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Annals of Information Systems 21

Amit V. Deokar
Ashish Gupta
Lakshmi S. Iyer
Mary C. Jones Editors

Analytics
and Data
Science
Advances in Research and Pedagogy
Annals of Information Systems

Volume 21

Series Editors
Ramesh Sharda
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK, USA
Stefan Voß
Universität Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7573

Amit V. Deokar • Ashish Gupta
Lakshmi S. Iyer • Mary C. Jones
Editors

Analytics and Data Science

Advances in Research and Pedagogy
Editors
Amit V. Deokar Ashish Gupta
Robert J. Manning School of Business Raymond J. Harbert College of Business
University of Massachusetts Lowell Auburn University
Lowell, MA, USA Auburn, AL, USA

Lakshmi S. Iyer Mary C. Jones

Walker College of Business College of Business
Appalachian State University University of North Texas
Boone, NC, USA Denton, TX, USA

ISSN 1934-3221     ISSN 1934-3213 (electronic)

Annals of Information Systems
ISBN 978-3-319-58096-8    ISBN 978-3-319-58097-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58097-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017946842

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
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Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents

1 Exploring the Analytics Frontiers Through Research

and Pedagogy��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1
Amit V. Deokar, Ashish Gupta, Lakshmi S. Iyer, and Mary C. Jones
2 Introduction: Research and Research-in-Progress������������������������������    7
Anna Sidorova, Babita Gupta, and Barbara Dinter
3 Business Intelligence Capabilities����������������������������������������������������������   15
Thiagarajan Ramakrishnan, Jiban Khuntia, Abhishek Kathuria,
and Terence J.V. Saldanha
4 Big Data Capabilities: An Organizational Information
Processing Perspective ��������������������������������������������������������������������������    29
Öykü Isik
5 Business Analytics Capabilities and Use:
A Value Chain Perspective����������������������������������������������������������������������   41
Torupallab Ghoshal, Rudolph T. Bedeley, Lakshmi S. Iyer,
and Joyendu Bhadury
6 Critical Value Factors in Business Intelligence Systems
Implementations������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    55
Paul P. Dooley, Yair Levy, Raymond A. Hackney,
and James L. Parrish
7 Business Intelligence System Use in Chinese Organizations����������������   79
Yutong Song, David Arnott, and Shijia Gao
8 The Impact of Customer Reviews on Product Innovation:
Empirical Evidence in Mobile Apps ����������������������������������������������������    95
Zhilei Qiao, G. Alan Wang, Mi Zhou, and Weiguo Fan
9 Whispering on Social Media ������������������������������������������������������������������ 111
Juheng Zhang

v
vi Contents

10 Does Social Media Reflect Metropolitan Attractiveness?

Behavioral Information from Twitter Activity in Urban Areas���������� 119
Johannes Bendler, Tobias Brandt, and Dirk Neumann
11 The Competitive Landscape of Mobile Communications
Industry in Canada: Predictive Analytic Modeling
with Google Trends and Twitter ������������������������������������������������������������ 143
Michal Szczech and Ozgur Turetken
12 Scale Development Using Twitter Data:
Applying Contemporary Natural Language
Processing Methods in IS Research�������������������������������������������������������� 163
David Agogo and Traci J. Hess
13 Information Privacy on Online Social Networks:
Illusion-in-Progress in the Age of Big Data? ���������������������������������������� 179
Shwadhin Sharma and Babita Gupta
14 Online Information Processing of Scent-­Related Words
and Implications for Decision Making �������������������������������������������������� 197
Meng-Hsien (Jenny) Lin, Samantha N.N. Cross, William Jones,
and Terry L. Childers
15 Say It Right: IS Prototype to Enable
Evidence-­Based Communication Using Big Data �������������������������������� 217
Simon Alfano, Nicolas Pröllochs, Stefan Feuerriegel,
and Dirk Neumann
16 Introduction: Pedagogy in Analytics and Data Science ���������������������� 223
Nicholas Evangelopoulos, Joseph W. Clark, and Sule Balkan
17 Tools for Academic Business Intelligence
and Analytics Teaching: Results of an Evaluation�������������������������������� 227
Christoph Kollwitz, Barbara Dinter, and Robert Krawatzeck
18 Neural Net Tutorial���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 251
Brian R. Huguenard and Deborah J. Ballou
19 An Examination of ERP Learning Outcomes:
A Text Mining Approach ������������������������������������������������������������������������ 265
Mary M. Dunaway
20 Data Science for All: A University-Wide Course
in Data Literacy���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 281
David Schuff
About the Authors

Meng-Hsien (Jenny) Lin is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at California

State University, Monterey Bay. Her research interests include studying various
individual differences factors in the context of sensory marketing (influence of
olfactory sensitivity on consumer behavior), advertising (gender differences and
information processing in children), and focuses the mediating role of emotions on
these relationships. She studies these topics using multi-methods, including behav-
ioral experiments, survey research, neuroscience, and in-depth interviews. Her work
also involves pedagogical research in marketing. Some of Dr. Lin’s work has been
published in Neuroscience and Journal for the Advancement in Marketing Education.
Her research has implications for theory, public policy, and consumer well-being
issues. Dr. Lin received her Ph.D. in marketing and an M.B.A. from Iowa State
University.
William Jones is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Beacom School of
Business at the University of South Dakota. Billy’s work has explored consumers’
use of numbers, behavioral pricing, individual differences in consumers’ sensory
processes, and issues in marketing education. Dr. Jones’s work has been or will be
published in Biological Psychology, Journal for the Advancement of Marketing
Education, and Psychology & Marketing among other journals and presentations at
national and international conferences. Dr. Jones received his Ph.D. in marketing
from the University of Kentucky, an M.B.A. from Georgia Southern University, and
a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Scranton.
Samantha N. N. Cross is an Associate Professor in Marketing in the College of
Business at Iowa State University. Her research examines how diverse entities, iden-
tities, perspectives, beliefs, ways of sensing, and consuming co-exist in individuals,
households, and society. Current research streams examine diverse cultural influ-
ences on decision-making, consumption, and innovation within the home; the
impact of sensory influences on consumer identity and purchase behavior within the
marketplace; and innovations in research methodology. She has received several

vii
viii About the Authors

awards for her research, including the Jane K. Fenyo Best Paper Award for Student
Research, the ACR/Sheth Foundation Dissertation Award, and the Best Paper in
Track Award at the American Marketing Association (AMA) Winter Conference.
She has presented her work in several forums, both nationally and internationally.
Her work has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Marketing, the
International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Public Policy and
Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Macromarketing, and
Consumption, Markets and Culture. Dr. Cross received her Ph.D. in marketing from
the University of California, Irvine, her M.B.A. in international business from
DePaul University, and a B.Sc. in management studies from the University of the
West Indies.
Chapter 1
Exploring the Analytics Frontiers Through
Research and Pedagogy

Amit V. Deokar, Ashish Gupta, Lakshmi S. Iyer, and Mary C. Jones

Abstract The 2015 Business Analytics Congress (BAC) brought together academic
professionals and industry representatives who share a common passion for research
and education innovation in the field of analytics. This event was organized by the
Association for Information System’s (AIS) Special Interest Group on Decision
Support and Analytics (SIGDSA) and Teradata University Network (TUN) and held
in conjunction with the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS
2015) in Ft. Worth, Texas from December 12 to 16, 2015. The theme of BAC 2015
was Exploring the Analytics Frontier and was kept in alignment with the ICIS 2015
theme of Exploring the Information Frontier. In the spirit of open innovation, the
goal of BAC 2015 was for the attendees to contribute their scientific and pedagogi-
cal contributions to the field of business analytics while brainstorming with the key
industry and academic leaders for understanding latest innovation in business ana-
lytics as well as bridge industry-academic gap. This volume in the Annals of
Information Systems reports the work originally reviewed for BAC 2015 and subse-
quently revised as chapters for this book.

Keywords Decision support • Business analytics • Congress • Business intelli-

gence • Panels • Research • Pedagogy

A.V. Deokar (*)

Robert J. Manning School of Business, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 72 University
Ave, Pulichino Tong Business Center 436, Lowell, MA 01854, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Gupta
Raymond J. Harbert College of Business, Auburn University,
415 W. Magnolia Ave., 417 Lowder Hall, Auburn, AL 36849, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
L.S. Iyer
Walker College of Business, Appalachian State University,
287 Rivers St, Boone, NC 28608, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
M.C. Jones
College of Business, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle #305249,
Denton, TX 76203, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 1

A.V. Deokar et al. (eds.), Analytics and Data Science, Annals of Information
Systems 21, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58097-5_1
2 A.V. Deokar et al.

It has been a tradition for the AIS Special Interest Group on Decision Support and
Analytics (SIGDSA) to organize the pre-International Conference on Information
Systems (pre-ICIS) analytics workshop with the title of “Congress” when the event
is held in the North American region. This “Congress” was the fourth such in its
series that began in 2009. Planning for Business Analytics Congress held in December
2015 in Ft. Worth, Texas began in Fall 2014. The theme of Business Analytics
Congress (BAC 2015) was decided as Exploring the Analytics Frontiers and was
kept in alignment with the ICIS 2015 theme of Exploring the Information Frontier.
A major purpose of the Congress was to bring together a core group of leading
researchers in the field to discuss the trends and future of business analytics in practice
and education. This included discussion of the role of academicians in investigating
and creating knowledge about applications of business analytics and its dissemina-
tion. This volume contributes to this purpose by striking a balance between investigat-
ing and disseminating what we know and helping to facilitate and catalyze movement
forward in the field. This volume in the Annals of Information Systems includes
papers that were originally reviewed for BAC 2015. These chapters were presented at
BAC 2015 and subsequently revised for inclusion as chapters for this book.
BAC 2015 was sponsored by both industry and academia. The two main industry
sponsors were Teradata University Network (TUN) and SAS, which in addition to
providing financial support for the Congress, helped with bringing in distinguished
speakers from industry. TUN also sponsored a reception for attendees the first eve-
ning of the event. Teradata University Network is a free, web-based portal that pro-
vides teaching and learning tools used by over 54,000 students and educators
world-wide. These include majors as diverse as information systems, management,
business analytics, data science, computer science, finance, accounting and market-
ing. The content provided by TUN supports instruction ranging from introductory
information systems courses at the undergraduate level to graduate and executive
level big data and business analytics classes. A key element of TUN success is that
it is “led by academics to ensure the content will meet the needs of today’s class-
rooms.” SAS is a corporate leader in the provision of statistical and analytical soft-
ware, services and support. SAS supports customers at over 80,000 sites around the
world and provides several resources (www.sas.com/academic) for academics in
support of their education needs. Academic sponsors included the University of
Arkansas, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University of North Texas,
and University of Tennessee Chattanooga.
The day and a half BAC2015 event began on Saturday December 12th with sev-
eral workshops. The first workshop was sponsored by SAS and focused on SAS®
Visual Analytics and SAS® Visual Statistics. The workshop presented by Dr. Tom
Bohannon focused on the basics of how to explore data and build reports using SAS
Visual Analytics. It also covered topics on building predictive models in SAS Visual
Statistics, such as decision tree, regression and general linear models.
The next workshop was sponsored by TUN and illustrated the vast academic
resources available on TUN. It was presented by Drs. Barbara Wixom and Paul
Cronan. The presenters discussed the rich repertoire of resources for faculty and stu-
dents covering topics related to BI/Data Warehouse, database and analytics. Further,
the talk session showcased software resources available from TUN and partnership
1 Exploring the Analytics Frontiers Through Research and Pedagogy 3

