Mo Adam Mahmood’s research while affiliated with The University of Texas at El Paso and other places

The present research investigates the influence of culture on telemedicine adoption and patient information privacy, security, and policy. The results, based on the SEM analysis of the data collected in the United States, demonstrate that culture plays a significant role in telemedicine adoption. The results further show that culture also indirectly influences telemedicine adoption through information security, information privacy, and information policy. Our empirical results further indicate that information security, privacy, and policy impact telemedicine adoption.

This research investigates whether firms using e-commerce technologies are successful in generating business value and, if so, which e-commerce drivers determine this success and how should firms use these drivers. There is no systematic empirical evidence in the IT productivity and business value literature regarding the payoffs a business receives from its e-business initiatives. The current research contributes to the literature in the e-commerce area by identifying a set of e-business value constructs, incorporating these constructs in a model in a manner not done before, and empirically validating the model using an AMOS/SEM analysis. The present research also contributes to the e-business value literature by providing insights into causal relationships among Rogers' innovation and diffusion theory (IDT) factors. This is the first time a research study has empirically established comprehensive causal relationships among these factors. The SEM analysis of the model indicates that the proposed model is able to explain e-commerce success utilizing the constructs identified and grounded using IT business value literature and Rogers' IDT. We conclude by summarizing its contributions to the IT literature, in general, and the e-business literature in particular, and by providing insights for practice and suggestions for future research.

This research attempts to identify critical e-commerce success factors essential for building business value within e-commerce enabled organizations. It is important to identify the critical success factors that organizations must pursue in order to facilitate a successful transformation from traditional brick-andmortar organizations to click-and-brick business models. Diffusion theory is used to demonstrate how these success factors create business value within an organization. The research model is fully grounded in information technology business value and productivity literature (e.g., Kauffman & Kriebel (1988), Mahmood, Gemoets, Hall, & Lopez (2008) Mahmood & Mann (1993), and Zhu (2004)). The manuscript utilizes an existing sample set consisting of a population of more than 550 company executives who are successfully implementing e-commerce strategies. The research examines constructs found in the literature and focuses on two importance dimensions of creating business value through e-commerce strategies: IT alignment to organizational strategies (ITOrS) and the quality and effectiveness of existing online systems (OnSQE). Critical success factors for e-commerce business success were found to include ITOrS (IT alignment to organizational strategies), IOrSA (Quality and effectiveness of online systems, OnSE (Online systems efficiency), and OnSQE (Online systems quality and effectiveness). The research produces empirical evidence that strategic decision making concerning implementation of e-commerce technologies and alignment with top management strategic planning is critical to the success of creating business value for e-commerce enabled organizations. The manuscript concludes with limitations of the research and implications for future research studies.

Information security (IS) research has become more sophisticated, relevant, and rigorous with increasing number of scholars in the IS community turning their attention to security research. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) at Carnegie Mellon University are aimed towards reporting information security incidents by making data available. This method of security research improves the richness and depth of their research by seeking out new and unique sources of data that reveal the underlying mechanisms of computer crime and the effectiveness of organizational responses to this behavior. These efforts of the scientific community aimed towards security are expected to push the scientific knowledge of IS security into new realms.

While a plethora of anecdotal evidence exists, there is little empirical evidence on the value-creating potential of e-commerce technologies. The present research investigates whether firms using e-commerce technologies are successful in generating business value and, if so, what e-commerce drivers determine success and how to best use these drivers. This work shows how diffusion theory can be used to analyze the wide-spread utilization of e-commerce technologies and how they create business value. It presents an exploratory model of e-commerce business value grounded in information technology (IT) business value and productivity literature. We use a sample from more than 550 company executives, identified as innovative and successful users of IT.

Information security was the main topic in this paper. An investigation of the compliance to information security policies were discussed. The author mentions that the insignificant relationship between rewards and actual compliance with information security policies does not make sense. Quite possibly this relationship results from not applying rewards for security compliance. Also mentions that based on the survey conducted, careless employee behavior places an organization's assets and reputation in serious jeopardy. The major threat to information security arises from careless employees who fail to comply with organizations' information security policies and procedures.

