Despite the potential benefits, many organizations have failed in service-oriented architecture (SOA) implementation projects. Prior research often used a variance perspective and neglected to explore the complex interactions and timing dependencies between the critical success factors. This study adopts a process perspective to capture the dynamics while providing a new explanation for the mixed outcomes of SOA implementation. We develop a system dynamics model and use simulation analysis to demonstrate the phenomenon of Òtipping point.Ó That is, under certain conditions, even a small reduction in the duration of normative commitment can dramatically reverse, from success to failure, the outcome of an SOA implementation. The simulation results also suggest that (1) the duration of normative commitment can play a more critical role than the strength, and (2) the minimal duration of normative commitment for a successful SOA implementation is associated positively with the information delay of organizational learning of SOA knowledge. Finally, we discuss the theoretical causes and organizational traps associated with SOA implementation to help IT managers make better decisions about their implementation projects. > >
This paper applies the theory of real options to analyze how the value of information-based flexibility should affect the decision to centralize or decentralize data management under low and high uncertainty. This study makes two main contributions. First, we show that in the presence of low uncertainty, centralization of data management decisions creates more total surplus for the firm as the similarity of business units increases. In contrast, in the presence of high uncertainty, centralization creates more total surplus as the dissimilarity of business units increases. The pivoting distinction trades the benefit of reduction of uncertainty from dissimilar businesses for centralization (with cost saving) against the benefit of flexibility from decentralization. Second, the framework helps senior management evaluate the trade-offs in data centralization that drive different business models of the firm. We illustrate the application of these propositions formally using an analytical model and informally using case vignettes and simulation.
The availability of data on the Web and new data extraction technologies have made it increasingly easy to reuse existing data to create new databases and provide value-added services. Meanwhile, database creators have been seeking legal protection for their data, such as the European Union's Database Directive. The legislative development shows that there is significant difficulty in finding the right balance between protecting the incentives of creating publicly accessible databases (including semistructured Web sites) and preserving adequate access to factual data for value-creating activities. We address this issue using an extended spatial competition model that explicitly considers licensing provisions and inefficiencies in policy administration. The results show that, depending on the cost level of database creation, the degree of differentiation of the reuser database, and the efficiency of policy administration, there are different socially beneficial policy choices, such as protecting a legal monopoly, encouraging competition via compulsory licensing, discouraging voluntary licensing, or even allowing free riding. With the appropriate policy in place, both the creators and the reusers should focus on innovation that can increase the variety of databases and create value from database contents.