The growth of information technology outsourcing and distributed software development have posed ... more The growth of information technology outsourcing and distributed software development have posed new challenges in managing software projects. In this paper we develop and test empirical models of project performance in the context of high maturity distributed software development. By analyzing data collected on more than forty large distributed commercial projects from a leading software vendor we study the effect of resource dispersion between remote development centers on software quality and productivity. Audited and fine grained data collected from these distributed projects operating at very high process maturity level (CMM-5) enables us to examine the effect of prevention, appraisal and failure-based quality management approaches on software project performance. Our results indicate that dispersion in software tasks between remote development centers negatively affect development productivity. However, we also find that the effect of dispersion on software quality can be mitigated using disciplined and highly mature development processes. Further in contrast to findings from the manufacturing quality literature, we find that failure-based quality management practices do help to improve software project performance. These empirical findings could explain the increased adoption of high process maturity frameworks such as CMM-5 among software service firms embarking on distributed development.
... Evidence Sunil Mithas ([email protected]) Ross School of Business University of Michigan 701 ... more ... Evidence Sunil Mithas ([email protected]) Ross School of Business University of Michigan 701 Tappan Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234 Phone: 734-763-8290 Fax: 734-936-0279 ... productivity or market value (Bharadwaj, Bharadwaj and Konsynski 1999; Brynjolfsson ...
Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'06), 2006
Page 1. Antecedents of Business Process Outsourcing in Manufacturing Plants Indranil R. Bardhan J... more Page 1. Antecedents of Business Process Outsourcing in Manufacturing Plants Indranil R. Bardhan Jonathan Whitaker Sunil Mithas ... Teng, Cheon and Grover (1995) note that the strategic orientation of a firm may affect its propensity to outsource the IS function. ...
... Our empirical results suggest that reverse auctions help buyers realize savings in procuremen... more ... Our empirical results suggest that reverse auctions help buyers realize savings in procurement costs, and they provide implications to develop more ... Reiley (1999) provides evidence for longerauction duration leading to higher prices for sellers in forward coin auctions on eBay. ...
... 4. R. Kohli and V. Grover, Business Value of IT: An Essay on Expand-ing Research Directions ... more ... 4. R. Kohli and V. Grover, Business Value of IT: An Essay on Expand-ing Research Directions to Keep Up with the Times, J. Assoc ... Sunil Mithas is an associate professor in the Robert H. Smith School of Busi-ness at the University of Maryland and a member of IT Professional's ...
ABSTRACT Advances in social computing can help firms enhance and leverage internal capabilities, ... more ABSTRACT Advances in social computing can help firms enhance and leverage internal capabilities, such as knowledge work and collaboration, and seamlessly integrate the vast information resources available on the Internet. Many firms, however, are still developing the practices that will enable them to leverage social networking in the enterprise. The articles in this special issue speak to this need.
This study presents a framework of complementarities between specific Human Resources (HR) and In... more This study presents a framework of complementarities between specific Human Resources (HR) and Information Technology (IT) practices, and validates this framework empirically. We conceptualize a system of HR-related work practices (facilitating HR) and system of IT-related practices (facilitating IT) that are specific to knowledge workers. We examine the interaction between facilitating HR practices and facilitating IT practices in the productivity outcomes of firms in knowledge-intensive industries. We also examine the quantitative firm productivity impacts of IT investment and facilitating HR-related work practices in the context of a specific type of knowledge work: the work of IT professionals. Linking separate datasets, we utilize objective economic metrics and managers' subjective assessments of firm productivity improvements to assess the effect of HR-IT alignment on firm productivity.
This article provides an assessment of the causal effect of customer relationship management (CRM... more This article provides an assessment of the causal effect of customer relationship management (CRM) applications on one-to-one marketing effectiveness. We use a potential outcomes based propensity score approach to assess this causal effect. We find that firms using CRM systems have greater levels of one-to-one marketing effectiveness. We discuss the strengths and challenges of using the propensity score approach to design and execute CRM related observational studies. We also discuss the applicability of the framework in this paper to study typical causal questions in business and electronic commerce research at the firm, individual and economy levels, and to clarify the assumptions that researchers must make to infer causality from observational data.
This paper develops a conceptual model to study the role of outsourcing strategies and plant-leve... more This paper develops a conceptual model to study the role of outsourcing strategies and plant-level information technology (IT) application infrastructure in the outsourcing of production and support business processes, as well as their subsequent impact on overall plant ...
