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(2020)ThesisInformation Technology (IT) outsourcing is a common practice, being adopted in many organisations in different industries and sectors of the worldwide market. Much of the research into IT outsourcing has focused on the use of IT outsourcing within private sector organisations, with less attention being paid to the use of IT outsourcing by government and the public sector. Relationships in IT outsourcing are of interest, juxtaposed against the older contracts in IT outsourcing; contracts and relationships are complementary, not substitutes. The purpose of this Study is to understand the differences between government versus private sector IT outsourcing, focusing on relationships. The researcher developed a classification of ‘tendencies’ in government IT outsourcing, characteristics that are more pronounced in government than in private sector IT outsourcing. Relational Exchange Theory was used to structure IT outsourcing into attributes, inherent characteristics that support the performance of the relationship (Goles and Chin, 2005). The researcher conducted an online survey, completed by government IT outsourcing managers, giving responses converted into tendency-attribute ‘combinations’ and analysed using statistical tests. The attributes were calculated using differing sample sizes, as some respondents abandoned the survey part-way through. Out of sixty combinations there were eighteen that were statistically significant at the 5% level. Most combinations came from Commitment, Consensus, Flexibility and Trust attributes. There are five tendencies out of ten that were strongly associated with these combinations. Some combinations appeared as if the scores have a bivariate distribution, but no clear evidence of bimodal distribution of the demographic variables was found. The low response rate to the survey was concerning; there was bias and sampling errors, there was inconsistent interpretation of the constructs, and there were respondent concerns about confidentiality. There is a need to investigate the four attributes, the five tendencies, and the demographics.
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(2020)ThesisThis research aims to contribute rich, empirically informed insights into the emerging phenomenon of ‘ICTs and societal challenges’ in the developing country context. Despite the growing body of research on the use of ICTs in addressing societal challenges, our understanding of this phenomenon is limited regarding the active role played by both individuals and the technology itself. This research examines two case studies which offer different ways to advance understanding of the use of ICTs in resolving crucial yet under-researched societal problems in Myanmar that are explored at micro and macro levels of analysis. It uses multiple methods of data collection: documentation, website/social media analysis, interviews, focus groups and participant observation. It applies a ‘technology affordance’ approach as a theoretical lens that provides a relational concept, facilitating different users’ understanding of the available opportunities to use technology. The first study examines the emerging use of social media during a recent flood disaster in Myanmar at the micro (community) level. It focuses on how individuals (e.g., victims, volunteers and government officials) harness the power of social media for disaster response. We identify different affordances of social media and examine how these affordances enable local communities to respond to disaster situations and achieve relevant social outcomes, using the case of the 2015 Myanmar flood. The second study explores how mobile technology can increase financial access and bring socio-economic benefits to the country. We look into the current issues of financial exclusion and examine the potential of mobile money at the macro (ecosystem) level using the case of Wave Money, the first Fintech company to offer financial services in Myanmar. The findings demonstrate that realisation of a technology affordance differs between different user groups due to the various intentions of technology use in specific contexts. However, actualisation of a technology affordance contributes to the ultimate outcome, such as facilitating disaster response and increasing financial inclusion. This research provides an increased understanding of how to harness the power of emerging technologies in contributing to the solutions for a variety of social problems in developing countries from a sociotechnical view, enriching the IS research avenue.
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(2021)ThesisSupport from peers and experts, such as feedback on research artefacts, is an important component of developing research skills. The support is especially helpful for early-stage researchers (ESRs), typically PhD students at the critical stage of learning research skills. Currently, such support mainly comes from a small circle of advisors and colleagues. Gaining access to quality and diverse support outside a research group is challenging for most ESRs. This thesis presents several studies to advance the fundamental and practical understanding of designing systems to scale support for research skills development for ESRs. First, we conduct a systematic literature review on crowdsourcing for education that summarizes existing efforts in the research and application domain. This study also highlights the need for studies on crowdsourcing support for research skills development. Then, based on findings from the first study, we conducted another systematic literature review study on crowdsourcing support for project-based learning and research skills development. The third study explores the qualitative empirical understanding of how ESRs leverage current socio-technical affordances for distributed support in their research activities. This study reveals opportunities afforded by socio-technical systems and challenges faced by ESRs when seeking and adopting support from online research communities. The fourth study explores quantitative empirical understandings of the most desired types of feedback from external researchers that need to be prioritized to offer, and the challenges that need to be prioritized to solve. Building on the findings from the four studies above, we proposed a theoretical framework -- Researchersourcing -- that guides the understanding and designing of socio-technical systems that scale the support for research skills development. Accordingly, in the fifth study, we design and evaluate a crowdsourcing pipeline and a system to scale feedback on research drafts and ease the burdens of reviewing research drafts.
