Workshops

Design Research Workshop on Digital Transformation of Urban Experiences

November 1-3 2007
Student Activities Centre
Temple University Main Campus

The Philadelphia Wireless Project promises to deliver affordable broadband wireless services to citizens in all areas of the city. It is the largest project of its kind in the world and may transform the urban landscape of the City of Philadelphia by enhancing the lives of community neighborhoods and overcoming the digital divide. Temple University has partnered with the City of Philadelphia to envision how a broadband wireless network can transform the lives and experiences of its citizens and visitors alike. The Philadelphia Wireless Project provides a source of inspiration for novel ideas as well as a living laboratory for examining new applications. Bill Mitchell, Professor and Director MIT Media Lab Smart Cities, will keynote the conference and set the stage.

Cities-arguably the most ambitious and successful of humankind’s design achievements-have become mired in problems like accidents, crime, poverty, traffic and pollution. Despite the advancements in society at large, a significant portion of urban residents have been left behind. The emergence of digital technology gives us a chance to re-shape the landscape of the urban community. We have the opportunity, as well as responsibility, to design this emerging digital urban environment right, so that it benefits people in all walks of life. It requires the creation of both a large-scale information infrastructure that will cut through existing physical and social infrastructures in the city and the design of new services and applications. It also requires new media both in form and function that can take advantage of the mobility and the ubiquity of information. It forces us to re-think the meanings of familiar activities, while at the same time it allows us to envision novel forms of social interactions. It demands new forms of partnership between public and private sectors, researchers and practice, and the social and technical realms. The digital urban community, then, is a socio-technical innovation space where new forms of digitally mediated social interactions are designed and the meanings of old social interactions are re-shaped and mediated through new technologies.

The Designing Digital Communities Workshop
The workshop organized by the Institute for Business and Information Technology, Fox School of Business, Temple University will be the first in a series of activities that will bring together leading academics and practitioners to analyze, design and describe ways to transform urban communities. Designers, architects, technologists, artists, policymakers, engineers and entrepreneurs will join academics in management, economics, architecture, communication, history and sociology to identify visionary design scenarios and narratives of future digital urban communities. The participants will look for examples, images, stories and vocabularies that can inspire both research and practice going forward. The workshop will:

• consider how a ubiquitous information infrastructure can transform everyday experiences
• explore design challenges in realizing the vision of a digital community, and
• influence the transformation of an urban community through the use of technology.

The Design Challenge
Design is positioned as a central theme in bringing together diverse perspectives that are necessary to realizing the vision of digital urban environments. Through the power of the design attitude the world can be made better by bringing entrepreneurial and technical knowledge together with the advances in digital technologies. Design thinking balances technical and engineering excellence with humanistic values, and rational analysis with aesthetic judgment. Design thinking can solve existing problems, but also evoke new images of urban life experiences, new social institutions and partnerships, and new models of value in our lives.

The workshop will take the everyday experience of Philadelphia residents and visitors as the point of departure for design inquiry. We will focus on three groups: residents in center city including underprivileged residents, commuters, and visitors. Participants will envision new technology, services, business models, and research projects that can enhance the everyday experience of one of these three groups by taking advantage of a citywide broadband wireless infrastructure.

Each attendee will write a short statement (c.a. 500-1000 words) that addresses a critical aspect of transforming everyday life as experienced by one of the three target populations. These statements will offer a basis for intensive discussion. Participants will be divided into small groups, each focusing on one of the four target populations. Small group discussions will be punctuated with plenary sessions for open dialogue and a keynote.

Participants
The workshop is by invitation only and will include leading practitioners, innovators and entrepreneurs who are thinking about the state of the art digital technology, as well as leading academics in related fields. We will provide hotel and food. There is no registration fee.

Impact and Deliverables
By systematically involving leading innovators and entrepreneurs along with leading academics in exploring and envisioning the future of a digital urban community, we intend to serve as a catalyst for the creation of ubiquitous information environments that serve in realizing human ideals and values. This will in turn stimulate companies and organizations to design new products, new services and new organizational forms. By creating a space for conversations across different disciplines, we believe that the workshop and related activities will create a significant opportunity to stimulate new approaches to interdisciplinary research that could have enduring consequences in enhancing the quality of life through the design and use of emerging digital technologies.

