SpringerBriefs in Digital Spaces – serie

Several prominent public voices have advanced the hypothesis that networked communications erode the value of privacy in favor of a transparent connected existence. Especially younger generations are often described as prone to live "open digital lives". This hypothesis has raised considerable controversy, polarizing the reaction of its critics as well as of its partisans. But how likely is the "end of privacy"? Under which conditions might this scenario come to be? What are the business and policy implications? How to ethically assess risks and opportunities? To shed light on the co-evolution and mutual dependencies of networked structures and individual and collective strategies towards privacy, this book innovatively uses cutting-edge methods in computational social sciences to study the formation and maintenance of online social networks. The findings confound common arguments and clearly indicate that Internet and social media do not necessarily entail the end of privacy. Publicity is not "the new norm": quite to the contrary, the book makes the case that privacy is a resilient social force, resulting from a set of interconnected behaviors of Internet users.

The use of social media tools in the enterprise is expanding rapidly and yet, firms are still unclear about the overall value of this activity and how best to facilitate useful outcomes. The focus of this book is, from a managerial standpoint, the control of information, the extent to which such tools can enhance employee satisfaction and how best to use social media tools to attain specific outcomes including innovative collaboration. As companies turn to IT solutions as substitutes for face-to-face engagements, an understanding of the social dynamics – how employees can best communicate, find and use information and generate motivation through computer-mediated activities is fundamental. Lingering questions relate to the strategic use of these tools; many large companies are using Facebook-like applications due to employee demand, but are not studying outcomes comprehensively or managing processes to create desired outcomes. This book fills this knowledge gap through examining the process and results of a controlled study in two companies, one in the US and the other in China. In each company “wiki challenges” were introduced to employees who were provided guidelines to produce goal-oriented outcomes. The book examine the results in each case and suggest guidelines for firms to achieve “wiki-readiness” to support innovation and co-creation.

How do firms jointly develop open information infrastructures? To answer this question, this book draws on the results of a longitudinal research project covering the development of the pharmaceutical distribution industry in China from 2004 to 2012, focusing on the emergence and subsequent evolution of industry-wide information infrastructures. How do firms delimit areas of proprietary innovation in open innovation projects? How do firms coordinate, initiate, negotiate and implement the development of innovative infrastructures? How do processes and practices within firms enable and constrain such collective efforts? - This book provides answers to these questions and draws conclusions regarding the challenges and new capabilities that firms will need in a world in which participation in the building of open information infrastructures becomes a necessary task for commercial organizations.

This book collects and reports on the results of a study conducted on the Chinese Software and Services Outsourcing (SSO) industry, focusing on one of its main players as a key case study. Two sets of research findings are presented: first, the knowledge management and communication processes inherent within a highly collaborative software development project between the case study company and one of its long-term UK clients are explored and distilled into specific practices; second, at the organizational level, the strategies used by the company to build and exploit capabilities and to dynamically configure resources to promote specific value positions along its outsourced services value networks are identified and discussed. The significance of these findings for similar China-based global high-tech firms and the value of this organizational form in moving closer to the goals of the 2020 enterprise vision are both discussed, along with the implications of the findings for EU/UK businesses operating in similar digital domains.

This book investigates the design and implementation of market mechanisms to explore how they can support knowledge- and innovation management within firms. The book uses a multi-method design, combining qualitative and quantitative cases with experimentation. First the book reviews traditional approaches to solving the problem as well as markets as a key mechanism for problem solving. After a short discourse on the applied methodology the book discusses internal- market types and examples of internal markets. It goes on to describe design guidelines including incentives design, governance mechanisms and lessons learned. It then analyzes the effects of internal knowledge markets. The book concludes with implications for theory and practice as well as the short-term perspectives.

Recent increases in uncertainty and speed of market change are driving the adoption of new intelligent mobile office systems. Organizational information systems paradigm suggests that a right match between organizational characteristics and the use of technology is critical in producing desired results. Following such perspective this study focused on the relationship between task characteristics and the use of mobile office systems with an intention to find out factors that affect the adoption of modern mobile office systems. The research results show that in performing tasks with high mobility users tend to use extensive mobile office functions. When the task has a high level of interdependency with external business partners, users relied on specialized mobile functions such as FFA, SFA and ERP. Highly volatile environment with many unexpected task changes caused an extensive use of task specific functions that help to solve problems at hand. Further, analyses of the differences of mobile office use by department showed that sales department used more communication functions than others, while administrative departments rely more on such task specific functions as mobile CRM and KM than others. Additional case study shows how the application of new technology the effectiveness of organizational coordination. Based on the research the concept of convergent coordination is suggested as well as the direction for future research.​

​This Springer Briefs volume guides the reader in a comprehensive form to design new digital business models. The book provides strategic roadmaps for enterprises in the digital world, and a comprehensive framework to assess new business models. It aligns both, research and a practical perspective through real case study examples. Even extreme scenarios are employed to ensure that innovative approaches are being considered adequately.