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(2022)ThesisInformation systems (IS) projects sometimes take a long time to complete. Particularly in the context of e-government projects in emerging countries where there is a lack of clarity as well as transparent structure and order, such projects may continue for many years. Moreover, it is not unusual for a seemingly non-performing e-government project to keep going. Running an IS project for an extended period of time requires the project team to navigate the present and future challenges. To do so, the project team need to have a sense of events and situations related to their project. The project team then can respond by taking appropriate action on what is happening (retrospectively) as well as anticipating what is yet to come (prospectively). Using qualitative methods, a longitudinal study was conducted using the interpretive approach to investigate the sensemaking process by the project team of an e-government project in Indonesia. The study focuses its investigations on two observed phenomena faced by the project team and related to sensemaking; escalation of commitment and prospective sensemaking. Escalation of commitment refers to situations where people continue with what appears to be a questionable endeavour regardless of its probability of achieving the expected outcome. On the other hand, prospective sensemaking refers to people trying to make sense of future events so they can anticipate them. Drawing from Goffman's framing theory and conceptualisation of frame alignment mechanisms, the study reveals how the project team sensemaking process includes a couple of mechanisms of frame alignment; frame transformation and frame extension. The aligned frame allows the project team to reacquire their sense of the project's situation, both recently and in the long run. This thesis seeks to make a theoretical contribution in several ways. First, the literature on the escalation of commitment by offering an alternative view of escalation phenomena as a resolution of the dilemma. Second, to the literature on sensemaking by providing empirical support for prospective sensemaking. Third, the literature on framing explaining how to frame alignment mechanism plays out as part of the sensemaking process, both retrospectively and prospectively, for an extended time; lastly, the literature on e-government by shedding more light on the social process behind e-government projects, particularly in the context of emerging countries.
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(2022)ThesisThe Operations Management (OM) and Environmental Psychology (EP) literature have examined consumers’ recycling behaviours to address the sustainability crisis. Social influence is a crucial driver impacting recycling behaviours that are identified by the EP literature but has been overlooked in OM research. In contrast, EP studies ignore a firms’ operational decisions when examining consumer recycling decisions. This research analyses both social influence and the firm’s optimal decisions to provide a comprehensive understanding of consumers’ recycling behaviours, which is essential for unlocking the full potential of remanufacturing. This research models a closed-loop supply chain consisting of a manufacturer selling a single product to a community of consumers. A consumer’s recycling decisions depend on the recycling reward offered by the manufacturer as well as sociallyinfluenced emotions of pride and guilt that arise from community interactions. These psychological factors are captured through a pair of coefficients representing the utility/disutility of feeling proud/guilty, and the community interactions are modelled using an evolutionary game. With a homogeneous community, stronger emotions of pride always increase the manufacturer’s profit, whereas stronger feelings of guilt can hurt the manufacturer when the prevailing recycling rate is low. Moreover, inducing a stronger emotion of pride increases (decreases) the overall recycling rate in equilibrium when this rate is low (high), and the impact is reversed for guilt. Interestingly, when consumers discount future recyclability, a win-win pathway benefiting the manufacturer and the environment exists. Furthermore, it is shown that the main results in this research can be extended to a heterogeneous community, with new insights derived regarding the impact of heterogeneity. Finally, this research considers the closed-loop supply chain problem subject to extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation. It is shown that under some conditions the EPR legislation can encourage the manufacturer to undertake effective interventions to improve both profit and the recycling rate. This study bridges sustainable OM and EP literature by analysing how sociallyinfluenced emotions of pride and guilt affect the recycling rate and the manufacturer’s optimal decisions and profitability. The results provide essential insights fo rsocial planners in designing effective and efficient socially-influenced-based interventions to improve recycling rates.
