Definition Of IT Research Articles

“Institutional Trap”: Both a Productive Concept and a Fine Metaphor

This paper is a reaction to the polemical article by Andrei Vernikov, How much substance is there behind the concept of Trap? (Journal of Institutional Studies, 2020, 12(2), pp. 25–37). This article concludes that there is no necessary scientific rigor and constructiveness of the concept of (IT), and therefore it is proposed to introduce a kind of academic ostracism in the form of a scientific moratorium on this concept in the form of its ban on the pages of academic journals and in the programs of training courses. The proposed article shows that the term IT has all the properties of strictness when defined at the verbal, i.e. the most generalized, level. At the same time, it is demonstrated that when switching to specific model constructions, the concept of IT acquires mathematical rigor and applied operationality, which is confirmed by a large number of IT models developed in Russia and abroad. The article also refutes A. Vernikov's Lemma, according to which there is no economic or social phenomenon in modern Russia that cannot be declared an trap. This is done using such striking counterexamples as the liquidity trap and the Malthusian trap, which do not fall under the definition of IT. Special attention is paid to identifying differences in terms of IT, Institute dysfunction and lock-in effect. Typical errors in the use of the term IT are demonstrated and it is proved that the fault for this lies with the authors who produce errors, and not with the term that does not contain any specific flaws. The thesis is put forward that the purity of the terminological field of institutional analysis should be provided by the expert community at the stage of reviewing articles, and not by methods of prohibiting scientific concepts. It is concluded that the popularity of the term IT is due to the fact that it is both a strict scientific concept and a beautiful metaphor.

Valuing IT-Related Intangible Assets

We assess the value of IT-related intangible assets and then use data on business practices and management capabilities to understand how this value is distributed across firms. Using a panel of 127 firms over the period 2003-2006, we replicate and extend the Brynjolfsson, Hitt and Yang (2002) finding that $1 of computer hardware is correlated with more than $10 of market value. We account for the “missing $9” by broadening the definition of IT to include capitalized software, and then include all purchased and internally developed software, other internal IT services, IT consulting, and IT-related training (whether or not it is capitalized by the firm). In addition, we use data on IT-related business practices in order to analyze the distribution of IT-related intangibles within the sample. Our results suggest that the “invisible” IT not accounted for on balance sheets is being priced into the market value of firms. We also estimate that there is a 45%-76% premium in market value for the firms with the highest organizational IT capabilities (based on separate measures of human resource practices, management practices, internal IT use, external IT use, and Internet capabilities), as compared to those with the lowest organizational IT capabilities. Our results thus suggest that contributions of IT to value depend heavily on other factors, and are not a “rising tide that lifts all boats.”

Information Technology Investment

Much evidence regarding the relationship between IT investment and firm performance is contradictory. Numerous issues have been summarized and discussed as factors that contribute to the contradictory findings. While many researchers have found IT investments to have a positive performance impact, others have failed to support those findings. These contradictory findings concerning IT investment appear at the firm, industry, and national economy levels of analysis. There are four broad issues related to the role of IT within an organization that are factors contributing to the contradictory findings: structural business characteristics, management ability, definition of IT, and measurement approach. While there are many studies that use broad secondary indices and economic models to look for mathematical relationships between IT investment and firm performance, few studies take an in-depth look at the role of IT within an organization and expose the dynamics of this relationship.

Gender and information technology

This paper examines implications of definitions of information technology to women's participation in the industry and in academe. It is exploratory only, based on a review of selected government and industry reports and data related to IT education and the profession. However, it argues that there is evidence to suggest that discourse related to information technology has the effect of excluding women and multi-disciplinary perspectives. On the one hand, there is considerable evidence that the IT industry and skills it demands are multi-disciplinary and that many people working in the industry, particularly women, come from a variety of disciplines. On the other hand, despite the evidence of the multidimensional nature of IT, the impact of convergence, the importance of matching IT solutions to user needs and so on, a very narrow definition of IT dominates the discourse. This definition equates IT and IT professionals with computer science and engineering, disciplines which are predominately male. The result, then of this narrow definition is to marginalize women and their contributions. This is a pattern that has been observed with the development of other disciplines such as medicine. Not only does the narrowing of the definition of Information Technology tend to exclude and devalue the contribution of women but it also results in marginalization of other disciplines that would bring more "neutral" or "critical" perspectives to bear on technology. Thus the exclusion of multiple disciplines and women may contribute to poor technology decision-making at the societal and organizational level.

