1,721,302 research outputs found
Innovating with Emerging IT in Highly Structured Environments - An Organising Vision Perspective on Blockchain and Digital Identity Wallets
Full text linkThis cumulative thesis explores the challenges and institutional mechanisms of innovating with emerging information technologies (IT) in highly structured environments. Emerging technologies are often difficult to implement because they arrive on the market in an immature state and with unclear use cases. To make sense of the emerging IT, members of the innovation community develop various interpretations. These are typically replete with wishful and unbalanced claims, resulting in a vibrant IT discourse that is characterized by a plethora of discursive frames and value-laden buzz words. When this discourse becomes coherent, it often leads to contagion and motivates organizations to engage with the emerging IT. Such engagement is challenging even for the most flexible organizations with innovation-friendly structures – and it can be downright daunting in highly structured environments. The latter organizations often face high structural and cultural barriers that encumber digital innovation with emerging IT. Adopting the macro-level cognitive institutional perspective of organizing vision theory, this thesis sets out to investigate how organizations in these environments can nevertheless make sense of emerging IT and materialize it in applications that create organizational value. My thesis examines the challenges of surfacing a pertinent business problematic from the organizing vision and of unpacking the technologies’ abilities and limitations. Moreover, it segues into pathways for navigating the aforementioned structural and cultural barriers. I develop four conjectures that provide practical guidelines for organizations in highly structured environments that are willing to engage with emerging IT. These insights build on 15 research papers, which are part of this thesis
Reflections of Sovereignty in Policy and Technology: A Socio-Technical Analysis of Decentralized Digital Identities
No full textThe ubiquitous datafication of our lives is leading to a paradigm shift in which information about our human existence is being quantified and integrated into the fabric of our digital society. Governance mechanisms of said datafication became the subject of a contemporary understanding of sovereignty that, so far, has only narrowly been covered by academic research. The first dynamic is reflected in the entrenchment of ‘digital sovereignty’ in the context of supranational policymaking in Europe. Digital sovereignty is a macro-level reaction to the growing power of data processing entities, like multinational technology companies and governments. The second dynamic is related to the emerging concept of ‘self-sovereignty’. It can be understood as a micro-level reaction to the pervasive datafication of our time. Self-sovereignty ought to symbolize a ‘user-centric’ philosophy and the empowerment of users by conferring them data ‘ownership’ and control, particularly in the field of digital identity management. This cumulative thesis investigates how digital sovereignty and self-sovereignty are reflected in policy and technology respectively. It does so by scrutinizing the reflections of sovereignty critically through a constructivist analysis, followed by systematic methodological approaches within Information Systems research, notably design science research. It will provide plausible solutions for the identified problems, facilitating a seamless transition from abstract concepts to practical applications. In a synthesis of the insights obtained, the thesis juxtaposes self-sovereignty in the practical context of value-driven government. It will extrapolate crucial conflicts that practitioners and policy-makers need to consider when pursuing sovereignty-oriented ideals. The overall aim of this thesis is to provide a holistic guidance on digital sovereignty and self-sovereignty, and to offer scientific insights, cautions and recommendations for the practical implementations led by policy-makers, researchers and practitioners
Modeling and Data Analysis for Flexibility Optimization and Forecasting in Energy Systems
Full text link9. Industry, innovation and infrastructur
Zero-Knowledge Proofs and Blockchain: Applying Technology to Strike a Balance between Privacy and Transparency
No full textA system design built on blockchain technology presents a fundamental challenge: the inherent transparency of the blockchain conflicts with the growing need for user privacy. This dissertation explores how Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) can be strategically combined with blockchain to strike a balance between these competing demands. The dissertation analyzes the challenges of privacy and transparency and provides an overview of solutions across the privacy-transparency solution space, drawing from the author’s original research and the broader academic landscape. On the privacy-centric side, it proposes a privacy-preserving design that utilizes off-chain ZKPs. In contrast, on the transparency-centric side, it presents a transparency-enhancing design that leverages on-chain data to build trust. In the middle, it discusses a taxonomy of hybrid applications whose unique combination of on-chain privacy (via ZKPs) and blockchain transparency reveals both a disruptive potential and significant regulatory challenges.R-AGR-3728 - PEARL/IS/13342933/DFS - FRIDGEN GilbertU-AGR-7500 - NCER22/IS/16570468/NCER-FT_GEN.ORG_UL - FRIDGEN Gilbert9. Industry, innovation and infrastructur
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Managing Emerging Technologies - A Socio-Technical Analysis of Opportunities and Tensions for Incumbents
Full text linkEmerging technologies are changing today’s economic environment with unprecedented speed and in unpredictable ways. These dynamics threaten incumbent organizations, which are caught between continuing to effectively deliver their outcomes to existing customers and leaving established paths to leverage the opportunities afforded by emerging technologies that are still changing and developing. To address these tensions, incumbents often must implement a variety of structural and contextual changes. However, these changes strongly depend on the respective environment the incumbents are embedded in. In managing emerging technologies, incumbents thus need to understand and address a broad range of interrelated techno-organizational factors. At the same time, the increasing autonomy and intelligence of emerging technologies challenges the effectiveness of established concepts of information systems research for managing traditional information technology.
