Search

Problem definition: In this work, we examine how ridesharing platforms affect changes in short-term vehicle purchasing. On the one hand, if the introduction of such platforms motivates owners to use the idle capacity of their existing vehicles to accrue rents, vehicle sales might fall. On the other hand, if the platform induces would-be drivers to purchase new vehicles in order to participate, vehicle sales might rise. Academic/practical relevance: Whereas operations management researchers have begun to broach this subject analytically, this work provides empirical evidence of the impact of ridesharing platforms on new vehicle ownership. Further, we assess heterogeneity in the effect across vehicle type and location. Methodology: We examine this tension using a unique data set of new vehicle registrations in China. In doing so, we exploit the variation in the timing of Uber entry using a difference-in-difference approach. Results: Findings suggest Uber entry is associated with a significant short-term increase in private new vehicle ownership, indicating that consumers actively change their stock of held resources to capture excess rents offered by the platform. These effects exclusively manifest among vehicle brands that qualify for the platform. Further, inasmuch as sales of vehicles with smaller displacement increase more than large-displacement vehicles, results indicate that the effect of Uber entry varies considerably across vehicle types. Finally, results indicate that the effects are stronger in locations where established public transportation options are weaker. Managerial implications: Results provide initial evidence that manufacturers can benefit from the emergence of the sharing economy, especially manufacturers whose products align with the needs of platform participants. For policy makers, our findings further undercut claims made by platforms that the individuals working on them are exploiting already existing resources, suggesting some form of nascent professionalism on the part of platform workers. Funding: The research was supported by the Key Program of National Natural Science of China [Grant 71832010]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.1183 .

Access to short-term capital remains a pressing problem for many people, especially those facing medical emergencies or needing immediate care. Peer-to-peer lending platforms have the ability to resolve these capital constraints by providing access to small to medium sums of money in an environment that is private and protective of personal information. In this study, we consider how the introduction of P2P lending platforms, and the resulting access to capital, influences local abortion rates, a medical procedure characterized by significant financial barriers and social stigma. We find that the entry of the P2P platform LendingClub is associated with an increase in the rate at which women choose to not carry to term. We argue that the availability of capital through these platforms, when combined with privacy protections, is able to reduce the financial barriers women face when accessing abortion services. This observed effect is stronger in more religious areas and areas with lower levels of education, indicating that social frictions and stigma may be higher in these areas, and also showing where providing an additional channel for funding is more influential.

Although significant research has examined the effect of enterprise information systems on the behavior and careers of employees, the majority of this work has been devoted to the study of blue- and gray-collar workers, with little attention paid to the transformative effect information technology may have on high-status professionals. In this paper, we begin to bridge this gap by examining how highly skilled professionals react to the increasing presence of enterprise systems within their organizations. Specifically, we investigate how the implementation of enterprise systems—in the form of electronic health records—affects the decision of physicians to continue practicing at their current hospital. Results suggest that when enterprise systems create complementarities for professionals, their duration of practice at the organization increases significantly. However, when technologies are disruptive and force professionals to alter their routines, there is a pronounced exodus from the organization. Interestingly, these effects are strongly moderated by individual and organizational characteristics, such as the degree of firm-specific human capital, local competition, and the prevalence of past disruptions, but are not associated with accelerated retirement or the strategic poaching of talent by competing organizations.

Electronic health records (EHRs) adoption has become nearly universal during the past decade. Academic research into the effects of EHRs has examined factors influencing adoption, clinical care benefits, financial and cost implications, and more. We provide an interdisciplinary overview and synthesis of this literature, drawing on work in public and population health, informatics, medicine, management information systems, and economics. We then chart paths forward for policy, practice, and research.

Recent work has emphasized the benefits of patient–physician concordance on clinical care outcomes for underrepresented minorities, arguing it can ameliorate outgroup biases, boost communication, and increase trust. We explore concordance in a setting where racial disparities are particularly severe: childbirth. In the United States, Black newborns die at three times the rate of White newborns. Results examining 1.8 million hospital births in the state of Florida between 1992 and 2015 suggest that newborn–physician racial concordance is associated with a significant improvement in mortality for Black infants. Results further suggest that these benefits manifest during more challenging births and in hospitals that deliver more Black babies. We find no significant improvement in maternal mortality when birthing mothers share race with their physician.

Although the adoption of new technology has received significant attention in management research, investigations of abandonment have lagged. In this study, we examine differences in the rates of abandonment of medical technologies based on whether abandonment occurs in response to the emergence of a superior technology or in light of new information questioning its efficacy. We link differences in responses to underlying differences in the missions and incentives of organizations. Examining coronary stents across three technological regime changes using a census of approximately two million patients admitted to Florida hospitals from 1995 to 2007, we show meaningful differences across three hospital types: for-profit, not-for-profit, and academic medical centers. Results show that for-profit hospitals abandon the earlier generation in favor of a superior technology faster than not-for-profit hospitals, but this is not the case if the efficacy of the technology is questioned. Academic medical centers, however, have the highest rates of abandonment under both triggers. Importantly, we find that organizational factors dominate physician differences as explanatory factors for abandonment. Implications of these findings are twofold. First, we identify the factors likely at play, i.e., the salience of norms of science and the corresponding trade-offs with economic benefits, when organizations make abandonment decisions. Second, our work underscores the importance of organizational mission, which dominates individual preferences in determining rates of abandonment. This paper was accepted by David Hsu, entrepreneurship and innovation.

