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Selecting an appropriate theory has always remained a critical task for the digital policy researchers. The literature seems to miss providing theoretical accounts of policy view of the digital platforms governance and offering tools for measuring the effectiveness of policies. To this end, this paper aims to provide a critical review and comparison of dominant information systems (IS) theories used. It highlights the weaknesses of these theories to explain technology features and actor- technology interactions with the rising trend of digital platforms. The main argument of this research is that the policymakers will not have adequate tools for policymaking of digital platforms by following the assumptions of theories used dominantly in the IS field.

This paper analyzes the assumptions of dominant IS theories and their applications in the digital policy literature. Then, it shows to what extent these theories are incapable of conceptualizing features of technology and actors’ role in policymaking and governance of digital platforms.

This paper identifies three aspects of digital platforms, including layered architecture, multisided (“side” means “participants”) and user interaction based, that dominant IS theories have shortcomings in explaining them.

The findings of this research can help authorities to take a more realistic view in defining digital platform policy objectives and applying more appropriate tools in policy implementation.

Discussing insights into the shortcomings of theories helps to define the theoretical requirements for studying policymaking and governance of digital platforms. It also suggests opportunities and recommendations for future studies.

The present study aims to address the emergence of platform-organized open innovation (OI). The research has the two main aims: the first is to increase the understanding of the performance of OI by investigating how the achievements of OI are measured in situated practices from a performative and strategic knowledge management (SKM) orientation. The methodological disadvantages of not pre-given case selection are partially counterbalanced by the second aim of the research, which is to extend existing SKM theory and examine how platforms create knowledge as they include actors and digital devices, thereby potentially redistributing relations of accountability.

Building on performativity theory, the paper studies how the achievements and knowledge created in OI are managed and evaluated in practice. The case description draws on different sources from a spiral case study, as openness is performed by platform, firm, crowd and innovation intermediaries.

The paper illustrates how a strategy of digitally enabled openness brings its own issues as platforms enable knowledge sharing and perform a redistribution of accountability. In the heterarchies studied through this research endeavor, managers and their team members were accountable not only to multiple units, or teams, across the organization, but also to the crowd. The case material demonstrates that the ecology of devices and their performative struggles create lateral accountability.

While recent streams of research suggest that the context of OI (i.e. distributed sources of knowledge for innovation) shifts the unit of analysis of organization design from the individual firm to networks of actors organized on platforms, the authors find that the focal firm still remains a key conceptual parameter in SKM research, which, in turn, makes it difficult to capture the suggested radicality of OI.

The authors show, that in practice, the firm has to take into account the performance of the external crowd and at times put resources into its training and education. In heterarchy, distributed authority is assumed to be facilitated through lateral accountability, whereby the traditional principles of vertical authority no longer hold, but rather, managers and their team members can be accountable to multiple units, or teams, across the organization.

The paper develops a performative theory of openness. OI is a model, strategy and socio-material practice whereby digital designs create an ecology of devices that can enact all kinds of openness. Ultimately, the current paper proposes that SKM and OI theory need to consider how platforms perform relations of accountability beyond the boundaries of the single organization.

This paper aims to answer the following two questions: What are the affecting factors of platform leadership? How do the business ecosystem and unique attributes of platform enterprises affect the formation of platform leadership?

Based on the niche theory, this study used the grounded theory research methods to explore the strategic behavior of platform enterprises, analyze the characteristics of platform leadership and systematically explore the influencing factors of platform leadership based on four internet platform enterprises and their business ecosystem.

The result shows that the acquisition of platform leadership is closely related to the platform enterprises’ Niche, where they are located in the business ecosystem. Platform enterprises play the roles of the founder, coordinator, leader and arranger in the ecosystem, and there are four affecting factors of platform leadership: architecture foundation, connection and coordination, innovation leading and integrated expansion. The architecture foundation consists of four factors: platform architecture, installation base, intellectual property and network coverage; the connection and coordination contain five factors: interactive collaboration, multilateral user connection, information matching, neutral arbitration and mutualism; the innovation leading is composed of four factors: research and development investment, common components, complementary innovation, cross-border search and standard-setting; the integrated expansion includes resource orchestration, modular design, data collaboration, supportive enabling and scenario application.

This research constructs a framework of platform leadership with the influencing factors.

This paper aims to examine the effect of Web-based financial reporting and social media platforms on the proxies of information asymmetry in the Saudi Stock Exchange.

The sample of this paper consists of 133 Saudi listed non-financial companies for the year 2019. Web-based disclosure level was measured using 25 items, and the social media platforms examined in this study are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The information asymmetry proxies are measured using the relative spread and the time-weighted average bid-ask spread.

