Management Information Systems Commons^™

Principles For Conducting Critical Realist Case Study Research In Information Systems, Donald E. Wynn, Clay K. Williams

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

Critical realism is emerging as a viable philosophical paradigm for conducting social science research, and has been proposed as an alternative to the more prevalent paradigms of positivism and interpretivism. Few papers, however, have offered clear guidance for applying this philosophy to actual research methodologies. Under critical realism, a causal explanation for a given phenomenon is inferred by explicitly identifying the means by which structural entities and contextual conditions interact to generate a given set of events. Consistent with this view of causality, we propose a set of methodological principles for conducting and evaluating critical realism-based explanatory case study research …

A Computational Analysis Of Bundle Trading Markets Design For Distributed Resource Allocation, Zhiling Guo, Gary J. Koehler, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online auction markets play increasingly important roles for resource allocations in distributed systems. This paper builds upon a market-based framework presented by Guo et al. (Guo, Z., G. J. Koehler, A. B. Whinston. 2007. A market-based optimization algorithm for distributed systems. Management Sci. 53(8) 1345–1458), where a distributed system optimization problem is solved by self-interested agents iteratively trading bundled resources in a double auction market run by a dealer. We extend this approach to a dynamic, asynchronous Internet market environment and investigate how various market design factors including dealer inventory policies, market communication patterns, and agent learning strategies affect the …

Valuation Of Benchmark Provisions On It Services Contracts, Robert J. Kauffman, Ryan Sougstad

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information technology (IT) services are often subject to downward price pressures due to improvements in technology and business processes in a competitive market. When clients enter into IT services contracts, they are faced with the future risk that their services will be overpriced relative to the broader IT services market. To mitigate this risk, clients often add benchmark provisions, whereby a neutral third party assesses the prevailing market price for services. It will support fair price adjustments if the market prices are lower than the current prices. We model the decision to benchmark in order to provide managerial information on …

Development And Implementation Of It-Enabled Business Processes: A Knowledge Structure View, Rick Brattin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As competitive pressures mount, organizations must continue to evolve their business processes in order to survive. Increasingly, firms are developing new IT-enabled business processes in response to rising competition, greater customer expectations, and challenging economic conditions. The success rate of these projects remains low despite much industry experience and extensive academic study. Managerial and organizational cognition represents a potentially fruitful lens for studying the design and implementation of IT-enabled business processes. This view assumes that individuals are information workers who spend their days absorbing, processing, and disseminating information as they pursue their goals and objectives. Individuals develop cognitive representations, called …

Time Waits For No One: Using Time As A Lens In Information Systems Research, Christopher M. Conway

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite considerable research interest, IT projects still fail at a higher rate than other projects. Primary causes for these failures are relational, motivational, and scheduling issues on the team. Using the concept of time as a lens, the four essays in this dissertation examine how the ways that individuals and teams structure time can help explain these failures. The essays formulate the concept of temporal dissonance at the individual and team level, and explore how temporal dissonance causes negative consequences for IT workers and IT teams.

Essay one synthesizes temporal dissonance from concepts of temporal congruity and cognitive dissonance. It …

From Clickstreams To Searchstreams: Search Network Graph Evidence From A B2b E-Market, Mei Lin, M. F. Lin, Robert J. Kauffman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Consumers in e-commerce acquire information through search engines, yet to date there has been little empirical study on how users interact with the results produced by search engines. This is analogous to, but different from, the ever-expanding research on clickstreams, where users interact with static web pages. We propose a new network approach to analyzing search engine server log data. We call this searchstream data. We create graph representations based on the web pages that users traverse as they explore the search results that their use of search engines generates. We then analyze the graph-level properties of these search network …

Hedonic Valuation Of Online Game Participation, Robert J. Kauffman, Kwansoo Kim, Byungjoon Yoo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We use hedonic valuation to establish a basis for valuing the time a user participates in an online gaming community. We distinguish between utilitarian and hedonic value. Our application involves elements of both utilitarian and hedonic value, however, the latter is much more important. We use an extensive data set involving a massive multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG) from Korea. We specify and test econometric models that reflect the appropriate empirical structure for the setting, based on information about the players and the activities they engage in. The results permit us to estimate the hedonic value in monetary terms for …