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(2022)ThesisOperations management research predominantly models humans as rational and self-interested, with the ability to optimise objectively. However, human decision-making typically deviates from prescribed profit-maximising behaviour. For instance, decision biases in supplier and retailer contracting can lead to lower profits for suppliers, due to preferences for a more equitable distribution of profits between supply chain partners. Supply chain decisions and strategies are ultimately crafted and implemented by managers who are influenced by contextual elements of the decision-making environment. This thesis focuses on contextual factors like lead times, supplier locations, social relationships, and probable disruptions, which all influence perceptions of psychological distances. Using controlled experiments, this thesis addresses the research question of whether psychological distances affect the supply chain managers’ decision making and if so, how? The first study evaluates how psychological distance impacts managers’ trade-offs between cost and sustainability that were accentuated by the pandemic. The second study explores the effect of naturally occurring social and spatial psychological distances in domestic and international collaborations. The third study examines the effects of temporal and hypothetical psychological distances on inventory orders and allocations when engaging in dual sourcing. Overall, this work establishes that psychological distances arising in supply chains significantly influences managerial decisions.
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(2021)ThesisReward-based crowdfunding is rapidly shaping up to be a revolutionary avenue for companies, especially start-ups, to broadcast their businesses and solicit capital through digital platforms. The platformized micro-investment mechanism in crowdfunding creates an unprecedented digital market that ensures a more fluid and granular distribution of financial resources. The Information Systems (IS) community has endeavored to shed light on this growing market by studying the decisive factors that motivate funders’ contributions and lead to crowdfunding success. Yet, despite its risky nature, no study thus far systematically investigates how risk perceptions emerge and impact funders’ investment behavior in reward-based crowdfunding and what companies can do to address funders’ risk concerns. To bridge these gaps, this thesis synthesizes contemporary knowledge on the contextual characteristics of crowdfunding and risks around diverse transactional environments to arrive at a typology of the risks encountered by funders when participating in reward-based crowdfunding. Drawing on the indispensable link between trust and risk, a holistic research model is constructed to: (1) postulate the impact of funders’ risk perceptions on their willingness to invest using a reward-based crowdfunding platform, (2) discern how different types of crowdfunding risks can be mitigated by enhancing the assessability of fundraiser’s trustworthiness, and (3) explore the optimum trust-building mechanisms that can facilitate funders’ assessments of fundraiser’s trustworthiness. Three experimental studies are conducted to validate the advanced research model empirically. The findings from the three studies yield theoretical insights on crowdfunding risks and mechanisms to diminish funders’ risk perceptions via trust-building. The results also yield actionable design principles that platform providers can adopt to help funders assess risk and improve their financing experience in this emerging market.
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(2021)ThesisEmerging technologies are radically changing the future of work. From artificial intelligence for customer support to robotics for performing surgery, the change is unprecedented in the history of most organisations. This thesis aims to understand and contribute rich, empirically informed insights into the phenomenon of the future of work in the context of emerging technologies from an organisational history perspective. The thesis comprises three related but standalone studies that discuss organisational trajectories and the implications of emerging technologies in three distinct organisational contexts. To explore this emerging and intrinsic phenomenon in organisations, this work adopts the historical narrativist approach and the qualitative case study method. The first study explores the interplay between tradition and technology at a pre-digital organisation when new technologies are introduced. The second study delves into the strategies and practices of realising historically embodied process knowledge when adopting a robotic process automation technology at a digitally reformed organisation. The third study traces the evolution of a strategic path towards technology and data driven innovation, from the foundation to the implementation of artificial intelligence technologies, at a born-digital organisation. Each of the three studies provides a distinct but complementary understanding on the role of organisational history by contributing to the theories of imprinting, organisational memory and path dependence. Collectively, the thesis studies contribute to our understanding of “how history matters” in the future of work. The thesis discussion contributes to the literature by integrating the implications of surface- and deep-level effects of emerging technologies for the future of work and how they are shaped by the distant, intermediate and immediate histories of organisations.