The Game of Love: Troubadour Wordplay by Laura Kendrick

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER within the collection that takes the Pauline principle to heart. Would not this qualify him to be a "gentil"? And, finally, one cannot know whether a study such as this one reveals more to us about the medieval or the modern mind. Kendrick admits that we cannot easily determine "how much medieval people may have con­ sciously understood about the therapeutic possibilities of play or fiction" and that "we have a tendency to remake Chaucer in our own images." It is possible that her book does just that. Nevertheless, ChaucerianPlay seems to impart a deeper understanding to the reader ofChaucer's mind and art, and it is a book that medievalists will want to know. MARY FLOWERS BRASWELL University of Alabama at Birmingham LAURA KENDRICK. The Game a/Love: Troubadour Jfvrdplay. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1988. Pp. xiv, 238. $32.50. Kendrick posits a tradition of facetious wordplay which reached its apogee in the songs of the early troubadours, particularly in those of the first troubadour whose works survive, William IX, count ofPoitou and duke of Aquitaine. She claims that the tradition was anticipated as early as the seventh century by the parodist Virgil of Toulouse and the authors of the Hispericafamina and that it was revived in the fourteenth century by the members ofthe academy ofvernacular poetry at Toulouse which was called the Consistori de la subregaya companhia del gay saber. She finds support­ ing evidence of the tradition in the marginalia of certain troubadour and liturgical manuscripts, in Latin compositions in praise ofthe virgin, and in the history of performance practices. Her book is exciting because of its bold hypothesis, its historical breadth, and the diversity of evidence she introduces; both learned and provocative, it calls for discussion at length. For this reader, however, it is not persuasive, because too many of her arguments could easily be reversed and in particular because too many of her translations of Occitan and Latin are inaccurate. Therefore, it calls for discussion in detail. I am left with a feeling ofdisappointment that such an interesting attempt at an innovative synthesis cannot withstand scrutiny. 256 REVIEWS In chapter 1, "Contests and Contexts," Kendrick introduces the govern­ ing opposition ofthe book, a contrast between an acentric world view and a centered one. The former she tracesfrom classical authors such as Lucretius, Varro, and Ovid, down to the contemporary perspective (she alludes to Yeats, "The center cannot hold"); the latter she attributes to Saint Au­ gustine, the Inquisition, and the authoritarian mentality in any period. The contrast is clear, but its application is not. The classical tradition has been put in the opposite camp by recent scholars such as Howard Bloch, as Kendrick acknowledges (p. 5); Sarah Spence (Rheton·c of Reason and Desire: Vergi/, Augustine, and the Troubadours [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988]) reverses Kendrick's analysis, considering the rhet­ oric ofVirgil repressive, that ofAugustine nonantagonistic. Kendrick takes feudalism as a centered institution, overlooking the definition ofit as "the least possible government" which has often been bandied about. When she argues that in popular religion the relics of saints were considered not representative but real, or that vernacular charters were not meant to be authoritative, the strain becomespalpable. She assumes atavisticorigins of the acentric world view which have left little or no evidence and explains that the world view was intrinsically unlikely to produce evidence of its existence. Chapter 2, "Reading Troubadour Verse: The Adventure ofthe Signifier," makes the case for facetious reading of the early troubadors, based pri­ marily on a name and on variant readings in the manuscripts. The name is represented in the manuscripts as la troba neblo in Marcabru, interpreted hitherto as la troba n'Eblo, "the composition of Sir Eble," that is, Eble, viscount of Ventadorn, known as "the singer" (cantator), who was also mentioned as a poet by Beman de Ventadorn and Giraut de Bornelh even though none of his works are extant. Kendrick grants that this interpreta­ tion "is probably correct" but argues that "it might also be possible to understand neblo as 'foggy,' 'obscuring,' or 'obfuscating' or 'insubstantial, worthless' " (p. 25). Later in...