with BI and Analytics companies such as MicroStrategy, SAS and Tableau that pro-
vide excellent resources to support analytics and visualization topics. The University
of Arkansas is also a TUN partner and their resources were also discussed.
A workshop organized by Prof. Ramesh Sharda included Prof. Daniel Asamoah,
Amir Hassan Zadeh, and Pankush Kalgotra and focused on pedagogical innovations
related to delivering a Big Data Analytics course for MIS Programs. This session
covered their experiences in offering a semester long course on Big Data technologies
and included some hands-on demonstrations that they have used in their courses.
Discussions also included the course outline and learning objectives followed by a
description of various teaching modules, case studies, and exercises that they have
developed or adapted.
The last session on Saturday was a panel on Innovations in Healthcare:
Actionable Insights from Analytics. It was moderated and organized by Dr. Ashish
Gupta. Panelists included Ms. Sherri Zink from BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee,
Ramesh Sharda from Oklahoma State University, David Lary from University of
Texas Dallas and Ashish Gupta from Auburn University. This panel shared insights
that have been derived using big data approaches, and how they have led to transfor-
mations in areas related to health. Example include analytics in insurance from
consumer’s perspective, sports, pollution and allergy management, utilizing dispa-
rate data using new data science paradigms such as deep learning framework and
other enabling technologies.
The Sunday session began with an industry keynote by Ms. Sherri Zink, Senior VP,
Chief Data and Engagement Officer, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. The keynote
address provided detailed insight into applications of analytics for empowering con-
sumers, reducing redundant consumer touch points, optimal treatment plan based on
information shared between provider and payer, informed decision making. Her talk
provided an overview of how analytics could be used to develop a 360-degree view of
consumers with the help of various approaches that foster the data integration, transfor-
mation & prediction, and eventually towards actionable insights. Key takeaways from
the keynote address included a description of how clinical, life style and psychographic
data could help develop a better understanding about consumer for stratification pur-
poses using segmentation and clustering approaches. Such insights could help in devel-
oping better wellness programs and creating continuous feedback.
The keynote was followed by a panel entitled AACSB Resources for Building a
Business Analytics Program. The panel was moderated by Dr. David Douglas and
panelists included Drs. David Ahuja, Paul Cronan, Michael Goul, Eli Jones, Dan
LeClair and Tom McDonald. The panel discussed AACSB’s analytics initiative
designed to help schools develop programs by providing a mix of curriculum con-
tent, pedagogy, and structure resources for schools contemplating development of
or enhancement of Business Analytics. Panelists who were members of the AACSB
Analytics Curriculum Advisory Group shared resources and encouraged interactive
attendee discussion. Consistent with AACSB’s goal of providing services to ­member
schools across the globe, they shared information on initial analytics curriculum
development seminars that are being be offered in the three cities that house
AACSB’s regional offices: Tampa (USA), Singapore, and Amsterdam.
4 A.V. Deokar et al.

Lunch and afternoon sessions focused on research presentations, both complete

and research-in-progress, prototype and tutorials. The BAC 2015 event, for the first
time, included a prototype presentation that highlighted various aspects of the proto-
type such as novelty, architecture, functioning, ongoing and future work, etc.
Prototypes presented related to both teaching and research applications. Examples of
such prototypes included original web applications, mobile apps, functional analyt-
ics models, devices (such as IoT) connected to data science applications, and teach-
ing games that have an integrated study or analytics component. A report on one such
prototype, Say It Right: IS Prototype to Enable Evidence-Based Communication
Using Big Data, by Simon Alfano is included as a chapter in the book.
In keeping with the Exploring the Analytics Frontier theme of BAC 2015, the
research track sought forward-thinking research in the areas of analytics and busi-
ness intelligence, with special focus on the role of business intelligence and analyt-
ics in the creation, spread, and use of information. The research track was co-chaired
by Drs. Barbara Dinter, Babita Gupta, and Anna Sidorova.
Likewise, the teaching track also aligned their call with the theme of the congress
and sought pedagogical research contributions, teaching materials, and pedagogical
practices/cases that address acquisition, application, and continued development of
the knowledge and skills required in the usage of business analytics in the class-
room, with emphasis on business intelligence, social media analytics, big data ana-
lytics, high performance analytics, data science, visualization, and other emerging
analytic technologies. The teaching track was co-chaired by Drs. Sule Balkan,
Joseph Clark, and Nick Evangelopoulos.
The later chapters in the book provide many of the research and teaching track
papers, along with a prototype report, and a tutorial report.

Biographies

Amit V. Deokar is an Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems in the

Robert J. Manning School of Business at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Dr.
Deokar received his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of
Arizona. He also earned a M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Arizona
and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from VJTI, University of Mumbai. His research
interests include data analytics, enterprise data management, business intelligence, busi-
ness process management, and collaboration processes. His work has been published in
journals such as Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Support Systems
(DSS), The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems, Information Systems
Frontiers (ISF), Business Process Management Journal (BPMJ) and IEEE Transactions.
He is currently a member of the editorial board of DSS, ISF, and BPMJ journals. He has
been serving as the Decision Support and Analytics Track Chair at the international
AMCIS 2014–17 conferences, and is currently the Chair of the AIS Special Interest
Group on Decision Support and Analytics (SIGDSA). He was recognized with the 2014
IBM Faculty Award for his research and teaching in the areas of analytics and big data.
1 Exploring the Analytics Frontiers Through Research and Pedagogy 5

Ashish Gupta is an Associate Professor of Analytics in Raymond J. Harbert College

of Business at the Auburn University. Prior to this, he served as the (founding) direc-
tor of Analytics Research Center and an Associate Professor of Analytics & IS in the
College of Business at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. He has been a
Visiting Research Scientist at the Mayo Clinic Rochester, Visiting Associate
Professor in Biomedical Informatics at the Arizona State University and research
affiliate with University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. He has a
Ph.D. in MSIS from Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. Dr.
Gupta’s research interests are in the areas of data analytics, healthcare informatics,
sports analytics, organizational and individual performance. His recent articles have
appeared in journals such as MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Biomedical
Informatics, IEEE Transactions, Information Systems Journal, European Journal of
Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Information Systems Frontiers,
and Communications of the Association for Information Systems. His research has
been funded by several agencies and private enterprises. He has published four
edited books.

Lakshmi S. Iyer is Professor of Information Systems and Director of the Master’s

in Applied Data Analytics Graduate Programs at the Walker College of Business,
Appalachian State University. Her research interests are in the area of business ana-
lytics, knowledge management, emerging technologies & its impact on organiza-
tions and users, and social inclusion in computing. Her research work has been
published in or forthcoming in Communications of the AIS, Journal of Association
for Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Communications
of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, eService Journal, Journal of Electronic
Commerce Research, International Journal of Business Intelligence Research,
Information Systems Management, Journal of Global Information Technology and
Management, and others. She is a Board member of Teradata University Network,
recent past-chair of the Special Interest Group in Decision Support and Analytics
(SIGDSA, formerly SIGDSS). She has served as a Guest Editor for Communications
of the ACM, and the Journal of Electronic Commerce Research. She is also co-edi-
tor of Annals of Information Systems Special Issue on “Reshaping Society through
Analytics, Collaboration, and Decision Support: Role of BI and Social Media,”
from the 2013 pre-ICIS workshop in Milan, Italy.

Mary C. Jones is Professor of information systems and Chair of the Information

Technology and Decision Sciences Department at the University of North Texas.
She received her doctorate from the University of Oklahoma in 1990. Her work
appears in numerous journals including MIS Quarterly, European Journal of
Information Systems, Behavioral Science, Decision Support Systems, System
Dynamics Review, and Information and Management. Her research interests are
primarily in the impact on organizations of large scale, organizational spanning
information systems such as ERP or business intelligence systems. She teaches a
variety of courses including Enterprise Applications of Business Intelligence, IT
Project Management, and a doctoral seminar in General Systems Theory.
Chapter 2
Introduction: Research
and Research-in-Progress

Anna Sidorova, Babita Gupta, and Barbara Dinter

Abstract Inspired by the theme “Exploring the Information Frontier” of the ICIS
2015 conference, the Pre-ICIS Business Analytics Congress workshop sought
forward-­thinking research in the areas of data science, business intelligence, analyt-
ics, and decision support with a special focus on the state of business analytics from
the perspectives of organizations, faculty, and students. The research track aimed to
promote comprehensive research or research-in-progress on the role of business
intelligence and analytics in the creation, spread, and use of information. This work
has been summarized in this chapter.

Keywords Business intelligence • Analytics • Data science • Big data • Social

media analytics • Decision support systems • Curriculum design • Pedagogy

2.1 Introduction

Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI&A) have become core to many businesses
as they try to derive value from data. Although addressed by research in the past few
years, these domains are still evolving. For instance, the explosive growth in big
data and social media analytics requires examination of the impact of these

A. Sidorova (*)
University of North Texas, 365D Business Leadership Building, 1307 West Highland Street,
Denton, TX 76201, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
B. Gupta
California State University Monterey Bay, Room 326, Gambord BIT Building,
100 Campus Center, Seaside, CA 93955, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
B. Dinter
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Chemnitz University of Technology,
Chemnitz, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 7

A.V. Deokar et al. (eds.), Analytics and Data Science, Annals of Information
Systems 21, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58097-5_2
8 A. Sidorova et al.

technologies and applications on business and society. As organizations in various

sectors formulate IT strategies and investments, it is imperative to understand how
various technologies and applications under the BI&A umbrella such as business
intelligence, data warehousing, big data and big data analytics, decision support,
and data visualization contribute to organizational information processing, and ulti-
mately organizational success.
In the rest of this editorial we introduce the papers included in this chapter. The
papers address three broad issues: (1) business intelligence and analytics capabili-
ties and organizational impact, (2) social media analytics, and (3) individual, orga-
nizational and societal implications of big data. The remainder of this editorial is
structured around these themes.

