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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.

Subsidies have become increasingly popular for policy makers to promote the adoption of ecofriendly new technologies. Normally, the costs of these subsidies are nontrivial, underscoring the need to determine their efficacy. This work examines one subsidy used to steer consumers away from outmoded technologies and accelerate the adoption of green technologies: purchase subsidies for electric vehicles (EVs). On the one hand, such subsidies might cannibalize the market for traditional vehicles. On the other hand, such subsidies may result in overall market expansion, with little effect on traditional vehicle purchasing. Leveraging a phased subsidy rollout aimed at the early-stage EV market in China and a difference-in-differences approach, the authors find that subsidies strongly encourage EV purchasing but have little effect on traditional vehicle purchasing. This suggests that market expansion may result from the subsidy during the EV emergence and undermines the expected cannibalization on the traditional market. Further, the expansion effect is larger in cities with more severe air pollution. Finally, results reveal some level of cannibalization in cities of higher income and educational attainment. This suggests that although subsidies have yet to yield the intended cannibalization for the market overall, it is beginning to manifest in some parts of the market.

In this study, we examine how a firm’s decision to post on social media affects the propensity of its followers to (1) purchase its products and (2) unfollow the firm. Using a unique dataset from a large fashion retailer which frequently sends mass non-customized information-only posts on social media (i.e., non-coupons), findings indicate that such posts increase short-term purchases by 6%. However, these posts also increase followers’ propensity to unfollow the firm by 280%, significantly reducing long-term sales. Strikingly, this punitive effect of social media posting appears to manifest under very specific circumstances. Results indicate that these changes in unfollowing and long-term sales are larger if posts are sent in more crowded cities or during commuting hours (suggesting that the stress formed by personal crowding and the follower’s environment may play a key role in followers’ reactions to social media postings). These results underscore the potential downsides of sending blanket, non-customized, messages to followers, notably during times of intense psychological stress, as well as avenues to avoid such pitfalls

Gender discrimination continues to plague organizations. While 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 opinions about retailers (i.e., via online rating systems), recent work has begun to uncover significant biases that manifest during the review process. In particular, it has been suggested that the gig-economy’s elimination of previously anonymous arm’s-length transactions may re-introduce bias into perceptions of quality. In this work, we build upon research that has identified biases based on ascriptive characteristics in rating systems of ridesharing platforms. In doing so, we conduct an online experiment using a series of factorial vignettes to consider not only willingness to transact but post-transaction perceptions of quality. Findings suggest that female drivers are not penalized ex ante for taking on gender incongruent roles, i.e., driving, and experience no penalty when a rider reports a high-quality experience. However, conditional upon a lower quality experience, there is a disproportionate penalty for female drivers. Strikingly, we also observe that historic high quality does not serve as a buffer against such penalties, as prior literature would suggest. These findings underscore the challenges platforms face in ensuring their participants are being evaluated in a fair and impartial way, and highlight the difficulties present when non-employees (customers) are rating non-employees (drivers) of the firm.

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.

One of the most notable developments of the sharing economy is the unfettered proliferation of on-demand services. In this work, we examine how a subset of such platforms, online food delivery (e.g., Grubhub, UberEats, Doordash), has affected a particularly important household activity, meal preparation, and the dining behaviors of American households. To do so, we exploit the phased entry of the platform Grubhub into US counties from 2005 to 2019 using a difference in difference approach. Results indicate that the availability of an increasingly diversified delivery service leads to a significant reduction in time spent preparing meals within the home. Further, and alarmingly, we find that this impact is associated with an increase in the average BMI of affected persons, suggesting an unfavorable dietary shift from healthier home cooking to unhealthier food away from home consumption. We discuss implications for research, consumers, platforms, and public policymakers.

In this work, I examine the impact that breach notification laws have had on the incidence rate of breaches of consumer data. Since 2003, every US state has passed some form of breach notification requirement. In doing so, the stated goal has been to create a market for consumer privacy, wherein consumers may select into interacting with firms that are more responsible stewards of their data. However, limited empirical work has been devoted to determining the impact of these legislative efforts. Results from a multi-site difference in difference estimation indicate no significant change in the number of breaches or the number of breached records after the passage of such statutes. Results further suggest no demonstrable long-term change in the number of identity thefts or claims of fraud, i.e., a precisely estimated null. This absence of effect persists when considering legislative efforts that create private rights of action, require notification of the attorney general, and more; and suggests the need to consider different ways to approach consumer privacy. I propose one such alternative, standards setting by an administrative agency which creates safe harbors for conforming firms.

