M.N. Ravishankar

• PhD
• Dean at Queen's University Belfast

Product innovation strategies of emerging market companies are increasingly challenging conventional wisdom. Drawing on a qualitative case study of Mahindra Reva, the only electric vehicle producer in India, this paper explores how a bricolage strategy enabled a resource-constrained emerging market firm to deliver affordable, innovative, and high-t...

Impact sourcing – the practice of bringing digitally-enabled outsourcing jobs to marginalized individuals – is an important emerging social innovation in the outsourcing industry. The impact sourcing model of delivering Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing (IT–BPO) services not only seeks to deliver business value for clients, bu...

In Information Systems (IS) research on cross-cultural issues, cultural categories are typically introduced as analytical labels that explain why and how organizational groups in different parts of the world act and think differently. However, broad cultural categories can also be discursively mobilized by organizational members as strategic adapti...

Using qualitative methods, this paper explores how impact sourcing (ImS) ventures frame their activities to marginalized communities. In doing so, the paper attempts to unearth the social–psychological processes undergirding ImS strategies. The findings highlight the difficulties faced by ImS ventures in operationalizing their strategic intent. Mor...

Public Information and Communications Technology (ICT) innovations are seen as having the potential to usher in a new era of technology-enabled models of governance in emerging economies. While it may be desirable for the implementation of such innovations to be underpinned by precise planning, structure and clarity, policy implementers in emerging...

Venture-failure is a common experience for many entrepreneurs, but the strategies they adopt in framing venture-failure narratives to public audiences is not well studied. Addressing this knowledge gap, the study examines how entrepreneurs construct stories that stimulate responses from public audiences during the “moving on” phase. Our analysis of...

Digital tools can help mitigate serious threats to social and economic activity created by external shocks and reduced government funding. This paper complements Information Technology for Development (IT4D) studies of resilience by focusing on how the introduction of new digital tools can sustain both economic and social activities, potentially le...

Organizations rely on globally distributed work (GDW) to take advantage of complementary objectives. In typical arrangements, highly skilled onshore teams focus on strategy and customer interactions, while offshore teams focus on repetitive back-office activities, reducing costs and improving efficiencies. Individually, each side can operate within...

Information Systems (IS) research has taken significant interest in the migration of tasks across firm and national boundaries. In particular, the IS sourcing literature has explored the migration of IT-enabled tasks to both internal support units (insourcing) and external providers (outsourcing) in different parts of the world.

Big data and algorithmic decision-making have been touted as game-changing developments in management research, but they have their limitations. Qualitative approaches should not be cast aside in the age of digitalisation, since they facilitate understanding of quantitative data and the questioning of assumptions and conclusions that may otherwise...

This paper presents a new perspective on the problem of bias in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven decision-making by examining the fundamental difference between AI and human rationality in making sense of data. Current research has focused primarily on software engineers’ bounded rationality and bias in the data fed to algorithms but has neglect...

Digital technologies create myriad innovation opportunities and have inspired the establishment of many new start-ups in recent years. Despite the growing knowledge on digital entrepreneurship, few studies explore how start-ups exploit these opportunities to achieve entrepreneurial success. The purpose of this paper is to explore start-ups’ capabil...

Purpose This paper examines how entrepreneurship focused programs build capacities for disadvantaged groups to pursue more dignified lives. The struggles of disadvantaged entrepreneurs against pronounced structural constraints are well documented, but less is known about how targeted programs of entrepreneurship focused support change the status qu...

Governance of the Internet is a matter of global importance and concern. The multi-stakeholder (MS) and multilateral (ML) forms have been presented as two competing and plausible models of Internet governance. Drawing on actor–network theory (ANT) and building on an interpretive case study of rich archival data, this paper examines how the focal ac...

Via a multiple case study of work in microfinance institutions in India, this paper reports on the experiences of field officers and branch managers following work digitalisation. It identifies and explains an intriguing post‐digitalisation paradox of reported increased job satisfaction and tighter technological control diminishing branch managers'...

Prosocial P2P lending platforms are a novel and powerful example of a digital social innovation (DSI) in which the operating model relies primarily on digital technologies and the overarching focus is on the “social” aspect of the innovation. These platforms establish a virtual connection between low‐income individuals and lenders, helping the form...

Financial technology (fintech) is seen as possessing significant potential to provide the poor access to financial services and help them escape the clutches of poverty. Surprisingly, Information Systems (IS) research has engaged little with fintech's promise of fostering financial inclusion for the poor. In the spirit of ‘making a better world wit...

In globally distributed environments, gaps exist between an organisational‐level decision to migrate IT‐enabled tasks and the actual execution of strategy since a high‐level consensus does not always specify the precise sequencing and pacing of task migration in detail. This absence of operational‐level detailing can trigger status‐led enactments o...