... Sunil Mithas ([email protected]) RH Smith School of Business 4324 Van Munching Hall University ... more ... Sunil Mithas ([email protected]) RH Smith School of Business 4324 Van Munching Hall University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 Phone: 301.424.2283 ... Prior research shows that sophisticated IT infrastructure is a strong predictor of IOS adoption (Grover 1993). ...
A ccording to Jacobson and Mizik . The financial markets and customer satisfaction: Reexamining p... more A ccording to Jacobson and Mizik . The financial markets and customer satisfaction: Reexamining possible financial market mispricing of customer satisfaction. Marketing Sci. 28(5) 810-819], excess stock portfolio returns for firms with strong customer satisfaction are small and statistically insignificant, and if there is any above-market performance at all, it is due to a small set of firms in the computer and Internet industries. But their data seem to suggest the opposite. The returns are actually both exceptionally large and significant. Using monthly data, their portfolio consisting of strong American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) firms outperformed the market by 0.0053, corresponding to 6.4% cumulative risk-adjusted above-market returns on an annual basis over a 10-year period-a performance that would beat at least 99% of all large-cap U.S. stock funds tracked by Morningstar. Using a different treatment of risk, their annualized risk-adjusted return is a whopping 8.4% better than market. After eliminating computer, Internet, and utility companies, they find that the monthly risk-adjusted abnormal returns drop to 0.0045, which corresponds to an annual above-market return of 5.4%. This too is better than 99% of all actively managed stock funds in the population. Yet Jacobson and Mizik conclude that these returns are not statistically significant and that there is no evidence that stock returns from firms with strong customer satisfaction outperform the market over the long run.
This paper studies the influence of supply-side and demand-side factors on the compensation of in... more This paper studies the influence of supply-side and demand-side factors on the compensation of information technology (IT) professionals and considers the human capital and institutional explanations. We focus on returns to an MBA and the IT-related experience of IT professionals and use the largest data set of IT professionals that has been compiled to date in the United States to
... Authors, Sunil Mithas, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Pa... more ... Authors, Sunil Mithas, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742. ... 13. Bharadwaj, AS, Bharadwaj, SG and Konsynski, BR, "Information technology effects on firm performance as measured by Tobin's q," Management Sci., v45, pp. ...
... GM lost over $4 billion in a failed joint venture with Fiat, while on the other hand Nissan h... more ... GM lost over $4 billion in a failed joint venture with Fiat, while on the other hand Nissan has been able to derive greater value from its joint venture with Renault. ... Khanna 2000; Gulati and Singh 1998; Zollo et al. 2002), (2) Recombination of products, services or ...
Many multinational corporations have implemented cross-national satisfaction measurement programs... more Many multinational corporations have implemented cross-national satisfaction measurement programs for tracking and benchmarking the satisfaction of their customers across their various markets. These companies measure satisfaction with the goal of maximizing customer loyalty and the financial benefits associated with loyalty. However, existing research comparing consumer satisfaction across nations is limited, with the few existing studies examining only a small number of countries or predictors of satisfaction, or a small group of consumers within a particular economic sector. To expand our knowledge of the determinants of cross-national variation in customer satisfaction, we study three sets of factors: cultural, socioeconomic and political-economic. We utilize a unique sample of cross-industry satisfaction data from 19 nations, including nearly 257,000 interviews of consumers. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that consumers in traditional societies have higher levels of satisfaction than those in secular-rational societies. Likewise, consumers in self-expressive societies have higher levels of customer satisfaction than those in societies with survival values. We also find that literacy rate, trade freedom, and business freedom have a positive effect on customer satisfaction while per capita gross domestic product has a negative effect on customer satisfaction. We discuss the implications of these findings for policymakers, multinational corporations, and researchers.
... determinants, but it can also be expressed as the sum of all other economic assets of ... The... more ... determinants, but it can also be expressed as the sum of all other economic assets of ... They show that increases in customer satisfaction lead to signifi-cant cash flow growth. ... reduced, the cost of capital goes down as well, thus producing yet another source for stock price growth. ...
... Customer relationship management applications facili-tate organizational learning about custo... more ... Customer relationship management applications facili-tate organizational learning about customers by enabling firms to ... purchase behavior across transactions through different channels and customer touchpoints. ... examples of how FedEx and Ameri-can Airlines used their ...
