McGill-HEC Montreal EMBA blends online and in-person learning

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the McGill-HEC Montreal EMBA program has introduced a bimodal learning style that allows students to choose between online courses and in-person instruction.

Even standard IT can impact front-end innovation

When employees are motivated to master computer technologies like business analytics programs, point-of-sale systems, and knowledge management systems, creativity ensues.

A Seat at the Table and a Room of Their Own: Interconnected processes of social media use at the intersection of gender and occupation

Author: Emmanuelle Vaast Publication: Organization Studies, Forthcoming Abstract:

Theorizing Process Dynamics with Directed Graphs: A Diachronic Analysis of Digital Trace Data

Authors: B. Pentland, Emmanuelle Vaast and J. Ryan Wolf Publication: MIS Quarterly, Forthcoming Abstract:

The growing availability of digital trace data has generated unprecedented opportunities for analyzing, explaining, and predicting the dynamics of process change. While research on process organization studies theorizes about process and change, and research on process mining rigorously measures and models business processes, there has so far been limited research that measures and theorizes about process dynamics. This gap represents an opportunity for new Information Systems (IS) research. This research note lays the foundation for such an endeavor by demonstrating the use of process mining for diachronic analysis of process dynamics. We detail the definitions, assumptions, and mechanics of an approach that is based on representing processes as weighted, directed graphs. Using this representation, we offer a precise definition of process dynamics that focuses attention on describing and measuring changes in process structure over time. We analyze process structure over two years at four dermatology clinics. Our analysis reveals process changes that were invisible to the medical staff in the clinics. This approach offers empirical insights that are relevant to many theoretical perspectives on process dynamics.

Unveiling the relevance of academic research: A practice-based view

Authors: M. Marabelli, and Emmanuelle Vaast Publication: Information and Organization, Volume 30, Issue 3, September 2020, 100314 Abstract:

Losing Touch: An Embodiment Perspective on Coordination in Robotic Surgery

Authors: A.V. Sergeeva, Samer Faraj, and M. Huysman Publication: Organization Science, Volume 31, Issue 5, October 2020, Pages 1248-1271. Abstract:

Because new technologies allow new performances, mediations, representations, and information flows, they are often associated with changes in how coordination is achieved. Current coordination research emphasizes its situated and emergent nature, but seldom accounts for the role of embodied action. Building on a 25-month field study of the da Vinci robot, an endoscopic system for minimally invasive surgery, we bring to the fore the role of the body in how coordination was reconfigured in response to a change in technological mediation. Using the robot, surgeons experienced both an augmentation and a reduction of what they can do with their bodies in terms of haptic, visual, and auditory perception and manipulative dexterity. These bodily augmentations and reductions affected joint task performance and led to coordinative adaptations (e.g., spatial relocating, redistributing tasks, accommodating novel perceptual dependencies, and mounting novel responses) that, over time, resulted in reconfiguration of roles, including expanded occupational knowledge, emergence of new specializations, and shifts in status and boundaries. By emphasizing the importance of the body in coordination, this paper suggests that an embodiment perspective is important for explaining how and why coordination evolves following the introduction of a new technology.

When Digital Technologies Enable and Threaten Occupational Identity: The Delicate Balancing Act of Data Scientists

Authors: Emmanuelle Vaast and Alain Pinsonneault Publication: MIS Quarterly, Forthcoming Abstract:

Occupations are increasingly embedded with and affected by digital technologies. These technologies both enable and threaten occupational identity and create two important tensions: they make the persistence of an occupation possible while also potentially rendering it obsolete and they bring about both similarity and distinctiveness of an occupation with regard to other occupations. Based on the critical case study of an online community dedicated to data science, we investigate longitudinally how data scientists address the two tensions of occupational identity associated with digital technologies and reach transient syntheses in terms of “optimal distinctiveness” and “persistent extinction.” We propose that identity work associated with digital technologies follows a composite life-cycle and dialectical process. We explain that people constantly need to adjust and redefine their occupational identity (i.e., how they define who they are and what they do). We contribute to scholarship on digital technologies and identity work by illuminating how people deal in an ongoing manner with digital technologies that simultaneously enable and threaten their occupational identity.

Financial Returns to Firms’ Communication Actions on Firm-Initiated Social Media: Evidence from Facebook Business Pages

Authors: S. Chung, Animesh Animesh, Kunsoo Han and Alain Pinsonneault

Publication: Information Systems Research, Volume 31, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 258-285.

