Information Resources Management Journal

This paper draws upon Normal Accident Theory and the Theory of High Reliability Organizations to examine the potential impacts of Information Technology being used as a target in terrorist and other malicious attacks. The paper also argues that Information Technology can also be used as a shield to prevent further attacks and mitigate their impact if they should occur. A Target and Shield model is developed, which extends Normal Accident Theory to encompass secondary effects, change and feedback loops to prevent future accidents. The Target and Shield model is applied to the Y2K problem and the emerging threats and initiatives in the Post 9/11 environment.

This paper addresses the impact of information technology (IT) and the World Wide Web (WWW) on the 21st century and the challenges which we will face as responsible members of a dynamically changing society. Reviewing the spread of potentially alienating technology, the paper highlights the implications for change with reference to the "haves" and the "have nots" -- developing societies, economically disadvantaged groups, women and children. The authors argue that organisational, sociological and cultural factors may inhibit an effective transformation to a global Information Society. Particular consideration is given to policies, infrastructure, human resources and development responsibilities in developing societies.

The term 24-hour knowledge factory connotes a globally distributed work environment in which teammates work on a project around the clock. The 24-hour knowledge factory is a special case of a globally distributed team in which the different teams work on a sequential basis that has been clearly defined in advance. Whereas a manufactured item was the end product in the case of the factory which emerged as a consequence of the industrial revolution, knowledge-based services and knowledge-based products are the end deliverables in the case of the current information revolution; hence, the term 24-hour knowledge factory. Work can be decomposed by task style or by organizational style, and allows for greater specialization of workers. A case study from IBM details surprising differences between colocated and distributed teams, and leads to a future state analysis for organizations seeking to study or implement the 24-hour knowledge factory.

In the case of certain applications in which a need exists to visualize and interact with voluminous data sets and complex 3-D geometrical models, the conventional computer interface inhibits key human-computer interaction processes. Here, several deficiencies of the standard interface are identified with emphasis on a failure to make optimal use of the complex human sensory systems. Various general forms of interaction modality are outlined together with several types of image space. This provides a basis for brief discussion of emerging 'creative' 3-D display systems with emphasis on computational holography, varifocal techniques, and volumetric systems.

In this paper, the authors present a new algorithm for constructing a solid model when the given input is only one partial-view sketch ("natural sketch"). This algorithm is a two-step process, where first a complete (wireframe) sketch is derived, which is then transformed into a 3D polyhedron. The paper details topological and geometric aspects of the process, as well as the essential "user-interaction" components dealing with cases where the sketch-to-solid problem does not have a unique solution.

The software development process has undergone a considerable amount of change from the early days of spaghetti code to the present state of the art of development using strategic patterns. This has caused not only changes in the toolkits that developers use, but also a change in their mindset-the way that they approach and think about software development. This study uses revealed causal mapping techniques to examine the change in mindset that occurs across the procedural to OO development transition, and lays the foundation for future studies of the OO/ pattern cognitive transition. The results indicate that there is not only increasing complexity in the cognitive maps of the OO developers, but also that there is a need for the developer to shift from routine, assembly line coding to more abstract thought processes.

Using March and Smith's taxonomy of information systems (IS) research activities and outputs and Newman's method of pro forma abstracting, this research mapped the current space of IS research and identified research activities and outputs that have received very little or no attention in the top IS publishing outlets. We reviewed and classified 1,157 articles published in some of the top IS journals and the ICIS proceedings for the period 1998-2002. The results demonstrate the efficacy of March and Smith's (1995) taxonomy for summarizing the state of IS research and for identifying activity-output categories that have received little or no attention. Examples of published research occupying cells of the taxonomy are cited, and research is posited to populate the one empty cell. The results also affirm the need to balance theorizing with building and evaluating systems because the latter two provide unique feedback that encourage those theories that are the most promising in practice.

Much academic research on information technology IT, systems IS, and management IM has been branded by practitioners in business as unusable, irrelevant, and unreadable. Consequently, it is highly unlikely that conventional outlets for such work, e.g. scholarly journals and conference proceedings can receive significant real-world exposure. By reversing the push-pull dynamics of information dissemination and retrieval in the New Media, alternative approaches are emerging. This article presents the history of a case in point with data recorded over a period of 15 months. It is shown that the Internet in general, and the World Wide Web in particular, will be a significant resource in bridging the gap between practice and relevant research.

The theories of social exchange, task-technology fit, and technology acceptance are utilized in a field study of software development methodologies. This investigation includes the effects of user experiences on perceptions of acceptance and usage of a methodology. More specifically, perceptions of the outputs and deliverables from a methodology and perceptions of challenges and obstacles to using and applying a methodology were found to significantly and positively influence perceived usefulness and negatively influence ease of use of a methodology, respectively, within a developer's organization. Perceived usefulness was a positive and strong antecedent to perceptions of fit between the methodology and client problems, and the strengthening of efficacy beliefs about the methodology.

Despite the huge investments by organizations in ERP implementation, maintenance, and user training, ERP implementation failures and less-than-satisfactory productivity improvements are common. End-users' reluctance or unwillingness to adopt or use the newly implemented ERP system is often cited as one of the main reasons for ERP failures. To examine factors leading to the lack of end-user acceptance of ERP systems, we reviewed the literature on user adoption of IT in mandatory contexts, developed hypotheses to explain ERP user acceptance, and conducted a survey study to test the hypotheses. In particular, we examined end-users' attitudes toward system use and symbolic adoption, which refers to users' voluntary mental acceptance of a system, to understand user acceptance in the ERP context. Four cognitive constructs-perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived compatibility, and perceived fit-were hypothesized as the antecedents. The research model was tested through a survey of end-users' perceptions concerning adopting and using a newly implemented ERP system. The findings support most of our hypotheses. Specifically, perceived compatibility and perceived ease of use have both direct and indirect effects mediated by attitude on symbolic adoption, while perceived fit and perceived usefulness influence symbolic adoption by being fully mediated through attitude. The study provides managerial implications for organizations that are striving to engender user acceptance of newly adopted enterprise systems and applications.

The use of outsourcing is expanding rapidly. This study empirically tests a model of application development outsourcing acceptance based on the technology acceptance model TAM. TAM suggested perceived usefulness and ease of use mediate the effects of other variables on users' attitudes towards a technology. The model tested in this study suggests perceived usefulness and ease of use of outsourcing mediate the effects of the external environment, prior outsourcing relationships, and risks on decision-makers' attitude toward application development outsourcing. One hundred and sixty respondents to a survey sent to 3000 IT decision makers provided data to confirm the applicability of TAM and the influences of these external variables. Support for applying TAM in this alternative context was found. Three sub-dimensions of risk, project management, relationship, and employee risk emerged. Project management and employee risks along with prior relationships were found to significantly influence decision maker perceptions about application development outsourcing.

The use of multicriteria decision analysis MCDA methodology is not uncommon in organizational decisions. However, information systems IS researchers have focused on statistical hypothesis testing in examining organizational technology adoption decisions. In this study, an MCDA methodology is adopted in examining the effects of the technology acceptance model TAM constructs on organizational software acquisition decision. Analytic hierarchy process AHP provides an evaluation model based on the experiential knowledge of domain experts. The results of the study show that software performance plays a significant role in the software acquisition decision matrix, while vendor characteristic is given the least priority. The study also points to the fact that perceived usefulness is more vital than perceived ease of use in software evaluation and acquisition.

Information acquisition and its use frequently are considered critical to the decision-making process, yet related research, especially about the timing of information acquisition, is limited. Our research explores the impact of information acquisition on perceived decision quality and on the time required to reach a decision on a fuzzy task. We found that more information was accessed from a Web-based system in the first part of the group decision-making process, when the decision environment was searched and possible courses of action were analyzed. We also found that the proportion of information accessed in the first part of the meeting was related significantly to the time required to make the decision. More specifically, when most information was accessed in the first part of the decision-making session, the relationship between decision time and amount of information accessed in the early part of the meeting was positive and linear. However, a curvilinear relationship was found between decision time and amount of information accessed in the latter part of the decision-making session. Unlike the findings of a previous study, this earlier access of information is not associated with improved perceived decision quality.