2.2  rganizational Use and Impact of Business Intelligence

O
and Analytics

As organizations invest heavily in BI&A in hopes to improve their competitive

stance, researchers seek to develop theoretical frameworks that explain the strategic
role of BI&A, and help better understand the key factors associated with successful
organizational implementation and usage of BI&A. The papers presented here build
on several theoretical perspectives, including the capabilities view of the firm, value
chain model, and the IS success model.
A paper titled Business Intelligence Capabilities (Ramakrishnan et al. 2018) pro-
poses a theoretical framework for understanding core business intelligence capabili-
ties. As BI systems become an integral part of value delivery in modern organizations,
organizations need to go beyond the view of BI as a tool or artifact, and focus on
developing BI capabilities. The authors draw on the IT capabilities framework and
propose three categories of BI capabilities, BI innovation infrastructure capability, BI
process capability and BI integration capability, which contribute to the organiza-
tional success. The proposed taxonomy can be used to inform practitioners engaged
in building BI capabilities in their organizations. It also represents an important step
in developing comprehensive nomological network of BI capabilities.
A (RIP) paper titled Big Data Capabilities: An Organizational Information
Processing Perspective (Isik 2018) presents a theoretical model of big data capabilities
that is inspired by the organizational information processing perspective. The paper
argues that the realization of value from big data depends on an adequate fit between big
data processing requirements and big data processing capabilities. Another (RIP) paper
titled Business Analytics Capabilities and Use: A Value Chain Perspective (Bedeley
et al. 2018) proposes a value chain based approach for analyzing business analytics (BA)
capabilities of a firm. The authors analyze extant academic and practitioner literature
and identify and describe how descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics is used
in primary and supporting activities of Porter’s (2001) value chain. The literature analy-
sis suggests that organizations focus on building BA capabilities in value chain activities
where they measure the outcome of BA use in terms of the firm value.
2 Introduction: Research and Research-in-Progress 9

Building on the IS success model, a paper titled Critical Value Factors in Business
Intelligence Systems Implementations (Dooley et al. 2018), proposes and empiri-
cally tests a theoretical model on business intelligence system success. The paper
extends Delone and McLean’s model of IS success (Delone and McLean 2003) by
relating critical success factors identified in extant BI&A research perceived infor-
mation quality and perceived system quality. Through the use of survey methodol-
ogy, the study finds empirical support for the relationships among critical success
factors, perceived information quality, perceived system quality and user satisfac-
tion with the system and with the information provided by the system.
Song et al. (2018) present in their paper Business Intelligence Systems Use in
Chinese Organizations an international perspective on BI&A systems by investigat-
ing the impact of natural culture, in particular of Guanxi, a universal and unique
Chinese cultural form. The authors have conducted a series of interviews in two
indigenous Chinese organizations (including Alibaba) in order to test previously
identified research constructs. Based on the results five propositions of BI systems
use in Chinese organizations have been formulated, introducing a Guanxi perspec-
tive in BI use theories. Their results confirm that national culture has a significant
impact on BI&A usage in China. Future research should be guided by these insights
given the high relevance and influence of Chinese firms worldwide.

2.3 Social Media Analytics

Web 2.0 and social media facilitate the creation of vast amounts of digital content
that represents a valuable data source for researchers and companies alike. Social
media analytics relies on new and established statistical and machine learning tech-
niques to derive meaning from large amounts of textual and numeric data. In this
section we present several papers that seek to advance social media analytics meth-
ods and to demonstrate how social media analytics can be applied in a variety of
contexts to deliver useful insight.
The first paper in this category, titled The Impact of Customer Reviews on Product
Innovation: Empirical Evidence in Mobile Apps (Qiao et al. 2018) addresses a
research field with promising opportunities—analyzing Web 2.0 data to foster inno-
vation. The article examines the role played by customer reviews in influencing
product innovations in the context of mobile applications. In particular, the authors
verify the impact of online mobile app reviews on developers´ product innovation
decisions and identify the characteristics of such reviews that increase the likeli-
hood of future app updates. The findings suggest that it is important to explore user
generated reviews in the context of customer-centered product innovation.
The paper Whispering on Social Media (Zhang 2018) examines the role of infor-
mation circulated on social media in influencing stock performance during the so-­
called “quiet period” before an initial public offering (IPO). During such quiet
periods organizations are not allowed to disclose any information that might influ-
ence investors´ decisions. Nevertheless, people discuss and comment about
10 A. Sidorova et al.

upcoming IPS’s in social media. The author finds in her research that the number of
IPO-related tweets (and re-tweets) have significant positive correlation with the
IPO’s first-day return, liquidity and volatility.
The next contribution in this category presents another interesting use case for
social media analytics. The paper titled Does Social Media Reflect Metropolitan
Attractiveness? Behavioral Information from Twitter Activity in Urban Areas
(Bendler et al. 2018) describes how the analysis of social media activities can gener-
ate insights for urban planning. When tweets are combined with other data such as
the temporal information, spatial coordinates, appended images, videos, or linked
places, a variety of applications can be supported, for example city planning, city
safety, and investment decisions. For these purposes, the paper presents methods
and measures for identifying the places of interest.
The paper titled The Competitive Landscape of Mobile Communications Industry
in Canada—Predictive Analytic Modeling with Google Trends and Twitter (Szczech
and Turetken 2018) describes how social media and Google Trends can be analyzed
to predict competitive performance. Their predictive model builds on the previous
studies that use Google Trends for predicting economic and consumer behavior
trends in a particular business or industry. The authors improve these existing mod-
els by adding competition variables and incorporate Twitter Sentiment scores into
their models to discover if Twitter sentiment scores modify some of the variance in
the dependent variable that is not already explained by Google Trends data.
The research-in-progress paper titled Scale Development Using Twitter Data:
Applying Contemporary Natural Language Processing Methods in IS Research
(Agogo and Hess 2018) illustrates the use of Twitter data analytics for scale devel-
opment. With the rise in social media communication, these data are becoming an
important source to understand consumer behavior. However, challenges abound in
transitioning the traditional measurement scales into social media data such as
tweets. This paper uses natural language processing methods to develop measure-
ment scales using big data such as tweets. They present a new scale called the tech-
nology hassles and delights scale (THDS) to show how the content validity of the
scale can be improved by using a syntax aware filtering process that identifies rele-
vant information from analyzing 146 million tweets.

2.4 I ndividual, Organizational and Societal Implications

of Big Data

The rise of big data and associated analytical techniques has important implication
not only for organizational, but for the society in general.
The research-in-progress paper titled Information Privacy on Online Social
Networks: Illusion-in-Progress in the Age of Big Data? (Sharma and Gupta 2018)
focusses on the issues of privacy and information disclosure on social media. They
present a research model that draws together concepts from behavioral economic
theory, the prospect theory which is an extension of expected utility hypothesis, and
2 Introduction: Research and Research-in-Progress 11

the rational apathy theory, which is derived from the public choice theory in social
psychology. The research methodology investigates why people choose to disclose
vast amounts of personal information voluntarily on Online Social Networks (OSN).
The proposed research model considers the effect of situational factors such as the
information control, ownership of personal information, and apathy towards privacy
concern of users on OSN. The article proposes value to practitioners in many differ-
ent ways, the OSN providers and third parties could better understand how con-
sumer’s information disclosure behavior works and we could better understand why
people tend to disclose too much of their personal information on OSN.
The research article, titled Online Information Processing of Scent-Related Words
and Implications for Decision Making (Lin et al. 2018) takes a broader view of human
information processing by examining the role of olfactory information in decision
making. The authors propose a methodology to examine emotions triggered by olfac-
tory-related information and how these could be simulated using visual cues in the
context of consumer decision-making online. The methodology combines approaches
from neuroscience with behavioral experiments. Their work studies the effectiveness
of triggering olfactory emotions using sensory congruent brand names in online ads
and also examines the influence on the consumers’ attitudes and intentions towards
brand and purchases. Results show that individual differences in olfactory sensitivity
moderate the effects on cognitive and emotional processes. This work has implica-
tions for online advertising and marketing decisions made by the consumers.

2.5 Conclusion

The research work presented at the Special Interest Group on Decision Support and
Analytics (SIGDSA) Workshop held on Dec 12, 2015, Fort Worth, TX was of con-
siderable variety in addressing the issues facing the researchers in the business intel-
ligence and analytics area. The research work included here represents some of the
innovations taking place in the analytics, combining theories from not only infor-
mation systems but also diverse fields such as neuroscience, psychology, behavioral
economics, and social sciences. Future research promises to exciting with opportu-
nities to extend literature and methodologies presented here to further the field of
decision support systems in the context of business intelligence.

Biographies

Anna Sidorova is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information

Technology and Decision Sciences at the University of North Texas. She received
his Ph.D. in information systems from Washington State University. Her current
research interests include strategic use of business intelligence and analytics, busi-
ness process management, information sharing on social media, and adoption and
12 A. Sidorova et al.

use of intelligent systems. Her articles appear in MIS Quarterly, Journal of

Management Information Systems, Journal of the AIS, Decision Support Systems,
Information & Management, Communications in Statistics, Computational
Statistics & Data Analysis, and others.

Babita Gupta is a Professor of Information Systems at the College of Business,

California State University Monterey Bay. She received his Ph.D. from the
University of Georgia. Her research interests are in the areas of business intelli-
gence, online security and privacy, adoption of ICTs in government, and role of
culture in IT. She has published in Communications of the Association for
Information Systems, Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, the Journal of
Strategic Information Systems, the Communications of the ACM, the Journal of
Industrial Management and Data System, and the Journal of Information Technology
Cases and Applications and others. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the
Teradata University Network.

Barbara Dinter is Professor and Chair of Business Information Systems at

Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. She holds a Ph.D. from the
Technische Universität München, Germany, where she previously earned a master’s
degree in computer science. She has worked for several years at University of St.
Gallen, Switzerland as a Post-Doc and project manager. In her role as an IT consul-
tant, she worked with a variety of organizations. Her research interests include busi-
ness intelligence and analytics, big data, data driven innovation, and information
management. She has published in renowned journals such as Decision Support
Systems, Journal of Database Management, and Journal of Decision Systems, and
on conferences such as ICIS, ECIS, and HICSS.

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Chapter 3
Business Intelligence Capabilities

Thiagarajan Ramakrishnan, Jiban Khuntia, Abhishek Kathuria,

and Terence J.V. Saldanha

Abstract Business intelligence (BI) is emerging as a critical area of expertise for

firms’ value proposition. Firms are trying to leverage BI as an inherent capability to
create value. Considering an organizational systems view, BI extends beyond a tool
or artifact to include a number of capabilities. We draw on IT capabilities and prior
research on BI to uncover potential capabilities that BI bestows to an organization.
A three category BI capability classification is suggested: BI innovation infrastruc-
ture capability, BI process capability and BI integration capability. We discuss the
attributes of these three BI capabilities to provide insights into how the capabilities
help organizations. This taxonomy will help decision-makers take informed deci-
sions on how to effectively implement BI within their organization to improve
performance.

Keywords BI capabilities • BI innovation infrastructure capability • BI process

capability • BI integration capability • IT capability

T. Ramakrishnan (*)
College of Business, Prairie View A&M University, 805 A.G. Cleaver St.,
Agriculture/Business Multipurpose Building, Room 447, Prairie View, TX 77446, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Khuntia
Business School, University of Colorado Denver,
1475 Lawrence Street, Denver, CO 80202, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Kathuria
Faculty of Business & Economics, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
e-mail: [email protected]
T.J.V. Saldanha
Carson College of Business, Washington State University,
Todd Hall, Pullman, WA 99164, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 15

A.V. Deokar et al. (eds.), Analytics and Data Science, Annals of Information
Systems 21, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58097-5_3
16 T. Ramakrishnan et al.

