Abstract
Some business processes do well when activities remain physical; for others, there must be a balance between the physical and virtual process for them to survive. Virtualization does not imply the use of technology because some processes like catalog sales can be virtual but are not IT-enabled. For the virtualized process that is IT-enabled – such as the P2P collaborative consumption or the sharing economy phenomenon – it is important to theorize their sustainability because their characteristics may differ. This research interrogates the underlying notion of amenability in process virtualization theory (PVT) and suggests that understanding process virtualizability must go beyond the amenability of a physical process (as posited by PVT) to the sustainability of the IT-enabled virtual process. Based on our investigation of online learning platforms, we provide empirical support that network effects and scalability are necessary, but not sufficient, for the sustainability of knowledge sharing firm's virtual processes and that aligned motives play a compensatory role in the sustenance of a knowledge sharing firm’s virtual process.
Recommended Citation
Treku, Daniel Narh and Liao, Qinyu, "P2P Collaborative Consumption: Towards Sustainability in the Virtualization Processes of Knowledge Sharing Firms" (2019). AMCIS 2019 Proceedings. 12.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2019/is_education/is_education/12
P2P Collaborative Consumption: Towards Sustainability in the Virtualization Processes of Knowledge Sharing Firms
Some business processes do well when activities remain physical; for others, there must be a balance between the physical and virtual process for them to survive. Virtualization does not imply the use of technology because some processes like catalog sales can be virtual but are not IT-enabled. For the virtualized process that is IT-enabled – such as the P2P collaborative consumption or the sharing economy phenomenon – it is important to theorize their sustainability because their characteristics may differ. This research interrogates the underlying notion of amenability in process virtualization theory (PVT) and suggests that understanding process virtualizability must go beyond the amenability of a physical process (as posited by PVT) to the sustainability of the IT-enabled virtual process. Based on our investigation of online learning platforms, we provide empirical support that network effects and scalability are necessary, but not sufficient, for the sustainability of knowledge sharing firm's virtual processes and that aligned motives play a compensatory role in the sustenance of a knowledge sharing firm’s virtual process.