An e-mail system is a critical business tool and an essential part of organisational communication. Many organisations have experienced negative impacts from e-mail and have responded by electronically monitoring and restricting e-mail system use. However, electronic monitoring of e mail can be contentious. Staff can react to these controls by dissent, protest and potentially transformative action. This article presents the results of a single case study investigation of staff reactions to electronic monitoring and control of an e-mail system in a company based in Ireland. The findings highlight the variations in staff reactions through multiple time frames of electronic monitoring and control, and identifies the key concerns of staff which need to be addressed by management and consultants advocating the implementation of e-mail system monitoring and control.

As organizations strive to expand system capabilities through the development of system-of- systems (SoS) architectures, they want to know "how much effort" and "how long" to implement the SoS. In order to answer these questions, it is important to first understand the types of activities performed in SoS architecture development and integration and how these vary across different SoS implementations. This paper provides results of research conducted to determine types of SoS Lead System Integrator (LSI) activities and how these differ from the more traditional system engineering activities described in Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) 632 ("Processes for Engineering a System"). This research further analyzed effort and schedule issues on "very large" SoS programs to more clearly identify and profile the types of activities performed by the typical LSI and to determine organizational characteristics that significantly impact overall success and productivity of the LSI effort. The results of this effort have been captured in a reduced-parameter version of the Constructive SoS Integration Cost Model (COSOSIMO) that estimates LSI SoS Engineering (SoSE) effort.

This article introduces and discusses the process and system conceptualization framework for adoption and ongoing evaluation of enterprise information systems, based on the series of recursive high and base- level conceptualizations of organization's existing (as-is) and desired (to-be) processes and systems. The motivation for the framework is provided by a qualitative study that reveals two distinct approaches to the organizations' systems adoption and change. The approaches are labeled as systems view and process view, centered on organizations' processes and systems respectively; where process oriented approach is more likely to result in better fit between the adopted systems and corporate needs. Consistent with this finding, the purpose of the introduced framework is to guide organizations toward embracing the process-centric approach to the adoption of enterprise information systems, by placing particular emphasis on processes' and supporting systems' fit with organization's strategic goals.

Past research on electronic communication media suggests that those media pose obstacles to communication in collaborative tasks when compared with the face-to-face medium. Yet, past research also points at mixed findings in connection with the quality of the outcomes of collaborative tasks, generally suggesting that the use of electronic communication media has no negative effect on those outcomes. A new theoretical framework building on human evolution theory, called compensatory adaptation theory, has been proposed to explain these contradictory findings. This study provides a review and test of compensatory adaptation theory. It investigates the impact of the use of an electronic communication medium on 20 business process redesign dyads involving managers and professionals at a large defense contractor, with a focus on cognitive effort, communication ambiguity, message preparation, fluency, and task outcome quality. The study suggests that even though the use of electronic communication media seemed to increase cognitive effort and communication ambiguity, it had a neutral impact on task outcome quality. These results appear to be an outcome of compensatory adaptation, whereby the members of the dyads interacting through the electronic communication medium modified their behavior in order to compensate for the obstacles posed by the medium, which is suggested by a decrease in fluency and an increase in message preparation. The results generally support predictions based on compensatory adaptation theory.

This article revisits the relationship between IT and productivity, and investigates the impact on information technology IT investments. Using the MARS techniques, we show that although IT Stock is the greatest predictor variable for productivity Ko, M.; Clark, J.G.; Ko, D.Value Added, it is only significant as an interaction variable, combined with Non-IT Capital, Non-IT Labor, Industry, or Size.

Managers of healthcare organizations are increasingly aware that the potential of medical information systems exceeds mere support of routine administrative and clinical transaction processing. This article describes a case study about Maccabi Health Services, the second largest health maintenance organization in Israel and the first one to computerize clinical records resulting from routine transactions in doctors' offices, laboratories, and pharmacies. In this case about decision-making support practices, recycling the content of existing databases made it possible to discover patterns of sub-optimal treatment without having to invest time and money in additional data-collection procedures. The case study thus demonstrates value-added utilization of patient data, beyond uses intended at the beginning, for effectively supporting the implementation and evaluation of disease-management programs. Lessons learned about organizational benefits reaped from the organization's decision-support practices include implications for such initiatives as data warehousing, data mining, and online analytical processing.