BACKGROUND Alcohol consumption is associated with a wide range of adverse health consequences and a leading cause of preventable deaths. Ride-hailing services such as Uber have been found to prevent alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities. These services may, however, facilitate alcohol consumption generally and binge drinking in particular. OBJECTIVE The goal of the research is to measure the impact of ride-hailing services on the extent and intensity of alcohol consumption. We allow these associations to depend on population density as the use of ride-hailing services varies across markets. METHODS We exploit the phased rollout of the ride-hailing platform Uber using a difference-in-differences approach. We use this variation to measure changes in alcohol consumption among a local population following Uber’s entry. Data are drawn from Uber press releases to capture platform entry and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Systems (BRFSS) Annual Survey to measure alcohol consumption in 113 metropolitan areas. Models are estimated using fixed-effects Poisson regression. Pre- and postentry trends are used to validate this approach. RESULTS Ride-hailing has no association with the extent of alcohol consumption in high (0.61 [95% CI –0.05% to 1.28%]) or low (0.61 [95% CI –0.05% to 1.28%]) density markets, but is associated with increases in the binge drinking rate in high-density markets (0.71 [95% CI 0.13% to 1.29%]). This corresponds to a 4% increase in binge drinking within a Metropolitan Statistical Area. CONCLUSIONS Ride-hailing services are associated with an increase in binge drinking, which has been associated with a wide array of adverse health outcomes. Drunk driving rates have fallen for more than a decade, while binge drinking continues to climb. Both trends may be accelerated by ride-hailing services. This suggests that health information messaging should increase emphasis on the direct dangers of alcohol consumption and binge drinking.

Background Alcohol consumption is associated with a wide range of adverse health consequences and a leading cause of preventable deaths. Ride-hailing services such as Uber have been found to prevent alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities. These services may, however, facilitate alcohol consumption generally and binge drinking in particular. Objective The goal of the research is to measure the impact of ride-hailing services on the extent and intensity of alcohol consumption. We allow these associations to depend on population density as the use of ride-hailing services varies across markets. Methods We exploit the phased rollout of the ride-hailing platform Uber using a difference-in-differences approach. We use this variation to measure changes in alcohol consumption among a local population following Uber’s entry. Data are drawn from Uber press releases to capture platform entry and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Systems (BRFSS) Annual Survey to measure alcohol consumption in 113 metropolitan areas. Models are estimated using fixed-effects Poisson regression. Pre- and postentry trends are used to validate this approach. Results Ride-hailing has no association with the extent of alcohol consumption in high (0.61 [95% CI –0.05% to 1.28%]) or low (0.61 [95% CI –0.05% to 1.28%]) density markets, but is associated with increases in the binge drinking rate in high-density markets (0.71 [95% CI 0.13% to 1.29%]). This corresponds to a 4% increase in binge drinking within a Metropolitan Statistical Area. Conclusions Ride-hailing services are associated with an increase in binge drinking, which has been associated with a wide array of adverse health outcomes. Drunk driving rates have fallen for more than a decade, while binge drinking continues to climb. Both trends may be accelerated by ride-hailing services. This suggests that health information messaging should increase emphasis on the direct dangers of alcohol consumption and binge drinking.

Although recent work has examined the adverse implications of Internet-enabled matching platforms, limited attention has been paid to whom the negative externalities accrue. We examine how the entry of platforms for the solicitation of casual sex influences the incidence rate of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection by race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Using a census of 12 million patients subjected to a natural experiment in Florida, we find a significant increase in HIV incidence after platform implementation, with the largest effect accruing to historically at-risk populations (i.e., African Americans) despite documented lower rates of Internet utilization. Strikingly, our analysis reveals that HIV incidence increases in historically low-risk populations as well (e.g., individuals of higher socioeconomic status) and that men and women experience similar penalties. Identifying granular effects across subpopulations allows us to offer additional insight into the mechanisms by which matching platforms increase HIV incidence. We estimate the cumulative effect of platform entry over the five-year period of the study as 1,149 additional Floridians contracting HIV at a cost of $710 million. This paper was accepted by Lorin Hitt, information systems.

In this paper, we study the impact of increases in media coverage from two sources, newspapers and blogs, on firm founding rates in the context of technology-based entrepreneurship. Although increasing work in information systems (IS) has begun to investigate the effect of user-generated content on entrepreneurial behavior, limited attention has been devoted to how media affects firm founding or the boundary conditions of such an effect. Arguing for the direct effect of increased discourse in traditional and user-generated media in the information technology (IT) industry, results suggest that discourse in traditional media and blogs strongly influences IT firm founding rates. We further consider the differential impacts of media discourse on firm founding in different IT subsectors, over time, and in different locations. We test our hypotheses using entrepreneurial firm founding data from VentureXpert from 1998 to 2007, social media data from the three largest blogging platforms, and traditional media coverage from 11 major U.S. newspapers. Our work contributes to a better understanding of the concurrent effects of multiple forms of media on decision making and adds to the small but emerging literature addressing entrepreneurship-related research questions in IS.

Seeking multidisciplinary research into the rapidly evolving gig-economy.

There is a natural order to most events in life: Everything from learning to read to DNA sequences in molecular biology follows some predetermined, structured methodology that has been refined to yield improved results. Likewise, it would seem that firms could benefit by adopting and implementing technologies in some logical way so as to increase their overall performance. In this study of 555 hospitals, we investigate the order in which medical technologies are transformed into information technologies through a process of converting them from stand-alone technologies to interoperable, integrated information systems and whether certain configurations of sequences of integration yield additional value. We find that sequence does matter and that hospitals that integrated foundational technologies first—which in this case are known to be more complex—tend to perform better. Theoretical and practical implications of this finding and others are discussed.

The advent of the Internet and the digitization of commerce have provided both a mechanism by which goods and services can be exchanged, as well as an efficient way for consumers to voice their opi...