Browsing by Subject "Information technology--Economic aspects"
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Item Business value of information technology in the Internet economy(2002) Yin, Fang; Whinston, Andrew B.; Barua, AniteshItem Essays on contracts and corporate governance structure in the information technology industry(2002) Lin, Lihui; Whinston, Andrew B.This dissertation consists of three essays that explore contracts and corporate governance structure issues in the information technology (IT) industry. The first essay shows that when the information technology service being provided is critical to the buyer, it is optimal for the buyer and seller to sign flexible contracts that incorporate future renegotiations. The second essay studies contracts for procuring information technology. With a game theoretic model, it shows that when uncertainty unfolds over time and contracts complete in the specification of timing are infeasible (or transaction costs of writing complete contract are prohibitively high), information asymmetry between contracting parties leads to inefficient investment decisions. In particular, premature investments will occur under certain conditions. The third essay studies the issue of corporate governance in the technology sector. Shareholders of technology companies can only form beliefs on the financial health of technology firms and rely on the information provided by the firms to update their expectations, while the executives of these firms have access to firsthand information regarding the real potential of the new technology. A multi-period game-theoretical model with asymmetric information-updating process is developed and in equilibrium executives compensated with stocks and stock options will manipulate and untruthfully report the information, causing the public to discount strong companies with superior technologies due to expectations of possible frauds.Item New media for information technology-enabled environments: channel competition, demand shaping, and service network design(2007-12) Zhang, Bo, doctor of management science and information systems; Balakrishnan, AnantaramDuring the past decade, advances in information technology have profoundly impacted the business sector. In this dissertation, we focus on three aspects of the changes that influence firms' strategic and operational decisions. For the first research problem, we attempt to understand the competition between an online store and a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer. We incorporate multi-channel customers in our model, and investigate the implications of existence of multichannel customers on the effectiveness of profit-enhancing strategies for the retailer and online store. For the second problem, we study how manufacturers may incorporate information on anticipated demand and supply into its pricing and inventory allocation decisions. Our pricing policy highlights the interaction among the demands for multiple substitutable products as well as limited resource availability shared by the products. For the third problem, we study the complex tradeoffs that network planners face between minimizing the total cost of the network configuration while meeting end-to-end service requirements such as limits on traversal time or reliability. We propose a service network design model formulation for finding a minimum-cost network design in which the selected routes satisfy service requirements.Item Profiles of IT payoff success : an IT capabilities and business environments perspective(2006-05) Lee, Daniel Hae-dong, 1970-; Barua, Anitesh; Tanriverdi, HüseyinBusiness value of information technology (IT) continues to be an enduring topic of importance to business leaders and academic scholars alike. Previous studies have shown that IT does make a positive contribution with regard to firm performance when IT investment is well-implemented and accompanied by complementary investments. In addition, several scholars have reported, albeit not directly and without much explanation, that business value gains differ rather significantly across industry boundaries and over different business environments. This paper, therefore, focuses on the question of “under what conditions do investments in IT generate above normal strategic gains or financial returns?” and examines the effects of business environmental factors on IT payoff. Grounded in resource-based view (RBV) and coalignment theory, three business environment characteristics--competitive pressure, environmental dynamism and IT intensity (i.e., $IT as a percent of total expenses)--are identified as potential moderating factors on the linkage between firm performance and different types of IT capabilities, namely, IT that automates, IT that informates and IT that transforms. I employ the case study method to conduct a preliminary investigation and develop testable hypotheses. With the IT announcement event study data from 1981- 1995 and business environments data from archival and secondary sources such as US Industrial Outlook and US Economic Census, I test proposed hypotheses using multivariate regression techniques. I find that environmental dynamism negatively moderates the linkage between IT capabilities and firm performance (i.e., cumulative abnormal return (CAR)), while competitive pressure and IT intensity positively moderate this linkage. In other words, when environmental dynamism is high, above normal financial returns associated with IT that transforms are shown to be dampened. For academic scholars, this study will enrich coalignment theory by specifically identifying optimal combinations of different types of IT and business environments. This study will help business managers and CIOs to make informed decisions regarding the right types of IT investments in a given business environment. The study concludes with discussions of its research contributions and implications of the study.