The understanding of factors leading to the acceptance or rejection of information systems IS is important and relevant. Although there have been studies examining the adoption of Internet Banking IB, research on this topic in the Gulf context and from an IS perspective is lacking, even though societal factors are acknowledged as having an impact on technology adoption. To fill this gap, this paper uses a version of the Technology Acceptance Model TAM, extended by the compatibility and trust constructs. An empirical study, using students from a large university in the region, validates the research model.

Every year, individuals and organizations end up adopting licensing many competing software products. Yet, over time, much of the adopted software remains unused because users forgo the use of one software product for another adopted alternative. Although much research in the IS field has examined initial IS adoption, less is known about such post-adoption behavior. This article argues that a sense of "technology commitment" to one technology over other adopted alternatives is key to sustained post-adoption use intentions. By forwarding a technology commitment model, this article investigates the antecedents of technology commitment and its consequent effects on IS continuance. In the model, the article also examines how technological inertia moderates IS continuance intentions. Gathering empirical evidence from IS continuance intentions related to Webmail services, findings from the study offer interesting insights into the mechanics of continuance.

In spite of the increasing significance of broadband, many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are unaware of or unappreciative of its benefits. This is potentially a problem for governments, Internet Service Providers and other supply side institutions. The current study empirically verifies applicability of an extended IS continuance model controlling for organizational variables based on the Technology-Organization-Environment framework to examine factors influencing broadband post-adoption behavior of SMEs in Singapore. Strong support for the model has been manifested by the results, providing insight into influential factors. Results of the study suggest that perceived usefulness is a strong predictor of users' continuance intention, followed by satisfaction with broadband usage as a significant but weaker predictor. SMEs in a more competitive business environment and whose key executive possesses greater IT knowledge are more likely to use broadband.

The fear that telecommuting will have a negative impact on career advancement prospects has been a barrier to telecommuting acceptance. This study sought to examine whether professionals who telecommute on a part-time basis did indeed experience less advancement prospects than their non-telecommuting peers did. The results indicate that this fear is unfounded. Telecommuting did not have a direct effect on career advancement prospects or an indirect effect through job performance evaluations. Additionally, the level of telecommuting participation did not have an impact on career advancement. Employees who telecommuted more frequently did not experience significantly different job performance evaluations or career advancement prospects than those who telecommuted less. The paper concludes with the limitations of this study and directions for future research.

The value of information technology IT in today's organizations is constantly debated. Researchers and practitioners have examined organizations to try to discover causal links between competitive advantage and IT. This paper presents and details a model that depicts a possible connection between competitive advantage and IT. Furthermore, this paper attempts to show how one major component of the overall IT resources, the IT infrastructure, might yield sustained competitive advantage for an organization. More precisely, IT infrastructure flexibility is examined as an enabler of "core competencies" that have been closely related to sustained competitive advantage in the research literature. The core competencies enabled by IT that are the focus of this study are mass customization and time-to-market. By showing that IT infrastructure flexibility acts as an enabler of these competencies, the relationship to sustained competitive advantage is demonstrated.

Research indicates that rapidly evolving technology and markets do not provide a first mover strategic advantage but favor the second mover. This paper introduces a third variable: hype. In a time of rapid technology and market evolution, hype overrides the expected results and gives the first mover a strategic advantage. This study examines a homogeneous set of medium-sized information-dependent and information-intensive organizations as they implement visible information technology in two eras: during a time of intense hype and during a more normal time where technology has become commonplace. One hundred matched triples of credit unions were examined as they chose to remain offline, implement an informational website, or implement a transactional website during the highly hyped Internet expansion time of 1998 through 2002. One hundred matched pairs of credit unions were then examined during the more normal time from 2003 through 2007. Results indicate that credit unions that embraced the hyped technology gained significant strategic advantage. Second-moving credit unions that waited for the more mature technology survived, whereas the credit unions that did not adopt the technology were at a significant strategic disadvantage.