3.1 Introduction

Business Intelligence (BI) is referred to the techniques, technologies, systems, prac-

tices, methodologies, and applications that analyze critical business data to help an
enterprise better understand its business and market and make timely business deci-
sions (Ramakrishnan et al. 2012). BI helps transform large amount of data from
disparate sources into meaningful information to support decision making. BI
investment is estimated to grow from $54.5 billion in the year 2012 to $96.9 billion
in the year 2016 (Tabbitt 2013). BI is being used in almost all industry sectors and
is a top priority for organizations (Isik et al. 2013). The opportunities associated
with business analytics in different organizations have helped generate significant
interest in BI. In addition to the underlying data processing and analytical technolo-
gies, BI includes business-centric practices and methodologies that can be applied
to various high-impact applications such as e-commerce, market intelligence,
e-government, healthcare, and security applications.
The evolution of business intelligence has its roots in artificial intelligence and busi-
ness analytics, and has entered into mainstream business and IT communities since the
2000s (Davenport 2006). Further, the database related technologies advanced avenues
for data collection, extraction, and analysis in the business intelligence areas (Chaudhuri
et al. 2011; Turban et al. 2008; Watson and Wixom 2007). Currently, BI involves both
structured and unstructured (big) data analysis and intelligence gleaning. Very large
(from terabytes to exabytes), real time (feeds and tweets) and complex (from sensor to
social media) data is emerging central tenet to recent BI developments. In addition, BI
involves analytical techniques in applications that require advanced and unique data
storage, management, analysis, and visualization technologies.
Recent developments in the internet, web, social media and mobile systems have
offered unique data collection and analytical abilities to BI area. Large amounts of
company, industry, product, and customer information can be gathered from the
web and organized and visualized through various text and web mining techniques.
Web analytics tools can gather customer clickstream data logs. Social media data
analytics presents a unique opportunity for businesses to treat markets as avenues of
business-customer relationship based co-creation (Lusch et al. 2010). Furthermore,
mobile applications ranging from information advisories and ecommerce infomedi-
aries and aggregators to gaming systems, often with billions of users, are changing
the way intelligence and analytics fields are helping businesses and societal devel-
opments. It is noteworthy to mention that along with businesses, sectors such as
healthcare, education, and governments have been benefitted a lot from business
intelligence area. Emerging technologies and developments regarding Internet of
Things (sensors, RFIDs, barcodes, tags), or drone based surveillance or monitoring
systems are providing conduits for highly mobile, location-aware, person-centered,
and context-relevant operations and transaction data. Indeed, many agree that both
practice and academic communities face unique challenges and opportunities in
understanding, developing, researching and educating the next generation BI stu-
dents, researchers and professionals (Chen 2011).
3 Business Intelligence Capabilities 17

Notwithstanding the increasing trend in BI adoption and implementation, the

return on investments from BI remains a complex puzzle for many organizations.
Some practitioners note that only around 20% firms have been able to convert BI to
tangible benefits (Henshen 2008). Although it sounds simple, but initiation, imple-
mentation and development of a set of capabilities that can leverage on BI is not an
easy task, and often needs integration of a set of distinctly different capabilities,
ranging from information infrastructure to analytical mindsets. Once developed and
used to its best extent, BI can be influential in organizations, and helpful in decision
making or efficiency enhancements (Popovic et al. 2012; Wixom and Watson 2001).
Furthermore, some even suggest that BI capabilities can be an important strategy
within organizations forming their position in a competitive landscape (Thamir and
Poulis 2015). Thus, given the wide applications and understanding of BI, it is
important that BI capabilities be explicated in a simple yet holistic manner. In addi-
tion, given a firm wants to move towards BI implementations, managers should
have an understanding on what capabilities need to be developed, or which direc-
tions need to be taken with an integrated perspective of BI capabilities.
The goal of this chapter is to highlight a typology of BI capabilities in organiza-
tions. We provide three categories of classification for BI capability in organiza-
tions: (1) BI innovation infrastructure consists of the foundational ability to mobilize
and deploy BI functionalities to support innovation in the organization through
infrastructure, culture and technological improvements; (2) BI process capability is
the penetration of BI into the firm’s customer centric and business-to-business
(B2B) centric processes, and (3) BI integration capability refers to how the organi-
zation builds and integrates such capability and develops ways to acquire and con-
vert business intelligence towards organizational improvement. Salient features and
components of each type of BI capability are suggested to help in understanding in
practice and further research prospects. The next section focuses on the understand-
ing of BI capability, followed by the approach to develop the taxonomy and detailed
description of each type of capability. Finally, suggestions on how to use the tax-
onomy, including managerial and research implications are discussed.

3.2 What is BI?

Several definitions of BI reflecting on different perspectives have been suggested.

Moss and Atre (2007) define BI from a technological perspective as “an architecture
and a collection of integrated operational as well as decision support applications
and databases that provide the business community easy access to business data.”
However, Olszak and Ziemba (2003) define BI from an organizational perspective
as “a set of concepts, methods and processes that aim at not only improving busi-
ness decisions but also at supporting realization of an enterprises’ strategy.”
The effectiveness of BI is situated in its ability to support decision-making within
an organization and providing decision-makers with timely and relevant information
(Buchanan and O’Connell 2006; Massa and Testa 2005; Ramakrishnan et al. 2012).
18 T. Ramakrishnan et al.

Researchers have examined the benefits of implementing BI (Cooper et al. 2000;

Watson et al. 2004), implementation factors (Hwang et al. 2004), and decision making
(Park 2006). Organizations are struggling to make sense of the growing variety,
velocity, and volume of data; demanding development of BI capabilities to deal with
the data produced by internal and external sources, and leverage it to improve per-
formance. Prior work on BI capabilities focuses mainly on the technical and organi-
zational aspects of BI. For example, Sukumaran and Sureka (2006) examine BI
capability as the ability of BI to manage quantitative and qualitative data. Similarly,
BI capability has been seen in terms of a tool that can manage internal and external
data (Harding 2003; Hostmann et al. 2007; Isik et al. 2013). From an organizational
perspective BI capability has been examined as the ability of BI to provide support
for decision making under conditions of uncertainty (Harding 2003; Gebauer and
Schober 2006; Isik et al. 2013). An overarching view of the capabilities that BI
endows in organizations in terms of supporting innovation, integration, and different
process is still a gap in the BI literature; this chapter tries to fill in this gap.

3.3 Classification of BI Capabilities

We draw on prior work of IT capability and BI capability to propose that BI capa-

bilities help orient a firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and
external competences to address rapidly changing environments; using business
intelligence as a tool, artifact, and process level integrative capabilities. IT capabil-
ity has its roots in the resource-based view that suggests that organizations’ gain
competitive advantage through the application of a combination of resources that
are non-substitutable, scarce, difficult to imitate, and economically valuable (Barney
1991). Bharadwaj (2000) define IT capability as a firms’ “ability to mobilize and
deploy IT-based resources in combination or co-present with other resources and
capabilities,” (p. 171). Early studies with regards to IT capability started with view-
ing IT capability within single dimension in terms of either technological capability
(Sabherwal and Kirs 1994) or managerial capability (Sambamurthy and Zmud
1997) and has now evolved to comprise three dimensions: technological dimension,
human dimension, and organizational dimension (Kim et al. 2011; Schaefferling
2013). The technological dimension refers to the configuration and structure of all
the technological elements in a firm such as hardware, software, networking and
telecommunications, and different applications; the human dimension of IT capa-
bility discusses the knowledge and skill sets of the IT worker in a firm to manage
and leverage IT to achieve a competitive advantage for the firms. Similarly, the
organizational dimension examines the influence of organizational resources and
the IT/business partnership that can provide the organization with a competitive
advantage (Melville et al. 2004; Bhatt and Grover 2005; Rockmann et al. 2014).
BI as a capability is more so justified as a process or operational capability (Isik
et al. 2013). Following prior work we conceptualize that BI capability overall is a
culmination of different process or operational capabilities, and in addition, ­provides
3 Business Intelligence Capabilities 19

a second layer or integrative capability in the organization. This integrative capabil-

ity is manifested through the three underlying three dimensions: (1) integrate BI
within the organization (integration of data and intelligence), (2) align BI towards
innovation (infrastructure frontier), and (3) use BI to improve customer centric and
business partner centric processes (process orientation) (see Table 3.1). These three
dimensions translate to the three BI capabilities: BI innovation infrastructure capa-
bility, BI process capability (consisting of customer centric and B2B centric process
capabilities) and BI integration capability. We elaborate on these three dimensions
further in the next sub-sections.

3.3.1 BI Innovation Infrastructure Capability

BI Innovation capability is the ability to marshal and use the functionalities of BI to

sustain innovation in organizations through technological, cultural, and infrastruc-
ture improvements. In order to support BI technology the proper infrastructure and
the right data collections strategy for BI is needed (Ramakrishnan et al. 2012).
Further, in order to leverage BI technology, it is imperative to have the appropriate
organizational structure that can facilitate sharing and collaboration. Along, the
same lines, culture also plays an important role in facilitating sharing and leveraging
of information generated by BI. BI technology plays a crucial role in supporting
decision-making within any organization (Isik et al. 2013).
BI innovation infrastructure capability constitutes technical, structural and cul-
tural elements. First, BI technology refers to the degree and extent of technological
readiness to adopt BI in the organization. The technology dimension may also include
business intelligence, collaboration, distributed learning, discovery, mapping, oppor-
tunity recognition and generation as well as aspects related to security and privacy of
the data and analytics. The structural element of BI innovation infrastructure refers to
the modular organizational design that helps facilitate the technical architecture and
subsequent functions and innovations relevant to BI. BI culture facilitates a firm’s
ability to manage data, knowledge and intelligence; and espouses interaction between
individuals and groups is a basis of the creation of new ideas and innovation.
Technical, structural and cultural elements associated with BI innovation infrastruc-
ture provide the abilities to a firm that help in managing data, knowledge and intelli-
gence through embedded routines and processes of the organization. Technology plays
an important role in the structural dimension needed to capture, store, and analyzed
data in a firm. The various communication systems and information systems can be
linked in an organization to integrate the previously f­ ragmented flow of data and infor-
mation (Teece et al. 1997). These linkages can eradicate the hurdle to communication
between different business units and enable collaboration among them. Further, BI
technology can endow firms with the ability to engender information and knowledge
regarding their external fiscal environment and their competition (Gold et al. 2001).
Effective utilization of BI technology can help organizations deal with competitive and
institutional pressures that firms face within an industry (Ramakrishnan et al. 2012).
Table 3.1 Conceptualization of BI capabilities and dimensions
Category Core Description References
Infrastructure Codification, • Codification of Sukumaran and
Frontier connectivity and flow specialized data and Sureka (2006),
of data and information from different Parikh and Haddad
information to derive organizational elements to (2008), Hostmann
intelligence be used by qualified staff et al. (2007),
or personnel Harding (2003).
• Detection, classification
and planning of
organizational data and
information to be
accessed by others
• Provider formal access
and provision to staff and
employees to contextually
use the data and
information
• Creating a culture or
practice of intelligence
based decision making.
Process Exploitation of • Conceptualize and Li et al. (2008),
Orientation infrastructure and execute BI as essential Sahay and Ranjan
integration for crating dimensions at each and (2008), Elbashir
organizational value every process and et al. (2008), Isik
through workflow and workflow levels et al. (2013),
process coordination • Realization that the Wixom et al. (2011)
levels actions related to BI can
be used to create and
facilitate economic and
strategic values for the
organization
• Exploitation of BI as a
capability-asset to
produce income and
maximize profit
Integration of Design and integration • Design and use of White (2005),
Data and of spaces, practices organizational structures Hostmann et al.
Intelligence and connectivity to or networks (2007), Gebauer
foster the activities • to acquire expertise and and Schober
around data, skills for intelligence (2006), Petrini and
information and generation Pozzebon (2009)
intelligence gathering • to acquire data and
and conversion information from external
sources
• to convert the data and
information to
intelligence by using the
gathered expertise and
skills
• seamless integration of
the acquisition and
conversion process within
the organization
3 Business Intelligence Capabilities 21

BI structure establishes an organizational framework and readiness to accom-

modate and leverage this foundation, while BI technology provides the foundation.
Structure examines the distribution of tasks, coordination, flow of information, and
decision-making rights within an organization (Pugh 1990). Further, firms with
rigid structure may have the unintended effect of inhibiting the sharing of informa-
tion and knowledge across internal boundaries (Gold et al. 2001), rather than
enabling communication and collaboration. Therefore, we argue that in order to
leverage BI technology it is important to have BI structure in place that encourages
the sharing and exchange of information and intelligence. Organizations need to
promote collective intelligence rather than individualistic acumen. Firms need to
facilitate the transfer of intelligence across internal boundaries. Thus, BI structure
plays an important role in supporting BI technology, and hence, is an important ele-
ment in BI capabilities taxonomy.
Finally, BI culture espouses interactions between individuals and groups as a
basis of the creation of new ideas and innovation. Thus, a more interactive and col-
laborative culture is a precursor for converting the data or fact based tacit informa-
tion to more explicit intelligence, and move it from an individual to an organizational
level. Employees in such a cultural glue within the organization can develop an
ability to self-organize their knowledge and practices to facilitate solutions to new
or existing problems.
To establish the value proposition of BI innovation infrastructure capability, we
suggest that a firm can foster innovation using the technical, structural and cultural
elements of BI capabilities. Structural element of innovation infrastructure will
allow data and information to be exchanged seamlessly between different business
units, thus improving the effectiveness of BI towards higher performance. Further,
having a culture that will facilitate interaction between individuals and groups to
exchange information and intelligence generated by BI to come up with new inno-
vative ideas will make the BI more effective.

