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Rather than organize as traditional firms, many of today’s companies organize as platforms that sit at the nexus of multiple exchange and production relationships. This chapter considers a most basic question of organization in platform contexts: the choice of boundaries. Herein, I investigate how classical economic theories of firm boundaries apply to platform-based organization and empirically study how executives made boundary choices in response to changing market and technical challenges in the early mobile computing industry (the predecessor to today’s smartphones). Rather than a strict or unavoidable tradeoff between “openness-versus-control,” most successful platform owners chose their boundaries in a way to simultaneously open-up to outside developers while maintaining coordination across the entire system.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of user competence on two different usage variables related to information systems (IS) infusion: explorative use and exploitative use.

Structural equation modeling is used to construct a predictive model of user competence toward IS infusion. Individuals’ responses to questions about attitude and intention to use smartphone were collected and analyzed.

The results showed that all first-order factors of user competence were significantly linked to the second-order factor. User competence is then significantly related to IS infusion, both explorative use and exploitative use.

This study discusses individual usage behavior related to IS infusion usage. The authors conceptualized that exploitative use is different from explorative use. The findings in this study suggest that user competence must be included in IS usage models, especially IS infusion model.

The results associated with exploitation are more certain and closer in time, while those associated with exploration are more variable. That is, users are likely to innovate through their smart devices related to IS infusion. Smartphone developers and the relevant service providers should decide which factors are more important along the stages of the information technology implementation process. As indicated in this study, knowledge-based user competence together with perceived usefulness influences the usage behavior of smartphone users. Industry players need to consider user competence when they promote their smartphone services.

The proposed model brings together extant research on IS use and technology acceptance.

‐‐ The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief introduction to software applications that make nature field guides accessible on computers, including desktop and mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and to describe some specific products that are available.Design/methodology/approach ‐‐ This article discusses the development and proliferation of software applications or “apps” for nature field guides. Common features of such apps and some specific examples are presented.Findings ‐‐ Numerous field guide apps are available for identifying animals, plants, and other natural phenomena using mobile computing devices or smartphones. Apps for mobile devices retain the traditional quality of portability for field guides, and most of these apps offer high quality photographs along with descriptive text. Some products include audio files for identifying bird songs or frog calls. Features for users include the ability to maintain life lists and to search guide contents using graphic icons, animal or plant markings, or colors.Originality/value ‐‐ Reviews of nature field guides have generally focused on print sources or electronic book editions of print titles. While several newspapers, magazines, and websites have published reviews of mobile field guide apps, an introduction and reviews have not yet been published in a source like Reference Reviews.

People are living in a world where they maintain connectivity through sending and receiving messages and calls. Yet, almost daily, people choose not to respond to certain messages or calls, which can make the sender anxious, and adversely affect their communication. The aim of this study was to investigate the receivers' reasons for not responding.

The authors used theories related to information avoidance, power, interpersonal deception and emotions and conducted interviews of smartphone users.

The study found that the receiver’s physical and psychological state, the time of the day and the content of the message impacted non-response. The findings suggest that the non-response behavior is moderated by the power relationship between the sender and the receiver. The receiver’s state of mind will determine the likelihood of non-response, while the sender’s state of mind will determine how the sender deals with non-response.

The study contributes to research in mobile information behavior, and the wider fields of information science, sociology and communication.

The process of interviewing itself helped raise awareness about these issues with the people who were interviewed.

The findings shed light on the current communicative practices and ways to overcome the disconnectedness and stress suffered by people regularly using smartphones.

The study provides recommendations for healthy communication between the sender and the receiver using their smartphones.

The purpose of this paper is to study smartphone use and its positive and negative effects and to provide recommendations for balanced use.

To study phone use, this paper applies the uses and gratification theory and gathered interview data from 24 participants on the participants’ frequency of use, mode of communication, people contacted and the reasons for using their phones. This paper analyzes the pros and cons of using smartphones using the Yin-Yang worldview.

This paper finds that people use their smartphones for communication, entertainment and other specific functions. Ease of communication and multitasking are the key benefits, and overuse and disconnect from the real world are the detriments in smartphone use.

The findings can enable future researchers and practitioners to view smartphones and their effects more holistically, rather than seeing it only from the negative or the positive lens.

The proposed framework can help the reader to consider their daily use of smartphones and their ways of balancing their presence in the virtual and the real worlds.

This paper proposes the Yin-Yang framework of smartphone use and provides recommendations for effective usage.

The rate of project failure across the globe seems to reinforce poor performance as a norm. However, engagement with construction digitalisation (CD) represents a departure point for improving project performance. Amidst researchers' recent empirical engagement with CD, the knowledge of the relationship model between CD and project delivery (PD) is abysmal. As a result, developing a business case for CD in developing countries has been slow due to the dearth of empirical evidence. This paper aims to investigate the influence of digitalisation on project performance.

Anchored on cross-sectional survey research design using a questionnaire survey in which a total of 183 copies of structured questionnaires were randomly distributed to medium- and large-sized construction firms operating in Abuja, Nigeria's federal capital. A total of 126 valid responses were received giving an overall response rate of 68.8%. The responses were analysed using mean item score, principal component analysis and multiple linear regression.

