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In the era of the digital economy, organizations are under much pressure to justify their information technology (IT) spending on digital transformation. Some organizations have thus implemented IT chargeback, an IT governance (ITG) mechanism, to clarify and allocate IT costs among various business units. While practitioners have stressed the importance of IT chargeback, there has been little theoretical effort that investigates its strategic effects and boundary conditions.

Synthesizing the ITG literature and the resource-based view (RBV), the authors develop a research model to examine if IT chargeback affects IT–business strategic alignment and, in turn, organizational performance and how human IT resources strengthen the impacts of IT chargeback. The authors designed a survey to collect data from 103 firms and tested the model using partial least squares (PLS).

The authors found that IT chargeback promoted strategic alignment and then organizational performance only for firms with business-competent chief information officers (CIOs), rather than IT-competent business executives.

This study enriches the ITG literature by exploring the strategic value of an IT cost governance mechanism (i.e. IT chargeback). This study further proposes and validates a measure of IT chargeback. Drawing on the RBV, this study quantitatively investigates the strategic impacts and boundary contingencies of IT chargeback. This study also advances the CIO literature by identifying the strategic leading role, instead of the traditional supporting role, of CIOs in modern organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine service level agreements (SLAs) in the retail industry and uses empirical data to draw conclusions on the relationships between SLA parameters and retailer financial performance.

Based on prior SLA theories, hypotheses about the impacts of SLA confidentiality, choice of chargeback mechanisms and chargeback penalty on retailer inventory turnover are tested.

Retailer inventory turnover could vary by the level of SLA confidentiality, and the variation of retailer inventory turnovers could be explained by chargeback penalty.

The research findings may not be readily applicable to SLAs outside of the retail industry. Also, most conclusions were drawn from publicly available SLAs.

The significant relationships between SLA parameters and retailer inventory turnover imply that a retailer could improve its financial performance by leveraging its SLA design.

Not only does this study contribute to the understanding of retail SLA design in practice, but it also extends prior theories by investigating the implications of SLA design on the retailer inventory turnover.

First party fraud is fraud committed by an account holder or customer that does not involve the use of a stolen identity. This type of fraud has grown substantially in recent times due to increased online shopping and is becoming a major concern for online retail businesses, hereby referred to as e-tailers. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the motives and nature of first party fraud in e-tailing.

Systematic literature review was used to synthesise existing research on first party fraud. The authors used scholarly literature as well as grey literature to help understand the motives and nature of this growing business problem.

Findings reveal a myriad of schemes and motives for engaging in first party fraud.

The findings of this paper employed very little literature due to availability. However, the authors believe that the findings are still useful for advancing the knowledge in this emerging research area.

This study will be useful to researchers as well as practitioners in the retail industry in helping understand the nature and motives of first party frauds which could in turn help devise preventive strategies. The study also makes a case for increased managerial interest and involvement in reducing first party fraud.

A comprehensive literature search presented in this paper shows that this is the first paper to synthesise the various forms of first party fraud in e-tailing.

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the merits of occupancy planning as a means for improving strategic decisions regarding real estate portfolios and strengthening the credibility of corporate real estate (CRE) professionals.

The authors' extensive experience is combined with survey results and case examples of how two global companies are benefiting from occupancy planning.

Occupancy planning programs lead to better data and forecasting, which in turn create a more accurate portfolio‐wide view and improved space utilization.

This article demonstrates the link between effective occupancy planning and sound CRE decisions.

Branded car dealerships with best revenue by serviced car also have the best after-sales customers’ satisfaction level. The purpose of this paper is to present the analysis of the after-sales quality management practices adopted by dealerships with the best performance in terms of customer’s satisfaction and revenue and how such practices contribute to these results.

A multiple case study was performed with nine leader branded car dealerships in an emerging country, considering the entrance car. The performance indicators to evaluate customers’ satisfaction, revenue and operational indicators related to product support, brand manifestation and relationship with customers were identified. Quality management practices that support the best results achievement were analyzed.

The three dealerships that represent Asiatic brands have best customers’ satisfaction and revenue performance. These dealerships typically have different processes comparing with dealerships that represent European and American brands concerning to: continuous improvement management; warranties and stock management; services scheduling; offer bonuses to customers; and customers service that emphasizes focus on technical and commercial expertise.

This research considered indicators performance and, based on that, analyzed the dealerships’ practices that support the best performance. Such aspect has room for academic literature since the quality management research related to car industry focuses mainly on manufacturer and generates managerial insights to the car industry and its dealerships.

Purpose – This chapter examines the role of payment platforms in the United States in sex censorship in which platforms have a pattern of denying financial services to people and businesses involved in publishing legal sexual content. It answers the following questions: what explains payment platforms’ regulation of lawful sexual content and what are the consequences? Methodology/Approach – Drawing from the platform governance literature, this chapter closely examines the corporate policies for PayPal and the credit card companies that prohibit certain types of sexual content and services. Findings – This chapter argues that payment platforms’ censorship of sexual expression is shaped by the distinctive nature of and market concentration within the online payment industry. Payment actors’ systematic campaign of sexual censorship disproportionately affects small businesses and individual operators in the sex and adult entertainment industries and amounts to “digital redlining,” a form of financial discrimination. Originality/Value – Payment providers’ role in regulating sex online has received considerably less scholarly attention than research on social media platforms. This gap in scholarship is notable as big payment actors have systematically denied services for about a decade relating to sexually oriented goods and services (see Blue, 2015a).

Razorpay is a four-year-old Indian B2B fintech startup in digital payments which is venturing into digital lending. It aims to simplify digital payment flows involved in acceptance, processing, and disbursement of payments through superior technology and automation. This case details how Razorpay creates value for businesses by offering service convenience in B2B space. Razorpay started as a payment solutions provider, primarily known for their payment gateway. Over time the market for digital payment in India has matured, with multiple providers offering similar products making it difficult for Razorpay to sustain its growth by using technological leadership and service differentiation. To maintain its growth trajectory, Razorpay has launched multiple new products in the digital payment space as well as announced a foray into creating a marketplace for digital lending through launch of Razorpay Capital. The case provides details of the growth of Razorpay and its move from its core strength of payment gateway

Regardless of how they are budgeted, information technology (IT) costs must be paid. Most schools offer some computing services at no cost to the individual or unit and some that are charged back to users and units. Typically, common good services are centrally funded, and services that differentially benefit specific individuals or units are charged for. How services are funded often reflects a school’s philosophy about IT and about finances. Preferably, IT funding mechanisms deliberately help shape and influence an institution’s IT and services philosophy, as opposed to an IT or service philosophy being unintentionally shaped by fiscal policies that follow no particular strategy. Levying fees to users on an individual or departmental basis may yield a different demand and expectation of IT services than when costs are borne by a central budget. Quantity and quality, degree of centralization, and administrative complexity of services are major variables in determining funding. Also at stake is the degree to which an institution wishes to endorse, suppress, control or expand IT services. These issues are specifically illustrated through a case study of the formulation of a new budget and cost accounting model to both finance an institution‐wide network upgrade and to maintain that network.

The organization of companies’ information technology (IT) functions has been studied and described in three ways: on a centralization‐decentralization continuum, on the basis of technological architecture, and, for multinational companies, as reflective of their strategic focus. This research proposes a classification of organizational structures based on the tension between business units and IT departments in the delivery of IT services. Using a cluster analysis on a sample of 40 companies having corporate offices in the USA or The Netherlands, it identifies four basic structures or patterns that describe the similarities and differences in the way IT services are handled. The paper then describes the implications of these structures for companies that are considering the redesign or restructure of their information technology function.