Leveraging philanthropic behavior for customer support: The case of user support forums

MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2014, Pages 187-208

  Jabr, Wael ^a   Mookerjee, Radha ^b   Tan, Yong ^c   Mookerjee, Vijay S ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

Author keywords

Feedback; Pro social behavior; Recognition mechanism; Text mining; User support forum

Indexed keywords

CHARACTER RECOGNITION; DATA MINING; FEEDBACK; QUALITY CONTROL; SALES;

CUSTOMER SUPPORT; PROPENSITY SCORE; RECOGNITION MECHANISM; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOLUTION PROVIDERS; TECHNICAL SUPPORT; TEXT MINING; USER SUPPORT;

BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH;

EID: 84928608393     PISSN: 02767783     EISSN: 21629730     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.25300/MISQ/2014/38.1.09     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. Ahuja, M., Galletta, D., and Carley, K. 2003. "Individual Centrality and Performance in Virtual R&D Groups: An Empirical Study", Management Science (49:1), pp. 21-38.
2. Ang, S., and Slaughter, S. 2001. "Work Outcomes and Job Design for Contract Versus Permanent Information Systems Professionals on Software Development Teams", MIS Quarterly (25:3), pp. 321-350.
3. Aral, S. 2011. "Commentary-Identifying Social Influence: A Comment on Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion", Marketing Science (30:2), pp. 217-223.
4. Ariely, D., Bracha, A., and Meier, A. 2009. "Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially", American Economic Review (99:1), pp. 544-55.
5. Ba, S., Stallaert, J., and Whinston, A. B. 2001. "Research Commentary: Introducing a Third Dimension in Information Systems Design-The Case for Incentive Alignment", Information Systems Research (12:3), pp. 225-239.
6. Ball, S., and Eckel, C. C. 1998. "The Economic Value of Status", Journal of Socio-Economics (27:4), pp. 495-514.
7. Baltagi, B. 2008. Econometric Analysis of Panel Data (4th ed.), Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons.
8. Bapna, R. 2003. "When Snipers Become Predators: Can Mechanism Design Save Online Auctions?", Communications of the ACM (46:12), pp. 152-158.
9. Bartol, K. M., and Srivastava, A. 2002. "Encouraging Knowledge Sharing: The Role of Organizational Reward Systems", Journal of Leadership and Organization Studies (9:1), pp. 64-76.
10. Becker, S. O., and Ichino, A. 2002. "Estimation of Average Treatment Effects Based on Propensity Scores", The Stata Journal (2:4), pp. 358-377.
11. Benabou, R., and Tirole, J. 2006. "Incentives and Prosocial Behavior", American Economic Review (96:5), pp. 1652-1678.
12. Bock, G. W., and Kim, Y. G. 2002. "Breaking the Myths of Rewards: An Exploratory Study of Attitudes about Knowledge Sharing", Information Resources Management Journal (15:2), pp. 14-21.
13. Bock, G. W., Zmud, R. W., Kim, Y. G., and Lee, J. N. 2005. "Behavioral Intention Formation in Knowledge Sharing: Examining the Roles of Extrinsic Motivators, Social-Psychological Forces, and Organizational Climate", MIS Quarterly (29:1), pp. 87-111.
14. Boudreau, K. J., Lacetera, N., and Lakhani, K. R. 2011. "Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis", Management Science (57:5), pp. 843-63.
15. Bouty, I. 2000. "Interpersonal and Interaction Influences on Informal Resource Exchanges Between R&D Researchers Across Organizational Boundaries", Academy of Management Journal (43:1), pp. 50-65.
16. Brush, A. J. B., Wang, X., Combs Turner, T., and Smith, M. A. 2005. "Assessing Differential Usage of Usenet Social Accounting Meta-Datam", in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems, April 2-7, Portland, OR, pp. 889-898.