3.3.2 BI Process Capabilities

BI process capabilities is the ability of BI to penetrate into the firms’ business pro-
cesses. This capability examines the functionalities of BI that can sustain both B2B
centric and customer centric activities. We argue that BI helps organizations by sup-
porting the business processes that give a firm a competitive advantage. Business
processes in a firm help orient its activities towards value creation. To create value,
a firm needs to do at least three activities; first, operations that can convert goods to
products or services (i.e., operations); second, relationship with other firms who
supply materials and products to the firm (e.g., firms in the supply chain), and third,
orienting its operations to deliver products and services to the customers (i.e., cus-
tomer oriented activities). As noted previously in this paper, the operational BI
capabilities are embedded within infrastructural development related to BI, or, in
other words, the infrastructural BI development caters to the operations. On the
22 T. Ramakrishnan et al.

contrary, supply chain and customer oriented BI activities need to be explicitly

developed; and included in the firm’s value chains as two sets of capabilities to cater
to the two ends of the value chain, i.e., supply chain partners and customers. Based
on these concepts in the existing literature, we propose that for an organization to
achieve competitive advantage, two explicit BI capabilities need to either exist or be
developed—the customer centric and a business to business (B2B) process related
BI capabilities elements. Although BI adoption and implementation is oriented pre-
dominantly towards customer centric data-information-knowledge-intelligence
paradigm, similar process oriented approach of BI can also be found in leveraging
B2B relationships or supply chain visibility areas. For example, BI in the B2B or
supply chain can eliminate waste by providing demand aggregation or reducing the
‘bullwhip effect’ associated with distribution.
Because processes are not unilateral directives in an organization, and often con-
sist of a multitude of orientations, we conceptualize the two dimensions of BI pro-
cess oriented capabilities as multi-dimensional constructs. For example, customer
centric BI process capability consists of the way BI is oriented to meet the firms’
customer needs and serve them, elements that enhance customer satisfaction and
loyalty by providing insights regarding customers’ long term goals and ­requirements,
and ability to absorb customer oriented information/intelligence into the organiza-
tion using BI. Similarly, B2B centric BI process capability consists of BI applica-
tions related to supply chain integration, engage new partners and improve
coordination with existing partners, and using BI for process coordination and oper-
ational improvements. Inherently, these dimensions relate to and influence organi-
zational performance due to responsiveness to customer needs, awareness of
customer goals and the ability to learn from information generated during customer
interactions. Furthermore, B2B centric BI process capability aids activities with
B2B partners due to insights through visibility of goods and information, business
level integration, and process-level coordination across channels. Together, BI pro-
cess capabilities provide firms with the capacity to derive analytical insights in its
business processes which in turn enhance organizational effectiveness.

3.3.3 BI Integration Capability

Prior studies recognize BI integration to be very important and critical for the successful
utilization of BI (Isik et al. 2013). Integration refers to combining different types of
explicit data and information into novel patterns and relations (Herschel and Jones
2005). Based on the existing literature, we posit that organizations need to develop ways
to acquire and convert business intelligence towards organizational performance.
We argue that BI integration capability has two dimensions that are effective
towards organizational performance, albeit in an interconnected manner. First, BI
acquisition consists of gathering data from different types of sources across the
organization and beyond, in addition to data aggregation, rollup and partitioning.
Data extracted from operational systems need to be cleansed and transformed in
3 Business Intelligence Capabilities 23

order to make it suitable for use without errors (Ramakrishnan et al. 2012). Second,
the data need to be converted to usable patterns and schemas to help an organization
to glean more insights from the data. Thus, BI Integration consists of the acquisition
of data from various sources, followed by the conversion of data to the right format
and quality in order to be used effectively in the organization.
As much as the acquisition and integration of business intelligence from various
sources is a prerequisite for the utilization BI capabilities; the outcome of the acqui-
sition and conversion through integration helps to achieve higher organizational
performance. For instance, customer centric activities require acquisition of busi-
ness intelligence regarding customer behavior and experience, which in turn pro-
vide insights regarding goals and requirements. Second, the gathering and
aggregation of data from different types of sources across the organization and beyond
enables the organization to leverage BI to adequately respond to market and envi-
ronmental changes. Hence BI can provide insights regarding the nature of change to
which the organization needs to adapt, as well as the internal changes required to do
so. Third, aggregation, cleansing and transformation of this data can make this data
more substantive and insightful, thereby making subsequent ­decisions faster and
more effective. Thus, integration capability of BI that facilitates the gathering and
cleaning of data from disparate data sources and providing the decision-­makers
with timely and usable information will make the BI more effective.

3.4 Using the Taxonomy

With the advent of business intelligence, organizations are somewhat moved by a

‘fad’ effect around this tool. In practice, while the buzz around BI is very high, BI
perspectives and viewpoints vary across firms, with differing concepts, definitions
and applications. While eliminating the differences would be a herculean task, inte-
grating BI perspectives into holistic models can certainly be a fruitful approach. The
intention of this chapter is to provide such a holistic view around BI integration in
an organization, albeit with a bias towards a capability perspective. Taking the capa-
bilities perspective helps to highlight the fact the BI is ‘not just a fad’ or buzz’ in the
practice and academic discourse, but it can be helpful in garnering higher organiza-
tional performance. Indeed, the theoretical concepts and model developed in this
chapter are oriented towards establishing the relationships between different dimen-
sions of BI capabilities, their integrated schema, and the influence of these dimen-
sions on organizational performance.
The classification schema can be helpful in further research. A line of research
that can be pursued is relating the BI capabilities in a causal way. For example, a
relationship model can test whether a BI innovation infrastructure capability can
lead to a higher BI integration capability, and a higher BI integration capacity can
lead to a higher process capability as suggested in a conceptual diagram in Fig. 3.1.
Further research can explore relationships between capability types and organiza-
tional performance or BI effectiveness.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Baseball Joe had come back!
 CHAPTER XXIII
ON THE RAMPAGE

Baseball Joe’s mates crowded around him and patted and

thumped him until he was sore.
“Let up, boys,” he laughingly protested. “You’ll make a cripple of
me if you keep on.”
As for McRae and Robbie, their relief and delight were beyond
words.
“Wrigglin’ snakes!” ejaculated Robbie. “Such pitching! Such
batting! Joe, old boy, I thought I was going to die of heart failure!”
“You won the game almost alone, Joe,” declared McRae as he
wrung his hand. “I never saw anything like it. They’ll be barring you
from the league if you pitch many games like that. They’ll figure that
no other team has a chance.”
Elwood himself, although a hard loser, was a good sport, and
came over to extend his congratulations.
“I’m as sore as a boil at losing the game, Matson,” he said. “But I
want to say that I’ve been in the game as player and manager for
twenty-five years, and I don’t think I ever saw such magnificent
work. No team in the league could have beaten you to-day.”
Jim Barclay was in the seventh heaven of delight. For weeks past
his heart had been as heavy as lead at Joe’s unexplainable slump.
Now it was as light as thistledown.
“You were the old master for fair to-day, Joe,” he said exultingly,
as after the game he and his chum made their way to their hotel.
“They couldn’t touch you, couldn’t come within a mile of you. And
how you whaled the ball!”
 “Well,” laughed Joe, “as Reggie said, one swallow doesn’t make a
drink, but I hope that this is a good omen for the rest of the trip.
But, do you know, Jim, I have the feeling that if this game had been
played on the Polo Grounds I’d have lost it?”
“Nonsense!” protested Jim. “What puts such an idea as that in
your head? Why should you play better on the Pirates’ field than on
your own?”
“Does seem rather foolish, doesn’t it?” admitted Joe. “But I’ve had
an odd feeling that a jinx was hovering over me in New York. I’ve
felt that way for weeks past. That old arm of mine wouldn’t behave.
I lost games that I ought to have won, and even when I did get by,
it was largely a matter of luck and the poor playing of the other
fellows. You know that as well as I do.”
“I knew that you weren’t yourself,” said Jim. “But I just put it
down to overwork.”
“It was more than that,” asserted Joe. “I’ve worked just as hard in
other years and my arm has never gone back on me. This time,
though, the old wing just went on strike. No apparent reason for it.
It just quit.”
“Well, it came back gloriously to-day,” said Jim, with infinite relief.
“I had a hunch it would when I was warming up, and that’s the
reason I asked McRae to let me pitch to-day. It’s been feeling more
and more like itself ever since I left New York. By and by, if this
keeps on, they’ll be saying that I’m all right on the road, but no
good at home.”
“No danger of that,” asserted Jim. “Now that your arm’s come
back, all grounds will look alike to you.”
The sudden comeback of Joe, apart from his own achievements in
the box and on the field, put new life into the Giant team. The pall
of depression that had been resting on them was swept away as in a
moment. The real class of the team came to the front.
 For the rest of that western trip they were like a team of runaway
horses that could not be stopped. The other members of the
pitching staff took on a new lease of life. Everybody was on the
rampage.
When they had come into Pittsburgh they would have been glad
enough to get an even break. As a matter of fact, they swept the
whole four games into their bat bags and moved on to Cincinnati
with the intent of giving the same medicine to the Reds. This they
did not quite succeed in doing, as Bradley faltered in one of the
games, but they took the other three by a substantial margin.
With seven out of eight safely stowed away, they tackled the Cubs
in their lair. Here they met with their stiffest resistance. Axander,
pitching against Markwith, nosed through with one victory. The
Giants took the next two and would probably have grabbed a third if
it had not been stopped by rain at a time that the Giants were in the
lead.
On that rainy day the Giants got a laugh out of the game even if
they did not register a victory. Four innings had been played and the
Giants were two runs to the good. The rain threatened to come
down hard every minute, and the Chicagos were doing everything in
their power to delay the game so that it might end before the
necessary five innings had been played that would have permitted it
to be called a game.
But the umpire was obdurate, and even when a drizzle set in kept
the game going. Then a diversion was caused by the appearance of
one of the Chicago substitutes, “Dummy Masterson,” so called
because he was deaf and dumb, who emerged from under the
grandstand in raincoat and rubber boots in which he pretended to be
wading about in derision of the umpire who was at the plate.
A roar of laughter went up from the crowd and the umpire flushed
angrily at this mockery of his decision to go ahead with the game.
He wrathfully waved Masterson off the field.
 “Dummy” went slowly, but as he did so he “talked” vehemently
with his companions on the bench, who were doubled up with
laughter at the opinion of the umpire he was expressing. From their
association with him they had learned enough about the sign
language to understand it readily, while Masterson felt safe, as far as
the umpire himself was concerned.
What was Masterson’s consternation, however, when suddenly the
umpire’s hands went up and his fingers also began to work.
“I’m a robber, am I?” his fingers said. “I’ve got mud in my eyes,
have I? All my head is fit for is to hang a cap on, is it? That’ll cost
you twenty-five, Masterson, and if you don’t get off the field in a
hurry I’ll make it fifty.”
The discomfited “Dummy” wilted and vanished, and the laugh was
with the umpire, who, as it happened, had a brother-in-law who was
deaf and dumb and from whom he had learned the sign language.
But the incident had been effective as far as delaying the game
was concerned, and before it again got fairly under way the rain
came down in torrents and the Giants were cheated out of another
probable victory.
With only two losses out of eleven games they moved on to St.
Louis.
There, what they did to the Cardinals was, as Jim expressed it, a
sin and a shame. They wanted those games and they took them, all
four of them, winding up in a blaze of glory the most successful trip
that any Giant team had made for years.
“Oh, you pennant, come to papa!” sang out Larry Barrett, as the
hilarious crowd swung aboard the train and started on the long
journey home.
 CHAPTER XXIV
A STARTLING DISCOVERY

