Developing technological applications, entering exploitation alliances, and choosing between a researchor service-focused strategic orientation are decisions that high-tech firms must manage concurrently. This paper explores systematically the contrasting effects of these strategic determinants on rent-generation and rent-appropriation using the entire population of French biotech firms (1994-2...

Sociocultural constructivism assumes that a learner’s capacity for intellectual growth increases with the presence of scaffolding or support during interaction. Moreover, from participating in dialogic interaction, there is appropriation of the knowledge shared and jointly created by learners which could transform individual understandings. Hence, interactions are opportunities for scaffolding ...

Processes of appropriation of groupware systems in organizations are social processes that are strongly intertwined with processes of reflection and communication. We suggest facilitating these processes by supporting the creation of socio-technical self-descriptions. Self-description is an important element of social systems such as organizations and can be extended to include descriptions of ...

We analyze how economic shocks and policies affect the intensity of social conflict. We view conflict phenomena such as crime and civil war as involving resource appropriation activities. We show that not all shocks that could make society richer reduce conflict. Positive shocks to labor intensive industries diminish social conflict, while positive shocks to capital intensive industries increas...

This article is a response to an increasing rapprochement taking place between the humanities and the sciences, and specifically between cultural theory and the cognitive sciences within the field of affect studies. The focus of the article will be on the area of automaticity research in both its past and present formations. This field of research has furnished cultural theorists with concepts ...

Adoption of new technology such as Open Source Software (OSS) is one of the important issues in organizations. Despite being considered as cost effective by many organizations, OSS implementation still encounters many challenges. This paper describes a case study conducted at one of Malaysia’s public universities which initially adopted Open Source based applications but then later rejected the...

The mobility of activities entails intrinsic parameters such as the mobility of tasks and technologies, as well as changing conditions underlying mobile computing. The interactions between these parameters bear directly on the appropriation of mobile technologies deployed in these activities. In this paper, I analyze the appropriation of mobile technologies as a function of motives, conditions ...

This paper explores the use of cognitive mapping for eliciting users' sensemaking during information system (IS) appropriation. Despite the potential usefulness of sensemaking, few studies in IS research use it as a theoretical lens to address IS appropriation. A possible reason for this may be that sensemaking does not easily lend itself to be used in practice. We introduce cognitive mapping a...

What do young people want from information and communication technology? Why do they adopt some technologies but reject others? What roles do mobile technologies play in their lives as they move from childhood toward the adult world? Working from a social constructionist perspective, and on the basis of an extensive empirical research process, we are gaining insight into the variables heeded by...