Search results

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) calls for far-reaching changes to the way economic activity will occur in EU digital markets. Before its remedies are imposed, it is critical to assess their impacts on individual markets, the digital sector, and the overall European economy. The European Commission (EC) released an Impact Assessment in support of the DMA that purports to evaluate it using cost/benefit analysis.

An economic evaluation of the DMA should consider its full impacts on dynamic competition. The Impact Assessment neither assesses the DMA's impact on dynamic competition in the digital economy nor evaluates the impacts of specific DMA prohibitions and obligations. Instead, it considers benefits in general and largely ignores costs. We study its benefit assessments and find they are based on highly inappropriate methodologies and assumptions. A cost/benefit study using inappropriate methodologies and largely ignoring costs cannot provide a sound policy assessment.

Instead of promoting dynamic competition between platforms, the DMA will likely reinforce existing market structures, ossify market boundaries, and stunt European innovation. The DMA is likely to chill R&D by encouraging free riding on the investments of others, which discourages making those investments. Avoiding harm to innovation is critical because innovation delivers large, positive spillover benefits, driving increases in productivity, employment, wages, and prosperity.

The DMA prioritizes static over dynamic competition, with the potential to harm the European economy. Given this, the Impact Assessment does not demonstrate that the DMA will be beneficial overall, and its implementation must be carefully tailored to alleviate or lessen its potential to harm Europe’s economic performance.

This paper investigates the dynamics between state affect and trusting cognitive beliefs on post-adoptive information technology (IT) use behaviors in the form of intention to explore and deep structure usage. That state affect can influence behaviors is recognized in practice. In fact, some studies examine the impact of affective constructs, but the way state affect impacts how individuals use IT remains largely unexplored. The authors theorize that state affect, in the form of positive and negative affect, will influence trusting cognitive beliefs regarding an IT artifact (in terms of perceived helpfulness, capability and reliability) and, more importantly, directly influence intention to explore and deep structure usage.

The authors test the model using a sample of 357 IT users. Survey items were derived from established measures, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results of this study suggest that positive affect and negative affect impact trusting cognitive beliefs. Trusting cognitive beliefs positively impact intention to explore with an IT and deep structure usage of an IT. Even in the presence of trusting beliefs, though, positive affect directly impacts intention to explore. Positive affect and negative affect both also have various indirect, mediated effects on intention to explore and deep structure usage.

In order to maximize value from workplace IT, the results suggest managers foster an authentic, positive work environment in order to harness or redirect employees' emotional energies.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a growing body of research on the applicability of resource-based theory (RBT) to the information systems (IS) area. In particular, the paper provides an understanding of the IS value creation process, and strategies for managing it by demonstrating the application of cross-impact analysis.

RBT and systems theory are adopted as a theoretical framework in this study. Cross-impact analysis is used as a method for investigating interactions among elements of an IS value creation system. These elements were identified through 22 semi-structured interviews with organisational stakeholders, and assessed in terms of direction and strength of their interactions, and depicted in a coordinate system.

The result of the analysis is a meaningful classification of elements in an IS value creation system as: levers, indicators, identities, buffers or trends, based on their position in the system. The results provide additional clarity and insights into the relationships between IS and organisational resources and their effect on IS value.

The research findings have important implications for researchers and managers in terms of understanding the impact of interactions among IS and organisational resources on formulating successful strategies for managing the IS value creation system.

This study explores interactions among IS/information technology resources and organisational resources by using cross-impact analysis. It shows that interactions among the identified resources do have a major influence on the overall IS value creation system.

The purpose of this study is to compare the environmental impacts of two additive manufacturing machines to a traditional computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine to determine which method is the most sustainable.

A life-cycle assessment (LCA) was performed, comparing a Haas VF0 CNC mill to two methods of additive manufacturing: a Dimension 1200BST FDM and an Objet Connex 350 “inkjet”/“polyjet”. The LCA’s functional unit was the manufacturing of two specific parts in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic or similar polymer, as required by the machines. The scope was cradle to grave, including embodied impacts, transportation, energy used during manufacturing, energy used while idling and in standby, material used in final parts, waste material generated, cutting fluid for CNC, and disposal. Several scenarios were considered, all scored using the ReCiPe Endpoint H and IMPACT 2002+ methodologies.

Results showed that the sustainability of additive manufacturing vs CNC machining depends primarily on the per cent utilization of each machine. Higher utilization both reduces idling energy use and amortizes the embodied impacts of each machine. For both three-dimensional (3D) printers, electricity use is always the dominant impact, but for CNC at maximum utilization, material waste became dominant, and cutting fluid was roughly on par with electricity use. At both high and low utilization, the fused deposition modeling (FDM) machine had the lowest ecological impacts per part. The inkjet machine sometimes performed better and sometimes worse than CNC, depending on idle time/energy and on process parameters.

The study only compared additive manufacturing in plastic, and did not include other additive manufacturing technologies, such as selective laser sintering or stereolithography. It also does not include post-processing that might bring the surface finish of FDM parts up to the quality of inkjet or CNC parts.

Designers and engineers seeking to minimize the environmental impacts of their prototypes should share high-utilization machines, and are advised to use FDM machines over CNC mills or polyjet machines if they provide sufficient quality of surface finish.

This is the first paper quantitatively comparing the environmental impacts of additive manufacturing with traditional machining. It also provides a more comprehensive measurement of environmental impacts than most studies of either milling or additive manufacturing alone – it includes not merely CO₂ emissions or waste but also acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, ecotoxicity and other impact categories. Designers, engineers and job shop managers may use the results to guide sourcing or purchasing decisions related to rapid prototyping.

Many attempts to justify the business value of increased investments in information technology (IT) have shown mixed results. While findings from earlier studies have been conflicting, recent firm level studies indicate that IT investments have a positive impact on productivity. However, whether IT adds value to organizations is an on going debating issue. Thus, thus it is worth of further investigation.

The paper employs multiple techniques – a regression, regression trees, and regression splines – and integrate the responses provided from each technique.

While IT investments have a positive impact on productivity, the impact is conditional and is not uniform but depends on the amounts invested in other related areas, such as non‐IT labor, non‐IT capital, and/or IT investments.

The IT impact on productivity can be maximized when investments in other related areas are considered together than when they are considered in isolation. Therefore, IT investment decisions should not be made without consideration of the levels of other investments within an organization to avoid any waste in additional investments in IT.

While most previous studies have studied in terms of its existence or non‐existence of the IT impact, we investigate the conditions under which the IT impact would or would not exist. Thus, our study provides with the opportunity for gaining a deeper understanding of the impact of IT investments on productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the organizational impacts of enterprise mobility and the configurations of mobile information technology (IT) impacts in companies with various value creation logics.

An exploratory approach combining semi-structured interview and repertory grid method was used to evaluate managers’ perspectives on the effects of mobile technologies.

The qualitative findings unearth managers’ perspectives about the organizational impacts of enterprise mobility, which are categorized into six intermediary dimensions and two fundamental impacts. A further analysis of material collected from interviews also shows the differential context-related configurations of mobile IT impacts in companies.

This study contributes to literature on the business value of IT in general and mobile IT in particular by examining managers’ cognitive constructions of the organizational impacts of enterprise mobility and highlighting the complexity and context-related variety of mobile IT impacts.

This study provides valuable insights for managers and decision makers that enterprise mobility shows promise in enhancing a firm’s operational and marketing performance.

Different from prior literature, this study is an exploratory attempt to investigate complex enterprise-mobility-performance relationship and preliminarily uncovers that the mechanisms with which mobile IT influences firm performance vary in different organizational contexts.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.