Article on "Governing Digital Crisis Responses" published

We are pleased to announce the publication of the article authored by Dennis M. Steininger, Felix B. Buesching and Daniel J. Veit entitled "Governing digital crisis responses: platform standards and the dilemma of COVID-19 contact tracing" in the Journal of Business Economics.

Abstract
In response to the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, various developers turned to smartphone-based contact tracing to address the challenges of manual tracing. Due to the presence of network effects, i.e., the effectiveness of contact tracing applications increases with the number of users, information technology standards were critical to the technology’s success. The standardization efforts in Europe led to a variety of trade-offs concerning the choice of an appropriate technological architecture due to the contradictory tensions resulting from the dualism between the need for contact tracing data to contain the pandemic and the need for data minimization to preserve user privacy. Drawing predominantly on the software platform and standards literature, we conduct an interpretive case study to examine the emergence and consequences of this multi-layered decision situation. Our findings reveal how Google and Apple were able to limit the individual leeway of external developers, thereby effectively resolving the European standards war. Furthermore, we identify and discuss the various short-term and long-term trade-offs associated with the standardization of contact tracing applications and translate our findings into recommendations for policy makers with respect to future crisis situations. Specifically, we propose a strategy grounded in our data that enables responsible actors to make goal-oriented and rapid decisions under time constraints.

Reference: Buesching, F. B., Steininger, D. M., and Veit, D. J. 2022. "Governing digital crisis responses: platform standards and the dilemma of COVID-19 contact tracing" Journal of Business Economics, (Online First).(https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-022-01118-4).

Link:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11573-022-01118-4 (Open Access)

About the Journal: The Journal of Business Economics is a leading international journal in the research field of general management. The journal is rated B by the German Academic Association for Business Research (VHB) in JOURQUAL3.