The Giants did not have to slink into New York this time as they
did on the return from the disastrous western trip of the year before.
They were almost mobbed by their admirers at the station and the
press of the city welcomed them back as conquering heroes.
In the columns devoted to their exploits Joe got the lion’s share of
attention. His great pitching and batting received their full meed of
praise, and it was generally agreed that it was his comeback that
had revived the flagging spirits of the team and set them again on
the road to victory.
Joe would not have been human if he had not been gratified at
this recognition of his work. But he did not lose his head or become
unduly vain. He was only profoundly grateful at his sudden recovery
on the road from the mysterious ailment that his arm had suffered
from at home.
Had it fully and permanently recovered? This was the question
that must yet be answered, and answered favorably, before the
apprehension that still lurked to some extent in his heart could be
dispelled.
Of course, what Joe had said to Jim about a jinx hovering over
him at the Polo Grounds had been a joke. Joe was too intelligent to
be superstitious. He was not worried about being threatened by
anything supernatural.
But he knew that there were many natural things that were so
mysterious and bewildering that they might easily seem to be
supernatural until their causes were ferreted out. Some such thing
as that it must have been that had made his arm so powerless in
New York but seemed to have no effect when he had left the city
behind him.
So it was with some secret apprehension that he went into the
box in the first game he pitched after returning to the Polo Grounds.
To his delight, he found that his arm worked as well as it had on
the western trip. He mowed down the opposing batsmen with all his
old skill and turned in a brilliant victory, in which only three hits were
made by the enemy and one run registered.
“How about that jinx that was waiting for you at the Polo
Grounds?” chaffed Jim at the conclusion of the game.
“Guess he must have pulled up stakes and vamoosed,” answered
Joe happily.
Jim, too, was now at the top of his form and was pitching great
ball. He had come along wonderfully since, fresh from Princeton, he
had joined the Giants. He had a powerful physique that had not
been weakened by dissipation and he had, as well, curves, slants
and hops that were only second to those of Joe himself. And his
association with Joe had aided him marvelously in the development
of his powers and his knowledge of the weak points of the batsmen
who faced him. There were few pitchers in the entire league who
could hold their own against him.
With these two as the mainstays and the rest of the string to help
out, the Giants were well fortified in the pitcher’s box. And as the
rest of the team were doing excellent work both in the field and at
the bat, the prospects of the Giants for winning the pennant could
scarcely have been more promising.
On the days that Joe was not in the box he took the place in the
field of either Curry or Bowen, according to which one of them was
going the better with the bat. In this way the hitting strength of the
Giants was vastly increased, for his batting eye had never been
keener and he was crashing out the hits with great regularity.
 Doubles and triples again and again cleared up the bases and
almost every other day he ripped out a homer.
“Guess you’re going to hang up that record you spoke about at
the beginning of the season,” said Jim one day, shortly after their
return from the western trip. “All you’ve got to do is to keep up your
present gait and no one else will have a look in. And that goes not
only for our league, but for the American as well. Already you’ve
made a dozen more homers than Kid Rose of the Yankees, and the
gap is getting wider all the time.”
“Knock wood,” grinned Joe, as he tapped three times on the table.
“Perhaps the jinx is listening.”
It seemed as though the jinx was, for on the very next day Joe’s
arm went bad again and Markwith had to be called on to finish the
game.
“Remember what I said about the jinx,” Joe reminded his chum.
“He’s on the job again.”
“Just an off day,” pooh-poohed Jim. “You’ve got to remember that
Napoleon sometimes lost a battle. You can’t win always.”
Three days later the Giants moved to Boston and Joe pitched one
of his old-time games, winning with ease. He took the first game
and repeated in the fourth.
They moved on to Philadelphia, and here again Joe lived up to his
reputation. He was simply invincible. But in Brooklyn he once more
fell down.
“Singular thing, isn’t it?” he remarked to Jim, “that I can go like a
house afire the minute we get away from the city, but go bad again
as soon as I get back.”
“I’ll tell you just why it is,” declared Jim. “It’s because you were
first knocked out of the box at the Polo Grounds. That was such a
shock to you that you associate the grounds in some vague way with
the incident. You think that what happened there once may happen
there again. You’ve brooded over it. It’s made you nervous. You feel
as though you were hoodooed. Snap out of it, old boy!”
But Joe refused to accept Jim’s explanation. It was not
psychological. It was physical. He was as cool and nervy as ever
when he went into the box, but his arm was wrong. It felt queer,
heavy, with little electric tinglings rippling along it from hand to
shoulder.
Dougherty could find nothing the matter with it. A leading
specialist whom he consulted had no solution except that the arm
must have been overworked. Rest was his only prescription. And
neither Dougherty nor the specialist could explain the difference
between Joe’s work in New York and that which he did on the
enemy’s grounds.
One thing that relieved somewhat the gloom that was gradually
settling on Joe’s mind was the fact that Mabel was coming to New
York for a visit. Both had been looking forward to it eagerly, and Jim
was welcoming her coming also, for he hoped that it would cheer his
chum, give a different trend to his thoughts, and banish his
depression.
Clara had at first intended to come with Mabel, but Mrs. Matson
had had one of her bad turns and Clara had to defer her trip, much
to poor Jim’s disappointment.
On the morning of Mabel’s expected arrival Joe went down to the
station to meet her, his heart beating with delighted anticipation.
“Won’t you come along?” Joe asked Jim.
“Not on your life!” grinned Jim. “I know when two’s company and
three’s a crowd. You’ll want her just to yourself for a little while. I’ll
see the dear girl when you bring her up here. In the meantime, I’ve
just had a long letter from Clara and I’ll try to console myself with
that while you luckier folks are renewing your honeymoon.”
So Joe went down alone and his heart skipped a beat when
Mabel, more distractingly beautiful than ever she seemed to him,
came through the gates and he rushed forward to meet her. For the
next few moments they forget that there was any one else in the
world.
Then they called a taxicab, and in a short time were whirled up in
front of the Westmere Arms and went up to their suite.
“Jim’s in the next room,” said Joe, as Mabel removed her hat and
fluffed her hair. “I’ll just tell him you’re here.”
He went to the door and knocked.
There was no answer.
“That’s queer,” remarked Joe. “I know he wasn’t planning to go
out anywhere.”
He tried the door. It was locked.
He had a key to it, however, and with a little feeling of
apprehension he fitted it into the lock, turned it, and went in.
The next moment he uttered a shout that brought Mabel flying
into the room.
 CHAPTER XXV
THE JINX

On the floor lay Jim. The letter that he had been reading had
fallen from his hand. He had slipped from the chair and lay crumpled
up in a heap.
“Oh, Joe!” Mabel cried, as she knelt down and took Jim’s head on
her knee. “What has happened to him? Is he dead?”
“Nothing like that, honey,” Joe reassured her, as he felt for Jim’s
heart and noted that it was beating. “Just fainted I guess. We’ll have
him all right in a jiffy.”
He rushed for some water, which he dashed into Jim’s face. Then
he tore off Jim’s collar and chafed his wrists so vigorously that in a
few moments Jim opened his eyes.
He encountered those of Mabel and essayed to smile.
“Hello, Mabel!” he said as he tried to get up. “What seems to have
happened to me? This is a nice reception to give you, isn’t it?” he
added sheepishly.
“Oh, I’m so thankful to hear you speak,” sobbed Mabel. “I feared
at first that you were dead.”
“Oh, I’m worth a dozen dead men yet,” returned Jim, as Joe
helped him into a chair. “Never felt better in my life than I did this
morning. Don’t know what came over me. Must have tripped over
something and hit my head. It’s whirling yet a bit. No, it wasn’t a fall
either. Don’t think I got up from this chair after Joe left. Must have
had a touch of vertigo and slipped from the chair. That’s funny, too.
Never had anything like that happen to me before. Last thing I
remember I was reading Clara’s letter. Where is it?” he asked, as he
looked around.
 Joe picked it up from the floor and handed it to him.
“Nothing in the letter itself to upset you, was there?” asked Joe.
“Nothing in the world,” replied Jim. “Clara is well and it is one of
the most delightful letters the dear girl has ever written. I was just
feasting on it when suddenly I didn’t know anything. But I’m
ashamed to think that I should topple over that way. And just at this
time too, when Mabel was coming.”
“Don’t think of that twice,” said Mabel. “I’m so relieved to know
that the thing wasn’t as serious as I feared. How are you feeling
now?”
“The old bean is getting steady again,” replied Jim. “But my arm
feels queer. Something like a pin cushion with all the pins strictly on
the job.”
“Give it to me,” commanded Joe, and he rubbed the afflicted
member till it glowed and the queer symptoms disappeared.
“Well, that’s that,” said Jim as he adjusted his collar and tie and
smoothed his rumpled hair. “Now let’s forget the whole thing. It
makes me feel sheepish every time I think about it. And above all,
Mabel, don’t breathe a thing about it to Clara. She would worry
herself to death about it and after all it’s only a trifle.”
Mabel promised, and they were soon chatting gayly about other
matters. Mabel could stay for only a few days, as she had promised
a visit to her parents at Goldsboro.
But she and Joe made the most of those golden days while they
lasted. Mabel’s mornings passed rapidly in shopping and sightseeing,
her afternoons were spent at the Polo Grounds, and in the evenings
they took in some of the best theaters and concerts in the
metropolis.
All too soon the visit was over and Mabel departed, but not until
after arranging for a much longer visit as soon as the Giants should
have returned from their next western trip.
 Two days after the queer occurrence in their rooms, it was Jim’s
turn to go into the box. He entered it with the confidence born of a
long series of recent victories.
But, to his surprise and consternation, he was sent to the showers
before the fourth inning was over. Almost from the start he was
batted freely, but one or two sparkling plays by his fielders pulled
him through. But in the fourth came the slaughter.
Base hits fairly rained from his opponents’ bats and in a twinkling
the bases were full with none out. Then Joe reluctantly gave the
signal and Jim walked in, his face flushed with mortification.
“Can’t understand it,” he remarked, as he handed the ball to
Merton who replaced him on the mound.
Merton took up the burden and by good pitching, aided by a few
breaks, pulled the game out of the fire.
“What in thunder do you suppose got into me this afternoon?” Jim
asked Joe, as they were walking back to their rooms after the game.
“The same thing that got into me, I guess,” replied Joe. “We’re
brothers in misfortune, old boy. And now that this has happened I’m
beginning to get hold of one end of the string that may furnish a
clew. As long as I was the only one affected I put it down to
something connected with me alone, something in my mental
attitude or my physical condition. I’ve been mulling it over and over
in my mind and couldn’t make head or tail of it. But when you were
knocked out of the box to-day an idea began to take shape in my
mind. It grew clearer and clearer.
“Then suddenly I saw something in the grandstand and I had a
blinding flash of light. I believed I had found——”
“What?” interrupted Jim eagerly.
“The jinx!” answered Joe.
 CHAPTER XXVI
THE DEADLY RAY

Jim looked at his chum in astonishment.

