Jens Dibbern | University of Bern (original) (raw)

Papers by Jens Dibbern

Journal of the Association for Information Systems

While multisourcing offers benefits such as access to best-of-breed resources and enhanced compet... more While multisourcing offers benefits such as access to best-of-breed resources and enhanced competition, it also presents clients with a new governance challenge, namely the need to ensure that vendors not only deliver their individual contributions but also collaborate to produce a coherent joint outcome. Clients can address this challenge by combining bilateral governance focused on each vendor’s individual performance with collective governance aimed at the vendors’ joint performance. However, it is unclear how the simultaneous application of bilateral and collective governance affects multisourcing performance. Indeed, the literature falls short in systematically differentiating these governance mechanisms and empirically examining their interplay. Drawing on existing work on multisourcing and on the outsourcing governance literature, we argue that bilateral and collective governance direct efforts toward different performance dimensions (individual vs. joint), invoke different m...

International Conference on Information Systems, 2009

When entering foreign markets, software firms need to make a fundamental choice on the distributi... more When entering foreign markets, software firms need to make a fundamental choice on the distribution arrangements for software and related services. This choice may involve contracting with local partners or entering foreign markets through company-owned channels. This study focuses on analyzing such boundary choices of software product firms in international markets. Taking a knowledge-based perspective, a research model is developed that outlines the influence of software product and service characteristics on software firms' international entry mode choices. The research model is tested using PLS based on survey data from internationally operating software firms. In line with the knowledge-based reasoning, the results point out the need for software firms to enter foreign markets through company-owned channels if the business processes and the functionality reflected in a software product are highly specific and if a high share of complementary services is provided. In contrast, if significant country-specific adaptations of software products need to be performed, in particular language localization, the required knowledge is most effectively integrated through cooperation with local sales partners.

Knowledge processes are critical to outsourced software projects. According to outsourcing resear... more Knowledge processes are critical to outsourced software projects. According to outsourcing research, outsourced software projects succeed if they manage to integrate the client's business knowledge and the vendor's technical knowledge. In this paper, we submit that this view may not be wrong, but incomplete in a significant part of outsourced software work, which is software maintenance. Data from six software-maintenance outsourcing transitions indicate that more important than business or technical knowledge can be application knowledge, which vendor engineers acquire over time during practice. Application knowledge was the dominant knowledge during knowledge transfer activities and its acquisition enabled vendor staff to solve maintenance tasks. We discuss implications for widespread assumptions in outsourcing research.

Information Systems Journal, Aug 13, 2019

Bridging knowledge boundaries among project team members is essential to prevent delays or comple... more Bridging knowledge boundaries among project team members is essential to prevent delays or complete failure of software development projects. Prior researchers have reported that software prototypes can be used to help bridge knowledge boundaries between team members in traditional software development settings, yet their use in an agile development setting remains unexplored. Agile development centers the interactions between team members on emerging representations of the prototype whose properties are prone to change over time. Therefore, we conducted an in-depth study of an agile development project to enhance our understanding on how software prototypes are used as boundary objects in a distributed team setting. Our analyses of team member interactions during 46 virtual meetings that took place over a period of 6 months revealed four different prototype use practices (exemplifying, contrasting, relating, framing) that were

Springer eBooks, Oct 1, 2006

This book is a set of readings on information systems (IS) outsourcing resulting from a conferenc... more This book is a set of readings on information systems (IS) outsourcing resulting from a conference held in Bayreuth, Germany, in 2001. The organisers of that conference have put together papers from the event plus some others to produce a substantial resource of contemporary research in the field. Altogether there are 23 papers organised under five section headings entitled: Determinants of the Outsourcing Decision, Arranging and Managing IS Outsourcing Relationships, Experiences and Outcome of IS Outsourcing, Integration, Transaction and Recruitment Platforms, and Application Service Provision (ASP). The first three sections, according to the editors, essentially address issues related to the outsourcing life cycle, from the clients' perspective, that is, from the initiation of the outsourcing project (decision) through its life to the termination of the contract. The final two sections address two specific IT-enabled challenges to the basic (and more traditional) outsourcing life cycle, that is, integration, web services and ASPs. This categorisation is interesting and itself shows the development of the topic of outsourcing, as a few years ago only the life cycle section might have been present. I think the authors have made a brave attempt at this categorisation, but there are more issues and challenges than just those that are IT enabled. This book is substantial, running to over 530 pages, and provides a very useful collection of papers that together cover much, although by no means all, of the academic research in the area. There are omissions, for example, offshore outsourcing and perhaps the implications for the residual IS/IT department after outsourcing, but most topics are covered in some form. The papers are generally up to date and well written, and although some of them have been published elsewhere it seems that many of them are either new or new versions of existing papers that the authors have provided for the conference. Some, inevitably, are more interesting than others, but they are almost all worthy of inclusion in the collection. Each individual paper cannot be reviewed here, but I will highlight a couple that I found of particular interest. The first is by Hirschheim and Lacity, which reports on a study that addresses information systems insourcing, defined here as the selection of the internal IS department over external bidders after a formal outsourcing initiative. The findings suggest that insourcing can be as cost-effective as outsourcing, but that the perceptions of stakeholders and senior managers concerning success are difficult

Based on an embedded multi-case study about a multisourced software development project, this pap... more Based on an embedded multi-case study about a multisourced software development project, this paper aims to explore how and why vendors in a situation of forced coopetition practice cooperation and competition differently. To do so, we reconstructed the individual case narratives and composed a process model based on our analysis. More specifically, we found that vendors faced with a coopetitive imbalance both consciously and unconsciously balance cooperation and competition on two ways: On the one hand, vendors aspired the highest common denominator and therefore increased either cooperation or competition to match the respective counterpart. On the other hand, vendors aspired the lowest common denominator and therefore reduced either cooperation or competition. Even though both ways have shown their ability to counterbalance cooperation and competition, only the first way has led to promising outcomes for the applying vendors – virtuous cycle, while the second did not – vicious cy...