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.

The rise of the internet has precipitated the birth and downfall of numerous industries, but perhaps no industry has been transformed to the same degree as news production. Journalism has seen the rise of content aggregation, the proliferation of fake news through social media, and the decimation of local reporting capacity, all of which have served to hollow the newspaper industry. In this work, we examine the downstream effects of this decline industry on an outcome of significant theoretical and practical significance: political corruption. As newspapers are an important investigative arm of local communities, it is possible that the closure of community media will embolden corrupt actors who believe they are less likely to be detected following the closure of a local newspaper. To estimate any effect, we employ a difference in difference approach, exploiting the phased closure of major daily newspapers across the country. Results indicate a significant increase in federal corruption charges in federal districts following closure. Further, we observe no evidence that the rise in online newsvendors and the democratization of the press ameliorates this effect. This highlights the important role of the “fourth estate” in inhibiting corruption in governance and the need to conceptualize the punitive societal effects of the internet more expansively.

Managers of social media platforms aggressively compete for users to stimulate user generated content on their sites. In this study, we delve into one tactic of this competition which has become increasingly popular, but has received limited attention, the extension of character limits. Despite its popularity, the impact of changing these limits on user engagement and behavior is unclear. On the one hand, increasing limits might yield more low quality and rambling posts, thereby alienating the users who favor microblogs for their streamlined and efficient content. On the other hand, increasing limits might give users the freedom they need to more effectively communicate ideas. We delve into this tension by exploiting a natural experiment, the phased rollout of length limit extensions on the Chinese microblog, Weibo. As expected, findings from more than 7,000 users suggest that extending length limits increases the average length of posts. However, results also indicate that the magnitude of the effect is infinitesimal (only 2 characters). Further, results indicate that extending length limits significantly increases user engagement by enticing users into posting more actively. Finally, it appears that accessing the platform through tethered or mobile connection strongly moderates these effects; inasmuch as the observed changes to post length and volumes are only observed for PC users (versus mobile-only users). This suggests a potential risk in extending length limits by shifting the platform away from mobile-only users.

Digital multisided platforms and their societal implications are increasingly attracting attention from scholars. In this prior work, the predominant focus has been on platform participants, with little consideration given other market actors who coexist with the platform, but do not participate in it directly. In this study, we investigate one aspect of the changing economy subject to considerable theoretical ambiguity: the effects of peer-to-peer home sharing on noise complaints, a growing problem associated with urban living. Leveraging the phased expansion of home sharing platform Airbnb into different locations at different times, and a differences-in-differences approach, we find that the entry of Airbnb is associated with a significant decrease in the rate at which city residents file residential noise complaints. This is striking, given the assumption made by academic literature, industry and government reports, and the popular press that externalities will be negative. This significant decrease is intensified further in locations where a material number of tourist attractions exists, suggesting the effect is driven by limited physical occupancy of residential housing. Corroborating this finding, we observe a significant increase in street noise following the entry of Airbnb, indicating that noise moves out of residential space and into streets where tourist attractions mostly take place.

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.

To explore whether managers’ beliefs and attitudes influence gender inequality among their subordinates, we theorize about the relationship between managers’ political ideology, situated on a liberal–conservative continuum, and differences in the hiring, work team selection, and promotion of male versus female subordinates, as well as how a manager’s gender moderates this relationship. We analyze novel microdata from the U.S. legal industry from 2007 to 2012 and find that large law offices whose partners are more liberal hire a larger percentage of female associates, that more-liberal partners are more likely to select female associates to be members of their client teams, and that associates whose supervising partners are more liberal have greater gender parity in promotion rates. Further, we find that the ideology of male partners is significantly more influential than the ideology of female partners in affecting these differences. We find little evidence that sorting on the part of higher-quality female associates drives the results.

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 significant research has examined how technology can intensify racial and other outgroup biases, limited work has investigated the role information systems can play in abating them. Racial biases are particularly worrisome in healthcare, where underrepresented minorities suffer disparities in access to care, quality of care, and clinical outcomes. In this paper, we examine the role clinical decision support systems (CDSS) play in attenuating systematic biases among black patients, relative to white patients, in rates of amputation and revascularization stemming from diabetes mellitus. Using a panel of inpatient data and a difference-in-difference approach, results suggest that CDSS adoption significantly shrinks disparities in amputation rates across white and black patients—with no evidence that this change is simply delaying eventual amputations. Results suggest that this effect is driven by changes in treatment care protocols that match patients to appropriate specialists, rather than altering within physician decision making. These findings highlight the role information systems and digitized patient care can play in promoting unbiased decision making by structuring and standardizing care procedures. This paper was accepted by Stefan Scholtes, healthcare management.