“What do you mean?” he gasped.
“Who do you suppose are our worst enemies in this city just
now?” replied Joe, adopting the Yankee method of answering a
question by asking one. “Who is it that is most interested in having
us downed, in seeing the Giants lose the pennant?”
“Harrish and Tompkinson, I suppose,” answered Jim promptly.
“They and their gang stand to lose two hundred thousand dollars if
we win.”
“Precisely,” agreed Joe. “Well, I saw them in the grandstand this
afternoon.”
“But what if you did?” replied Jim, somewhat disappointed at what
seemed an anti-climax. “They are there almost every day. I’ve seen
the scoundrels a dozen times since you had your mix-up.”
“Right enough,” admitted Joe. “In itself that stands for nothing.
But right behind them was sitting a man whom I know but you
don’t. Did I ever mention to you the incident of the old fellow who
bumped into me at the newsstand?”
“I don’t think you did,” returned Jim, wondering what his friend
was driving at.
Joe briefly sketched the happening.
“He’s a scientist of some kind,” he explained. “A scientific ‘nut’ or
‘bug’ I think the newsdealer called him. A few days later I saw him
looking at me from a window across the street. He stared at me
stupidly for a moment and then vanished behind the curtains.”
 “Well,” remarked Jim perplexedly, “that simply shows that he was
a neighbor of ours.”
“Yes,” said Joe. “And that neighbor of ours bent over two or three
times this afternoon and whispered to the worst enemies we have.
They know each other. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not necessarily,” answered Jim, in bewilderment. “A bit of a
coincidence, perhaps.”
“Let it go as that for a moment,” said Joe. “Now put your mind on
this. You and I live in the same rooms. Our favorite chair is in that
bay window of ours. The window is almost directly opposite that of
the old scientist, who, bear in mind, is evidently on friendly terms
with our worst enemies. I sit there and suddenly go to sleep, an
unusual thing in the day time. Shortly afterward I get knocked out of
the box. You sit there and go to sleep, also an unusual thing. Shortly
afterward you get knocked out of the box. Do you suppose that’s
due to coincidence?”
A light burst upon Jim.
“You think then,” he asked in a voice that fairly trembled with
excitement, “that that old scientist has been putting something over
on us?”
“Exactly,” replied Joe with conviction. “The facts fit into each other
like the blades of a pair of shears.”
“But—but—” stammered Jim, “how can he do it? It seems like
witchcraft, and the days of witchcraft are over.”
“True,” replied Joe. “But the days of science have just begun.
Science is working every day what in the old times would have been
looked upon as miracles. Look at the marvels of radio. Marconi
would have been burned at the stake as a wizard a few hundred
years ago. Have you read about that English scientist who has
discovered what he calls the death ray? It seems almost diabolical.
He claims that by its use he can stop airplanes in their flight, that he
can sink ships, that he can demolish fortifications, that he can kill a
whole regiment at a stroke.
“Now those claims may be exaggerated, but it has been pretty
well proved in experiments that the ray will paralyze and sometimes
kill small animals, such as rabbits and guinea pigs, at quite a
distance away. It’s been done in the presence of spectators.”
“It’s an invention of Satan!” ejaculated Jim.
“Let it go at that,” replied Joe. “Now, just suppose that this old
scientist has developed something of this kind. Suppose he’s been
hired by Harrish and Tompkinson to turn it on us with the hope of
spoiling our pitching arms and so ruining the Giants’ chances for the
pennant.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Jim, “I believe you’re right. That would
explain everything, especially the tingling in our arms after we came
out of those mysterious sleeps. Joe, you’re a wonder.”
“Just a matter of putting two and two together,” deprecated Joe.
“Oh, if we could only prove it!” exclaimed Jim. “If we could only
hang it on those rascals what we would do to them would be
plenty!”
“We’re going to try to prove it,” declared Joe. “We’ll match each
other to see who will be the goat. One of us will sit in that window in
our shirt sleeves to-morrow morning reading a paper. The other will
take that strong pair of field glasses of mine and go into the other
room and hide behind the curtains, leaving just space enough to see
through with the glasses. Then we’ll see what happens.”
Jim agreed eagerly. The matching decreed that he should be the
one to occupy the chair in the window while Joe from the other
room would bring the glasses to bear on the apartment across the
street.
The sun was shining brightly the next morning as Jim carelessly
settled himself in the chair while Joe, behind the curtains in the
adjoining room, scanned the window opposite.
 For some time nothing happened. But suddenly Joe noted a
fluttering of the curtains opposite. He saw the old scientist cast a
crafty eye across the street. In the shadows behind the old fellow
Joe thought he could discern the figures of two others.
Then a small table came into view on which was an oddly shaped
instrument with a small tube something like that of a camera.
As Joe watched it breathlessly a sharp flash darted from the tube,
quickly followed by others, until the instrument seemed to be
spitting a shower of sparks.
The mysterious ray was getting in its work!
 CHAPTER XXVII
TOO LATE

Joe tiptoed to the door between the two rooms.

“Feel anything queer, Jim?” he asked his companion.
“Just beginning to,” answered Jim, not turning his head or taking
his eyes off the paper. “I’m starting to feel drowsy and the old
tingling sensation is going through my arm.”
“Pretend to nod,” counseled Joe. “Then let the paper fall from your
hand and slump down off your chair to the floor. We don’t want to
let that infernal machine do any more mischief. We’ve got all the
proof we want.”
Joe returned to his post of vantage. The sparks were still coming
from the machine.
Jim, with excellent acting, kept up the pretense of reading a
moment longer then slowly let the paper drop and himself slid down
off the chair to the floor. Thus out of sight of the conspirators, he
crept below the level of the window into the other room.
Joe saw the curtains across the street part a little and the face of
the old scientist appeared. It wore a smile of satisfaction at having
achieved its purpose. At the same time the power behind the
instrument was evidently turned off, as the sparks ceased and the
table was wheeled away from the window.
Again Joe caught a glimpse of two figures behind that of the old
man and the hand of one of them came down congratulatingly on
the scientist’s shoulder.
“I’d give a farm to be able to see the faces of those two men,” Joe
said to Jim, who was standing out of range of the window, rubbing
his arm. “Though of course,” he added, “I have no doubt as to who
they are.”
“Harrish and Tompkinson of course,” remarked Jim. “They’re the
subtle scoundrels who’ve engineered this thing. The old man is
simply their tool. And now they’re congratulating him on the way
he’s done his work. They can already hear the rustling of that two
hundred thousand dollars they’re going to win.”
“That they were going to win,” corrected Joe, as he laid aside the
field glasses. “But that’s all gone glimmering now. They’ll get no
further chance to cripple us. We’ll get after them at once. How is the
arm feeling, Jim?”
“It’s all right again,” was the reply. “That wasn’t kept up long
enough to do any harm. I suppose at other times they’ve kept that
thing going at us for an hour or more at a time.”
“Well, let’s get ready for lunch now,” said Joe. “We’ve done the
best morning’s work of our lives.”
“Thanks to that old noddle of yours,” put in Jim. “The best
detective on the force couldn’t have worked that thing out better
than you have done. But now what’s your next step?”
“To put McRae wise to the whole thing,” replied Joe. “He’ll get the
whole police department at work if necessary. We’ll hurry to the Polo
Grounds and see him before the game.”
They cornered McRae and Robbie as soon as the manager and his
assistant entered the clubhouse.
“I’d like a word with you and Robbie in private, Mac,” Joe began
without any preliminaries.
“Sure thing,” replied McRae, in some surprise at the state of
repressed excitement under which the young men seemed to be
laboring. “Come over in my office.”
“Mac,” said Joe, as they seated themselves after the manager had
carefully closed the door, “Jim and I have found out why we’ve been
knocked out of the box.”
“What do you mean?” demanded McRae.
“I mean just this,” said Joe, and went on to tell in detail the events
of the morning.
The faces of McRae and Robbie were a study as Joe unfolded the
rascally scheme. Incredulity, conviction, and rage beyond expression
succeeded each other in turn.
“The scoundrels! The skunks! The thieves!” gasped Robbie, his
face apoplectic.
McRae leaped for the telephone.
“This you, O’Brien?” he said when he had secured the extension
he wanted. “Listen, Tom. Come up here to the Polo Grounds on the
jump. Bring a good man with you. Yes, one will be enough. We’ll
give you any further help you want. Tell you all about it when I see
you. All right, Tom. Thanks. Good-by.”
He put up the receiver and turned to the others.
“We’ll get after those scoundrels right away,” he announced. “And
all I ask is that I may get a chance to lay these two hands of mine
on any or all of them. If I do, there’ll be little mercy shown them!”
Nothing was said about the matter to the other members of the
team for fear of upsetting them by the knowledge of the plot against
their chances, and the game went on as usual. Bradley was in the
box and pitched one of his best games, scoring a victory by an
ample margin.
Before the game ended O’Brien of the detective squad was on
hand with a policeman accompanying him whom Joe recognized as
Lonergan.
“What’s up, Mac?” asked O’Brien, a burly, powerful man, after he
had shaken hands and been introduced to the others.
 “Plenty, Tom,” replied McRae and briefly sketched the situation. “I
want to nab the bird who’s operating that infernal machine. Probably
he’ll peach on his confederates. Of course, I haven’t had time to
swear out a warrant——”
O’Brien grinned.
“I guess we can get over that little formality,” he said. “Any one of
several things will do, ‘suspicious character,’ ‘disorderly conduct,’
‘assault with a deadly weapon.’ Leave that to me and pile into the
car.”
They climbed into the department car in which O’Brien had come
up and were whirled up to the apartment house in which the old
scientist dwelt.
They went upstairs, headed by O’Brien, who knocked on the door.
There was no response and he tried the knob. It yielded and they
entered.
An exclamation of chagrin escaped their lips.
The bird had flown!
 CHAPTER XXVIII
RACING TOWARD THE PENNANT

