im Rahmen des CDSB Research Seminars freuen wir uns, Herrn Prof. Dr. Thomas Kude von der Universität Bamberg bei uns begrüßen zu dürfen.
Am Mittwoch, den 11.10. hat Herr Prof. Dr. Armin Heinzl ihn eingeladen von 12:00 bis 13:00 Uhr einen Vortrag zum Thema „The evolution of organizational networks in the enterprise software industry: A 14-year qualitative study of four complementors“ zu halten.
Abstract
Digital business models increasingly extend beyond organizational boundaries. In the enterprise software industry, complementor organizations participate in organizational networks to access complementary resources provided and controlled by a platform owner. Complementors use these resources to create innovative enterprise software applications that serve a wide variety of client needs. However, while facilitating digital innovation, these organizational networks are also characterized by extreme power asymmetries. Platform owners can make unilateral moves without consulting complementors, prompting complementors to respond to these moves. Drawing on the competition and cooperation perspectives on value co-creation in software ecosystems, we conceptualize platform owner moves along two dimensions: (1) Platform owners entering into complementors’ niches and (2) platform owners impairing complementors’ resource access. Through a 14-year longitudinal investigation of 21 move-response pairs from four complementor-platform owner partnerships, we unpack the nature of complementor responses to platform owner moves as well as temporal patterns of complementor responses. We found complementors to respond by insisting on market access and resources or by pivoting within the focal ecosystem or across ecosystems. We identify dynamic patterns of responses that vary in their ability to help complementors re-stabilize their position in light of the destabilizing effects of platform owner moves. Our findings have implications for research on the governance of organizational networks for digital innovation and on platform-dependent entrepreneurship, point to the importance of complementor responses for creating resilient software ecosystems, and inform the ongoing discussion on the digitalization and platformization of established organizations and industries.
Speaker Bio
Thomas Kude is a professor of information systems and platform economy at the University of Bamberg. Previously, he was an associate professor at ESSEC Business School in France. He received his Ph.D. and habiltation from the University of Mannheim. In his research, he is interested in the development and application of information systems at various levels of analysis. His recent research has primarily focused on digital innovation produced by collectives of organizations and individuals. For example, he has studied the governance and evolution of digital platforms and ecosystems in different domains, including enterprise software and mobile apps. He has also studied collaboration in teams, in particular software development teams. His work has been published in various outlets including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Information Systems Journal. In 2018, he received the AIS Early Career Award from the Association of Information Systems. In 2019, he received the Best Paper Award from the journal Information Systems Research together with his co-authors. He serves as an associated editor for MIS Quarterly and Business & Information Systems Engineering and is on the editorial review board of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems.