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We theoretically and empirically investigate the relationship between information technology (IT) and firm innovation. Invoking absorptive capacity (ACAP) theory, we introduce and develop the concepts of three types of IT-enabled knowledge capabilities. Firm innovation is examined through two observable innovation outcomes: patents, and new product and service introductions. These innovation outcomes are often labeled as competitive actions aggressively undertaken by firms to gain market share or to achieve profitability. We use secondary data about IT-enabled knowledge capabilities and innovation outcomes of 110 firms. Our data results provide strong support for our main assertion that knowledge capabilities that are enhanced through the use of IT contribute to firm innovation. The study's findings suggest that the three types of IT-enabled knowledge capabilities have differential effects on firm innovation. This study substantially contributes to the information systems (IS) research, methodology, and practice in multiple ways.

Crowdsourcing (CS) of micro tasks is a relatively new, open source work form enabled by information and communication technologies. While anecdotal evidence of its benefits abounds, our understanding of the phenomenon’s societal consequences remains limited. Drawing on value sensitive design (VSD), we explore microtask CS as perceived by crowd workers, revealing their values as a means of informing the design of CS platforms. Analyzing detailed narratives of 210 crowd workers participating in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), we uncover a set of nine values they share: access, autonomy, fairness, transparency, communication, security, accountability, making an impact, and dignity. We find that these values are implicated in four crowdsourcing structures: compensation, governance, technology, and microtask. Two contrasting perceptions—empowerment and marginalization—coexist, forming a duality of microtask CS. The study contributes to the CS and VSD literatures, heightens awareness of worker marginalization in microtask CS, and offers guidelines for improving CS practice. Specifically, we offer recommendations regarding the ethical use of crowd workers (including for academic research), and call for improving MTurk platform design for greater worker empowerment.

This paper primarily investigates sensitivity towards patients' values in the designs of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) that are capable of empowering them. We focus on the role of ICTs in self-management (SM) of diabetes, a chronic disease. Chronic diseases, declared an invisible epidemic by the World Health Organization, cause and perpetuate poverty and impede the economic development of many countries. As a means of informing the design of ICTs that facilitate self-management, we draw on value sensitive design (VSD) to conduct an in-depth interpretive field study to reveal the values that are important to diabetic patients. Specifically, we reveal twelve values shared by these patients: accessibility, accountability, autonomy, compliance, dignity, empathy, feedback, hope, joy, privacy, sense-making, and trust. A conceptual model emerged from analyzing interviews with diabetic patients; this model explains how these values, which are integrated into ICT features, afford or constrain patients' abilities to self-manage their activities. This study makes multiple theoretical contributions: By granting ICT artifacts a clear theoretical status, it advances the field of SM that has nominally covered ICTs; it extends design research by extending the VSD literature and by introducing a valuecentric design perspective to examine a complex sociotechnical system; and it broadens work system theory by applying it in the healthcare space. The study's findings have implications for design science researchers, healthcare providers, and policymakers.

Advancements in Internet and digital technologies have enabled a new work form of open sourcing, which we refer to as the crowdsourcing work environment (CSWE). This new form of work has the potential to disrupt and transform the nature of traditional work. However, our understanding of this new work form is still in its incipient stage. To enhance our understanding, this study captures crowdworkers' perceptions to explore the characteristics of the crowdworkers, crowdsourcing jobs, and the crowdwork environment that collectively drive the crowdworkers to participate in open source work. Guided by the job characteristic theory and work value perspectives, we used the revealed causal mapping method to analyze narratives by 55 crowdworkers registered on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Our data analysis uncovered nine main constructs, 22 key concepts, and 815 causal-effect linkages surrounding CSWE that could guide our theoretical understanding of this emerging phenomenon. Individual needs and the crowdwork context emerged as the major factors motivating individuals' initial participation in CSWE, but we found crowdsourcing task characteristics (e.g., job autonomy, task variety, task significance, task instruction, and task compensation) and a digitally enabled environment (e.g., system affordance and MTurk governance) to shape crowdworkers' continued participation in CSWE. The findings suggest several promising research streams, including the psychological factors (i.e., personal growth needs and work values) and social outcomes (i.e., empowerment or exploitation of crowdworkers) for examining the psychology and sociology of crowdsourcing work.

Crop yield estimation before harvest is required for marketing, pricing, storage, import, export etc. Productivity of cropping systems under various weather, management and policy scenarios can be predicted successfully by simulation models. Due to increase in input cost of agricultural operation, agriculture produces become costly. Therefore, crop yield estimation in the agriculture becomes essential. Weather variability causes the losses in the yield. Therefore, model based on weather parameters, soil parameter and crop parameters can provide reliable crop yield estimation in advance. For estimating the multi stage wheat crop yield, experiments were conducted at research farm of IARI, New Delhi during Rabi 2016–17 and Rabi 2017–18. Crop yield were estimated by weather based and crop simulation model. Percentage deviation of estimated yield by observed yield at flowering and grain filling stage was −5.1 and 2.0 by weather based model, 4.3 and 2.1 by InfoCrop model, 10.2 and 9.0 by DSSAT model during Rabi 2016–17 and 5.3 and 5.9 by weather based model, 2.3 and 2.2 by InfoCrop model, −10.8 and −9.6 by DSSAT model during Rabi 2017–18 respectively. Among the three models opted for estimating the yield at flowering and grain filling stage, InfoCrop model gave better results followed by weather based and DSSAT model. Therefore, this model can be used for multi stage wheat crop yield estimation at district as well as regional level.