A two-stage approach is employed in order to examine the influencing factors of consumer behaviors in the context of mobile advertising. The first stage of the study evaluates the correlation relationship of consumer motives for receiving mobile advertising and their attitudes toward mobile advertising. It also investigates the relationship between consumer intentions for receiving advertisements on their cellular phones and their subsequent actions once the mobile advertising was received. A negative sentiment was revealed by cellular phone users toward mobile advertising, a signal that current practices of mobile advertising are ineffective and require a careful reevaluation on the part of mobile commerce firms. The second stage of the research validates a Fishbein and Ajzen's Theory of Reasoned Action model. It is found that positive actions on the received advertisements are significantly influenced by strong intentions; strong intentions are influenced significantly by favorable attitudes, and favorable attitudes are influenced significantly by strong motives. Implications for e-commerce application developers and marketers are discussed.

This paper discusses a study by the author to identify factors that affect the process quality of the information requirements determination (IRD) process from a user perspective. A nominal group process was used with three groups of users that have had experience with the IRD process. The results indicate there is a set of factors that users agree impact the quality of the IRD process. A total of 33 factors were identified as critical to IRD process quality. This study should benefit IT users, IT professionals, project managers, and IT researchers. The factors identified may be used to develop metrics to be used to monitor the IRD process or measure its success or quality. For IT researchers, this study offers two primary contributions: 1) identification of the critical factors suggests that there are many variables that have not received attention, and 2) an example of an approach to generate potential variables for further study.

A 2x2 factorial controlled experiment was conducted to examine the effects of agenda structure and facilitator style on participant satisfaction and output quality in meetings employing group support systems GSS. Participants were assigned to one of four conditions: 1 relationship style/relationship agenda; 2 task style/task agenda; 3 task style/relationship agenda; and 4 relationship style/task agenda. As expected, satisfaction with the agenda, process, and outcomes was higher in the matched style/agenda conditions 1 and 2. Surprisingly, satisfaction with facilitation and task was higher in the relationship style conditions 1 and 4. Two expert raters were used to judge the quality of group outputs. As predicted, groups in the matched conditions produced higher quality outputs than groups in the mismatched conditions. Implications of the study for practice and future research are provided. This study is part of an ongoing program of research into the effectiveness of GSS as a tool for conducting meetings and other forms of group activity.

Emerging agent-based systems offer a new means of effectively managing knowledge to address complex decision processes, thereby enabling solutions to many real problems that have heretofore appeared intractable. This article presents an overview of expert system and agent technologies, and shows the latter as a powerful extension of artificial intelligence for systems development. To illustrate, a system developed first using an expert system approach and then an agent-based approach is used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the agent-based approach. Last, the practical implications of a company adoption of agent-based technology for systems development are addressed.

Most of new information systems development is now being undertaken with Web-based architectures. The objective of this study is to identify and assess the relative importance of the required features for methodologies used to develop Web-based information systems. Critical success factors CSFs for the development of Web-based applications were identified from the literature and organized into a hierarchy consisting of their dimensions and sub-dimensions. The relative importance of the dimensions was assessed through an analytical hierarchy process AHP method based on data obtained in Korea from IT professionals. Information properties and risk control were found to be the two main dimensions. Within information properties dimension, integrity of information was found to be the most important sub-dimension. The relative importance of the features was also found to vary for the three industry sectors investigated.

This research investigates the influence of computerized search engines on consumer decision making in the electronic commerce environment. The results indicate that by providing well-designed decision aids to consumers, it is possible to significantly increase consumer confidence, satisfaction, and decision quality. Consumers who have access to query-based decision aids perceive increased cost savings and lower cognitive decision effort associated with the purchase decision. The future challenge in developing consumer-oriented computerized decision aids does not reside in technological advances, but rather in developing systems that are useful and appealing to the intended consumer. This is necessary to avoid consumer perceptions of non-utility, and ultimately non-use of the computerized decision aids. The challenge for marketing managers is to provide consumers with information systems that change over time such that they fulfill the consumers' short-term needs without sacrificing the consumers' long-term interests.

