Indushobha N. Chengalur-Smith

• PhD
• University at Albany, State University of New York

Open source software (OSS) is increasingly being developed by hybrid teams that consist of a mix of company employees and volunteer developers. While hybrid OSS teams are becoming more prevalent, they also face unique challenges due to the involvement of different constituents. To address those challenges, this paper develops and validates a new or...

User engagement is considered critical to technology interactions. The user engagement scale (UES) is a measurement tool for engagement based on self- reported measures. However, UES does not emphasize interactions with infor- mation and focus solely on perception. This visual presentation describes a novel conceptual and measurement framework to s...

Farming communities in developing countries like India are victims of the information divide. Voice-based information sharing services (VISS) can bridge this divide and help farmers address a range of challenges by exchanging knowledge with their peers. An analysis of in-depth phone interviews with farmers in remote, rural Gujarat, India, reveals f...

Online self-disclosure (OSD) on social networking sites can leave individuals and organisations vulnerable to security threats. Following a design science research (DSR) method, we created a gamified, “choose your own adventure” style security education, training, and awareness (SETA) artefact using two formats: text and visual. Both artefacts were...

Most cybersecurity incidents and data breaches have been caused by human error and negligence. Therefore, there has been a keen interest in developing security education and training programs to mitigate users' security lapses. This study proposes a contextualized and participatory storytelling approach in which learners alter the course of the sto...

The goal of this study is to examine the effects of learner control on information security (ISec) training effectiveness. While organizations recognize the importance of education and training in security and invest in such efforts, the design of these programs often lacks theoretical grounding and the outcomes are often not critically evaluated....

End users’ behaviors that compromise security and privacy put both individuals and organizations at risk. In this study, we focus on online self-disclosure and propose a staged model that describes how individuals can move towards reduced online self-disclosure. We recognize that information privacy and security behavior is a dynamic process that u...

Purpose Our knowledge of why organizations continue to use open source software (OSS) infrastructure technologies is relatively limited, and existing models appear inadequate to explain this continuance phenomenon given that they are set at the individual level and also do not take into account the unique characteristics of OSS. The paper aims to...

Although information sharing is highly desirable in a supply chain, the reality is that most supply chain participants restrict themselves to dyadic information sharing (i.e., information sharing between immediate, first-tier supply chain participants). In this investigation, data is collected from one system that permits extensible information sha...

This study analyzes the process adopted by information poor communities of farmers from five remote villages in Gujarat, India, which use IBM's Spoken Web for building an information network (INet). Spoken Web enables information poor communities to create and access VoiceSites over their mobile phones. After analyzing in-depth phone interviews wit...

Extant research on open source software (OSS) has primarily focused on software developers and active users, but has paid limited attention to the less visible ‘passive’ users who form the silent majority of OSS communities. Passive users play a critical role in the adoption and diffusion of OSS, and more research is needed to understand their beha...

Although information sharing is highly desirable in a supply chain, the reality is that most supply chain participants restrict themselves to dyadic information sharing (i.e., information sharing between immediate, first-tier supply chain participants). In this investigation, data is collected from one system that permits extensible information sha...

Drawing from social capital theory, this study attempts to present a model that applies the structural, relational, and cognitive dimensions of social capital to theorize the determinants of the provision of informational and emotional support in healthcare virtual support communities. The results show that individual provision of emotional support...

The phenomenon of social support―aid and assistance exchanged through social relationships and interpersonal transactions―has been studied extensively for decades. In the context of healthcare virtual support communities, researchers have focused on exploring community members’ support behavior and its effects on individuals’ health outcomes. This...

In this paper, we conceptualize about, and empirically test for, differences between the more traditional Open Source Software (OSS) projects that are aimed towards techies-only and the projects that are aimed towards the general population. By drawing upon the theories of Reciprocity and Network Effects, we propose that OSS projects for techies-on...