2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 2016

Joint idea generation is vital in software development projects requiring team members with diffe... more Joint idea generation is vital in software development projects requiring team members with different knowledge specializations to exchange and integrate multiple perspectives into ideas to improve the software product. While joint idea generation is generally difficult to achieve, it is even more challenging in offshore-outsourced settings. Our goal was to understand the process of how software prototypes can support joint idea generation over the life of a 16 month offshore-outsourced software development project. Based on an in-depth, ethnographic case study, we reveal three joint idea generation modes building on and stimulating each other: from diverging, to exploring and advancing. These joint idea generation modes were closely interwoven with the software prototype. We find that as the software prototype evolved, new possibilities for engaging in various joint idea generation modes emerged. Our research has important implications for literature and practice.

Information Systems Journal, 2019

ACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems, 2020

Software robots tend to increasingly take over organizational processes. However, little is known... more Software robots tend to increasingly take over organizational processes. However, little is known about principles of building and implementing as opposed to using robotic systems, such as bots for process automation (RPA) and chatbots. Therefore, based on an empirically illustrated theoretical conceptualization of routine automation and affordance actualization, this paper develops a framework that guides how different types of software robots can be built and implemented through transforming a human-executed routine into a robot-automated routine by applying specific implementation guidelines.

Progress in IS, 2020

Innovation ecosystems are becoming increasingly important for the co-creation and modification of... more Innovation ecosystems are becoming increasingly important for the co-creation and modification of digital innovation by different and often competing organizational actors. However, how innovation ecosystems emerge between such organizational actors is yet unknown. This article addresses this gap by exploring how central organizational actors create innovation ecosystems, and how and why these innovation ecosystems emerge over time and through the interplay of all involved organizational actors that pursue both common (i.e., cooperate) and own goals (i.e., compete). To answer these questions, we opted for a single-case study of a large software development project, initiated by a major logistics company and implemented in collaboration with its independent IT department, six software vendors, and some field experts. This unique constellation with different coopeting (i.e., simultaneously cooperating and competing) organizational actors is particularly well suited to answer our research questions. Our results show that central organizational actors can create the basic structure and procedures of an innovation ecosystem. However, for an innovation ecosystem to progress in its emergence, central organizational actors need to stabilize the basic structure, while all other organizational actors need to help refine the basic procedures. The better adapted the structure and the procedures, the better organizational actors can exploit them to materialize coherent and customer-oriented digital innovation. We present our findings as a three-phase process model of innovation ecosystem emergence, in which innovation agency is distributed and redistributed among the organizational actors. Our findings have important implications for the literature on innovation ecosystems, the coopetition paradox, and digital innovation.

Business & Information Systems Engineering

Successful IT business transformations require a departure from silo thinking in individual proje... more Successful IT business transformations require a departure from silo thinking in individual projects to a broader perspective in holistic, process-oriented programs. Such programs face latent paradoxical tensions that can become salient throughout their (re-) design and execution. Prior research suggests ambidextrous leadership by the program management team to resolve such salient paradoxical tensions. However, little is known about whether such unilateral and top-down approaches can restore sustainable equilibria or even trigger follow-up tensions between program-level objectives and project-level needs. Therefore, this study explores whether and how ambidextrous leadership to resolve strategic tensions can trigger follow-up tensions and how such follow-up tensions can be addressed to restore sustainable equilibria. To this end, we conducted an ethnographic study in an IT transformation program at a large Central European telecommunications company. We find that ambidextrous leade...

Robotic Process Automation, 2021

With the increasing potential to automate business processes using software robots, companies fac... more With the increasing potential to automate business processes using software robots, companies face the challenge of scaling the implementation of such robotic systems in order to enable their efficient evolution. The implementation of software robots is based on the often time consuming work carried out by the project team, which often leads to higher than expected costs and time delays. This can be made more efficient by scaling the extension of the robot’s functionalities. However, scaling can only take place once one has understood what can be scaled, how it can be scaled, and to what extent. Routine theoretical concepts help us better understand the extent to which processes previously carried out by humans can be transformed and transferred to robots. We build on literature on routine dynamics as well as digital scaling to understand the mechanisms required to scale the implementation of software robots. Therefore, based on an empirically illustrated theoretical conceptualization of scaling the software robot implementation, we elaborate in this chapter how routines evolve and dynamically influence each other in order to explain how scaling can be approached when implementing software robots. In doing so, we rely on data from two case studies. In one case study a chatbot was contextually expanded over time. In the second case study a series of robotic process automation (RPA) robots were implemented

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2022