17. Byron, K., and Khazanchi, S. 2012. "Rewards and Creative Performance: A Meta-Analytic Test of Theoretically Derived Hypotheses", Psychological Bulletin (138:4), 809-30.
18. Casas-Arce, P., and Martínez-Jerez, F. A. 2009. "Relative Performance Compensation, Contests, and Dynamic Incentives", Management Science (55:8), pp. 1306-1320.
19. Cheng, R. 2009. "Squeezing Web Sites Onto Cellphones: Businesses Try to Shift Online Communities, Consumer Forums to Places Tailored for Wireless Users", The Wall Street Journal, Tech Section (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574568242989515828.html? mod=djemTECH; accessed December 2, 2011).
20. Chiu, C., Hsu, M., and Wang, E. 2006. "Understanding Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Communities: An Integration of Social Capital and Cognitive Theories", Decision Support Systems (42:3), pp. 1872-1888.
21. Christakis, N., and Fowler, J. 2011. "Commentary-Contagion in Prescribing Behavior Among Networks of Doctors", Marketing Science (30:2), pp. 213-16.
22. Congleton, R. D. 1989. "Efficient Status Seeking", Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (11:2), pp. 175-90.
23. Constant, D., Sproull, L., and Kiesler, S. 1996. "The Kindness of Strangers: The Usefulness of Electronic Weak Ties for Technical Advice", Organization Science (7:2), pp. 119-135.
24. Croson, R., Fatasband, E., and Neugebauerc, T. 2005. "Reciprocity, Matching and Conditional Cooperation in Two Public Goods Games", Economics Letters (87:1), pp. 95-101.
25. Cross, R., and Cummings, J. N. 2004. "Tie and Network Correlates of Individual Peformance in Knowledge-Intensive Work", Academy of Management Journal (47:6), pp. 928-937.
26. De Véricourt, F., and Zhou, Y.-P. 2005. "Managing Response Time in a Call-Routing Problem with Service Failure", Operations Research (53:6), pp. 968-981.
27. Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., and Ryan, R. M. 1999. "A Meta-Analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation", Psychological Bulletin (125:6), pp. 627-668.
28. Deci, E. L., and Ryan, R. M. 1985. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, New York: Plenum Press.
29. Dehejia, R. H., and Wahba, S. 2002. "Propensity Score-Matching Methods for Nonexperimental Causal Studies", The Review of Economics and Statistics (84:1), pp. 151-161.
30. Eisenberger, R., and Cameron, J. 1996. "Detrimental Effects of Reward-Reality or Myth?", American Psychologist (51:11), pp. 1153-1166.
31. Emerson, R. M. 1962. "Power-Dependence Relations", American Sociological Review (27:1), pp. 31-40.
32. Fischbacher, U., Gachter, S., and Fehr, E. 2001. "Are People Conditionally Cooperative? Evidence from a Public Goods Experiment", Economics Letters (71:3), pp. 397-404.
33. Forman, C., Ghose, A., and Wiesenfeld, B. 2008. "Examining the Relationship Between Reviews and Sales: The Role of Reviewer Identity Disclosure in Electronic Markets", Information Systems Research (19:3), pp. 291-313.
34. Franke, N., and Von Hippel, E. 2003. "Satisfying Heterogeneous User Needs Via Innovation Toolkits: The Case of Apache Security Software", Research Policy (32:7), pp. 1199-1215.
35. Frey, B., and Meier, S. 2004. "Social Comparisons and Pro-Social Behavior: Testing Conditional Cooperation in a Field Experiment", American Economic Review (94:5), pp. 1717-22.
36. Friedkin, N. E. 2004. "Social Cohesion", Annual Review of Sociology (30:1), pp. 409-425.
37. Ghose, A. 2009. "Internet Exchanges for Used Goods: An Empirical Analysis of Trade Patterns and Adverse Selection", MIS Quarterly (33:2), pp. 263-291.
38. Gilmore, A., and Moreland, L. 2000. "Call Centers: How Can Service Quality Be Managed?", Irish Marketing Review (13:1), pp. 3-11.
