E-business and management science: mutual impacts (Part 2 of 2)

This concludes a two-part commentary on management science and e-business, the theme of this two-part special issue. After reviewing the topical clusters that give organization to both parts, we sketch the papers appearing in this second part from the perspective of two key questions concerning the impact of the emerging digital economy on management science research: What fundamentally new research questions arise, and what kind of research enables progress on them. We then offer summary comments on the second question based on the papers in both parts? The principal conclusions are that, in meeting the challenges posed by the digital economy, management science researchers are (a) making greater use of parts of economics and computer science/information technology, and (b) exploiting the improving productivity advantages of empirical and methodological work in comparison with theoretical work.