Global efforts to stymie greenhouse gas emissions have been diverse and multifaceted; with limiting carbon emissions from internal combustion automobiles being implicated as a key tactic. In this work, we examine one approach taken by governments to steer consumers away from traditional vehicles and accelerate the diffusion of green technologies: subsidizing the purchase of electric automobiles. While many subsidies have accelerated the diffusion of EVs, the source of the change in purchase behavior remains unknown. On the one hand, as policymakers hope, such subsidies might be cannibalizing established fossil-fuel vehicle markets, i.e. cannibalization. On the other hand, new markets might be emerging as a result of purchases made by customers who otherwise would not have purchased a vehicle, i.e. market expansion. Leveraging the phased rollout of an electric vehicle subsidy in China, we find that subsidies strongly encourage EV purchase, but yield no notable effect on traditional vehicle purchasing. This suggests a market expansion effect and undermines the efficacy of subsidies in slowing traditional vehicle sales; indicating that while subsidies can accelerate the diffusion and adoption of de novo technologies, the abandonment of outmoded technologies is not guaranteed. Further, we find these effects are moderated by non-pecuniary motivations, viz. air pollution. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed within.

Background: Alcohol consumption is associated with a wide range of adverse health consequences and is a leading cause of preventable deaths. Ride hailing services such as Uber have been found prevent alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities. These services may, however, facilitate alcohol consumption generally and binge drinking in particular. Objective: 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 utilization of ride hailing services likely 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 measures alcohol consumption in 113 metropolitan areas. Models are estimated using fixed effects Poisson regression. Pre- and post-entry trends are used to validate this approach. Results: Ride hailing has no effect on 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 increases the binge drinking rate by 0.71 [95% CI: 0.13% to 1.29%]. This corresponds to a 4% increase in binge-drinking within an MSA. Conclusion: Ride hailing services appear to stimulate risky behavior, in the form of 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 the incidence of binge drinking has continued 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.

Digital multisided platforms and peer-to-peer marketplaces are increasingly attracting attention from scholars, with a significant amount of work examining their societal implications. Yet, despite such focus, limited work has investigated the social implications of the democratization of capital by peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms, particularly in healthcare. In this study, we investigate the effects of P2P lending platforms on local abortion rates, a medical procedure characterized by both significant financial barriers and social stigma. Leveraging the entry of the P2P platform LendingClub into different states at different times, and a differences-in-differences approach, we find that the entry of LendingClub is associated with an increase in the rate at which women chose not to carry to term. Further, results indicate the effects greatly depend on the characteristics of the local area, with stronger effects manifesting in more religious areas and areas with lower levels of education. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed within.

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.

Research Summary We study the effect of firm disruptions on competitor performance in the presence of shared resources in the U.S. airline industry. While scholars have investigated both the effects of industry‐wide and firm‐specific disruptions, little work has examined the effect on competitors, who are increasingly reliant on interconnected resources in the digital age. Results from a series of recent information technology (IT) outages indicate that performance is materially affected by a competitor's disruption. While the disruption of a full‐service carrier significantly delays flights of all airlines leveraging its hubs, the exact opposite is observed during the disruption of a low cost carrier. Further, the effect is strongly moderated by the type of airlines reacting to the disruption. Implications for managers and theory are discussed within. Managerial Summary What happens to my operations when a competitor's operations are disrupted? While research has examined how a disrupted firm can recover, little attention has been paid to competitors, except their ability to exploit the disruption for economic gain. This is problematic, as firms increasingly leverage interconnected resources and infrastructure. We show that an airline's IT outages affect on‐time performance of competitors' flights to and from its hub airports. However, the effects depend on both who is disrupted, and who is reacting to that disruption. The disruptions of full‐service carriers (FSCs) delay competitors' flights, but that of a low‐cost carrier (LCC) leads to early arrivals and departures. Further, LCCs are significantly more nimble reacting to disruptions compared to FSCs.

