Information Systems Research Best Published Paper Awarded to Professors Chi and Ravichandran

11.18.11

“Information Technology, Network Structure, and Competitive Action,” co-authored by Lally Professors Lei Chi and T. Ravichandran, with Goce Andrevki of Queens University won the 2010 Information Systems Research Best Published Paper award. Information Systems Research is a top tier research journal published by INFORMS and is selected as one of the top academic journals by both BusinessWeek and Financial Times in their rankings of business schools.  The paper examines how information technology (IT) influences competitive firm behavior in interfirm alliance networks. Using the global automotive industry as a model system, this paper collects data about 12 global major automakers over 16 years from 1988-2003. It finds that dense network structure of alliance networks is more beneficial than sparse network structure (rich in structural holes) on competitive firm behavior only when IT-enabled capability is high; on the other hand, when IT-enabled capability is low, sparse network structure becomes more beneficial on competitive firm behavior. This paper represents one of the first studies that examined the interaction between IT and interfirm alliance networks. It uncovers an important role of this interaction in competitive firm behavior.

Professor Chi is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Lally School. Her research spans multiple disciplines of information technology, networks, innovation and entrepreneurship. She has received grants from Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Office of Entrepreneurship at Rensselaer. Chi has published more than twenty-one peer-reviewed research papers in academic journals and conference proceedings. Her research has been published in journals such as Information Systems Research, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Journal of Knowledge Management.  Professor Chi currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, and an Editorial Review Board Member of IEEE Transactions in Engineering Management and the Knowledge Management Research and Practice. She has previously served as an Associate Editor for the 2010 International Conference on Information Systems and a Mini-Track Chair for the 2010 Americas Conference on Information Systems.

Professor Ravichandran, Professor and Area Coordinator of the Marketing, Information Systems and Operations Management area, is an affiliated faculty in the Information Technology program in the School of Science and in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Rensselaer. He has been a visiting scholar at the Technological University at Eindhoven, School of Computing, National University of Singapore,  Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea, Seoul National University, South Korea and ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. Professor Ravichandran’s long-term research interests focus on four broad areas: 1) strategic implication of information technology and organizational capabilities to manage information technology; 2) supply chain management and business-business electronic markets; 3) innovation diffusion and assimilation; and, 4) organizational renewal and growth through innovation. His research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Ministry of Education, Singapore. He has published more than ninety five research papers in academic journals and conference proceedings. His research articles have been in leading academic published, such as the Communications of the ACM, Decision Sciences, European Journal of Information Systems, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Information Systems Research, Information Technology Management, Logistics Information Systems, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of High Technology Management Research and MIS Quarterly. He currently serves as a Department Editor of IEEE Transactions in Engineering Management and as a Senior Editor of Information & Management. He recently completed a four-year term as an Associate Editor of MIS Quarterly and as an Associate Editor of Information Systems Research. He has also served as a guest editor for the ACM Database for Advances in MIS.