39. Goethals, G. R. 1986. "Social Comparison Theory: Psychology from the Lost and Found", Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (12:3), pp. 261-278.
40. Golle, P., Leyton-Brown, K., Mironov, I., and Lillibridge, M. 2001. "Incentives for Sharing in Peer-to-Peer Networks", in Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Electronic Commerce, New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 75-87.
41. Gu, B., and Jarvenpaa, S. 2003. "Are Contributions to P2P Technical Forums Private or Public Goods? An Empirical Investigation", in Proceedings of the 2003 Workshop on Economics of Peer-to-Peer Systems, June 5-6, Berkeley, CA.
42. Guimerà, R., Uzzi, B., Spiro, J., and Amaral, L. 2005. "Team Assembly Mechanisms Determine Collaboration Network Structure and Team Performance", Science (308:5722), pp. 697-702.
43. Guo, S., and Fraser, M. W. 2010. Propensity Score Analysis: Statistical Methods and Applications, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
44. Hausman, J. A. 1978. "Specification Tests in Econometrics", Econometrica (46:6), pp. 1251-1271.
45. Heffetz, O., and Frank, R. H. 2010. "Preferences for Status: Evidence and Economic Implications", in Handbook of Social Economics (Volume 1), J. Benhabib, M. O. Jackson, and A. Bisin (eds.), Amsterdam: North Holland Press.
46. Hogg, M. A., and Terry, D. J. 2000. "Social Identity and Self-Categorization Processes in Organizational Contexts", Academy of Management Review (25:1), pp. 121-140.
47. Iyengar, R., Van Den Bulte, C., and Valente, T. W. 2011. "Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion", Marketing Science (30:2), pp. 195-212.
48. Jeppesen, L. B., and Frederiksen, L. 2006. "Why Do Users Contribute to Firm-Hosted User Communities? The Case of Computer-Controlled Music Instruments", Organization Science (17:1), pp. 45-63.
49. Kankanhalli, A., Tan, B., and Wei, K. 2005. "Contributing Knowledge to Electronic Knowledge Repositories: An Empirical Investigation", MIS Quarterly (29:1), pp. 113-143.
50. Katz, D., and Kahn, R. L. 1978. The Social Psychology of Organizations, New York: Wiley.
51. King, W. R., Marks, P. V., and McCoy, S. 2002. "The Most Important Issues in Knowledge Management", Communications of the ACM (45:9), pp. 93-97.
52. Krishnan, R., Smith, M. D., and Telang, R. 2003. "The Economics of Peer-To-Peer Networks", Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (5:3), pp. 31-44.
53. Kumar, A., and Telang, R. 2012. "Does the Web Reduce Customer Service Cost? Empirical Evidence from a Call Center", Information Systems Research (23:3), pp. 721-37.
54. Kumar, V., Krishnan, R., and Krackhardt, D. 2008. "Dynamics of Network Structure and Content in an Organizational Forum", Working Paper, Carnegie Mellon University (http://qbox. wharton. upenn.edu/documents/opim/seminars/ForumPaper-No v01-2008.pdf).
55. Lakhani, K. R., and Von Hippel, E. 2003. "How Open Source Software Works: Free User to User Assistance", Research Policy (32:6), pp. 923-943.
56. Lerner, J., and Tirole, J. 2002. "Some Simple Economics of Open Source", Journal of Industrial Economics (50:2), pp. 197-234.
57. Lin, N. 1990. "Social Resources and Social Mobility: A Structural Theory of Status Attainment", Social Mobility and Social Structure, R. L. Breiger (ed.), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 247-271.
58. Manning, C. D., Raghavan, P., and Schütze, H. 2008. Introduction to Information Retrieval, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
59. Marwell, G., Oliver, P. E., and Prahl, R. 1988. "Social Networks and Collective Action: A Theory of the Critical Mass", American Journal of Sociology (94:3), pp. 502-534.