Innovation is considered the engine for firm growth. Especially innovations, through recombining seemingly unrelated knowledge streams, can have groundbreaking impact and lead to sustained competitive advantage. To generate such innovation, firms often need to go beyond their existing technological or geographical boundaries to identify and integrate novel knowledge elements. This article refers to firms' knowledge activities of drawing upon distant knowledge (i.e., knowledge from dissimilar technological domains or distant geographical regions) to create novel technological solutions, as innovation through boundary spanning. Aiming to investigate the roles of information technology (IT) in facilitating innovation through boundary spanning, we collected data from the pharmaceutical industry over a six-year period to test the research model. The data analysis results indicate that IT supports boundary-spanning activities in firm innovation and different IT-enabled knowledge capabilities affect boundary-spanning innovation differently.

Background:Digital acceleration coupled with unprecedented work disruption (e.g., a Pandemic) have amplified the need for mature IT governance practices to generate planned value from organizations' digital investments. Although the pairwise relationship between mature governance practices, value derived from IT investments, and organizational performance have been examined previously, all three have rarely been simultaneously investigated. Therefore, this paper examines the role of value in the relationship between IT governance mechanisms and organizational performance.Method:A research model that comprehensively conceptualizes the governance mechanism construct is developed and validated. The model is examined using data collected from 250 United States organizations that have invested in cloud computing for over a year.Results:The results reveal that the value generated from an IT investment is germane to understanding the relationship between governance mechanisms and organizational performance. Specifically, the result explains that governance mechanisms help improve organizational performance through cost reduction in IT services, create agility through flexibility in technology service, strengthen IT security and privacy, and effectively redirect IT resources. The results show the more critical role of the relational mechanism and practices related to IT security and privacy in the cloud computing context.Conclusion: The study contributes to IS literature by providing a more unified conceptualization of governance mechanisms and theoretically establishing the importance of governance in effectively governing cloud computing. By providing a guideline to help organizations achieve more value from cloud computing, the study provides implications for practice. The findings empirically show the relational mechanism has the most critical role in creating value from cloud computing. The governance practices help bridge the gap between business and IT, gradual transformative change in the roles and responsibilities, control cloud expenses, security and privacy risks. The findings show that competency is more likely to be achieved from cloud computing investment.

Angina Bullosa Hemorrhagica is characterized with rapid appearance of soft, blood-filled blisters on the mucosa of oral cavity and oropharynx. It is a benign condition, and is not associated with any systemic hematological disorder. No etiological factors have been identified and there are no established guidelines for its management. The current case report describes the sudden appearance of large, bluish, soft lesion on the soft palate which was managed with incision and drainage, and healed completely over the next three weeks.

In this paper we attempt to remove the dichotomy created by distinguishing between participatory and non-participatory breeding programmes by using the degree of client orientation as the basis for an analysis. Although all breeding programmes are implicitly client-oriented, we examine how participatory approaches explicitly increase the extent of client orientation. We briefly review the history of participatory plant breeding (PPB) and analyse the participatory techniques used at different stages of the breeding programme. In common with several other authors, we find that farmer involvement in selecting in the segregating generations may not be an essential component of PPB. However, in some circumstances such collaboration is required and is the subject of a second paper in this series. The purpose of all the techniques used in PPB programmes is to better meet the needs of clients. Thus, breeding programmes can be differentiated by their extent of client-orientation removing the dichotomy involved with the term participatory. We discuss four techniques in the suite of techniques that have been employed by PPB: identifying the target market or clients; using germplasm that can best meet the needs of target clients; matching the environments of the target clients; and product testing in the target market with target clients. Most attention is paid to the last of these four that is often referred to as participatory varietal selection (PVS) and how it is done varies with circumstances. Rice varieties from a client-oriented breeding programme in Nepal were tested in mother and baby trials in Bangladesh. The rapid acceptance of these varieties by farmers illustrates the power of the participatory trials system and the success of a highly client-oriented breeding approach.

This study examines worker voice behaviors in the microtask crowdsourcing work environment (CSWE) where voice channels are absent. Informed by employee voice research, this study adopts the revealed causal mapping method to analyze the detailed narratives of 60 workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our data analysis shows that the crowdworkers did engage in voice behaviors, but their voices were not always heard, depending on recipients. The crowdworker voice was directed to three different recipients (worker community, job requester, and platform) and influenced by six antecedents (duty orientation, efficacy judgment, workgroup identification, anger/frustration, futility, and achievement orientation). Based on the findings, we propose a model of worker voice antecedents and moderators in the CSWE. This study extends employee voice research by presenting a moderator perspective in the CSWE. Moreover, our study provides a nuanced understanding of crowdworker voice behaviors from two major aspects – antecedent and recipient – contributing to crowdsourcing research.