To address this gap, this thesis presents a socio-technical perspective on the management of emerging technologies that is informed by the ideas of critical realism and considers opportunities and tensions for incumbent organizations as well as their contextual embedding. First, it delves into a deeper understanding of the potentials of emerging technologies in relation to their respective context and organizational actors. In particular, the thesis focuses on two such technologies: blockchain and artificial intelligence. Second, it elaborates on how incumbents can prepare emerging technologies for effective use that lack established use cases and patterns. It explores how the techno-organizational context gives rise to a variety of interrelated mechanisms that can stimulate or constrain experimentation activities with these technologies. Moreover, this thesis investigates how incumbents prepare for effective technology use by building necessary digital capabilities and managing tensions between leveraging digital opportunities and effectively delivering outcomes despite disruption. Resolving these tensions often leads to an accumulation of digital debt, technical and informational obligations that will need to be addressed in the future. Incumbents must manage this digital debt carefully to avoid negative in the long-term.
This thesis contextualizes the contribution of seven embedded research papers and provides a holistic perspective on managing emerging technologies, contributing to a better understanding of opportunities and tensions for incumbents
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Information Technology: Instrument and Object of Risk/Return Management
Full text linkThe ongoing financial and economic crisis (FEC) that started in 2007 already caused and still causes unprecedented damage for the economy worldwide. Its reasons and consequences illustrate the complex and dynamic environment in which companies act nowadays: Increasingly harmonized markets and the growing use of information technology (IT) enable companies to be part of globally connected value networks and therefore to realize quick return opportunities all over the world. The FEC definitely showed that these value networks are also risk (spreading) networks: Companies can only create sustainable value if they are able to control the associated risk. Heretofore, they took too much risk on assets they believed to understand but whose risk contribution was in fact completely unknown. Similar to a domino effect, these risks spread rapidly all over the world, not only in the financial sector. Due to a lack of equity, banks did for example not renew credit contracts of companies in production or service sectors. Their respective bankruptcy brought suppliers and customers who relied on their business partners into liquidity issues, especially, when they had problems with their own credit renewals. Although the financial services industry pulled the trigger, the problems and solutions presented in this dissertation apply to all industries: Producing and service industries highly depend on the reliability of customers, suppliers, and many of them also of resource prices. Companies better cope with such a crisis, if they are able to consistently manage those dependencies and their effects on projects as well as business processes. Crisis such as the FEC either will not happen again, or at least cause much less damage, first, if companies know their risk/return position regarding all relevant assets, second, if they know the respective interdependencies, and third, if they use their knowledge correctly. Considering the FEC, IT can be regarded as both, a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, IT may enable ad hoc collection and aggregation of information on the current risk/return position, on the other hand IT is not only a relevant risk factor itself, it even made the FEC possible in the first place. Unfortunately, there are neither IT systems available that are able to determine a company's risk position within its value network, nor sophisticated methods to measure the risk of IT itself. This dissertation therefore regards IT not only as an instrument but also as an object of risk/return management – IT is not only an enabler, but also has to be aligned. In order to enable decision support (particularly on capital market based hedging) the risk/return-position of the company has to be determined shortly before market actions, after market actions, and – due to dynamic markets – on a regular basis, too (the first paper included in this dissertations describes how to determine the optimal interval of risk/return calculations). As described in the third paper, the computing capacity necessary for risk calculation can be substantial, especially in globally acting enterprises. For a complete examination, the correlation between every possible pair of (relevant) assets has to be determined. This requires IT to be able to make extensive calculations in very short time, even when examining only parts of a company's assets (see the second paper included in this dissertation). As this functionality is often required, it needs advanced algorithms and/or parallel computing. Currently "service-oriented architectures" (SOA) and especially "grid computing" (newly also labeled "cloud computing") that are in vogue in academia and practice seem to be promising concepts to solve this need for flexible and distributed utilization of IT resources. IT usually constitutes a big part of a company's cost, at the same time it bears high opportunities and risk. