations play a moderating role in the relationship of KOL with knowledge acquisition, transfer and application activities.

Originality/value

This study extends the literature on knowledge-based dynamic capabilities, by examining the relationship of KOL, KM behaviour and project-based innovation performance. Investigating the moderation of goal-orientation in the relationship of KOL with KM behaviour is also an original contribution.

Disruption as worldview change: A Kuhnian analysis of the digital music revolution

Why is it that technology-enabled industry disruptions appear entirely inevitable with hindsight, yet practitioners in disrupted businesses typically struggle to detect and respond appropriately to disruption while it is unfolding? We term this surprising contradiction ‘interpretive discontinuity’ and use it to problematize the established understanding of disruption in the literature. We suggest that the contradiction at the heart of interpretive discontinuity holds an important key to what exactly changes during disruption and why. By juxtaposing an empirical case of disruption in the music industry with theoretical resources sensitive to the nature of radical change – Thomas Kuhn’s work in the unrelated field of scientific practice – we demonstrate that it is productive to understand disruption as a Kuhnian paradigm shift. We are then able to trace interpretive discontinuity to the gestalt switch in worldview that accompanies such a paradigm shift. This insight sheds new light on both what is actually ‘disruptive’ about disruption and also on the limitations of prior work theorizing disruption. Our work is important because it adds to the literature on disruptive innovation important yet overlooked conceptual tools in Kuhn’s work – the role of exemplars, the worldview aspect of a paradigm, and paradigm incommensurability.

High-Frequency Trading and Conflict in the Financial Markets

The last few decades has seen an ever-increasing growth in the way activities are productized and associated with a financial cost. This phenomenon, termed financialization, spans all areas including government, finance, health and manufacturing. Recent developments within finance over that past decade have radically altered the way trading occurs. This paper analyses high-frequency trading (HFT) as a necessary component of the infrastructure that makes financialization possible. Through interviews with HFT firms, a software vendor, regulators and banks, the effects of HFT on market efficiency, and its impact on costs to long-term investors are explored. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the conflict that exists between HFT and traditional market makers in today's fragmented markets. This paper argues that society should be unconcerned with this conflict and should instead focus on the effects these participants have on the long-term investors, for whom the markets ultimately exist. In order to facilitate the best outcomes, regulation should be simple, aimed at keeping participants’ behavior stable, and the interactions among them transparent and straightforward. Financialization and HFT are inextricably linked, and society is best served by ensuring that the creative energy of these market participants is directed on providing liquidity and removing inefficiencies.

The Regulatory, Technology and Market ‘Dark Arts Trilogy’ of High Frequency Trading: A Research Agenda

Computerization has transformed financial markets with high frequency trading displacing human activity with proprietary algorithms to lower latency, reduce intermediary costs, enhance liquidity and increase transaction speed. Following the “Flash Crash” of 2010 which saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge 1000 points within minutes, high frequency trading has come under the radar of multi-jurisdictional regulators. Combining a review of the extant literature on high frequency trading with empirical data from interviews with financial traders, computer experts and regulators, we develop concepts of regulatory adaptation, technology asymmetry and market ambiguity to illustrate the ‘dark art’ of high frequency trading. Findings show high frequency trading is a multi-faceted, complex and secretive practice. It is implicated in market events, but correlation does not imply causation, as isolating causal mechanisms from interconnected automated financial trading is highly challenging for regulators who seek to monitor algorithmic trading across multiple jurisdictions. This article provides information systems researchers with a set of conceptual tools for analysing high frequency trading.