The workshop will result in an edited book on the theme of digital community design and ubiquitous information environments. The book will be used to drive future research and impact into the broader community. We also expect that the workshop will result in specific new collaborative research and development projects.

Further Information
Please contact Professor Youngjin Yoo at youngjin.yoo@temple.edu or +1-215-204-3058.

Program Committee

• Richard Boland, Case Western Reserve University
• Fred Collopy, Case Western Reserve University
• Peter Coughlan, IDEO
• Dan Fesenmaier, Temple University
• Munir Mandviwalla, Temple University
• Youngjin Yoo (Chair), Temple University

March 26-27, 2004
The 5th Annual International Business Research Forum
Temple University CIBER and Institute for Business and Information Technology
Philadelphia, PA

Organizers

• Masaaki Kotabe
• Munir Mandviwalla

Overview

Over the years, two fundamental counteracting forces have shaped the nature of international business operations and research. The same counteracting forces have been revisited by many authors in such terms as “standardization vs. adaptation” (1960s-70s), “globalization vs. localization” (1970s-80s), and then “global integration vs. local responsiveness” (1980s-90s). If the recent explosive growth of information technology (IT) is considered, one could suggest a new IT-relevant one, “online scale vs. offline sensitivity,” to the litany of the supply-side and demand-side counteracting forces.Although terms have changed, the quintessence of the strategic dilemma that globally operating companies face has not changed and may even remain unchanged for years to come. Are these terms just fashionable dichotomous (either/or) concepts of the time without some deep meanings? Or has something inherently changed in the nature of global strategy and competition under the influence of IT? Indeed, more recent views suggest these counteracting forces are no longer an either/or issue. Forward-looking, proactive firms have the ability and willingness to accomplish both tasks simultaneously.As a result, changes wrought by IT are profound and need to be expressly incorporated in international business (IB) theory development. Theoretical concepts (e.g., transaction costs, information asymmetry, and cultural distance) and operational concepts (e.g., product development cycle, product differentiation, and market segmentation) may need to be recast in light of the growth of IT.

In this research forum we wish to foster a dialogue among scholars studying the effect of IT on IB strategy and theory development in an attempt to develop a more integrated view of the working of the modern MNCs in the global marketplace. About twelve papers will be selected for presentation at the 5th Annual IB Research Forum at Temple University, scheduled for March 26-27, 2004. Temple CIBER and Institute for Business and Information Technology will cover the presenters’ travel and lodging expenses. Subsequently, the best papers from the research forum will be published in a Special Issue of the Journal of International Management.

October 16, 2003
8:30 AM – 1:00 PM, Speakman Hall 318 (Carzo Room)
Fox School of Business and Management
Temple University

David Schuff
Workshop Chair

Overview

Despite a global economic slowdown and the recent troubles plaguing the technology sector, Information Technology spending remains a significant component of an organization’s expenses. However, there is continued debate about the best way to assess these investments. The inherent difficult in correctly assessing the value of IT is reflected by the “productivity paradox,” where technology investments do not appear to yield significant increases in output, and by the notion of Total Cost of Ownership, where the initial investment only accounts for a small portion of overall costs. The “social costs” of Information Technology, or the way in which a technology can influence the workplace, has also been considered as a way of evaluating investments in IT.

Results

The half-day research workshop covered a variety of topics. Some of those topics were the assessment and measurement of IT project success, the link between technology and firm performance, realizing the benefits of IT investment, and the cost implications of software customization and the use of open source software. Research faculty at the Fox School of Business, Villanova University, and Lehigh University presented their work, joined by invited commentator Nicholas Economidis, Assistant Vice President of AIG eBusiness Risk Solutions. Each participant’s presentation consisted of a brief overview of their idea, followed by a discussion  focusing on ways to refine their research going forward.

One common theme that emerged from the group discussion was the need to determining concrete, reliable metrics for the assessment of the true costs and benefits of technology investments. A potential solution suggested was to use managerial perceptions of benefits, while others suggested using a simplified model with easily measurable variables (i.e., lines of code) to provide an reasonable estimate of true costs.

Goals of the Workshop

The goal of the IBIT Workshop Series is to provide an informal setting in which to present and discuss important research issues for future work and explore opportunities for collaboration. Presentations are kept short to allow time for discussion.