60. Mason, W., and Watts, D. J. 2009. "Financial Incentives and the Performance of Crowds", Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD Workshop on Human Computation, P. N. Bennett, R. Chandrasekar, M. Chickering, P. G. Ipeirotis, E. Law, A. Mityagin, F. J. Provost, and L. Von Ahn (eds.), June 28, Paris, pp. 77-85
61. Meier, S. 2007. "A Survey on Economic Theories and Field Evidence on Pro-social Behavior", in Economics and Psychology: A Promising New Cross-Disciplinary Field, B. S. Frey and A. Stutzer (eds.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 51-88.
62. Mithas, S., Almirall, D., and Krishnan, M. S. 2006. "Do CRM Systems Cause One-to-One Marketing Effectiveness?", Statistical Science (21:2), pp. 223-233.
63. Moody, J., and White, D. R. 2003. "Structural Cohesion and Embeddedness: A Hierarchical Concept of Social Groups", American Sociological Review (68:1), pp. 103-127.
64. Moon, H. K., and Park, M. S. 2002. "Effective Reward Systems for Knowledge Sharing: Facilitating Knowledge Flow", Knowledge Management Review (4:6), pp. 22-25.
65. Moon, J. Y., and Sproull, L. S. 2008. "The Role of Feedback in Managing the Internet-Based Volunteer Work Force", Information Systems Research (19:4), pp. 494-515.
66. Morrison, E. W. 2002. "Newcomers' Relationships: The Role of Social Network Ties during Socialization", The Academy of Management Journal (45:6), pp. 1149-1160.
67. Mundlak, Y. 1978. "On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data", Econometrica (45:1), pp. 69-85.
68. Nahapiet, J., and Ghoshal. S. 1998. "Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage", Academy of Management Review (23:2), pp. 242-266.
69. Nam, K. K., Ackerman, M. S., and Adamic, L. A. 2009. "Questions in, Knowledge iN? A Study of Naver's Question Answering Community", in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing, April 3-9, Boston, pp. 779-788.
70. Neckermann, S., and Frey, B. S. 2007. "Awards as Incentives", Institute for Empirical Research in Economics Working Paper No. 334, University of Zurich (http://www.eea-esem.com/files/papers/EEA-ESEM/2008/644/iewwp334.pdf).
71. Nee, V., and Ingram, P. 1998. "Embeddedness and Beyond: Institutions, Exchange, and Social Structure", Chapter 2 in The New Institutionalism in Sociology, M. Brinton and V. Nee (eds.), New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
72. Nerkar, A., and Paruchuri, S. 2005. "Evolution of R&D Capabilities: The Role of Knowledge Networks within a Firm", Management Science (51:5), pp. 771-786.
73. Olson, M. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (2nd ed.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
74. O'Reilly, C. A., Caldwell, D. F., and Barnett, W. P. 1989. "Work Group Demography, Social Integration, and Turnover", Administrative Science Quarterly (34:1), pp 21-37.
75. Orlikowski, W. J. 1993. "Learning From Notes: Organizational Issues in Groupware Implementation", Information Society (9:3), pp. 237-251.
76. Petrovcic, A., Vehovar, V., and Žiberna, A. 2012. "Posting, Quoting, and Replying: A Comparison of Methodological Approaches to Measure Communication Ties in Web Forums", Quality and Quantity (46:3), pp. 829-854.
77. Raban, D. R. 2008. "The Incentive Structure in an Online Information Market", Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (59:14), pp. 2284-2295.
78. Raghu, T. S., Jayaraman, B., and Rao, H. R. 2004. "Toward an Integration of Agent- and Activity-Centric Approaches in Organizational Process Modeling: Incorporating Incentive Mechanisms", Information Systems Research (15:4), pp. 316-335.
79. Raymond, E. 1999. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates.
80. Ren, Z. J., and Zhou, Y.-P. 2008. "Call Center Outsourcing: Coordinating Staffing Level and Service Quality", Management Science (54:2), pp. 369-383.