Tensions are a major source of communication problems, coordination issues, and conflict in globally distributed work. In this article, we argue that extant literature falls short of addressing tensions in globally distributed work at two levels. First, it fails to fully account for the intrinsic and entrenched nature of tensions in globally distri...

In this paper we examine how highly vulnerable migrants who exist at the margins of society use mobile phones to achieve a sense of belongingness and control in their precarious life situations. Drawing on the belongingness hypothesis from Baumeister and Leary (1995), we analyse ethnographic data collected during long-term fieldwork (2018-2019) amo...

This paper proposes qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as a novel method to harness unstructured data sets such as publicly available reports and news articles. It shows how QCA and conventional qualitative IS research can complement each other. In particular, it demonstrates how qualitative IS research can combine typical qualitative coding te...

In this paper we introduce the concept of Digital Social Entrepreneurship (DSE), which refers to the entrepreneurial work of social ventures centred on digital technologies. DSE presents one particular form of hybridity, related to the need to blend digital and non-digital capabilities in the same organisational unit. To understand how such capabil...

Cloud computing is being viewed as an effective enabler for enhanced operational efficiency and flexibility in competitive business environments. Despite the increased knowledge on cloud computing, very few studies have been conducted to explore vendors' capabilities for service development and delivery. This gap prevents us from developing a full...

Research has established that ambidextrous organizations can successfully outperform their non-ambidextrous counterparts through exploitative and exploratory activities. However, there remains a scarcity of research on how managers orchestrate ambidexterity at the operational level, particularly in project delivery. Drawing on 55 qualitative interv...

In addition to their professional social media accounts, individuals are increasingly using their personal profiles and casual posts to communicate their identities to work colleagues. They do this in order to ‘stand out from the crowd’ and to signal attributes that are difficult to showcase explicitly in a work setting. Existing studies have tende...

Social enterprises need to be ambidextrous, i.e. simultaneously pursue social and financial goals. In this paper we focus on how digital social entrepreneurs at the base of the pyramid implement ambidextrous strategies. We draw on a case study of Rang De, India’s first platform for the delivery of credit to the poor, whose ecosystem involves multip...

In this inductive, qualitative study, we observe how Uber, a company often hailed as being the poster-child of the sharing economy facilitated through a digital platform may also at times represent and reinforce postcapitalist hyper-exploitation. Drawing on the motivations and lived experiences of 31 Uber drivers in Toronto, Canada, we provide insi...

It has been suggested that social media foster innovative outcomes by facilitating communication with a vast network of new connections. In this paper we argue that forming new social connections on social media is a crucial first step in the innovation process that is not straightforward to achieve. We report on the findings of a qualitative study...

Purpose Organisational implementations of information technology (IT) normally fail due to cultural forces that inhibit the usage levels required to facilitate successful IT implementation. This paper explores IT implementation from an IT Culture perspective (Leidner and Kayworth, 2006). In particular, it identifies and follows the trajectory of I...

Impact sourcing (ImS) is the practice of bringing digitally enabled outsourcing jobs to underprivileged communities. While such jobs are attractive and improve life chances, situated ImS employees face the difficult task of transitioning from their traditional communities to the relatively modern ImS workplace. These transition experiences expose t...

Purpose It is known from research that the right context can help managers develop an ambidextrous approach. But just as few of us are naturally ambidextrous, many managers fail to balance conformity and change during strategy implementation. This paper aims to investigate why. Design/methodology/approach Through a qualitative study of managers...

Climate change is one of the big challenges facing humanity today. Environmental values have spread globally and consumer beliefs are pressurizing firms in almost all industries to comply with green regulations. Sustainability has become such an important part of business strategy that almost every major company now has an executive with “sustainab...

Some information system (IS) studies have adopted organisational culture (OC) theory to investigate IS implementations. The studies highlight that members will reach consensus or agreement in the use of an IS but also experience inevitable tensions and ambiguities in the utilization of the IS. However, literature related to IS implementation/OC has...

Some information system IS studies have adopted organisational culture OC theory to investigate IS implementations. The studies highlight that members will reach consensus or agreement in the use of an IS but also experience inevitable tensions and ambiguities in the utilization of the IS. However, literature related to IS implementation/OC has rar...

Multinational organizations now increasingly source tasks from nearshore units. While, offshore locations promise superior opportunities for cost savings and access to large scale, flexible workforces, organizations are increasingly distributing work much closer to home (Deloitte 2014). One of the biggest attractions of nearshore locations is proxi...

