Management Research Opportunities Research Articles

Blockchain: Challenges and Opportunities for Management Research

Blockchain technology is widely hailed as a disruptive technology that will not only lead to the emergence of new business models, but also redefine what constitutes an organization and how it can effectively operate. Concurrently to the widespread adoption of blockchain and its technological maturity, a vibrant community of scholars studying blockchain and its implications for management is emerging. Therefore, we believe that the time is ripe to bring together leading scholars with different research foci and diverse methodological preferences to discuss, provide direction, as well as debate, how blockchain will affect management theory and practice. This panel symposium will serve as a forum to elaborate on how blockchain related research differs from past work, what are the associated challenges and opportunities, as well as identify areas that future blockchain research should focus upon. In a facilitated discussion, we will raise these issues, providing ample opportunities for participants to engage, raise questions, and learn from their peers to design and conduct top blockchain management research.

Obtaining Data from the Internet: A Guide to Data Crawling in Management Research

The increasing availability of data on the Internet opens new opportunities for management research and the method of data crawling can be used for automated large-scale data extraction. We show that data crawling has quickly gained popularity and is used for a wide variety of purposes, but has so far gained less traction in the field of management. We argue that we could use many data sets used in other disciplines for answering questions in management research and show that setting up a data crawler does not require advanced programming skills. However, a lot of pitfalls can challenge the success of using crawled data for research. We develop a guideline for crawling projects and address how many of the regularly occurring challenges can be addressed.

How to create business value in the knowledge economy

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to explore and revitalise key contributions of Peter Drucker for the understanding of how changing conditions in the economy radically alter the ways business value is created. Second, the authors wish to demonstrate how the changes in key economic resources pose altogether different challenges and opportunities for management research and practice.Design/methodology/approach – Taking Peter F. Drucker as a point of departure, the paper presents a conceptual reflection of the conditions and new challenges for the creation of business. Drucker's insights are discussed and accelerated with a philosophical and sociologically inspired position on management.Findings – The paper demonstrates that the creation of business value in the knowledge economy is highly immaterial and socially embedded. This demands a broadening of perspective to (ontologically) encompass both the technical and the social. Production and the value of consumption cannot be measured independentl...

Workflow Automation: Overview and Research Issues

Workflow management systems, a relatively recent technology, are designed to make work more efficient, integrate heterogeneous application systems, and support interorganizational processes in electronic commerce applications. In this paper, we introduce the field of workflow automation, the subject of this special issue of Information Systems Frontiers. In the first part of the paper, we provide basic definitions and frameworks to aid understanding of workflow management technologies. In the remainder of the paper, we discuss technical and management research opportunities in this field and discuss the other contributions to the special issue.