Governance of the information security function is critical to effective security. In this paper, the authors present a conceptual model for security governance from the perspective of decision rights allocation. Based on Da Veiga and Eloff's 2007 framework for security governance and two high-level information security documents published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST, the authors present seven domains of information security governance. For each of the governance domains, they propose a main decision type, using the taxonomy of information technology decisions defined by Weill and Ross 2004. This framework recommends the selection of decision rights allocation patterns that are proper to those decision types to ensure good security decisions. As a result, a balance can be achieved between decisional authority and responsibility for information security.

The authors use a simulation approach to determine effective management of resource allocation and task prioritization decisions for the development of open source enterprise solutions software in the context of a large scale collaborative development project (CDP). Unlike traditional software systems where users have limited access to the development team, in open source environments, the resolution of issues is a collaborative effort among users and the team. However, as the project grows in size, complexity, and usage, effective allocation of resources and prioritization of tasks become a necessity to improve the operational performance of the software system. In this article, by mining an open source software repository, the authors analyze the effects of collaborative issue resolution in a CDP and its effects on resource allocation of the team developers. This article examines several scenarios to evaluate the effects of forum discussions, resource allocation, and task prioritization on operational performance of the software system.

While technology enables home-based telecommuting HBT, it also has been blamed for its slow growth. Thus, technology may both facilitate and hinder HBT. In order to clarify the role that technology currently plays when employees telecommute, this study investigated the relationship between different forms of organizational support classified as technology-related, somewhat technology-related, and nontechnological and employees' reactions to HBT. Dependent variables included satisfaction, Perceived Productivity, and number of days/weeks spent telecommuting. Respondents were 50 full-time employees from 20 organizations. Two technology-related support variables and manager's trust a nontechnological support had a broad impact on employees' reactions to HBT. So, technology plays a crucial role and, thus, could be a major factor in HBT's slow growth, but HBT is better understood within a multi-factor rather than a single-factor framework. Results also indicate that organizations should emphasize providing IT support and appropriate technology for telecommuters as well as HBT-related training for nontelecommuting coworkers and managers.

Deregulation and liberalization of the telecommunications markets has led to tough international competition. This paper presents well-established approaches used by large telecom service providers in assessing the technical and market forces impacting their network planning and strategies. This paper, in the form of a tutorial, takes the reader through the assessment and analysis processes dealing with the requirements, design and implementation issues facing global communications carriers today. Four generic telecommunication network models varying based on the degree of capital intensity required are presented to demonstrate that a strategy of employing these generic models to appropriate settings generates cost savings and network efficiencies. A specific case analysis conducted by the global communications carrier for a regional network in Italy is included that discusses strategic planning for the provision of new data and Internet services, and assesses alternative network designs and technologies to provide optimized solutions and service delivery.

Recently, researchers in IS have begun to rely on the theories of innovation diffusion to study implementation problems. A major focus of these studies has been how potential users' perceptions of the information technology IT innovation influence its adoption. User acceptance of IT has been a primary focus in the MIS implementation research for the past decade. Why do users accept or reject information systems? How is user acceptance affected by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and attitude toward acceptance behavior? The present research addresses these questions in the Western Europe culture. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the applicability of the technology acceptance model in the United Kingdom. This study seeks empirical support for the well-known technology acceptance model, or TAM in the UK. TAM is used as a base model to produce a causal model resembling a network of relationships among the constructs of the study. A field study of 324 users regarding an IT system was conducted in the UK to validate measures used to operationalize model variables and to test the hypothesized network of relationships. Partial Least Squares PLS, a second-generation multivariate analysis technique, was used to estimate the parameters of the proposed causal model. The study findings indicate that TAM is very applicable to the UK, which lend a hand to a good tool of assessing IT acceptance in this developed region of the world. They also indicate that perceived usefulness has the largest influence on IT acceptance followed by users' attitudes toward IT. Perceived usefulness demonstrate to operate directly on IT acceptance and indirectly through attitudes. Meanwhile, perceived ease of use has a larger influence on users' attitudes than does perceived usefulness. Suggestions for future research and implications of findings are discussed.