The empirical results have shown that there is a negative and significant relation between Web-based financial reporting and the adoption of social media platforms and the proxies of information asymmetry. Indeed, the relative spread and the time-weighted average bid-ask spread decreased with increased Web-based reporting levels. Among three platforms (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), the results show that only the use of Twitter as a channel for information disclosure has a negative and significant effect on information asymmetry proxies. Consequently, in the Saudi context, the authors demonstrate that the assumptions of the agency, stewardship and signaling theories are supported. Also, results reveal that the effect of information disclosure through websites and social media on reducing information asymmetry is stronger for large companies than small companies.

The paper provides new insights into the role played by websites and social media platforms in the reduction of the information asymmetry in the stock market. Consequently, investors and regulatory authorities in the Saudi financial market must give great importance to online information disclosure and its implications for lowering information asymmetry. This empirical study informs regulators in Saudi Arabia to conduct the better practice of Web-based and social media financial reporting and to regulate the current practice of information disclosure. Besides, the obtained results have the potential to convince firms’ managers to improve online information disclosure to benefit from the reduction in information asymmetry.

Unlike previous studies, this study investigates, simultaneously, the effect of Web-based and social media information disclosure on the proxies of information asymmetry in a developing economy. In addition, the hypotheses of this study are developed based on a set of theories (the agency, signaling and stewardship theories), to verify the applicability of these three theories in the Saudi context.

The purpose of this paper is to identify strategic options and challenges that arise when an industrial firm moves from providing smart service toward providing a platform.

This conceptual study takes on a multidisciplinary research perspective that integrates concepts, theories and insights from service management and marketing, information systems and platform economics.

The paper outlines three platform types – smart data platform, smart product platform and matching platform – as strategic options for firms that wish to evolve from smart service providers to platform providers.

Investigating smart service platforms calls for launching interdisciplinary research initiatives. Promising research avenues are outlined to span boundaries that separate different research disciplines today.

Managing a successful transition from providing smart service toward providing a platform requires making significant investments in IT, platform-related capabilities and skills, as well as implement new approaches toward relationship management and brand-building.

The findings described in this paper are valuable to researchers in multiple disciplines seeking to develop and to justify theory related to platforms in industrial scenarios.

To understand why the penetration of handset-based mobile payment in most countries is still low has been an important research topic for the last 15 years, and it has been analyzed from different perspectives. However, the analysis of a single aspect cannot provide a sophisticated answer to the complicated underlying question. The purpose of this paper is to understand how a relatively successful m-payment ecosystem is created and sustained through the coopetition of various actors.

To that end, the authors analyze the case of Alipay wallet, the m-payment service provider with the largest market share in China, and focus on understanding the motivations and subsequent actions of the organizations cooperating in the Alipay wallet core ecosystem.

The results show that actors with heterogeneous and complementary resources can forge sustainable collaboration. Within an ecosystem, although always constrained by resources and capabilities, the actions that the core actors take and the resulting power imbalances are dynamically changing, reflecting actors’ aim of reducing uncertainty.

The main limitation of this case is that it was conducted in a Chinese context, which has specific features that may not apply to other cases. In addition, this study is based on a single case study in a single country, without comparing the results to any other cases or countries. Therefore, some modifications may have to be made when applying the framework and generalizing the results.

With regards to the practical perspective, the Alipay case may serve as an example that other providers follow, taking similar actions to increase the dependency of others and reduce their own dependency on others. It is helpful to take a keystone strategy to create value within the ecosystem and share this value with other participants. Moreover, Alipay acts as the platform provider, in addition to managing value creation within the ecosystem and sharing that value with the other participants. Alipay focuses on the business and strategic needs of the core actors, without threatening their main business, for example, Alipay focuses on micro-payments, which does not pose a direct competition to banks, who mainly rely on macro-payments to generate profit. Micro-payments are often related to high transaction costs for banks. In addition, although it is difficult to define the boundaries of actors in the ecosystem, the core business of every actor is the key competitive or even survival condition. This notion should be taken into consideration by actors whose actions affect the business of other ecosystem partners. For instance, Alipay will not aim to become a bank, as they know that if they do so, they cannot connect any other bank to their platform. In other words, the scope and boundary of the actors are clearly identified so that the core business will not be threatened. Sords, we can learn from Alipay that it pays off to focus on one area, and not to let your competitors challenge you.

The authors proposed the StReS framework for analyzing a business ecosystem by combining resource-based review, resource dependency theories and network analysis for investigating the motivations of the organizations cooperating in the core ecosystem and the actions they have taken to reduce dependency and uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of a platform-based project execution in the industrialised construction sector, with a focus on systematically balancing cost and value. Offering custom-tailored buildings at reasonable costs has been a growing concern for many construction companies. A promising approach adapted by operations management and design theory regards individual building projects as the adjustment and recombination of components and processes from a set of predefined platforms, while configuration systems assure feasible building solutions.