New information pertinent to organizational decision making, even when publicly available, may not diffuse rapidly in the form of adoption and transformation of organizational practices. In this study, we examine how different markers of expertise, each representative of human capital at both individual and organizational levels, moderates the speed of response to new information. We do so in the context of medical device utilization, viz. stents, for the treatment of stable coronary arterial disease by physicians practicing in hospitals. Results show that physicians possessing specialized expertise developed through deliberate practice adopt new guidelines significantly faster, as compared with physicians endowed with general expertise reflected in elite schooling or tenure. Furthermore, we observe significant spillovers within organizations from expertise gained through deliberate practice, indicating that physicians with expertise markers associated with deliberate practice are able to act as influential agents and help diffuse new practices within the organization. Our study thus extends the literature on both information diffusion and expertise by providing quantitative and qualitative evidence of the mechanisms at play in the adoption of new best practices. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2018.1246 .

Consumer-generated ratings typically share an objective of illuminating the quality of a product or service for other buyers. While ratings have become ubiquitous and influential on the Internet, surprisingly little empirical research has investigated how these online assessments reflect the opinion of the population at large; especially in the domain of professional services where quality is often opaque to consumers. Building on the word-of-mouth literature, we examine the relationship between online ratings and population perceptions of physician quality. Our study builds on prior work by leveraging a unique dataset which includes direct measures of both the offline population’s perception of physician quality and consumer generated online reviews. As a result, we are able to examine how online ratings reflect patients’ opinions about physician quality. In sharp contrast to the widely voiced concerns by medical practitioners, we find that physicians who are rated lower in quality by the patient population are less likely to be rated online. Although ratings provided online are positively correlated with patient population opinions, the online ratings tend to be exaggerated at the upper end of the quality spectrum. This study is the first to provide empirical evidence of the relationship between online ratings and the underlying consumer perceived quality, and extends prior research on online word-of-mouth to the domain of professional services.

In this work, we examine how sharing-economy platforms affect durable goods purchase. On the one hand, the introduction of such platforms may cannibalize sales, as they may change the decision-making calculus of consumers by offering a lower cost “rental” option in lieu of purchase. On the other hand, such platforms might stimulate purchase, as their presence enhances the value of ownership by allowing participants to capture rents through the sharing economy. We examine this tension using a unique dataset of new vehicle registrations in China. In doing so, we exploit the variation in timing of Uber entry across different locations to estimate the effect on new vehicle purchase. Findings suggest Uber entry is associated with a considerable increase in new vehicle ownership, indicating that consumers are actively changing their stock of held resources in order to capture excess rents offered by these platforms. Further, results indicate that the effect of Uber entry varies considerably across vehicle type.

In this study, we examine how a firm’s decision to post on social media affects the propensity of its followers to: (a) purchase its products and (b) unfollow the firm. Using a unique dataset from a large fashion retailer which frequently sends mass non-customized information-only posts on social media (i.e. non-coupons), findings indicate that such posts increase short-term purchases by 6%. However, these posts also increase followers’ propensity to unfollow the firm by 280%; significantly reducing long-term sales. Strikingly, this punitive effect of social media posting appears to manifest under very specific circumstances. Results indicate that these changes in unfollowing and long-term sales are larger if posts are sent in more crowded cities or during commuting hours (suggesting that the stress formed by personal crowding and the follower’s environment may play a key role in followers’ reaction to social media posting). These results underscore the potential downsides of sending blanket, non-customized, messages to followers, notably during times of intense psychological stress, as well as avenues to avoid such pitfalls.

Recent global efforts to stymie greenhouse gas emissions in both the public and private sector have been both diverse and multifaceted; with limiting carbon emissions from internal combustion autom...

Digital multisided platforms and peer-to-peer marketplaces are increasingly attracting attention from scholars, with recent work beginning to examine many of their societal implications. Despite su...

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 mission and incentives of organizations. Examining coronary stents across three technological regime changes using a census of approximately 2 million patients admitted to Florida hospitals from 1995-2007, we show meaningful differences across three hospital types: for-profit, not-for-profit, and academic medical centers (AMCs), 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 two-fold. 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.

Significant prior research has examined the role that managers play in producing gender inequality in organizations, but little work has directly explored the role of managers’ beliefs and attitudes. We bring managers’ beliefs and attitudes to the fore by theorizing about the relationship between managers’ political ideology, situated on a liberal-conservative continuum, and the level of gender inequality among their subordinates. Using novel microdata from the legal services industry, we find that law offices whose partners are more liberal have lower rates of gender inequality in the hiring and promotion of associate attorneys. Further, examining the interaction between partners’ gender and partners’ political ideology, we find that the political ideology of male partners is significantly more powerful in affecting these differences as compared with the ideology of female partners. Finally, we do not find evidence that these differences are driven by selection, in the form of higher quality female associates choosing to work for more liberal partners. We discuss the implications of our theory and findings for individual careers and firm performance.