Electronic commerce is often touted as a global phenomenon. However, most studies of e-commerce have focused on more developed countries. While it is important to understand e-commerce in the context of richer, more developed countries, it also impacts developing countries. Using diffusion of innovation theory, and literature on trustworthiness in e-commerce and dimensions of national culture as theoretical bases, this research investigates how consumers perceive e-commerce differently in India and the United States. Results indicate that Indian and American consumers perceive the relative advantage, ease of use, compatibility, and the demonstrability of results of e-commerce differently. Post hoc analyses reveal there is an association between perceptions of e-commerce and use intentions. This result holds across nationalities, although the pattern of influence differs according to country.

There is strong evidence that data stored in organizational databases have a significant rate of errors. As computerized databases continue to proliferate, the number of errors in stored data and the organizational impact of these errors are likely to increase. The impact of data errors on business processes and decision making can be lessened if users of information systems are able and willing to detect and correct data errors. However, some published research suggests that users of information systems do not detect data errors. This paper reports the results of a study showing that municipal bond analysts detect data errors. The results provide insight into the conditions under which users in organizational settings detect data errors. Guidelines for improving error detection are also discussed

Information systems IS technology has become a strategic resource for most organizations to compete successfully in today's highly uncertain marketplace. One critical component of this strategic resource is the IS human resource. Unlike many other professions, the IS professionals historically displayed a much higher rate of turnover due to rapid technological changes, job stress and emerging employment opportunities. Such excessive turnover can be very costly to the organization in terms of costs of recruiting and re-training, and the loss of systems development productivity. Therefore, maintaining a qualified and stable body of IS staff has been continually ranked among the most important issues for the successful functioning of IS departments. However, these important IS human resource management issues have not received enough empirical research attention within the IS management literature. The current study attempts to fill this gap by empirically examining the relationships among a set of organizational and psychological factors i.e., management support, degree of IS control, IS strategic significance, role stressors and the organizational commitment of IS managers. Empirical data was collected through large-scale questionnaire survey. The rigorous statistical method of LISREL path analysis was used. Results show that these variables are closely related to each other, which provides valuable insights for organizations to more effectively manage their IS human resource.

This article explores the evolution of the Massively Parallel Processing MPP database, focusing on trends of particular relevance to analytics. The dramatic shift of database vendors and leading companies to utilize MPP databases and deploy an Enterprise Data Warehouse EDW is presented. The inherent benefits of fresher data, storage efficiency, and most importantly accessibility to analytics are explored. Published industry and vendor metrics are examined that demonstrate substantial and growing cost efficiencies from utilizing MPP databases. The author concludes by reviewing trends toward parallelizing decision support workload into the database, ranging from within database transformations to new statistical and spatial analytic capabilities provided by parallelizing these algorithms to execute directly within the MPP database. These new capabilities present an opportunity for timely and powerful enterprise analytics, providing a substantial competitive advantage to those companies able to leverage this technology to turn data into actionable information, gain valuable new insights, and automate operational decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of a Web-based geographic information system GIS for providing online crash information and statistical information for commercial vehicle crashes. The system is capable of displaying crash data such as specific geographic location, period and time of crashes, severity, contributing factors, and cost. The system supports interagency communication with the purpose of reducing the number of crashes. Through the description of the design and implementation of the system, we demonstrate the feasibility of addressing spatial problems in a collaborative OLAP environment. It provides a guide for the design and development of similar systems and identifies a series or related, but yet unsolved, research problems.

This article examines the impact of information security breaches on organizational performance. Until now, there have been only a few empirical academic studies that have investigated this issue and they have investigated information security breaches with the focus on the short-term impact on the market value of the firm. This study offers an alternate approach to investigate this issue as it explores the impact of breaches on financial performance of the firm, one year after the breach. Using a "matched sampling" methodology, we explored the impact of each type of breach i.e., confidentiality, integrity, and availability and also by IT intensity and size. Our results suggest that the direction of the impact i.e., positive, negative is dependent on the type of security breaches and also the impact of IT intensive firms is different from non-IT intensive firms. Our study also includes some important implications for managers and stock market investors.