Topics

• Financial evaluation of IT investments
• Models to explain investment behavior
• Evaluating risk versus return for information technology investments
• Effects of IT investments on an organization’s social structure
• Evaluating productivity resulting from technology
• Metrics for costs and benefits of IT investments

Format of Submissions

Submissions (in the style of a “position paper”) should be no more than two single-spaced pages (using Times Roman 12 point font). This includes a brief abstract and an overview of the basic concepts of the program of research. Specific formatting is up to the author, although a bullet-point style would be most effective, highlighting new ideas, models, and the theoretical background.

Please submit your position paper by email to David Schuff by Friday, August 1, 2003. You will be notified about the decision of the program committee by Tuesday, September 2, 2003.

Publication

The proceedings of the workshop will be published as part of the official working papers series of the Institute for Business and Information Technology. You will also be eligible to apply for seed funding from the Institute for Business and Information Technology.

For more information, contact David Schuff (David.Schuff@temple.edu).

Thursday, March 6, 2003, 8am – 2pm
Fox School of Business and Management
Temple University

Lynne Andersson
Workshop Chair

The workshop is intended to provide an opportunity for scholars broadly interested in issues surrounding cyberdeviance to come together to discuss and gain helpful critique of their research papers or works-in-progress in an informal setting. The workshop is limited to a maximum of 12 participants.

Workshop Results

The Institute for Business and Information Technology recently hosted a one-day research workshop on the topic of “Cyberdeviance in the Digital Economy: Ethical, Legal, and Economic Implications.” Chaired by Fox School Assistant Professor Lynne Andersson, the workshop provided an engaging forum for scholars interested in understanding the manifestations, causes and consequences of computer-mediated behaviors that run counter to the laws, ethical standards, and/or economic goals governing business organizations. Eleven attendees from Temple and three other area universities (Drexel, NJ Institute of Technology, Saint Joseph’s) presented their research on varied topics such as unethical corporate practices in brand communities, cyberloafing and dysfunctional personal web usage in the workplace, and the potential for loss of personal and corporate freedoms posed by the increasing electronic presence of governments around the world. As a group, participants explored linkages among the theoretical frameworks informing their work as well as the methodological issues unique to the study of corporate and individual behavior in cyberspace. The day concluded with a discussion of possible interventions, including a lively debate concerning the need to incorporate social requirements into the design of information technology systems to foster legitimacy and thus prevent social benefits from corporate cyberdeviant behaviors.

Call for Proposals

Increasingly, business social interactions and economic transactions occur within the broad and constantly changing social context of cyberspace. Research from various disciplines (e.g., communication, computer science, cultural studies, information systems, legal studies, linguistics, marketing, organization and management theory, philosophy, psychology) and varied paradigmatic perspectives has generated rapidly accumulating knowledge of the psychological and experiential features that characterize computer-mediated communication.

Many of these features (e.g., limited sensory experience; invisibility and anonymity; access to numerous and varied relationships; permanent recording and reproducibility) enhance the ambiguous nature of social and economic transactions in cyberspace, creating an environment ripe for disinhibition and social contagion – and thus conducive of behaviors that can be construed as “cyberdeviant.”

Forms of cyberdeviance in the digital economy are many and varied, encompassing behaviors occurring within and between organizations as well as between organizations and their customers. Some directly violate established ethical norms; others fall into a moral gray area. Examples of cyberdeviance include:

inappropriate use of e-mail ∙ spamming ∙ ethnocentrism ∙ harassment ∙ cyberloafing ∙ bandwidth banditry ∙ flaming ∙ forgery ∙ data theft ∙ hackery ∙ cyberaddiction ∙ misleading electronic representation ∙ impostering ∙ eavesdropping ∙ undisclosed surveillance ∙ data manipulation ∙ electronic corporate shilling ∙ viral marketing ∙ cyberterror

The potential ethical, legal, and economic implications of these and other forms cyberdeviance in the digital economy are profound. Some of the many possible questions for exploration include:

• How can cyberdeviance be defined in the realm of the digital economy, a context in which norms are not yet fully established?
• Why might various forms of cyberdeviance occur in business interactions and transactions?
• What theoretical frameworks can be used to conceptualize and better understand cyberdeviant business behaviors?
• What social science, ethical, and/or legal methodologies could be employed to examine cyberdeviant business behaviors?
• What are businesses and/or governments doing to curtail cyberdeviant business behaviors and protect employees and consumers?