We gather detailed data on organizational practices and information technology (IT) use at 253 firms to examine the hypothesis that external focus--the ability of a firm to detect and therefore respond to changes in its external operating environment--increases returns to IT, especially when...

We test for three-way complementarities among information technology (IT), performance pay, and human resource (HR) analytics practices. We develop a principal-agent model examining how these practices work together as an incentive system that produces a larger productivity premium when the...

We present a framework and empirical estimates that quantify the economic impact of increased product variety made available through electronic markets. While efficiency gains from increased competition significantly enhance consumer surplus, for instance, by leading to lower average selling...

We study the strategy of bundling a large number of information goods, such as those increasingly available on the Internet, and selling them for a fixed price. We analyze the optimal bundling strategies for a multiproduct monopolist, and we find that bundling very large numbers of unrelated...

The "productivity paradox" of information systems (IS) is that, despite enormous improvements in the underlying technology, the benefits of IS spending have not been found in aggregate output statistics. One explanation is that IS spending may lead to increases in product quality or variety...

Although there is good reason to expect that the growth of information work and information technology will significantly affect the trade-offs inherent in different structures for organizing work, the theoretical basis for these changes remains poorly understood. This paper seeks to address...

There have been many claims that the Internet represents a new nearly "frictionless market." Our research empirically analyzes the characteristics of the Internet as a channel for two categories of homogeneous products---books and CDs. Using a data set of over 8,500 price observations collected...

Many markets have historically been dominated by a small number of best-selling products. The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, describes this common pattern of sales concentration. However, information technology in general and Internet markets in particular have the potential to...

Many changes in the organization of work in the United States since 1975 have been attributed to the increased capabilities and use of information technology (IT) in business. However, few studies have attempted to empirically examine these relationships. The primary goal of this paper is to...

A key question for Internet commerce is the nature of competition with traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. Although traditional retailers vastly outsell Internet retailers in most product categories, research on Internet retailing has largely neglected this fundamental dimension of...