Findings from the regression analysis reveal that digitalisation has varying levels of impact on PP measured using quality, time and cost. The relationship model with time performance is weak (r = 0.526, r² = 0.277); on cost performance, the significant model is also weak (r = 0.502, r² = 0.252) and moderate on quality (r = 0.663, r² = 0.439). CD influences project cost, time and quality performance despite the weak relationship model. The results indicate that the most effective benchmark of CD is quality performance.

This study established the relationship between digitalisation and construction PD within the construction industry context, an area lacking research attention in emerging economies. This study is the first study in emerging economies that established the influence of digitalisation on construction PD statistically.

After reading the case study, the students will be able to analyze the impact of post-pandemic “new normal” customer behavioral change on a start-up aggregator operating virtually. Recognize the need for the service marketing strategy to prepare a service provider/aggregator to sustain a dynamic and volatile consumer environment. Understand the importance of competitors’ analysis as a primary step of service marketing strategy in influencing “new normal” consumer behavior. Examine the utility of customer engagement through website blogs, social media posts, videos and continuously updated information on the mobile application in influencing the “new normal” customer behavior, from skinner operant conditioning behavior and Rusbolt’s investment model perspectives.

Rafeeg is a mobile application-based home maintenance service providing company, conceived and founded in 2017 by Khamis Alsheryani – who, as an Emirati entrepreneur, has a prior record of accomplishing successful mobile applications and business ventures since 2004. The unique selling proposition of Rafeeg in the Abu Dhabi market is its functioning as the home maintenance services aggregator bringing its suppliers and consumers under-one-roof alongside maintaining ensuring high quality, punctuality and security at competitive prices. Rafeeg has collaborated with approximately 1,000 licensed suppliers using nearly 5,000 technicians and maintenance workers with a customer base of about 70,000 households. Although it is formally situated in Al Salam St, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), the company communicates with its consumers virtually. However, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UAE in March 2020, Rafeeg witnessed a considerable decrease in service requests. Consumers’ psychological fear of the pandemics spread into their houses through the technicians and maintenance workers and the degree of hygienic practices the latter follows before their service provision acted as the major reason behind the fall in requests. Despite Alsheryani’s assurance on the provision of only those suppliers who are verified of their hygienic practices, negative COVID-19 test reports and their availability to the consumers as proof and regular temperature checks of the technicians, the consumer apprehensions remained stagnant and the loss of new service requests, as well as revenue, continued. The pandemic’s spread and consequent lockdown of services in the UAE affected Rafeeg’s business operations gravely, as projected by its sudden drop-in service requests – from 53,638 average monthly customer requests in January and February to approximately 10,000 in March and April. The sudden drop of 81% in new requests drove Alsheryani to develop a service marketing strategy in May to boost consumer behavior, encouraging them to resume their requests without further apprehensions. However, with the continuous rise in the pandemic and vaccines still under trial and research, Alsheryani contemplates the viability of the new marketing strategy. Alsheryani took measures in supplier training programs, excommunicating with suppliers who fail to comply with his strict safety regulations, developing the app with clearly stated, uniform, safety procedures and bearing the additional safety-related costs small suppliers provide quality work as part of the strategy. Despite so, will there be an increase in new requests? Will the bearing of additional costs on the suppliers’ behalf jeopardize its competitive advantage in UAE? Should he consider an alternate business model to adapt to the new normal environment?

This case is written for undergraduate students majoring in consumer behavior, consumer engagement approaches, digital marketing approaches using websites, mobile applications, social media communities and service marketing strategies. Students, through this case, can relate the importance of virtual space in engaging consumers and the importance of the latter in addressing the dynamicity of consumer behavior, especially affected by sudden environmental change, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The case study also subtly highlights the importance of collaboration with suppliers in an aggregator business model to capture the essence of changing consumer behavior. This case study is appropriate for students having previous knowledge of Rusbolt’s investment model and skinner’s operant behavioral model of consumer behavior and their application in service marketing. Besides, students must be aware of the online business model and aggregator businesses in the service industry of the UAE. The case study purports to motivate critical analytical thinking among students and build their understanding of the importance of consumer behavior for business sustenance.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CCS 8: Marketing.

The empirical record of cyberattacks features much computer crime, espionage and hacktivism, but none of the major damage feared in prevalent threat narratives. The purpose of this article is to explain the absence of serious adverse consequences to date and the durability of this trend.

This paper combines concepts from international relations theory and new institutional economics to understand cyberspace as a complex global institution with contracts embodied in both software code and human practice. Constitutive inefficiencies (market and regulatory failure) and incomplete contracts (generative features and unintended flaws) create the vulnerabilities that hackers exploit. Cyber conflict is a form of cheating within the rules, rather than an anarchic struggle, more like an intelligence-counterintelligence contest than traditional war.

Cyber conflict is restrained by the collective sociotechnical constitution of cyberspace, where actors must cooperate to compete. Maintenance of common protocols and open access is a condition for the possibility of attack, and successful deceptive exploitation of these connections becomes more difficult in politically sensitive situations as defense and deterrence become more feasible. The distribution of cyber conflict is, thus, bounded vertically in severity but unbounded horizontally in the potential for creative exploitation.

Cyber conflict can be understood with familiar political economic concepts applied in fresh ways. This application provides counterintuitive insights at odds with prevalent threat narratives about the likelihood and magnitude of cyber conflict. It also highlights the important advantages of strong states over the weaker non-state actors widely thought to be empowered by cyberspace.