Abstract:

The primary goal of this study is to investigate the financial returns to firms’ communication actions on a firm-initiated social media platform by focusing on Facebook Business pages. To this end, we conceptualize and quantify two types of firms’ communication actions on social media: posts and responses to customer messages. Furthermore, we classify a firm’s responses to customer messages based on the valence of customer messages—positive versus negative—and examine the effects of volume as well as timeliness of the two types of a firm’s responses to customer messages on firm performance. Using a sample of 63 South Korean firms across industries over a three-year period (5,566 firm-week observations), we find that the volume and timeliness of a firm’s responses to negative customer messages, which are associated with an increase in customer satisfaction, have a significant positive impact on the firm’s market performance measured by abnormal returns and Tobin’s q. Interestingly, the results suggest that a firm’s posts and its responses to positive customer messages are not significantly associated with firm performance. Furthermore, we find that a firm’s posts and its responses to negative customer messages exhibit complementarities in contributing to firm performance. Our results are robust to various alternative specifications, econometric concerns, and Facebook’s policy changes, such as EdgeRank and Promoted Post. Our findings underscore the business value of firms’ actions on social media and provide unique and important implications for theory and practice regarding the appropriate ways to use social media for building and managing customer relationships.

Software Patents and Firm Value: A Real Options Perspective on the Role of Innovation Orientation and Environmental Uncertainty

Authors: S. Chung, Animesh Animesh, Kunsoo Han and Alain Pinsonneault

Publication: Information Systems Research, Volume 30, Issue 3, September 2019, Pages 1073-1097.

Abstract:

Although software patents have been growing steadily since 1996, when the restrictions on the patentability of software were eliminated, their value and impacts on the firm’s profits remain unclear and ambiguous. Drawing on the real options theory and the literature on exploration and exploitation, we develop a novel theoretical framework to assess the value of software patents. Moreover, we examine the impact of contextual factors related to the nature of innovation underlying firms’ patent portfolios (exploitative versus explorative) and the environmental uncertainty (competitiveness and dynamism) on the value of software patents. Specifically, we examine the interaction effect of a firm’s software patent stock and its innovation orientation on firm value in markets exhibiting different levels of environmental uncertainty. Based on a large-panel data set consisting of 602 U.S. firms, our results indicate that a software patent portfolio having higher levels of explorative orientation is associated with a higher firm value (as measured by Tobin’s q) in environments exhibiting low dynamism and high competitiveness. By contrast, a software patent portfolio with higher levels of exploitative orientation is associated with a higher firm value in environments with high dynamism and low competitiveness. We discuss the implications for research and practice.

$1-million gift accelerates student mental health effort at Desautels

A generous donation from Gisèle and Neil Murdoch (BCom’81) has accelerated student mental health efforts at Desautels, creating a new Local Wellness Advisor position in the Faculty.

Professor Khern-am-nuai awarded funding to help retailers predict surge demands

McGill University has awarded Professor Warut Khern-am-nuai with MI4 Emergency COVID-19 Research Funding to examine social media data to help retailers identify panic buying behavior during the pandemic.

Delve: Searching for the Pandemic’s Silver Lining? Look Online.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the requirements of physical distancing have created a sense of crisis that transcends most boundaries. While the imposed trauma is immense, the sharing of personal pandemic experiences online has been encouraging.

Professor Emmanuelle Vaast named Associate Dean of Research

As Professor Vihang Errunza steps down from his role as Associate Dean of Research at the Desautels Faculty of Management, Professor Emmanuelle Vaast is gearing up to take the reins.

The Role of Decision Support Systems in Attenuating Racial Biases in Healthcare Delivery

Authors: Kartik K. Ganju, Hilal Atasoy, Brad Greenwood and Jeff McCullough

Publication: Management Science, Volume 66, Issue 11, November 2020, Pages 5171-5181.

Abstract:

Although significant research has examined how technology can intensify racial and other outgroup biases, limited work has investigated the role information systems can play in abating them. Racial biases are particularly worrisome in healthcare, where underrepresented minorities suffer disparities in access to care, quality of care, and clinical outcomes. In this paper, we examine the role clinical decision support systems (CDSS) play in attenuating systematic biases among black patients, relative to white patients, in rates of amputation and revascularization stemming from diabetes mellitus. Using a panel of inpatient data and a difference-in-difference approach, results suggest that CDSS adoption significantly shrinks disparities in amputation rates across white and black patients—with no evidence that this change is simply delaying eventual amputations. Results suggest that this effect is driven by changes in treatment care protocols that match patients to appropriate specialists, rather than altering within physician decision making. These findings highlight the role information systems and digitized patient care can play in promoting unbiased decision making by structuring and standardizing care procedures.

Delve: Romancing the User: Three Business Lessons from Digital Daters

New research from Prof Jui Ramaprasad explores how gender, comfort, and impulsivity are key for that perfect chemistry.