IS discipline has seen a large and growing body of research on IT sourcing, with economic theories informing a large portion of this work. The paper examines use of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) as a theoretical lens to study IT sourcing decision (internal vs. external). It reviews TCE’s major assumptions, and assesses key constructs of frequency, asset specificity, opportunism, and uncertai...

In recent years, corpus based approaches to machine translation have become predominant, with Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) being the most actively progressing area. Success of these approaches depends on the availability of parallel corpora. In this paper we propose Active Crowd Translation (ACT), a new paradigm where active learning and crowd-sourcing come together to enable automatic...

Spurred by the consumer market, companies increasingly deploy smartphones or tablet computers in their operations. However, unlike private users, companies typically struggle to cover their needs with existing applications, and therefore expand mobile software platforms through customized applications from multiple software vendors. Companies thereby combine the concepts of multi-sourcing and s...

We develop a new theory of supplier diversification based on buyer risk. When suppliers are subject to the risk of buyer default, buyers may take costly action to signal creditworthiness so as to obtain more favorable terms. But once signaling costs are sunk, buyers sourcing from a single supplier become vulnerable to future holdup. Although ex ante supply base diversification can be effective ...

This paper analyzes the choice between different external technology sourcing activities of a firm. On one hand, the firm can acquire new technology which is embodied in personnel. On the other hand, the firm can obtain new technology disembodied through a licensing agreement or by outsourcing the technology development from an R&D contractor. Building on Cassiman and Veugelers (2006), we test ...

In this paper, we present a comparison between controlled laboratory experiments and crowd-sourcing techniques for gathering consumer terms. We discuss the difference between the data gathered from these techniques and how crowd-sourcing can be used to increase engagement and seek feedback from your customers via the internet or other digital methods. As a case study, we present a new set of un...

Over the past few years, an exciting new IT sourcing model has emerged: business managers can now rent business applications over the Internet. Initially called “application service provision,” “ASP,” or more informally, “apps on tap,” this sourcing model promises to deliver best-of-breed, scalable, and flexible business applications to customer desktops. The low monthly fee is based on number ...

Innovation events the introduction of new products or processes represent the end of a process of knowledge sourcing and transformation. They also represent the beginning of a process of exploitation which may result in an improvement in the performance of the innovating business. This recursive process of knowledge sourcing, transformation and exploitation comprises the innovation value chain....