This research attempts to identify critical e-commerce success factors essential for building business value within e-commerce enabled organizations. It is important to identify the critical success factors that organizations must pursue in order to facilitate a successful transformation from traditional brick-and-mortar organizations to click-and-brick business models. Diffusion theory is used to demonstrate how these success factors create business value within an organization. The research model is fully grounded in information technology business value and productivity literature (e.g., Kauffman & Kriebel (1988), Mahmood, Gemoets, Hall, & Lopez (2008) Mahmood & Mann (1993), and Zhu (2004)). The manuscript utilizes an existing sample set consisting of a population of more than 550 company executives who are successfully implementing e-commerce strategies. The research examines constructs found in the literature and focuses on two importance dimensions of creating business value through e-commerce strategies: IT alignment to organizational strategies (ITOrS) and the quality and effectiveness of existing online systems (OnSQE). Critical success factors for e-commerce business success were found to include ITOrS (IT alignment to organizational strategies), IOrSA (Quality and effectiveness of online systems, OnSE (Online systems efficiency), and OnSQE (Online systems quality and effectiveness. The research produces empirical evidence that strategic decision making concerning implementation of e-commerce technologies and alignment with top management strategic planning is critical to the success of creating business value for e-commerce enabled organizations. The manuscript concludes with limitations of the research and implications for future research studies.

Introduction Careless employees, who do not follow information security policies, constitute a serious threat to their organization. We conducted a field survey in order to understand which factors help towards employees' compliance with these security policies. Our research shows that the visibility of the desired practices and normative expectations of peers will provide a solid foundation towards employees complying with these policies. Our research also shows that if employees realize how vulnerable their organization is to security threats and the severity of these threats, they are likely to have a strong intention to comply with information security policies. Finally, employees' self-efficacy and response efficacy motivate them to comply with these policies. This article provides an information security strategic plan that puts together various best practices we found in our survey and that shows how these practices can be used to alleviate employees' non-compliance with organizational security policies. Information security breaches can cause serious damage to organizations. Such breaches can harm irreparably by shutting down computers forcing businesses to loose potential revenues or by leaking corporate confidential information and customer data possibly making corporations vulnerable to legal and regulatory problems and bad publicity. 4,5 Most organizations encounter more than one information security breaches in a given year. ² Prior information security research studies suggest that 91% of organizations' own employees frequently fail to adhere to information security policies ² paving the way for such breaches. To tackle this situation, a number of suggestions have been made in the literature to help ensure employees' compliance with security policies. Commentators have, however, pointed out a serious of weaknesses in the existing approaches. They suggest that these approaches lack empirical evidence on their effectiveness in practice. Because practitioners need empirically validated information, it is extremely important that we study employees' non-compliance with information security policies using field research. In order to understand why employees are careless about following security policies and which factors are important toward employees' compliance with these policies, we conducted a field survey of information security professionals from five Finnish companies operating in different lines of business. The survey instrument was developed based on a theoretical model developed from behavioral theories including the Theory of Reasoned Action ¹ and the Protection Motivation Theory. ³ Since employees' compliance with information security policies is ultimately a psychological phenomenon; we find these theories useful in understanding how organizations can help their employees comply with these security policies. We show how these theories can be useful in offering a new and practical insight into what motivates employees to comply with these policies. Some 3130 employees from four Finnish corporations were asked to fill out a Web-based information security instrument. Of these, 919 filled out the questionnaire resulting in a 29.4% response rate. The demographic data, among the respondents, show that the number of male (56.1%) and female (43.1%) are fairly evenly distributed. In order to test our model, we analyzed the field survey responses using factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. All constructs were found to have an acceptable level of reliability and validity confirming soundness of the measuring instrument.

With an estimated investment of over 1 trillion dollars to date on information technology (IT) products and applications, one would hope that there exists a corresponding improvement in organizational performance and productivity. The level of IT usage has widely been accepted as an important indicator of IT success within organizations. This research synthesizes and validates the construct of IT usage using a meta-analysis. It accomplishes that by analyzing the empirical results of various studies over a period of time covering a broad scope of characteristics of both users and information systems (IS), and it examines the relation between these characteristics and the level of IT usage within organizations. In general, the results of this meta-analysis lead to the conclusion that there exists a strong and significant positive relation between the perception of ease of use and the perceived usefulness of an IT system to the actual amount of usage. Another factor that indicates a high level of IT usage is the organizational support of IT within an enterprise. Although the factors of education level, training level, and professional level were found to have a substantial effect on IT usage, the magnitude of these effects were lower than those of the perceptions of the user and organizational support. Managers and IT professionals may have a better chance of avoiding IT system ineffectiveness and even failure by paying attention to the results of this research, especially in view of the fact that it synthesized and validated the results of a significant number of empirical studies published in some of the best IS journals. Rarely do single research experiments provide definitive answers on which to base policy decisions.