Care and community revalued during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A feminist couple perspective

The COVID‐19 pandemic led us to understand and revalue care ethics within our daily lives and communities based on the feminist theory of care ethics. This article is a personal reflection of an academic couple living in Japan as we reflect on our experiences and the challenges encountered in caring for ourselves and our community. We discuss the ideas of care theory mainly: caring‐about and caring‐for, interchangeably in our discussion across the three‐stage categories: Home — A Commonplace; Care Ethics in Community; and Care Ethics for Self. Through these personal narratives, we strive to recognize the struggles of living through the pandemic in a virtually connected world that often disconnects us from self. We foster the idea of embracing care ethics as a starting point at an individual level.     

Decision Processes for Developing Strategic Applications of Information Systems: A Contingency Approach*

Strategic applications of information systems (IS) are considered by IS researchers to be determined by contextual factors such as environmental uncertainty, and influenced by attributes of the processes preceding them, such as planning and top management support. For better management of the process leading to these applications, it is essential to understand the relationship between process attributes and contextual factors. Utilizing a contingency approach, this article takes a step toward such an understanding. Based on successful strategic IS applications from 81 large companies, it examines the relationship between the context of these applications and the decision-making process leading to them. The results indicate that the external environment is related to whether a rational or political decision-making process is used. The IS function seems to influence the use of the decision process implied by IS researchers, one in which the top management champions the strategic application, while the IS managers contribute by conducting in-depth analysis. However, the organization structure was not related to any decision process attribute. The implications of these findings for future research and practice are also discussed.     

中国,吸引国外留学生的强磁场

外界对中国充满了误解与迷思,一个有见识的外国学生也不敢预测到中国留学会学到什么。但实际上,在中国生活以后,逐渐会感到习惯,也会从迷雾中发现真相并作出理智的判断。虽然在世界任何地方都应采取必要的防范措施,但中国真的是一个非常有安全感的国家,市区的犯罪率和美国以及欧洲城市相比较低。     

The Relationship Between Information System Planning Sophistication and Information System Success: An Empirical Assessment*

Literature on information systems (IS) planning implicitly assumes that a sophisticated IS planning process leads to greater IS success. This paper questions the exclusive reliance on this traditional belief. Instead, because IS planning requires significant organizational resources, prior IS success is essential to convince top management of the importance of IS planning sophistication. Therefore, IS success may influence IS planning sophistication. Several theoretical arguments are advanced in support of this explanation. Data from a survey of 236 academic institutions are used to empirically assess the two alternative directions of the relationship between IS planning sophistication and IS success. Four structural models including the alternative causal directions are evaluated. Two of these models are supported. Together, they imply that for a high level of IS planning sophistication, either the previous ISs should have been successful or the organization should possess advanced information technology capabilities. Thus, empirical results suggest that the explanation presented here (i.e., IS success facilitates IS planning sophistication) provides an equally good alternative to the more traditional explanation (i.e., IS planning sophistication facilitates IS success).     

Characterization of Revenue Equivalence

The property of an allocation rule to be implementable in dominant strategies by a unique payment scheme is called revenue equivalence. We give a characterization of revenue equivalence based on a graph theoretic interpretation of the incentive compatibility constraints. The characterization holds for any (possibly infinite) outcome space and many of the known results are immediate consequences. Moreover, revenue equivalence can be identified in cases where existing theorems are silent.     

The Complexity of Forecast Testing

Consider a weather forecaster predicting a probability of rain for the next day. We consider tests that, given a finite sequence of forecast predictions and outcomes, will either pass or fail the forecaster. Sandroni showed that any test which passes a forecaster who knows the distribution of nature can also be probabilistically passed by a forecaster with no knowledge of future events. We look at the computational complexity of such forecasters and exhibit a linear‐time test and distribution of nature such that any forecaster without knowledge of the future who can fool the test must be able to solve computationally difficult problems. Thus, unlike Sandroni's work, a computationally efficient forecaster cannot always fool this test independently of nature.