Virtual Worlds Affordances for Organizations

Virtual work has become critical to competing in the global information economy for many organizations. Successfully working through technology across time and space, especially on collaborative tasks, however, remains challenging. Virtual work can lead to feelings of isolation, communication and coordination difficulties, and decreased innovation. Researchers attribute many of these challenges to a lack of common ground. Virtual worlds, one type of virtualization technology, offer a potentially promising solution. Despite initial interest, organizational adoption of virtual worlds has been slower than researchers and proponents expected. The challenges of virtual work, however, remain, and research has identified virtual world technology affordances that can support virtual collaboration. Virtual world features such as multi-user voice and chat, persistence, avatars, and three-dimensional environment afford, in particular, social actions associated with successful collaboration. This suggests that the greatest value virtual worlds may offer to organizations is their potential to support virtual collaboration. Organizational scholars increasingly use a technology affordance lens to examine how features of malleable communication technologies influence organizational behavior and outcomes. Technology affordances represent possibilities of action enabled by technology features or combinations of features. Particularly relevant to virtual world technology are social affordances—affordances of social mediating technologies that support users’ social and psychological needs. To be useful to organizations, there must be a match between virtual world technology affordances, organizational practices, and a technology frame or organizing vision. Recent studies suggest a growing appreciation of the influence of physical organizational spaces on individual and organizational outcomes and increasing awareness of the need for virtual intelligence in individuals. This appreciation provides a possible basis for an emerging organizing vision that, along with recent technology developments and societal comfort with virtual environments, may support wider organizational adoption of virtual worlds and other virtualization technologies.

Applying Our Imagination to Settle Unfinished Business

Recent events on colleges campuses specifically and society generally suggestthat a new generation of scholars will inherit the unfinished business of resolvingour nation’s longstanding “race problem.” What can a journal do to improve theirchances of producing scholarship that will lead to dismantling oppressive racialpatterns and order? I argue in this manuscript that JCSCORE should providemore space to exchange and critique imaginations of new racial meanings andstructures. Such forward-looking thinking that stretch beyond standardizedapproaches to scholarship can help coordinate and guide the application ofempirical research. After all, “social change” is much more than an empiricalproject and ultimately requires a creative and organizing vision that inspires,invents, and sustains transformative actions.

Standardization of Information and Financial Innovation

Mortgage securitization markets emerged as an extension of the primary mortgage lending markets. This created the need for standardization of information across these two contexts that would enable a collective and universal understanding of credit risk and its management. The securitization industry, however, instead of developing standardization management strategies that would support this vision, it rather chose to implement an organizing vision that was centered around operational efficiency and profit-making supported by a focus on functional specialization. The outcome was the fragmentation of the securitization supply chain via vertical disintegration, which undermined the unity of the risk analysis process. This chapter argues that the effects of technological standardization on innovation in the mortgage industry should be explored beyond a narrow focus on efficiency and profit in relation to an individual organization's business strategy; but rather within an extended scope that includes broader social and policy contexts that guide innovation.

Standardization of Information and Financial Innovation

Mortgage securitization markets emerged as an extension of the primary mortgage lending markets. This created the need for standardization of information across these two contexts that would enable a collective and universal understanding of credit risk and its management. The securitization industry, however, instead of developing standardization management strategies that would support this vision, it rather chose to implement an organizing vision that was centered around operational efficiency and profit-making supported by a focus on functional specialization. The outcome was the fragmentation of the securitization supply chain via vertical disintegration, which undermined the unity of the risk analysis process. This chapter argues that the effects of technological standardization on innovation in the mortgage industry should be explored beyond a narrow focus on efficiency and profit in relation to an individual organization's business strategy; but rather within an extended scope that includes broader social and policy contexts that guide innovation.

The Diffusion and Adoption of a Cloud-Based Enterprise System in Danish Municipalities

This chapter addresses how Opus, a modified SAP solution delivered as a cloud solution, is interpreted, diffused, and adopted by Danish municipalities. The chapter is based on a theoretical framework using the organizing vision and diffusion of innovation theories. The authors study four Danish municipalities and the vendor of the Opus solution. They tell the history of Opus and analyze how it has diffused into Danish municipalities. The findings are that the diffusion is strongly influenced by regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive pressures. Institutional processes play an essential part in the early and late diffusion of IS innovations and in the creation and evolution of an organizing vision such as Opus for Danish municipalities. The authors conclude the chapter with a discussion of how Opus as a technology could be categorized and follow this with future research directions.

Applying and theorizing institutional frameworks in IS research

Purpose – This paper investigates how Information Systems (IS) researchers apply institutional theoretical frameworks. The purpose of this paper is to explore the operationalization of meta-theoretical frameworks for empirical research which can often present difficulties in IS research. The authors include theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects to explore modalities of use and suggest further avenues. Design/methodology/approach – After an overview of institutional concepts, the authors carry out a thematic analysis of journal papers on IS and institutional frameworks indexed in EBSCO and ABI databases from 1999 to 2009. This consists of descriptive, thematic coding and cluster analysis of this textual database, this combined qualitative and quantitative method offers a unique way of analyzing how operationalization is carried out. Findings – The findings suggest three groups of publications which represent different methodological approaches and empirical foci: “descriptive exploratory approaches,” “generalizing approaches,” and “sociological approaches.” The authors suggest that these three groups represent possible patterns of the use of “meta” social theories in IS research, reflecting a search for disciplinary legitimacy. This helps us analyze papers according to how they use and apply theories. The authors identify the “organizing vision” and the regulatory approach as two institutionalist “intermediary” concepts developed by IS researchers. Furthermore, the authors find that institutional theoretical frameworks have been used in “direct,” “intermediary” or “combined” conceptualizations. The authors also confirm the dynamism of the IS institutional research stream, as evidenced by the increase in number of articles between 1999 and 2009, and identify a maturation process of the IS field in investigating a social theory. Originality/value – The evolution the authors identify in the application of institutional theoretical frameworks in the IS field reveals conformity in methodological, theoretical and empirical terms. By identifying these patterns, it becomes possible to understand institutional reasons for their existence and legitimacy; and to propose other avenues of exploration in future IS research, such as combining different theoretical lenses in institutional frameworks. The methodological contribution is to provide an innovative methodology which helps describe categories and levels of institutional theoretical frameworks used, leading to the identification of gaps and proposing further avenues of research.