The phenomenon of social support-aid and assistance exchanged through social relationships and interpersonal transactions-has been studied extensively for decades. In the context of healthcare virtual support communit ies, researchers have focused on exploring community members' support behavior and its effects on individuals' health outcomes. This...

The phenomenon of online social support has been studied for years. However, little is known about the factors that drive individual online helping behavior. While the Information systems literature provides rich insights into the determinants of online social support, the emphasis has been exclusively on the provision of informational help. By con...

Drawing on the lens of statistical social network analysis, we collected longitudinal data on online message postings from a healthcare virtual support community (HVSC) and applied stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) to infer the structural evolution of two co-dependent online communication networks-social support and companionship interaction...

Most IT departments have experienced stagnant or shrinking budgets due to the recession. How are IT executives coping? This survey reveals commonly used strategies for reducing costs while still applying business intelligence to support sales growth.

Web-based supply chain applications promise to provide information sharing capabilities that will enhance the participating organizations’ information capabilities and business benefits. We performed an empirical study of a sophisticated Web-based supply chain application to determine the effect of such information sharing and business systems leve...

The phenomenon of social support - aid and assistance exchanged through social relationships and interpersonal transactions - has been studied for decades with a focus on discovering the mechanism that lies between support exchange and personal wellbeing. In the age of the Internet, researchers also have shifted their focus to online support exchan...

This paper develops a conceptual model that explicates the role of synchronous communication media in enabling - directly and indirectly, via social presence - virtual software development teams to adopt and apply Agile methods. In turn, Agile methods, as well as perceived social presence, are theorized to have a positive impact on communication co...

Open source software literature has largely ignored how newly initiated OSS projects can attract developers in order to sustain their vitality. In light of the fact that most are eventually abandoned, more attention needs to be paid to how these projects can effectively and efficiently attract more developers. Drawing on impression-management liter...

Security policies are widely used tools for the implementation of organizational security, however neither do we have metrics for measuring their effectiveness, nor are there universal standards that can serve as benchmarks. There is considerable variability in security policies based on the way they are written but we have no quantifiable evidence...

Organizations are increasingly interested in exploring Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) based technologies as viable alternatives to proprietary or commercial solutions, but research on the business value of such technologies is lacking. In this paper, we contribute to this important, yet understudied, topic by examining the antecedents of t...

This paper examines the factors that influence the long-term sustainability of FLOSS projects. A model of project sustainability based on organizational ecology is developed and tested empirically. Data about activity and contribution patterns over the course of five years for 2,772 projects registered with SourceForge is analyzed. Our results sugg...

Social engineering continues to be an increasing attack vector for the propagation of malicious programs. For this article, we collected data on malware incidents and highlighted the prevalence and longevity of social engineering malware. We developed a framework that shows the steps social engineering malware executes to be successful. To explain...

Conventional wisdom is that most companies today, particularly the larger ones, have adopted the practices associated with sound supply chain management. But that may not always be the case. New research reveals a clear gab between adopters and the laggards--or the "sophisticated" and "less sophisticated" practitioners. This article explains wwhat...

While a variety of information technology (IT) acceptance and use models have been extensively examined and validated in numerous contexts, most studies have been conducted in western cultures, and thus not much is known about the probable moderating role of culture on the relationships between the constructs in those models. To fill this gap in th...

Security policies are widely used tools for the implementation of organizational security, however neither do we have metrics for measuring their effectiveness, nor are there universal standards that can serve as benchmarks. There is considerable variability in security policies based on the way they are written but we have no quantifiable evidence...

Many have been envisaging the emergence of Open Source Software (OSS) for general end-users and the enhancements in providing services and support, as the most critical factors for OSS success, and at the same time, the most critical issues which are holding back the OSS movement. While these two distinct waves in OSS evolution have become more obs...

GE Operations Services Global Vendor Managed Inventory (Global VMI) application offers a means to improve inventory management and the order fulfillment process by connecting companies through one database. The application employs electronic sensors to measure raw material inventories at Six Sigma quality levels to provide supply chain visibility....

