Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Attribution Of Responsibility After Failures Within Platform Ecosystems, Brian Dunn, Matthew L. Jensen, Ryan Ralston

Data Analytics & Information Systems Faculty Publications

Increasingly, new hardware and software are embedded within ecosystems that include a platform and modules. Ideally these ecosystems perform reliably. However, if an ambiguously sourced failure occurs within one of these ecosystems, users are left to distribute blame across the various components of the ecosystem. The actual distribution of this blame, however, can be difficult to predict. This study investigates attribution of blame and discontinuance recommendations for ecosystem components after an ambiguously sourced failure. To extend platform ecosystems and attribution theory, we conducted a scenario-based experiment investigating the negative consequences of failure for platform and module components and the contingent …