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that IT is widely used to support not only numerous business processes, but especially business-critical core processes of a company. On the other hand, this is due to special characteristics like irreversibility and dependencies between the different IT assets. Hence, it is necessary to design IT considering risk and return and to align it thoroughly to the company's strategy. Phrases like "death of distance" show that technology rendered globally distributed value networks possible. One central motive for many IT sourcing decisions is the high cost pressure on IT departments. On the one hand, many argue that outsourcing to IT service providers or offshoring to low-wage countries can lead to high savings on the IT budget without losses in quality. On the other hand, these decisions may also imply high risk – especially in the IT sector. Nevertheless, well managed outsourcing at a fixed price can help optimize the risk/return position of the whole IT portfolio as described in the fourth paper included in this dissertation.Gerade vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise ist eine Betrachtung der Informationstechnologie aus zwei Perspektiven notwendig: Auf der einen Seite sind Unternehmen auf eine leistungsfähige und flexible IT zur Entscheidungsunterstützung im Ertrags- und Risikomanagement angewiesen, um wettbewerbsfähig zu sein und darüber hinaus Wettbewerbsvorteile zu realisieren. Auf der anderen Seite stellt die IT in der Regel selbst einen signifikanten Kostenblock im Unternehmen dar und birgt gleichzeitig aufgrund spezieller Merkmale, wie z.B. Irreversibilität und hoher gegenseitiger Abhängigkeiten zwischen den IT-Bewertungsgegenständen, große Chancen und Risiken. In der ersten Arbeit dieser kumulativen Dissertation wird der Beitrag, den das Konzept serviceorientierter Architekturen (SOA) für das Ertrags- und Risikomanagement leisten kann, analysiert. Als Hauptcharakteristikum von SOA lässt sich festhalten, dass man auf die – für die Berechnung notwendigen – IT-Ressourcen nur im Bedarfsfall zugreift und somit Kosten lediglich für die Nutzung entstehen. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird zunächst ermittelt, welchen Wertbeitrag die jeweilige Geschwindigkeit der Berechnung von Ertrags- und Risikogrößen für die betrachtete Unternehmung stiftet, wobei der Kovarianzansatz für die Messung des Portfoliorisikos zu Grunde gelegt wird. Darauf aufbauend wird eine optimale Zuteilung von IT-Ressourcen vorgenommen. Es wird einerseits analysiert, welche Faktoren einen Einfluss auf die optimale IT-Ressourcenzuteilung besitzen und andererseits, welcher Wirkungszusammenhang zwischen Einflussfaktor und IT-Ressourcenzuteilung besteht. Als zentrales Ergebnis kann festgehalten werden, dass im Fall von stark volatilen Märkten eine geringere Zuteilung an IT-Ressourcen vorteilhaft ist, da das Risiko durch eine sicherere Anlagestrategie in diesem Fall besser kontrolliert werden kann als durch schnellere Berechnungen. In der zweiten Publikation wird die aufbauende Fragestellung bearbeitet, in welchen Situationen serviceorientierte Infrastrukturen konventionellen dedizierten Systemen zur Risikoberechnung überlegen sind. Es wird festgestellt, dass serviceorientierte Infrastrukturen gerade dann vorteilhaft sind, wenn sich die Nachfrage nach Rechenkapazität häufig ändert, wie dies ebenfalls in Krisenzeiten zu erwarten ist. Der dritte Aufsatz in dieser kumulativen Dissertation konzentriert sich auf ein spezifisches Problem – die im Netzwerk verteilte Berechnung von Kovarianzmatrizen, welche ein wichtiges Hilfsmittel im Rahmen von Investitionsentscheidungen im Portfoliokontext unter Berücksichtigung von Ertrag und Risiko darstellen. In diesem Zusammenhang werden unterschiedliche Netzwerktopologien auf ihre Eignung für die entsprechenden Berechnungen analysiert. In Abhängigkeit der jeweiligen Netzwerkstruktur werden Algorithmen entwickelt und Komplexitätsklassen abgeleitet. Allgemein kann für beliebige Netzwerkstrukturen eine untere und eine obere Schranke für die Komplexität einer verteilten Berechnung bestimmt werden. Diese Ergebnisse liefern erste Ansatzpunkte für die Ressourcenallokation im Rahmen von Grid-Computing und für die Beantwortung der Frage, welchen Wertbeitrag Grid-Computing im Rahmen eines integrierten Ertrags- und Risikomanagements liefern kann. Der Fragestellung einer ertrags- und risikooptimalen Outsourcingstrategie widmet sich der vierte Beitrag dieser kumulativen Dissertation. Es wird die Möglichkeit analysiert, die risikoadjustierten Gesamtkosten des IT-Portfolios durch eine optimale Outsourcing-Strategie zu senken. Im entwickelten Modell wird im Rahmen einer Portfoliobetrachtung für jedes IT-Projekt der optimale Outsourcing-Anteil ermittelt, wobei insbesondere Risiken und Diversifikationseffekte berücksichtigt werden. Das Modell zeigt, dass im Gegensatz zur heute in der Praxis üblichen Strategie, zunächst über Projekte und anschließend über ein mögliches Outsourcing sequentiell zu entscheiden, eine simultane Optimierung des Projektportfolios und der Outsourcing-Entscheidungen vorteilhaft ist
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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