81. Resnick, P., Zeckhauser, R., Friedman, E., and Kuwabara, K. 2000. "Reputation Systems", Communications of the ACM (43:12), pp. 45-48.
82. Rosenbaum, P. R., and Rubin, D. B. 1983. "The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects", Biometrika (70:1), pp. 41-55.
83. Ryan, R. M., Mims, V., and Koestner, R. 1983. "Relation of Reward Contingency and Interpersonal Context to Intrinsic Motivation: A Review and Test Using Cognitive Evaluation Theory", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (45:4), pp. 736-750.
84. Sebastiani, F. 2002. "Machine Learning in Automated Text Categorization", ACM Computing Surveys (34:1), pp. 1-47.
85. Singh, J. 2005. "Collaborative Networks as Determinants of Knowledge Diffusion Patterns", Management Science (51:5), pp. 756-770.
86. Singh, V., Twidale, M., and Rathi, D. 2006. "Open Source Technical Support-A Look at Peer Help Giving", in Proceedings of the 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Science, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press.
87. Smith, M. D., and Telang, R. 2009. "Competing with Free: The Impact of Movie Broadcasts on DVD Sales and Internet Piracy", MIS Quarterly (33:2), pp. 321-338.
88. Thomas-Hunt, M. C., Ogden, T. Y., and Neale, M. A. 2003. "Who's Really Sharing? Effects of Social and Expert Status on Knowledge Exchange Within Groups", Management Science (49:3), pp. 464-477.
89. Thye, S. R. 2000. "A Status Value Theory of Power in Exchange Relations", American Sociological Review (65:3), pp. 407-32.
90. Tsai, W., and Goshal, S. 1998. "Social Capital and Value Creation: The Role of Intrafirm Networks", Academy of Management Journal (41:4), pp. 464-476.
91. Van Den Bulte, C., and Stremersch, S. 2004. "Social Contagion and Income Heterogeneity in New Product Diffusion: A Meta-Analytic Test", Marketing Science (23:4), pp. 530-544.
92. Voelpel, S. C., Dous, M., and Davenport, T. H. 2005. "Five Steps to Creating a Global Knowledge-Sharing System: Siemens' ShareNet", Academy of Management Executive (19:2), pp. 9-23.
93. Wasko, M., and Faraj, S. 2005. "Why Should I Share? Examining Social Capital and Knowledge Contribution in Electronic Networks of Practice", MIS Quarterly (29:1), pp. 35-57.
94. Wasko, M., Teigland, R., and Faraj, S. 2009. "The Provision of Online Public Goods: Examining Social Structure in an Electronic Network of Practice", Decision Support Systems (47:3), pp. 254-265.
95. White, P. H., Kjelgaard, M. M., and Harkins, S. G. 1995. "Testing the Contribution of Self-Evaluation to Goal-Setting Effects", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (69:1), pp. 69-79.
96. Wichardt, P. C. 2009. "A Status-Based Motivation for Behavioural Altruism", International Journal of Social Economics (36:8), pp. 869-887.
97. Wiertz, C., and De Ruyter, K. 2007. "Beyond the Call of Duty: Why Customers Contribute to Firm-Hosted Commercial Online Communities", Organization Studies (28:3), pp. 347-376.
98. Willer, R. 2009. "Groups Reward Individual Sacrifice: The Status Solution to the Collective Action Problem", American Sociological Review (74:1), pp. 23-43.
99. Yankee Group Research, Inc. 2006. "Great Expectations: Self-Service Success Can Happen", Yankee Group Research, Inc. (http://www.ccng.com/files/public/Yankee-SelfService.pdf).
100. Zghaibeh M., and Anagnostakis, K. G. 2007. "On the Impact of P2P Incentive Mechanisms on User Behavior", in Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on the Economics of Networked Systems and Incentive-Based Computing, June 11, San Diego.
101. Zhang, X., Vogel, D., Chen, Z., and Yuan, M. 2006. "Is Reward Always Effective as Incentive in Electronic Knowledge Repositories? A Game-Theoretical Perspective", in Proceedings of the 12th Americas Conference on Information Systems, August 4-6, Acapulco, Mexico.