After adapting some of the underlying assertions of platform design to the engineer-to-order (ETO) situation in construction, the practical implications are evaluated on a case study of a precast manufacturer using high performance concrete.

Based on empirical findings from three distinct platform strategies, this research highlights key aspects of adapting platform-based developed theory to industrialised construction. Building projects use different layers of product, process and logistics platforms to form the right cost – value ratio for the target market application, while modelling methods map structural platform characteristics so as to balance commonality and distinctiveness.

This paper proposes a general theory of platform-based development and execution in the industrialised construction sector, which goes beyond concurrent approaches of standardising and systemising buildings projects. It adapts and extends established frameworks for platform development to the ETO situation in construction and empirically validates their cost and value effects.

Deglobalization and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have severely hindered multinational enterprise (MNE) investment. At the same time, digital technology is seriously challenging it with traditional production factor flows. Few studies have realized that the impact of digitalization is not limited to either transaction costs or the location-boundness of firm-specific advantages (FSAs), but extends to profound changes in the fundamental essence of MNEs. There is still limited understanding of this body of knowledge as a whole, including how its subtopics are interrelated. This study took the production factor change perspective to review MNE theory in the digital era. Therefore, this study aims to identify any upcoming and undeveloped themes in order to provide a platform suited to direct future research.

This paper presents a summary and a review of 151 articles published between 2007 and 2020. Such review was conducted to systematically explain the connotations and influential mechanisms of digital empowerment on MNE theory. This was achieved by using the CiteSpace citation visualization tool to build a keyword co-occurrence network.

The research findings pertain to how digitalization expands, breaks through, and even reshapes traditional MNE theory from four distinctive angles: the influential factors of internationalization, the process of internationalization, competitive advantage, and location choice. The findings are followed by the presentation of future research directions.

This paper presents an examination of MNE theory in the digital era from the perspective of production factor change. In doing so, it identifies significant theoretical innovation opportunities for future scholarly research priorities.

This study examines the role of financial service providers (FSPs) in assessing the supply chain credit of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and how they help SMEs obtain supply chain finance (SCF) through an established digital platform using big data analytics (BDA).

This study conducted data mining analysis on the archival data of China's FSPs in the mobile production industry from 2015 to 2018, using neural networks in the first stage and multiple regression in the second stage.

The findings suggest that digital platforms sponsored by FSPs have a discriminative effect based on implicit BDA on identifying the quality and potential risks of borrowers. The results also show that tailored information utilised by FSPs has a supportive effect based on explicit BDA in helping SMEs obtain financing.

This study contributes to the emergent research on BDA in supply chain management by extending the contextual research on information signalling and platform theory in SCF. Furthermore, it examines the distinctive financing decision models of FSPs and provides a solution that addresses the information deficiency and overload of both lenders and borrowers and plays a certain reference role in alleviating the financing problems of SMEs.

In smart cities pervasive systems are deployed by enterprises and stakeholders in municipalities to provide digital services to citizens. But cities are faced with the challenge of achieving system pluggability, mainly service integration due to numerous actors and systems needed for smart urban transformation. Hence, there is need to employ a comprehensive and holistic approach to help achieve service integration of pervasive platforms. Therefore, this study presents an Enterprise Architecture Framework (EAF) to support smart urban transformation.

In this study the design science research methodology is adopted based on a multi-case studies of two organizations and data is collected using semi-structured interview from an organizations and municipality in Norway to validate how service integration can be achieved by the developed EAF to address pluggability challenges faced in urban environment.

Findings suggest that the presented EAF provides the structure to manage changes and maintain urban transformation and aims to align the business with the underlying information systems from the perspective of the stakeholders. Additionally, findings from the case studies modelled in ArchiMate language depict how service integration of different pervasive platforms provide digital services for smart urban transformation.

This research only employed semi-structured interviews to validate service integration of digital platforms, other identified dimensions of pluggability were not fully addressed in this study.

Findings from the case studies provides insights on how pervasive platforms can be integrated to achieve a pluggable digital service from different stakeholders and data sources in practice. The developed EAF presented in this study provide a model that supports collection and exchange of data from different data sources in smart urban environment to enable the provision and consumption of digital services.

The developed EAF aids system pluggability of actors and systems in providing digital service such as smart urban transformation that contributes to sustainable use of electric mobility in cities.

As cities increasingly deploy pervasive platforms to support urban innovation, researchers are seeking to explore how these platforms shape urban transformation. Presently, prior studies do not offer important insights into pervasive platform management from urban perspective. Against this backdrop, this study employs the information systems perspective of digital platforms literature roots in software development and physical product development to depict how the EAF can be employed to describe specific cases that integrate different pervasive platforms deployed by different stakeholders communicating to co-create collective digital services to citizens.