It is my pleasure to present the first 2019 JITCAR issue. It is a Special Issue focusing on “Internet-based Commerce and Social Media.” The contents of this issue are: Editorial Preface article by Dr. H. Samih; Research Case article one co-authored by Dr. Urvashi Tandon and Dr. Ravi Kiran; Research Case article two authored by Dr. Nicholas Flor; Expert Opinion report by Dr. Mahesh Raisinghani; and Book Review by Dr. Gaurav Bansal. Summary information of these items is as follows.
In the editorial preface article titled, Smart Cities and Internet of Things, the authors focus on how diverse stakeholders (government and private companies) of cities, large and small, have been capitalizing on ever-expanding capabilities of IT and Internet applications to make cities more efficient and effective in providing various services for its citizens. It identifies six characteristics of a smart city: smart economy, environment, governance, living, mobility, and people. It provides a summary of attributes of a smart city, Los Angeles referring to an earlier preface article in JITCAR. It also provides a futuristic scenario of how waste management should operate in a smart city. Dwelling on Internet of Things, the author articulates the role of emerging technologies like big data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in shaping future smart cities.
First research article is titled, Factors Impacting Customer Satisfaction: An Empirical Investigation into Online Shopping in India. This article analyzes impact of website quality and other drivers of online shopping on customer satisfaction in India. It brings into focus two new drivers of online shopping – “Social Media interactions” and “Pay on Delivery (POD)” mode of payment, both emerging as statistically significant alongside website quality.
Second research is titled, Elements of a Design Theory of Nano-Viral Messages: A Case Study of #Solar Nanovirals. It is a novel study analyzing viral social media messages that reach a large number of people at almost no cost. Main characteristic of the majority of viral messages is their shocking or entertaining content. The author posits the question if other social media messages such as pertaining to science and technology can also go viral. Conceptual blending analysis is done to analyze five representative “very small viral messages” (nanoviral) about solar technology leading to the identification of four distinct viral strategies. The author concludes by articulating a practical heuristic to guide the design of nanoviral messages.
The Expert Opinion report documents interview by Dr. Mahesh Raisinghani with Mr. Gustavo Pares, a partner at Nearshore Delivery Solutions (NDS), a company that assists global IT services companies in establishing and maintaining nearshore delivery operations in Mexico. Mr. Pares was born in Mexico and earned a bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems as well as a master’s degree in Business Administration from the Monterrey Institute of Technology. He also received an Executive Certificate in Management and Leadership from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and attended few executive education courses at Harvard and Stanford.
Questions posed to Mr. Gustavo Pares are: (a) How important is information technology (IT) in your industry, and your organization?; (b) Please name and briefly describe some of your strategic IT applications; (c) What has been the role of IT in the internationalization of your business?; (d) Please describe the worldwide global IT architecture in your organization (i.e., where are the major computing centers, how are they connected, etc.); (e) Please name and briefly describe some of your key international IT applications; (f) What have been the most important technologies (e.g., mobile, Internet-based, imaging, satellite communications, etc.) that have facilitated international expansion?; (f) What have been the key technical challenges in the overseas implementation of IT applications?; (g) What have been the key management challenges/issues in the overseas implementation of IT applications?; (h) Have you faced specific issues dealing with trans-border data flows and data privacy?; (i) What are the cultural issues that have arisen as a result of using native technology and management practices in foreign markets?; (j) Please name three opportunities for international IT applications, based on your company’s experience; (k) What advice can you offer to companies exploring the use of IT in overseas markets?
Book review report by Dr. Gaurav Bansal provides a detailed critique of the 2016 book titled, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy authored by Cathy O’Neill and published in 2016 by Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. The book report emphasizes how indiscriminate use of “big” data and “blind” algorithms can lead to wrong decisions and may consequently increase inequality and injustice. The book covers various aspects of this theme in 10 chapters devoted to (a) drawing a distinction between transparent (good) and opaque (bad) models and emphasizing that bad models are opaque, unfair, and tend to maximize efficiency at the expense of fairness; (b) providing example of one bad model (Weapons of Math destruction (WMD)) as the financial mathematical models that conceal inherent risks to maximize gains for security traders; (c) informing readers about the misleading US News College Rankings that are used by several colleges and universities for admission and are based on assigning weights to different factors in an entirely opaque manner; (d) warning about the advertising algorithms use their predictive power to effectively and efficiently locate targets and exploit the most vulnerable people in our society; (e) informing about recidivism risk models that are used for sentencing guidelines and crime patrol algorithms potentially resulting in racial profiling; (f) warning about personality tests used for hiring minimum wage workers in lieu of more powerful performance indicators. The report summarizes by saying, “Tremendous data is now available from social media posts, wearable devices such as Fitbit, responses to online forms and data submitted to health insurance companies among others. WMD algorithms armed with all sorts of “pooled” data ranging from credit scores to sleep patterns are devising arbitrary and opaque e-scores. These e-scores tend to optimize efficiency over effectiveness, profit over justice, opacity over transparency, and arbitrariness over fairness thus causing collateral damage…. Such WMDs are also used during elections as they are opaque (they hide one version of reality shown to one individual from the other), scalable and highly dangerous for the democracy. This has been clearly demonstrated in the 2016 presidential elections in USA where instances of fake news on social media, far removed from reality, were many.”
Routledge, in line with the ongoing trends, has published this journal online since 2014. The website to find all JITCAR issues is: http://www.tandfonline.com/utca. All authors and reviewers are encouraged to start using Routledge’s online manuscript submission and reviewing system http://www.editorialmanager.com/jitcar/. I urge all our current and future authors and reviewers to familiarize themselves with this system. I hope you all know that JITCAR is included in the SCOPUS index.
I hope you will enjoy reading all the items in this issue. With best regards,
Sincerely