The growth of information technology outsourcing and distributed software development have posed ... more The growth of information technology outsourcing and distributed software development have posed new challenges in managing software projects. In this paper we develop and test empirical models of project performance in the context of high maturity distributed software development. By analyzing data collected on more than forty large distributed commercial projects from a leading software vendor we study the effect of resource dispersion between remote development centers on software quality and productivity. Audited and fine grained data collected from these distributed projects operating at very high process maturity level (CMM-5) enables us to examine the effect of prevention, appraisal and failure-based quality management approaches on software project performance. Our results indicate that dispersion in software tasks between remote development centers negatively affect development productivity. However, we also find that the effect of dispersion on software quality can be mitigated using disciplined and highly mature development processes. Further in contrast to findings from the manufacturing quality literature, we find that failure-based quality management practices do help to improve software project performance. These empirical findings could explain the increased adoption of high process maturity frameworks such as CMM-5 among software service firms embarking on distributed development.
... Evidence Sunil Mithas ([email protected]) Ross School of Business University of Michigan 701 ... more ... Evidence Sunil Mithas ([email protected]) Ross School of Business University of Michigan 701 Tappan Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234 Phone: 734-763-8290 Fax: 734-936-0279 ... productivity or market value (Bharadwaj, Bharadwaj and Konsynski 1999; Brynjolfsson ...
Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'06), 2006
Page 1. Antecedents of Business Process Outsourcing in Manufacturing Plants Indranil R. Bardhan J... more Page 1. Antecedents of Business Process Outsourcing in Manufacturing Plants Indranil R. Bardhan Jonathan Whitaker Sunil Mithas ... Teng, Cheon and Grover (1995) note that the strategic orientation of a firm may affect its propensity to outsource the IS function. ...
... Our empirical results suggest that reverse auctions help buyers realize savings in procuremen... more ... Our empirical results suggest that reverse auctions help buyers realize savings in procurement costs, and they provide implications to develop more ... Reiley (1999) provides evidence for longerauction duration leading to higher prices for sellers in forward coin auctions on eBay. ...
... 4. R. Kohli and V. Grover, Business Value of IT: An Essay on Expand-ing Research Directions ... more ... 4. R. Kohli and V. Grover, Business Value of IT: An Essay on Expand-ing Research Directions to Keep Up with the Times, J. Assoc ... Sunil Mithas is an associate professor in the Robert H. Smith School of Busi-ness at the University of Maryland and a member of IT Professional's ...
ABSTRACT Advances in social computing can help firms enhance and leverage internal capabilities, ... more ABSTRACT Advances in social computing can help firms enhance and leverage internal capabilities, such as knowledge work and collaboration, and seamlessly integrate the vast information resources available on the Internet. Many firms, however, are still developing the practices that will enable them to leverage social networking in the enterprise. The articles in this special issue speak to this need.
This study presents a framework of complementarities between specific Human Resources (HR) and In... more This study presents a framework of complementarities between specific Human Resources (HR) and Information Technology (IT) practices, and validates this framework empirically. We conceptualize a system of HR-related work practices (facilitating HR) and system of IT-related practices (facilitating IT) that are specific to knowledge workers. We examine the interaction between facilitating HR practices and facilitating IT practices in the productivity outcomes of firms in knowledge-intensive industries. We also examine the quantitative firm productivity impacts of IT investment and facilitating HR-related work practices in the context of a specific type of knowledge work: the work of IT professionals. Linking separate datasets, we utilize objective economic metrics and managers' subjective assessments of firm productivity improvements to assess the effect of HR-IT alignment on firm productivity.
This article provides an assessment of the causal effect of customer relationship management (CRM... more This article provides an assessment of the causal effect of customer relationship management (CRM) applications on one-to-one marketing effectiveness. We use a potential outcomes based propensity score approach to assess this causal effect. We find that firms using CRM systems have greater levels of one-to-one marketing effectiveness. We discuss the strengths and challenges of using the propensity score approach to design and execute CRM related observational studies. We also discuss the applicability of the framework in this paper to study typical causal questions in business and electronic commerce research at the firm, individual and economy levels, and to clarify the assumptions that researchers must make to infer causality from observational data.
This paper develops a conceptual model to study the role of outsourcing strategies and plant-leve... more This paper develops a conceptual model to study the role of outsourcing strategies and plant-level information technology (IT) application infrastructure in the outsourcing of production and support business processes, as well as their subsequent impact on overall plant ...
