Jonathan P. Allen

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at University of San Francisco

Latour’s analysis of the ‘elites’ of society, and their rejection of politics that accounts for the natural limits of our planet (the Terrestrial), offers Information Systems research a unique opportunity to analyze digital innovations in ways that reflect the overwhelming role of social ‘elites’ in steering technology directions. A proposed next s...

Our lives are increasingly touched by almost-ubiquitous information technology. Entrepreneurial enterprises, rather than traditional conglomerates developed much of this technology. Although entrepreneurship has long existed, the digital age has influenced the nature and impacts of entrepreneurship. The panel will consider questions related to the...

This chapter reviews arguments about the relationship between technology and inequality, the evidence for rising inequality in the most technologically advanced economies, and why rising inequality in a digital world is surprising. It presents two main schools of thought about the relationship—the ‘technological’ school, and the ‘institutional cont...

This chapter reviews debates about the Internet and the new digital economy. A unique aspect of digital technology is its potential to transform not only every stage of production, distribution, and consumption, but also the very mechanisms used to coordinate and regulate the economy. A digitally mediated economy, where digital technology, data, an...

The relationship between technology companies and aspects of their institutional context, such as regulation and taxation, is a less explored area in discussions of technology and inequality. This chapter discusses the role of intellectual property in wealth concentration , and technology companies’ use of it for tax avoidance purposes. Specific fo...

This chapter uses what we have learned about technology and inequality to find new opportunities for reducing inequality in a more digital world. Our key strategy is to focus on the ways financial value is created by the digital technology sector, and the specific ways that value is captured. Digitally mediated markets are a new and growing phenome...

Using our four-part framework of mediation, model, mobilization, and wealth effects, this chapter analyzes social media as a case study of technology and inequality. The digital mediation of social relationships has evolved from personal profiles and networks of friends and followers to an information feed that keeps users updated about new content...

This chapter builds a simple conceptual framework for analyzing technology and inequality, bringing together aspects of both the technological and institutional context schools . Drawing from the Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature, the framework begins with a ‘practice’ view of technological systems, including technology practice (how...

Using our simple conceptual framework of mediation, model, mobilization , and wealth effects, we analyze the case of online search. Search is a high-stakes commercial activity that strongly influences consumer attention and action. The mediation of search is an evolving contest between search companies trying to provide results that serve their bus...

Using the four-part framework of mediation, model, mobilization , and wealth effects, we analyze the case of the sharing economy. The digital technology used to mediate the sharing economy platforms has evolved to attract and maintain the trust of a diversity of buyers and sellers, while meeting the expectations of multi-billion dollar investors. T...

This chapter describes shifts in private wealth in the United States since 1980, away from real assets toward financial assets, and away from the energy and commodity sectors of the economy toward information technology and finance. We describe how major digital technology companies, despite their variety, share basic similarities in terms of finan...

This book will summarize what we know about technology and inequality across disciplines, and seek out new ways to analyze this relationship based on technology and business practices, with the objective of restoring digital technology as an engine of opportunity. Besides the unique focus on the role of technology in inequality, the book will have...

The sharing economy is a term used to describe an IT-fueled, rapidly growing social movement around collaborative consumption. This movement has the potential to significantly affect economic opportunity and broader culture. In this research- in-progress paper, we pose as a key question: how does technology mediation of the sharing economy movement...

Information systems (IS), since their introduction into organisations over five decades ago, have promised to streamline business processes, integrate disparate systems, increase innovation, and offer greater competitive advantage. Over the past decades, the evolution of Information Systems have mirrored many of the challenges experienced by our wo...

Given the growing economic impact of venture capital and the increasing amount of scholarly work in this field, an assessment of the relevance and value of venture capital research to practicing venture capitalists is appropriate. To better understand its usefulness, we employed a Delphi methodology to solicit professional venture capitalists’ insi...

Emerging-economy enterprises (EEEs) engage in strategic asset-seeking FDI (SAS FDI) for different reasons than traditional FDI. Previous studies suggest that a firm’s internal learning capability (absorptive capacity) and increased foreign competition (industry openness) might play a role in encouraging SAS FDI. Our study of recent Chinese outbound...

Open source communities can be deliberately designed to include competing vendors and customers. Work begins from a common base of non-differentiating technology. Staunch competitors are brought together under the auspices of a common, neutral institutional structure, creating joint interest in the widespread adoption and success of the open source...

Using online reviews in the co-creation of the service experience remains an attractive but elusive goal, based on case studies of how four high-end hotels in the western United States respond to customers’ reviews posted on TripAdvisor. Chosen specifically because they represent two divergent approaches for responding to reviews, the two sets of h...

Purpose This paper aims to present a theory of the perceived outcomes of open source software adoption for an organizational IT department. Design/methodology/approach The paper is an interpretive case study of three open source pilot projects in local government, based on interviews with IT management, IT staff, and users. Data analysis based on...

As open source software adoption becomes mainstream, the question shifts from whether organizations should use open source, to how organizations can best deploy and use open source. Based on three distinct types of organizational outcomes for open source use, we propose three different strategies for deploying open source: a substitution strategy,...

Many IS/IT departments today are under severe cost-cutting pressure, with frustrated users and a technical staff subject to the constant threat of outsourcing and layoffs. This case study reports on early experiences with deploying innovative new business applications using open source software at the City and County of San Francisco. While open so...