Social media is ubiquitous and most professionals feel compelled to use it for both personal and professional purposes. Although interacting with workplace colleagues and managers across online-offline and work-life offers several advantages, it also poses several image related challenges. This study aims to assess how individuals manage their imag...

Purpose – Social media technologies are used by many organizations to project a positive image of their strategies and operations. At the same time, however, there are an increasing number of reports of slip-ups linked to poor situational awareness and flawed self-presentations on social media platforms. The purpose of this paper is to explore the...

Extant research tends to view firm level offshoring strategies and micro level motivational drivers as self-contained units of analysis. By contrast, this paper draws on an inductive study of two global service firms to demonstrate how the implementation and success of an advanced task offshoring strategy depends on certain systemic interdependenci...

Impact sourcing (ImS) is the practice of bringing digitally enabled outsourcing jobs to marginalized individuals. The idea that ImS can play a role in providing sustainable livelihoods to marginalized individuals in the global south is steadily gaining credence among academics and practitioners. The claims of ImS ventures of positively impacting li...

This book constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 15th IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society, I3E 2016, held in Swansea, UK, in September 2016 The 47 full and 17 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 90 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: social media...

http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2015/proceedings/ISstrategy/9/

Purpose – Despite the ever-growing number of PhD students all over the world, there remain significant doubts about whether entering students in business and management disciplines fully understand the process of producing a PhD thesis, defending it and developing a coherent publication strategy. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to offer some gu...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the papers in the special issue. Design/methodology/approach – A general description of each paper in the special issue is provided. The introduction highlights the need for more research into the broad topic of the global elite. Findings – Research in the social sciences uses a very broad defin...

Information systems (IS) studies highlight that IS usage, a pre-requisite for IS diffusion, may be difficult to attain when usage is voluntary because users can resist using the system. User resistance may be overcome through the application of organizational controls. Control theory explains how users’ actions and practices are shaped in line with...

Social media technologies are used by many organisations to project a positive image of their strategies and operations. At the same time, however, there are an increasing number of reports of slip-ups linked to poor situational awareness and flawed self- presentations on social media platforms. Drawing on a qualitative study of 31 owner-managers i...

This paper summarizes a panel discussion held at the 18th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) in Chengdu, China, 2014, with the same title. The panel discussed the future of outsourcing in the Asia- Pacific region (specifically the importance of outsourcing, new trends, and issues in outsourcing). This paper provides directions f...

Strategic resources are key inputs to strategy that can form the basis of superior service performance, yet there is scarce research on the strategic resources used by managers to realise ambidexterity: the simultaneous pursuit of alignment and adaptability. In this article, we draw on a qualitative case study of a leading European airline and exam...

In this paper we use qualitative methods to explore how impact sourcing (ImS) ventures frame their activities to marginalized communities. We use the theory of frame alignment to unearth the various social-psychological processes which undergird the venture’s efforts. The results of our study broadly point to the difficulties which ImS ventures fac...

Global service firms are increasingly moving advanced tasks to popular offshoring destinations such as India. Despite the significant influence of micro-level motivational mechanisms on the implementation and success of such offshoring strategies, empirical research in this area is still in its early stages. In this paper, taking a grounded theory...

There is a growing body of research on the successes and failures of information and communications technology (ICT) projects in the public sector. However, this literature has rarely addressed the question: why do some projects persist and continue despite functioning poorly in several areas. In this paper, we suggest that the notions of instituti...

Purpose – Outsourcing is in a new era: an era of value-adding services, innovation and transformation. An era that shifts competition to skills and expertise where the main focus of key players in the industry is on the strategic impact of outsourcing services. As the outsourcing landscape is changing, so competition between countries for outsourci...

Information systems success and failure are among the most prominent streams in IS research. Explanations of why some IS fulfill their expectations, whereas others fail, are complex and multi-factorial. Despite the efforts to understand the underlying factors, the IS failure rate remains stubbornly high. A Panel session was held at the IFIP Working...

A number of information system (IS) studies have adopted organizational culture (OC) theory to investigate IS implementations. The studies highlight that members will reach consensus or agreement in the use of an IS but also experience inevitable tensions and ambiguities in the use of the IS. However, literature related to IS implementation/OC has...

This symposium develops, conceptually and empirically, a number of themes and topics related to global elites. Recognizing that global elites and globally mobile professionals are important in global political, economic and sociological terms, as well as in terms of global business, the symposium aims to focus and broaden our understanding of elite...

Information technology (IT) development in global organisations relies heavily on the transfer of tacit and complex knowledge from onshore units to offshore subsidiaries. A central concern of such organisations is the development of social capital, which is known to facilitate the smooth transfer of knowledge. However, only a few studies in IS rese...

