Track Chairs

David J. Langley, Professor, TNO & University of Groningen, the Netherlands, Email: david.langley@tno.nl

Eusebio Scornavacca, Professor, University of Baltimore, USA. Email: escornavacca@ubalt.edu

Mira Slavova, Assistant Professor, Warwick Business School, UK. Email: Mira.Slavova@wbs.ac.uk

Stefano Za, Adjunct Professor, LUISS Guido Carli University, Italy. Email: sza@luiss.it

 

Track Description

Digital Ecosystems: The Economic, Social, and Environmental Impact of Pervasive Connectivity

Interconnected products, the data and services they produce alongside the analytic tools they utilize, form powerful product systems that create complex digital ecosystems of partners1. Such ecosystems may include Original Equipment Manufacturers, suppliers of digital infrastructures with strong consumer brands and numerous consumer applications (e.g. Amazon, Google), as well as technology developers offering innovative products and services. By gradually blurring organizational, social, physical and temporal boundaries, digital ecosystems thrive by enabling interconnectedness, strengthening relationships and radically transforming production, collaboration and cooperation2. These emergent ecosystems have pronounced potential to generate unparalleled value by driving business and technological innovations3. However, not all transformations accompanying pervasive digitalization are necessarily beneficial and research is urgently needed to guide further advances in understanding how and what types of value is generated in digital ecosystems.

Moving away from equating value to short-term financial performance, we understand shared value4 to be shaped by the relationships among diverse stakeholders in digital ecosystems leading to different forms of benefit for different stakeholders (e.g. financial results, social improvements or environmental sustainability). Ubiquitous, connected, and intelligent assets – both human and technological – can generate environmental value by stimulating the uptake of circular economy principles. Scholars predict that connected products, which supply a constant stream of data about usage patterns, can allow firms to forsake their goods-dominant logic in favor of a service-dominant one as they strive to develop ever-better value propositions5. This, too, will lead to waste reduction as producers take on responsibilities such as repair, recycling and upcycling. Consequently, digital ecosystems can bring about a shift from the current linear ‘take, make, dispose’ economy to a less resource-dependent circular economy that is restorative and regenerative by design. Similarly, they can enable models for value creation where economic and social value is created and captured among diverse stakeholders. Connected technologies may allow organizations to reconceive their products and markets; to redefine how societal issues, such as natural resources, health and safety as well as equal opportunities are handled in conventional value chains. There is hence a need for research to illuminate how digital ecosystems can deliver on their potential for shared value creation.

Accordingly, this track serves as a forum for focused deliberation the opportunities for shared value creation in digital ecosystems. We endeavor to address crucial questions pertaining to how technology can bolster firms’ capability to adapt to ever-changing, economic, social, and technological realities. We especially encourage insightful and timely contributions that identify and address knowledge gaps in: (1) challenges and opportunities associated with leveraging digital ecosystems for multiple forms of value creation; (2) emerging business models anchored on (combinations of) new data streams afforded by pervasive connectivity, and; (3) issues related to innovative practices in digital ecosystems. Other topics that touch on matters regarding the effects of pervasive connectivity on economy, society, and environment are equally welcome.

The track is open to all methodological approaches. We invite both full research and research-in-progress papers.

 

Possible topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Methodological approaches for investigating the shared value, emerging through digitalecosystems

  • Behaviors and usage patterns in digital ecosystems

  • Theoretical perspectives relevant to understanding digital ecosystems and shared valuecreation

  • Conceptual frameworks for modelling digital ecosystems and shared value creation

  • Legislative policies, governance structures and communal regulations in digital ecosystemsfor shared value creation

  • Novel business models, especially models for shared and circular value creation

  • Privacy, ownership, and informed consent

  • Assessing economic, social, and/or environmental outcomes in digital ecosystems

 

References

1 Sorensen, C., 2011. Enterprise mobility: tiny technology with global impact on work C. Sorensen, ed., Palgrave Macmillan

2 Za, S., Spagnoletti, P. & North-Samardzic, A., 2014. Organisational learning as an emerging process: The generative role of digital tools in informal learning practices. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(6), pp.1023–1035.

3 Porter, M., and M. Kramer (2011) Creating Shared Value: How to Reinvent Capitalism and Unleash a Wave of Innovation and Growth. Harvard Business Review (89:1-2), pp. 1–17.

4 Ellen Macarthur Foundation (2016) Intelligent Assets: Unlocking the Circular Economy Potential.

5 Barrett, M., Davidson, E., Prabhu, J., & Vargo, S. L. (2015). Service innovation in the digital age: key contributions and future directions. MIS quarterly, 39(1), 135-154.

 

Publishing Opportunities in Leading Journals

We are working on a special issue proposal for Internet Research (IntR) and that journal’s publication opportunities will be updated in the near future.

 

Track Associate Editors

1. Sezgin Ayabakan, Assistant Professor, Temple University, USA

2. Alessio Maria Braccini, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Italy

3. Federica Ceci, Associate Professor, Università degli Studi “G.D'Annunzio” Chieti-Pescara, Italy

4. Panos Constantinides, Associate Professor, Warwick Business School, UK

5. Antonio Diaz Andrade, Associate Professor, Aukland University of Technology, New Zealand

6. Eduardo Diniz, Associate Professor, FGV - Fudacao Getulio Vargas, Brazil

7. Stan Karanasios, Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow, RMIT University, Australia

8. Tanel Kerikmäe, Professor, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia

9. Angelika Kokkinaki, Professor, University of Nicosia, Greece

10. Natalia Kryvinska, Associate Professor, University of Vienna, Austria

11. Thomas Kude, Associate Professor, ESSEC Business School, France

12. Alessandra Lazazzara, Assistant professor, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy

13. Francesco Paolone, Adjunct Professor, LUISS University, Rome, Italy

14. Roser Pujadas, LSE Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

15. Mark de Reuver, Associate Professor, Technical University Delft, Netherlands

16. Francesca Ricciardi, Associate Professor, Università di Torino, Italy

17. Alena Siarheyeva, Director MSc Business Engineer / Chair AIOTI Working Group Innovation Ecosystems, Yncréa Méditerranée University, France

18. Edin Smailhodzic, Lecturer, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen, Netherlands

19. Francesco Virili, Associate Professor, Università di Sassari, Italy

20. Gamel O. Wiredu, Associate Professor, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Ghana