Business Process Management BPM maximizes firm performance by transforming isolated functional activities into streamlined, cross-functional processes. Being a relatively new discipline, disagreement exists regarding the position structure and qualifications required for success. However, certain individual differences have been associated with job performance, both in general and for specific occupations. Because BPM initiatives can be expensive and risky, understanding these individual differences may help practitioners improve their chances for BPM job success. Two models of job performance have dominated organizational research; one argues that personality traits are the chief determinants, while the other argues that intelligence and experience are most important. This paper uses logistic regression to examine the efficacy of each model in predicting job performance among BPM professionals. Results indicate that intelligence, conscientiousness, and openness to experience are the most important differentiators of BPM job performance.

The present study attempts to investigate the applicability of the TAM model in the Arab context and to extend TAM with three moderating/interacting human factors. Using a survey sample collected from 722 knowledge workers using desktop computer applications on a voluntary basis in Saudi Arabia, this study sought empirical support for testing the basic structure of TAM. Toward that, the study was successful as the structure of TAM holds well in the Saudi settings. This study also empirically examined an extended TAM by incorporating gender, age and educational level as moderators of the model's core relationships. Our findings emphasize that most of the key relationships in the model are moderated. Specifically, age moderates all the influences of computers usefulness and ease of use on attitudes and intention to use. However, gender and educational level only moderate the influence of ease of use on attitudes.Implications for management and practice of these findings are discussed.

To meet the challenges of today's Internet economy and be competitive in a global market, enterprises are constantly adapting their business processes and adjusting their information systems. In this article, the authors analyze the applicability and benefits of using semantic technologies in contemporary information systems. By using an illustrative case study of deployment of Semantic Web technologies in Human Resources sector at the Mihajlo Pupin Institute, this paper shows how the latest semantic technologies could be used with existing Enterprise Information Systems and Enterprise Content Management systems to ensure meaningful search and retrieval of expertise for in-house users as well as for integration in the European research space and beyond.

The relationship between Information Technology and Business is something that has been growing over the years, materialized through investment increasing. IT investments typically have a negative connotation, as such companies have been seeking alternative models like Outsourcing, Managed Services or Cloud Computing. The aim of this paper is to inform a framework that aims to reconcile the benefits of IT Management Benefits who can give a different view of IT investments. On the other hand the advantage of having an Enterprise Architecture is to provide a guideline to the different projects.

In this paper, the author defines the evolution of the Classic Enterprise Information Infrastructure into Sustainability and Global Enterprise Information Infrastructure. However, this is not the end of evolution. Since Enterprise Systems operate within larger entities, such as Local, National, Global Information Infrastructures and these create the Civilization Information Infrastructure. The latter is the foundation for modern civilizations and the emerging Global Civilization, with repercussions for lower level infrastructures as well as World Civilization. If such civilizations want to survive, they must be able to monitor and predict sustainability in relationship with enterprises. In this paper, the author then gives recommendations for pathways to a sustainable future.

Previous studies have indicated that discriminatory practices exist in the Information Technology profession. In this paper, we quantify the differences in the current hourly salaries of female software developers with their male counterparts using the human capital model based on economic theory. In addition to the gender factor, the human capital model includes other control variables that may account for the salary differences such as education, experience, and specific skills, such as object-oriented programming and SQL. Our models indicate that gender is still a statistically and practically significant factor in assessing a software developer's salary.

Researchers have attempted to augment the traditional cost/benefit analysis model used in the IT decision process. However, frequently social subsystem issues are inadequately considered. Survey data, collected from a U.S. sample of 200 executives, provides an empirical assessment of haw these issues compare with other IT decision criteria given differing decision types. The social subsystem issues considered most important by decision makers are also identified and the manner by which they consider these issues is investigated.

Although software development methodologies can improve software quality, developers typically have a negative attitude toward using them. To encourage a positive attitude, organizations must convince developers of the usefulness of methodologies. However, the traditional conceptualization of perceived usefulness PU may not be detailed enough to explain and engender positive developer attitudes toward methodologies. To determine the ways in which a methodology is useful, in this paper, the authors propose and test a multidimensional conceptualization of PU. A survey of software developers suggests that in the context of methodologies, PU is multidimensional, helping developers achieve a variety of objectives.