In recent years India has become the information technology (IT) offshoring destination of choice for many Western organizations. From the perspective of vendor organizations in India, however, the IT offshoring phenomenon is more than just a business relationship with Western firms. It is also embedded within the context of the longstanding imbala...

Modularity in organizations can facilitate the creation and development of dynamic capabilities. Paradoxically, however, modular management can also stifle the strategic potential of such capabilities by conflicting with the horizontal integration of units. We address these issues through an examination of how modular management of information tech...

In this paper, we use qualitative methods to explore how social information technology (IT) sourcing organizations balance the paradoxical orientations of commerce and social upliftment. We apply the theory of organizational impression management to explore how such organizations meet the demands imposed by multiple audiences. The results of our st...

Many organizations still fail to make a return from the huge investments they make in implementing complex Information Technology (IT). This is usually due to cultural forces that inhibit the level of usage required to facilitate IT Diffusion. An emerging stream of research highlights the IT culture perspective, a perspective vital for understandin...

In this paper, we examine individuals’ career migration across international borders. It is widely recognized that globalization has fundamental implications for the careers of people across geographical and cultural boundaries. However, our understanding of the interplay of migration, career development and national/cultural identities remains und...

In fast changing business environments, firms' dynamic capabilities help them to identify and exploit market opportunities. Customer agility is a vital dynamic capability, which helps managers identify untapped customer demand and reconfigure existing firm assets and capabilities. The purpose of this research-in-progress paper is to set the stage f...

While IT offshoring has generated heated debates both in scholarly circles and in the popular press, its impact on professional role identities and career experiences of situated individuals in both onshore and offshore locations has received much less attention. In this paper, we present a qualitative case study featuring a large global German tec...

While IT offshoring has generated heated debates both in scholarly circles and in the popular press, its impact on professional role identities and career experiences of situated individuals in both onshore and offshore locations has received much less attention. In this paper, we present a qualitative case study featuring a large global German tec...

Two important gaps exist in the information systems (IS) alignment research. First, there is scant research on the potential of organizational culture, and specifically subcultures to influence the strategic alignment of IS and organizations. Second, there is a dearth of literature that considers the relationship between alignment and implementatio...

Through a qualitative study of business unit managers from an international airline, we build theory about the underlying features of organisational context that are most critical in developing contextual ambidexterity. We found that strategic capital defines a context that allows the meta-capabilities of alignment and adaptability to simultaneousl...

This article is closed access until April 2012. It was accepted for publication in the Industrial Relations Journal [© Blackwell Publishing Ltd] and the definitive version is available at: http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0019-8692&site=1 This paper is based on case studies of two organizations: a financial services company located in the Un...

In this paper, we report on the implementation of a public information systems (IS) project in Bangalore, India. Our analysis of the Bangalore One (B1) project demonstrates the deployment of both formal and informal control mechanisms at different stages of the project. The use of informal control mechanisms to establish control over several crucia...

In the last fifteen years, researchers and practitioners alike have promoted knowledge management (KM) as an essential element of organizational life, and have promised a variety of competitive advantages from implementing strategic KM programs. Fifteen years on, and after extensive research in the field, we are still unclear about the competencies...

Information technology (IT) outsourcing vendor organizations contain isolated business units whose creation and sustenance greatly facilitate business operations. But they also introduce important challenges for organizational knowledge management (KM). In this paper, based on 7 months of intensive field-work at India Inc., a leading Indian IT firm...

Organizations position their formal knowledge management (KM) initiatives as a continuous process of deriving strategic benefits from the knowledge resources dispersed in the various internal constituencies. While most organizations implement a rewards program attached to their KM initiative, the influence exerted by such programs on employees' res...

This paper discusses some of the difficulties and challenges that an information technology (IT) firm in a developing country faces in its attempt to become a global player. In 1999, the firm KnowICT embarked on a strategic project called Knowledge Management (KM), whose main purpose was to unify and integrate knowledge that resided in the various...

Organizations position their formal Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives as a continuous process of deriving strategic benefits from the knowledge resources dispersed in the various internal constituencies. Thus, gaining a deeper awareness of the diverse viewpoints and attributes of their various units is a big challenge for organizations embracin...

Organizations implementing knowledge management (KM) initiatives are concerned with promoting sharing and transferring of knowledge, within and across different organizational units. Thus, gaining a deeper awareness of the diverse viewpoints and attributes of the various organizational units is one of the important challenges facing organization-wi...

Modularity in organizations is shown to facilitate the creation of dynamic capabilities. While modular designs, systems and processes of product-based organizations are often thoroughly analysed in the literature, the increasing inclination towards modularity amongst organizations offering services such as Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) remains...