On every hand was evidence of the frantic haste with which the
apartment had been evacuated.
Drawers had been flung open, papers scattered upon the floor,
electric fixtures ripped from their connections. There was no trace of
the mysterious electrical instrument, though the imprints of its feet
could be seen on a small table.
The members of the group looked at each other in bitter
disappointment.
“He’s taken alarm at something,” remarked O’Brien. “Perhaps got a
tip that you were on to his track. Maybe the quickness with which
his machine worked this morning made him suspicious. Possibly he
or his accomplices had field glasses, too, and they may have seen
Mr. Matson keeping tabs on them. Well, I’ll put some of my men on
his track and I guess we’ll round him up before long.”
“How about Harrish and Tompkinson?” asked Joe.
“No use bothering with them just yet,” replied the detective. “No
doubt they’re guilty, but you haven’t a thing in the world on them in
connection with this plan. You just saw them speak to this man. But
any fan at a ball game may speak to another. No, the only chance
you have is to get this scientific bug and trust that he’ll peach on
them.”
They were sorely disappointed, but they recognized the truth of
what O’Brien said. They had not a scintilla of legal evidence as yet,
and a premature accusation would simply put Harrish and
Tompkinson on their guard. They must wait.
 But despite their chagrin, the hearts of Joe and Jim were simply
singing at their discovery of the morning. No more mystery! No more
apprehension! No more sleepless nights! No more fears that their
livelihood was threatened, that their usefulness was ended!
They had taken on a new lease of life. They had laid the jinx!
And how completely they had laid him was evident in the weeks
that followed. Never had they pitched with such deadly precision,
such complete mastery over their opponents. Their arms, freed from
the malign rays that had gradually been undermining their strength
and that would undoubtedly if continued have led to eventual
paralysis, had quickly regained their former cunning and power. All
teams looked alike to them, and their going into the box soon came
to be recognized as almost synonymous with chalking up a victory.
The rest of the pitching staff caught the spirit of victory. The
infield and the outfield played like men possessed. Whether at home
or on the road, it made no difference.
Steadily the gap widened between the Giants and the Pittsburghs
and the Cubs, their most formidable competitors. It seemed as
though one of the records that Joe had hung up as a goal was sure
to be realized, namely that the Giants should win more games than
they ever had before in a single season. A continuation of their
present work would make that dream a certainty.
And in the games played at home, it was an immense satisfaction
to view the faces of Harrish and Tompkinson in the grandstand as
victory after victory was hung up for the Giants. Those rascals
attended the games regularly, and that they were rooting violently
for the Giants to lose was evident from the glumness of their faces
as they saw the other teams mowed down.
“Regular undertakers’ party!” chuckled Jim as he watched them.
“No wonder,” laughed Joe. “Two hundred thousand iron men,
simoleons, bones, bucks, coin of the realm of standard weight and
refinement—all to be thrown into the gutter because that infernal
ray of theirs went wrong. Who wouldn’t be like a mourner at a
funeral?”
“With worse to come as soon as that old scientist can be rounded
up,” exulted Jim. “It’s funny O’Brien and his men haven’t found hide
or hair of him.”
“He’s certainly some crafty old fox,” admitted Joe. “But the
cunningest fox can be run to his hole some time.”
“How’s Reggie’s law suit coming on?” asked Jim.
“Haworth says that it will be on the calendar at the next term of
court,” replied Joe. “He’s been tracing up the work of those fellows
and he tells me that he has a dead open and shut case against
them. The papers will be served just as soon as Reggie comes to
town to sign them, and he’s due next week.”
Reggie did come into town a few days later, as immaculate as
ever, delighted with the success of the Giants and elated at the
prospects that his lawyer held out to him regarding his suit.
The day following his arrival Reggie and Joe were going down the
stairs of a subway station on their way to visit Haworth’s office.
At the foot of the stairs an elderly woman bumped into Joe and
dropped one of her packages. Joe picked it up and handed it back to
her with a pleasant smile.
Recognition flashed into the woman’s eyes and with a scream of
delight she dropped all her packages and threw her arms about Joe’s
neck.
 CHAPTER XXIX
ROUNDING UP THE SCOUNDRELS

To say that Joe was astounded would be putting it too mildly. He

was almost paralyzed with astonishment. He was not accustomed to
being embraced by women, elderly or otherwise, in public places.
He flushed a fiery red as he gently loosened the firm hold of the
woman’s arms, and his embarrassment was not lessened by the
grins of the spectators who had paused to witness the scene nor by
Reggie’s undisguised amusement at his plight.
As the woman fell away from him he saw that her face was
somewhat scarred, as if from burns. He looked again and something
familiar about her appearance brought the truth to his mind like a
flash.
It was Mrs. Bultoza, the woman whom he had saved from the
burning house down at the southern training camp!
“Oh, you brave young man!” she said, with her foreign accent.
“How glad I am to see you and thank you again. I have remembered
you in my prayers every night. You saved my life. And you did not
forget the lonely old woman in the hospital and sent her flowers. Oh,
I am so happy to see you again!”
She made as though to embrace him again, but Joe diplomatically
evaded this by stooping to pick up her scattered packages. Then he
took her by the hand and led her to a bench at the extreme end of
the subway station.
“I am very glad that you seem to be all right again after your
accident,” he said kindly. “I never expected to see you so far north
as this. Are you visiting friends here?”
 “I have just come to join my husband,” she said. “He has been
living and working here for some time, and now he has sent for me
to join him.”
“In what line of business is he?” Joe asked, more to make
conversation than anything else.
“He is a scientist,” returned Mrs. Bultoza. “He is poor because he
has spent all his money on making an invention. And now he has
succeeded, he tells me. Oh, he is a very smart man,” she added
proudly.
Joe had pricked up his ears at the word “scientist.”
“What is his invention?” he asked.
“I do not know exactly,” she replied. “It is electric—something like
what you call an X-ray, I think. But I have no head for such things.”
This reply interested Baseball Joe more than ever and he asked
the woman to describe her husband’s appearance and this she did
so well it instantly brought a gleam of satisfaction to Joe’s face.
“Where does your husband live?” he asked.
She gave him a crumpled slip of paper on which an address in an
uptown district was written.
“I’ll go up with you,” volunteered Joe. “Come along, Reggie. We’ll
take a taxi and get up there in a few minutes.”
Mrs. Bultoza protested that he must not take so much trouble, but
Joe overrode her protests, helped her into the taxicab, and in a little
while they were at the address given.
They inquired of the janitor, and were directed to a room on the
top floor.
A door opened at their knock and Joe saw the face of the old
scientist who had lived opposite him.
But the old man had eyes only for his wife, and they rushed into
each other’s arms in a way that bespoke the deep affection that
existed between them.
Joe and Reggie averted their eyes and lingered about uneasily.
The first effusion having passed, Mrs. Bultoza exclaimed:
“And what do you think? I met the brave young man who saved
my life in the fire. Oh, I was so happy to see him and thank him
again! He was kind enough to bring me all the way up here, and
now you can thank him, too.”
The old scientist advanced with beaming face and extended
hands. Then, for the first time, he saw Joe’s face.
For a moment he stood as if paralyzed. Then he dropped into a
chair, covered his face with his hands, and cried like a child.
“He saved your life!” he cried hoarsely between sobs. “He saved
your life! And I have injured him, might have killed him! God have
mercy on me!”
Then to his wife, who knelt by his side, pale and horrified, the old
man told his story, with frequent interruptions and questions on the
part of his wife and Joe, told how he had needed money to finance
his invention, how he had met Harrish in trying to raise funds for his
experiments, and of how the latter had advanced money on
condition that he should test his invention on Joe. He had been
sorely pressed, he had been told that the conspirators did not want
to injure Joe permanently but just to weaken him for the next few
months, and he had yielded to temptation, not realizing the enormity
of the project.
“Now you can put me in prison,” he said brokenly. “I deserve it. I
would give my life to undo what I have done to you—to you who
saved my wife’s life!”
Mrs. Bultoza’s imploring and tear-wet face was too much for Joe.
He thought quickly.
“I am not going to put you in prison,” he said. “But you must do
one thing for me. I want you to send a telephone message to
Harrish and Tompkinson telling them that you must see them at four
o’clock this afternoon. Tell them that it’s important and they must
come. They won’t dare not to.”
The agreement was made and Joe and Reggie hurried down to
the cab and were borne to the Westmere Arms, where Joe put in a
busy half hour with the telephone.
A few minute before four o’clock Harrish’s limousine stopped at
the house where Bultoza lived. The owner, accompanied by
Tompkinson, hurried up to the top floor.
They knocked at Bultoza’s door and he admitted them. The old
scientist’s wife had been sent away for the time being.
“What’s up?” asked Harrish, as he and his companion entered the
room.
“I need some more money,” said Bultoza. “My wife is coming to
live with me and my expenses will be greater.”
“You’ve had all you’re going to get,” snarled Tompkinson. “I’m
tired of being panhandled. You’ve fallen down on your job anyway.”
“That’s right,” chimed in Harrish. “You haven’t kept your contract
by a long shot. We paid you to ruin Matson’s pitching arm with that
infernal ray of yours. Did you do it? Here he is going along better
than ever. What have we got for our money?”
“Nothing much so far,” said Joe, stepping out from the adjoining
room. “But you’re going to get a good deal more before I’m through
with you!”
 CHAPTER XXX
A MERITED THRASHING

The effect of Baseball Joe’s sudden entrance was electric. If a

thunderbolt had torn its way through the room, the consternation of
the conspirators could not have been greater.
Their terror deepened as McRae, O’Brien, Robbie, Lonergan,
Reggie, Jim, and Haworth, the lawyer, filed in from the next room.
Then in panic the rascals made a break for the door. But O’Brien
was already standing there placidly, his broad back against it.
“Just a minute! Just a minute,” he drawled.
They took just one look at him and dropped back.
“Now, gentlemen,” said Joe, “you’re going to learn that Matson’s
arm is not yet ruined nor Mr. Barclay’s either. But first there are
some little formalities to be gone through with. I suppose,” he
added, as he turned to his companions, “that you all heard Mr.
Harrish’s confession?”
They nodded their assent.
“Eight witnesses,” remarked Joe. “I guess that would be enough in
any court of law to put you men behind the bars. The jig is up,
Harrish. You’re done. You’re through. And that goes for you, too,
Tompkinson.”
The rascals cringed visibly at this. Their teeth were chattering.
“That is,” continued Joe, “if we decide to make a charge against
you.”
He paused a moment to let this take effect.
 “How about that case of Mr. Varley’s, Mr. Haworth?” Joe asked
suddenly.
Haworth stepped forward.
“Perfectly clear,” replied the lawyer. “I have absolute proof that
Harrish has been matching orders in violation of the code. I have
proof that he has been pledging Mr. Varley’s stocks as collateral for a
loan greater than he has made on it to Mr. Varley. Another violation
of the code. Of course, if Mr. Harrish wants to stand suit—” He
stopped and smiled serenely and significantly.
“I don’t think that Mr. Harrish wants to stand suit,” mused Joe. “He
doesn’t want to change that well-tailored suit of his for a striped
suit. Now if he only had his check book here— Let’s see, what was
the value of the stock, Reggie?”
“Ten thousand, five hundred and sixty dollars,” replied Reggie.
“A mere trifle to a man who could pay fifty thousand dollars for
throwing baseball games,” mused Joe. “Oh, I see that Mr. Harrish is
drawing out his check book. And he has a fountain pen, too. How
lucky!”
Harrish wrote out a check for the full amount. Joe scanned it.
“On one of the day and night banks, I see,” he remarked. “It will
be open now. Suppose you indorse this, Reggie. Mr. Harrish will O.
K. your signature and you can go right over and cash it now.”
The indorsement and O. K. were made and Reggie hurried out to
collect his money.
“And now, gentlemen,” said Joe, turning to his friends, “would you
mind going outside and waiting for the rest of us? Mr. Barclay and I
want to settle a little matter with Mr. Harrish and Mr. Tompkinson in
private. It won’t take us long.”
A flash of understanding passed among the group and they went
with alacrity, though Harrish started to make a protest which they
ignored.
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