... Sunil Mithas ([email protected]) RH Smith School of Business 4324 Van Munching Hall University ... more ... Sunil Mithas ([email protected]) RH Smith School of Business 4324 Van Munching Hall University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 Phone: 301.424.2283 ... Prior research shows that sophisticated IT infrastructure is a strong predictor of IOS adoption (Grover 1993). ...
A ccording to Jacobson and Mizik . The financial markets and customer satisfaction: Reexamining p... more A ccording to Jacobson and Mizik . The financial markets and customer satisfaction: Reexamining possible financial market mispricing of customer satisfaction. Marketing Sci. 28(5) 810-819], excess stock portfolio returns for firms with strong customer satisfaction are small and statistically insignificant, and if there is any above-market performance at all, it is due to a small set of firms in the computer and Internet industries. But their data seem to suggest the opposite. The returns are actually both exceptionally large and significant. Using monthly data, their portfolio consisting of strong American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) firms outperformed the market by 0.0053, corresponding to 6.4% cumulative risk-adjusted above-market returns on an annual basis over a 10-year period-a performance that would beat at least 99% of all large-cap U.S. stock funds tracked by Morningstar. Using a different treatment of risk, their annualized risk-adjusted return is a whopping 8.4% better than market. After eliminating computer, Internet, and utility companies, they find that the monthly risk-adjusted abnormal returns drop to 0.0045, which corresponds to an annual above-market return of 5.4%. This too is better than 99% of all actively managed stock funds in the population. Yet Jacobson and Mizik conclude that these returns are not statistically significant and that there is no evidence that stock returns from firms with strong customer satisfaction outperform the market over the long run.
This paper studies the influence of supply-side and demand-side factors on the compensation of in... more This paper studies the influence of supply-side and demand-side factors on the compensation of information technology (IT) professionals and considers the human capital and institutional explanations. We focus on returns to an MBA and the IT-related experience of IT professionals and use the largest data set of IT professionals that has been compiled to date in the United States to
... Authors, Sunil Mithas, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Pa... more ... Authors, Sunil Mithas, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742. ... 13. Bharadwaj, AS, Bharadwaj, SG and Konsynski, BR, "Information technology effects on firm performance as measured by Tobin's q," Management Sci., v45, pp. ...
... GM lost over $4 billion in a failed joint venture with Fiat, while on the other hand Nissan h... more ... GM lost over $4 billion in a failed joint venture with Fiat, while on the other hand Nissan has been able to derive greater value from its joint venture with Renault. ... Khanna 2000; Gulati and Singh 1998; Zollo et al. 2002), (2) Recombination of products, services or ...
Many multinational corporations have implemented cross-national satisfaction measurement programs... more Many multinational corporations have implemented cross-national satisfaction measurement programs for tracking and benchmarking the satisfaction of their customers across their various markets. These companies measure satisfaction with the goal of maximizing customer loyalty and the financial benefits associated with loyalty. However, existing research comparing consumer satisfaction across nations is limited, with the few existing studies examining only a small number of countries or predictors of satisfaction, or a small group of consumers within a particular economic sector. To expand our knowledge of the determinants of cross-national variation in customer satisfaction, we study three sets of factors: cultural, socioeconomic and political-economic. We utilize a unique sample of cross-industry satisfaction data from 19 nations, including nearly 257,000 interviews of consumers. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that consumers in traditional societies have higher levels of satisfaction than those in secular-rational societies. Likewise, consumers in self-expressive societies have higher levels of customer satisfaction than those in societies with survival values. We also find that literacy rate, trade freedom, and business freedom have a positive effect on customer satisfaction while per capita gross domestic product has a negative effect on customer satisfaction. We discuss the implications of these findings for policymakers, multinational corporations, and researchers.
... determinants, but it can also be expressed as the sum of all other economic assets of ... The... more ... determinants, but it can also be expressed as the sum of all other economic assets of ... They show that increases in customer satisfaction lead to signifi-cant cash flow growth. ... reduced, the cost of capital goes down as well, thus producing yet another source for stock price growth. ...
... Customer relationship management applications facili-tate organizational learning about custo... more ... Customer relationship management applications facili-tate organizational learning about customers by enabling firms to ... purchase behavior across transactions through different channels and customer touchpoints. ... examples of how FedEx and Ameri-can Airlines used their ...
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