The methods and thinking of economics permeate a large part of the IS discipline. Reciprocally, newly emerging research methods relying on the IT-enabled treatment of massive data aggregates feed economic research. As new and radical forms of IT innovation continue to energize electronic commerce, IS researchers face a daunting task in using existing empirical methods and tools to understand the threats, opportunities, risks, and rewards of these new techniques. This groundbreaking volume leads the way. It introduces new methodological approaches to data analysis as well as new techniques for collecting and cataloging transactional data. The ideas it presents have broad appeal and demonstrate what is possible when new techniques and new ways of thinking are brought to bear on complex research problems.
Robert J. Kauffman is currently the W.P. Carey Chair in Information Systems at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. He was previously director of the MIS Research Center, and professor and chair in the Information and Decision Sciences Department at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. He has worked in international banking and served on the faculty at New York University and the University of Rochester, before moving to Minnesota in 1994. His M.A. is from Cornell University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. His current research focuses on senior management issues in IS strategy and business value, financial evaluation of technology investments, technology adoption, e-commerce and electronic markets, pricing strategy, and supply chain management issues. His research has been published in Organization Science, Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Decision Sciences, and other leading IS, economics, and computer science journals, and has been presented at conferences. He has won outstanding research awards with his doctoral students and faculty colleagues at the INFORMS Conference on IS and Technology in 2003, 2004, and 2005, the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science in 2004, and the International Conference on Electronic Commerce in 2005. In 2006, he also won an Outstanding Research Contribution Award from the IEEE Society for Engineering Management for an article on standards drift in technology adoption published in the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management in 2005. Paul P. Tallon is an assistant professor of information systems at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College, and a research associate at the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations, at the University of California, Irvine. He received B.Comm. and M.Mgt.Sc. degrees from University College Dublin, and a Ph.D. in information systems from the University of California, Irvine. He previously worked as an IT auditor and chartered accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dublin, Ireland, and New York. His research has appeared in the Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Communications of the AIS, the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and the Journal of Global IT Management. His research interests include the economic, social, and organizational impacts of IT, strategic alignment, real options, IT portfolio management, and the economics of data management.
