Development of digital products and services: Proposal of a framework to analyze versioning actions Jos  e Osvaldo De Sordi a, * , Reed, Elliot Nelson b , Manuel Meireles c , Marco Antonio da Silveira c a Faculdades Metropolitanas Unidas (FMU), Rua Iwakumi, 236, Jundiaí, SP,13211-424, Brazil b Universidade Nove de Julho (UNINOVE), Av. Francisco Matarazzo, 612, S~ ao Paulo, SP, 05001-100, Brazil c Faculdade Campo Limpo Paulista (FACCAMP), Rua Guatemala, 167, Campo Limpo Paulista, SP, 13231-230, Brazil article info Article history: Received 10 September 2015 Received in revised form 21 January 2016 Accepted 31 January 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: Versioning Information quality Versioning typology Digital product Digital service abstract Recent expansion in availability of data and of technological resources, as well as the ease of generating, reproducing and adapting digital products and services (DPS), has greatly expanded our ability to quickly generate a wide range of digital offerings. This increased capacity and complexity in turn demands greater operational and managerial effectiveness of organizations regarding the management of DPS versions and of versioning practices. Although versioning has been the subject of study in many disci- plines, there is yet little theory development that explicitly seeks to understand the impact and dynamics of versioning actions. Using grounded theory as a research method, we develop a broad framework for conceptualizing versioning actions with the aim of obtaining better understanding of different ver- sioning strategies and of the impact of versioning actions on DPS quality, taken from the interference analysis of the dimensions of information quality related to the DPS. Our framework encompasses ac- tions directed to the three principal components of the DPS architecture, namely the content, techno- logical and process platform, as well as their subcomponents. The framework aims to help researchers and managers reflect on and select the most effective versioning actions, thus reducing the incidence of unexpected events arising from interdependence among the dimensions of information quality that may otherwise be missed during the planning and definition of the versioning actions. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The expansion of the use of information and communications technology resources across different locations, objects, and per- sons (pervasive computing) is a central feature of the new and still developing information society (Castells, 1996; Gorey & Dobat, 1996). These developments have allowed the collection and stor- age of data in an unprecedented scale e the so-called big data phenomenon e which constitutes an excellent environment for the development of new digital products and services (DPS) (Goes, 2014; Jagadish et al., 2014). The ease and low cost of reproducing and adapting digital artifacts, compared to the physical products of the industrial era, creates a more dynamic business environment in terms of the creation, correction and improvement of DPS (Shapiro & Varian, 1998). In the words of Woodard, Ramasubbu, Tschang, and Sambamurthy (2013, p.537) “relentless innovation and competitive pressures dictate that firms continually adapt these [digital] artifacts to changing market and technological conditions”. These results in a higher frequency of events associated with the life cycle of DPS. More improvement events and the accumulation of new DPS versions to be registered requires greater operational and managerial effectiveness on the part of organizations that undertake versioning practices. In this study, versioning is defined as a set of actions that modify the DPS, including actions directed to its content (improvement, reduction, correction, and/or degrada- tion) and/or to its technological platform (content representation/ structure) and/or its process platform (DPS storage, recovery, pro- cessing, and presentation). According to Smith (2010), versioning should be an integral part of academic programs and professional training. However, it is seldom addressed, even in software engineering training programs. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: osdesordi@gmail.com (J.O. De Sordi), renelson@siu.edu (R.E. Nelson), profmeireles@uol.com.br (M. Meireles), marco.silveira@cti.gov.br (M.A. da Silveira). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect European Management Journal journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/emj http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2016.01.009 0263-2373/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. European Management Journal xxx (2016) 1e15 Please cite this article in press as: De Sordi, J. O., et al., Development of digital products and services: Proposal of a framework to analyze versioning actions, European Management Journal (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2016.01.009