Knowledge sharing in contemporary research is seen largely as a particular kind of "social dilemma" the public goods problem. Because people can benefit from public goods whether they contribute to them or not, there will always be the temptation to free-ride off the contributions of others. Knowledge-sharing behavior is scarcer that many would pre...

Risk in Information Systems Security can be defined as a function of a given threat source's exercising a particular vulnerability and the resulting impact of that adverse event on the organization. Risk management is the process of identifying and assessing risk and taking steps to reduce it to an acceptable level given the costs involved in doing...

Contemporary knowledge management research assumes that people are reluctant to share their personal knowledge for the benefit of others. Yet in certain Web 2.0 communities, there is an abundance of knowledge sharing, not a scarcity. This paper explores a new approach to studying peer-based knowledge reproduction that examines the detailed socio-te...

Alternate reality games (ARG) represent a new genre of digital gaming designed to blur the distinction between a player's experience in the digital world inside the game and the real world outside the game. ARG's bring gamers together to collectively solve puzzles and advance a game's storyline. Two features of a successful ARG are a compelling sto...

While Sub-Saharan African women have historically assumed the roles of both housewives and subsistence farmers, they have had few opportunities to participate in the modern economies of the region. However, this trend is changing with the exponential ...

This position paper argues that the Web 2.0 phenomenon is an important object of study for information systems research, and that a social informatics approach to understanding Web 2.0 is particularly relevant and useful. We discuss Wikipedia as an example of empirical research on Web 2.0 that can help bridge the divide between academic and popular...

This paper examines the influence of information technology (IT) on a distinct but closely related industry, the video game industry. We conceptualize the effects of IT as a process of translating three related dimensions of a technological frame – technology performance, industry practices, and use vision – from one industry to another. Through hi...

Purpose To identify, classify, and propose a preliminary theory of the value conflicts and social choices that arise in enterprise system use. Design/methodology/approach Ethnographic case study of a medium‐sized manufacturing firm, using a participant‐observer approach. Findings Three areas of value conflict are identified between functional are...

Theories of sociotechnical change seek to understand technology as both material and social artifacts. Actor-network theory (ANT) offers an approach to sociotechnical change that has been criticized for emphasizing a micro-level analysis of political strategies at the expense of larger social and cultural processes. This paper presents an approach...

Researching and Developing Work Activities in Information Systems: Experiences and the Way Forward Full Text at Springer, may require registration or fee

Little is known about how viable new mobile applications emerge in complex commercial environments. Research in the sociology of technology suggests that the evolution of new applications is a process of social interaction between multiple constituencies, aiming to create a common definition of mobile technology problems and solutions that is obvio...

The growth of broadband connectivity expands what can and might be transmitted across the World Wide Web and Internet. Coupled with the increasing levels of mobile Internet connectivity, broadband may allow for a new round of changed patterns in the ways computers are used. Direct effects models of the deployment, use, value and futures of broadban...

Information systems (IS) are technology-based innovations. Argues for the need to develop an approach to IS research based on studies of technological innovation in the social sciences. While research on the adoption and diffusion of innovations has become a popular approach to implementation and use issues in IS research, IS research projects shou...

Handheld computers have been criticized as one of the most excessively hyped new IT products of all time. This paper looks at handheld computing predictions made over a 10 year period, investigating what went wrong, and what went right, with handheld computing predictions. Handheld computing predictions can be divided into three phases, depending o...

How can computer professionals shape the future of new computing technologies? Using the recent history of handheld computers as an example, this paper investigates how computer professionals can shape the future by helping to define what new technologies should be. Computer professionals can play a variety of roles in creating, maintaining, and qu...

How can computer professionals shape the future of new computingtechnologies? Using the recent history of handheld computers as anexample, this paper investigates how computer professionals canshape the future by helping to define what new technologies shouldbe. Computer professionals can play a variety of roles in creating,maintaining, and questio...

How can computer professionals shape the future of new computingtechnologies? Using the recent history of handheld computers as anexample, this paper investigates how computer professionals canshape the future by helping to define what new technologies shouldbe. Computer professionals can play a variety of roles in creating,maintaining, and questio...

Large-scale, cross-functional information systems are often adopted selectively—core features can be adopted and used routinely, while others are supplemented or replaced by local information systems. In a participant-observer study of a Japanese-owned, US-based electronics factory, the interpretations held by groups of their relationships with oth...

How does an increase in the availability of detailed electronic information about behavior change organizations, and what kinds of choices influence those changes? This paper presents a model of mutual control, derived from studies of detailed information sharing in manufacturing, that describes one set of likely changes. According to the mutual co...

Concerns about the privacy implications of computer-supported cooperative work technologies are on the rise. The celebrated benefits of CSCW technologies often stem from their ability to collect or provide greater access to potentially sensitive information about individual behavior, a fact not lost on CSCW developers and researchers concerned with...

An abstract is not available.

The Advanced Integrated Manufacturing Environments (AIME) project has been a multi-year study of coordination changes in US manufacturing firms implementing new information technologies. AIME project research has confirmed the need for a behavioral view of coordination, using theories from organizational sociology and institutional economics. IT ca...

Open source business applications will require community contribu- tions from business experts with relatively modest technical skills. This position paper briefly examines how active communities have developed around open source platforms that separate core programming code from functional add-ons and user interface add-ons, and how this separatio...

A popular philosophy of manufacturing reform commonly referred to as "World Class Manufacturing", calls for the adoption of organizational practices that significantly alter coordination within and between manufacturing firms. These practices are intended to enable continuous improvement, speed up response time, improve product quality, and create...