The advent of the Internet and the maturation of the Information Technology (IT) industry has significantly decreased transaction and coordination costs. However, there is still a strong preference for being geographically proximal, notably when accessing capital markets for innovation activities (like the formation of funding ties between venture capitalists (VCs) and new IT ventures). While VCs prefer to support co-located entrepreneurs, significant evidence suggests that the funding of non-local IT entrepreneurs does occur. In this work, we investigate how trends in the form of herding and media coverage, which are not specific to the entrepreneur but pertain to the technology sector the entrepreneur operates in, may influence VCs to reach across geographic boundaries. Using a series of matched sample methodologies, results suggest that the influence of media is significantly stronger for VCs considering funding non-co-located, as opposed to co-located, IT entrepreneurs. However, and strikingly, support for the effect of herding is notably weaker. Managerial and policy implications, particularly for technology entrepreneurs and policy-makers seeking to support such innovators, are discussed within.

We examine how the entry of gig-economy platforms influences local entrepreneurial activity. On the one hand, such platforms may reduce entrepreneurial activity by offering stable employment for the unemployed and underemployed. On the other hand, such platforms may enable entrepreneurial activity by offering work flexibility that allows the entrepreneur to redeploy resources strategically in order to pursue the nascent venture. To resolve this tension, we examine the entry of the ridesharing platform Uber X into local areas. We use two measures of entrepreneurial activity: crowdfunding campaign launches at Kickstarter, the world’s largest reward-based crowdfunding platform, and levels of self-employment from the Current Population Survey. Results indicate a negative and significant relationship between platform entry and both measures of entrepreneurial activity. Importantly, the effect manifests primarily amongst unsuccessful Kickstarter campaigns and unincorporated entrepreneurial ventures, suggesting that gig-economy platforms predominantly reduce lower quality entrepreneurial activity, seemingly by offering viable employment for the unemployed and underemployed. These relationships are corroborated with a first-hand survey conducted with gig-economy service providers. This paper was accepted by Anandhi Bharadwaj, information systems.

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.

We study the effect of firm disruption on competitor performance in the presence of shared resources, and conditions under which competitors will experience performance degradation. We propose that...

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...

In this work, we investigate how the entry of the ride sharing service Uber influences the rate of alcohol related motor vehicle homicides. While significant debate has surrounded the entry of driving services such as Uber and Lyft, limited rigorous empirical work has been devoted to uncovering the societal benefits of such services (or the mechanism which drives these benefits). Using a difference-in-difference approach to exploit a natural experiment, the entry of two Uber services into markets in California between 2009 and 2014, we find a significant drop in the rate of homicides after the introduction of Uber. Furthermore, results suggest that not all services offered by Uber have the same effect, insofar as the effect for the Uber Black car service is intermittent and manifests only in selective locations (i.e. large cities). These results underscore the coupling of increased availability with cost savings which are necessary to exploit the public welfare gains offered by the sharing economy. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed within.

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 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 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 sub-sectors, over time, and in different locations. We test our hypotheses using entrepreneurial firm founding data from VentureXpert from 1998-2007, social media data from the three largest blogging platforms, and traditional media coverage from eleven major US 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.

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 grey collar workers, with little attention paid to the transformative effect IT 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 technology within their organizations. Specifically, we investigate how the implementation of electronic health record systems (EHRs) affects physician mobility and the decision to continue practicing at their current hospital. Results from a census of physicians in the state of Florida suggest that when these enterprise systems create complementarities for the physician, their tenure at the focal organization increases significantly. However, when technologies are disruptive to the physician’s routines, there is a pronounced exodus from the organization. Interestingly, despite recent claims, results do not suggest that such technology adoption is associated with accelerated retirement on the part of physicians or strategic poaching of talent on the part of competing hospitals. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed within.

We investigate how mass shootings influence the stock price of firearms manufacturers. While evidence suggests there is a spike in firearms purchase after such events, the reaction of financial mar...

We examine how the entry of gig-economy platforms influences local entrepreneurial activity. On one hand, such platforms may reduce entrepreneurial activity by offering a stable employment for the ...

In this work, we investigate how the entry of the driving service Uber influences the rate of alcohol related motor vehicle homicides. While significant debate has surrounded the entry of driving s...