This article addresses the problem of estimating the time of apparent death in a binary stochastic process. We show that, when only censored data are available, a fitted logistic regression model may estimate the time of death incorrectly. We improve this estimation by utilizing discrete-event simulation to produce simulated complete time series da...

This paper considers the problem of using control charts to simultaneously monitor more than one parameter with emphasis on simultaneously monitoring the mean and variance. Fixed sampling interval control charts are modified to use variable sampling intervals depending on what is being observed from the data. Two basic strategies are investigated....

Information-sharing projects are becoming increasingly important in both public and private organizations. Generally, organizations base their decision to move forward with an information-sharing project on the project's expected benefits such as better services, operational savings, and increased program effectiveness. Clearly, potential impedimen...

The quality of data in relational databases is often uncertain, and the relationship between the quality of the underlying base tables and the set of potential query results, a type of information product (IP), that could be produced from them has not been fully investigated. This paper provides a basis for the systematic analysis of the quality of...

A database is only as good as the data in it. Transaction-processing systems and decision-support systems provide data for strategic planning and operations. Thus, it is important to not only recognize the quality of information in databases, but also to deal with it. Research in information quality has addressed the issues of defining, measuring a...

A database is only as good as the data in it. Transaction-processing systems and decision-support systems provide data for strategic planning and operations. Thus, it is important to not only recognize the quality of information in databases, but also to deal with it. Research in information quality has addressed the issues of defining, measuring a...

Data Quality Information (DQI) is metadata that can be included with data to provide the user with information regarding the quality of that data. As users are increasingly removed from any personal experience with data, knowledge that would be beneficial in judging the appropriateness of the data for the decision to be made has been lost. Data tag...

Much has been written about both the theory and the practical importance of developing enduring buyer-seller relationships. Given the increasing variety and sophistication of information systems at the heart of relational communications, there is a growing need to develop theoretical tools for studying this topic. This paper frames the study of inf...

Using a sample of 350 companies, this paper investigates the benefits of client-server systems and links them to a set of implementation factors. The paper reveals that companies can expect competitive, operational, financial and technical benefits. It reports several important steps, activities and tasks that are positively related to those benefi...

This paper describes an experiment that explores the consequences of providing information regarding the quality of data used in decision making. The subjects in the study were given three types of information about the data's quality: none, two-point ordinal, and interval scale. This information was made available to the subjects, along with the a...

Ad hoc forecasts are generally unstructured forecasts that are performed infrequently. Unfortunately, there are no widely accepted formulae for performing such tasks. In this paper, the authors draw parallels between the process of ad hoc forecasting and disaster management, using characteristics of disasters to develop analogous dimensions for ad...

A large number of companies are adopting client–server systems. We investigated the relationship between several contextual factors and the initiation and adoption process of this important technology. The contextual factors included: (a) environmental, such as market position; (b) internal factors, namely organizational structure/culture, size, an...

Bioremediation encompasses several methods that use micro-organisms to treat contaminated soils. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) specifies a safe threshold level for residual pollutants. Regulators would be concerned that a contaminated site is not prematurely declared 'acceptable' and subsequently guard against delays in completing the t...

Intermediate and long range planning for Departments of Transportation necessitates the estimation of the cost of bridge rehabilitation, a range of activities falling between maintenance and replacement. This paper presents a set of regression models designed within the context of data available to the New York State Department of Transportation. T...

The problem of simultaneously monitoring the means of several variables is investigated using variable sampling intervals between samples. Several sampling strategies are considered where the interval between samples depends upon what is observed in the most recent sample. These strategies are compared with each other and are found to be more effic...

In general it is best to improve the quality of production processes to the point where inspection is minimal. It follows that incoming raw material usually should be of high quality. However, it can be disastrous if poor quality raw material is utilized by a production-inspection system optimized under the expectation of excellent raw material. Th...