Meaningful Use And Meaningful Curricula: A Survey Of Health Informatics Programs In The U.S., Kai Koong, Madison Ngafeeson, Lai Lui

Journal Articles

The introduction of the US government’s Meaningful Use criteria carries with it many implications including the training curriculum of healthcare personnel. This study examines 108 health informatics degree programmes across the USA. First, the courses offered are identified and classified into generic classes. Next, these generic groupings are mapped to two important frameworks: the Learning to Manage Health Information (LMHI) academic framework; and the Meaningful Use criteria policy framework. Results suggest that while current curricula seemed acceptable in addressing Meaningful Use Stage 1 objective, there was insufficient evidence that these curricula could support Meaningful Use Stage 2 and …

An Integrated Vendor-Buyer Cooperative Inventory Model For Items With Imperfect Quality And Shortage Backordering, Jia-Tzer Hsu, Lie-Fern Hsu

Publications and Research

We develop a model to determine an integrated vendor-buyer inventory policy for items with imperfect quality and planned back orders. The production process is imperfect and produces a certain number of defective items with a known probability density function. The vendor delivers the items to the buyer in small lots of equally sized shipments. Upon receipt of the items, the buyer will conduct a 100% inspection. Since each lot contains a variable number of defective items, shortages may occur at the buyer. We assume that shortages are permitted and are completely back ordered. The objective is to minimize the total …

Exploring The Roles Of People, Governance And Technology In Organizational Readiness For Emerging Technologies, Abiodun A. Ogunyemi, Kevin A. Johnston

The African Journal of Information Systems

The rapid development and release of emerging technologies have made their adoption challenging. Most often there are failing issues in organizational adoption of emerging technologies. It is yet unclear which component(s) of organization play the prominent role(s) in organizational readiness to adopt emerging technologies. Using a mixed method, this study conducted an online survey of 83 South African organizations for server virtualization adoption. Server virtualization is an emerging technology being widely adopted in most organizations in developed countries. IT executives rated server virtualization as the second-most important technology to help achieve cost reductions and optimize productivity in recent surveys. Very …

Customer Dissatisfaction And Complaining Responses Towards Mobile Telephony Services, Simon Gyasi Nimako Mr

The African Journal of Information Systems

The paper examines customer satisfaction and complaint responses towards Mobile telephony services. The study was a cross-sectional survey involving customers from two mobile telephony companies. Data were collected using a self-administered structured questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS (version 16.0). The study found that customer satisfaction rating differed according to the mobile networks, and previous dissatisfaction significantly influences complaining response. Again, dissatisfied customers tend to complain more than satisfied ones. Moreover, dissatisfaction may not necessarily induce complaining and some satisfied customers may still complain. Furthermore, previous dissatisfaction may not always negatively affect overall satisfaction if it is effectively managed. Finally, the …

The Role Of Interactivity In Interent Business On Customer Experiential Values And Behavioral Intentions, So Ra Park

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Customers’ experiential value is based on holistic experience customers would have when they interact with a product/service. Experiential value is defined as “relativistic preference characterizing a subject’s experience with some object” (Holbrook, 1994). Internet is characterized for interactivity and it should have a role in customers’ experiential value. Therefore, this research investigates the role of interactivity (e-store interaction, C2C interaction, and content interaction) and web store utility on intrinsic and extrinsic customer experiential value. The final dependent variable is behavioral intentions. To test the research model, a survey was designed to capture online consumers’ perception of interactivity within e-stores, experiential …

An Economic Analysis Of The Online Counterfeit Market And The Impact Of Anti-Counterfeit Technology, Xiong Zhang, Zhiling Guo, Wei Thoo Yue

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Counterfeiting causes hundreds of billions dollars of losses around the world every year. Due to the growing prominence of online commerce, the seriousness of the situation could soon become much worse. Hence, reaching a clear understanding of the fundamental economic incentives behind this practice is of vital importance. In this paper, we investigate a problem within which a firm selling a counterfeit product engages in price competition with a firm that sells an authentic product to a population of heterogeneous consumers. An online intermediary acts as the facilitator of both firms’ transactions and may consequently be liable for any counterfeit …

Vertical Differentiation And A Comparison Of Online Advertising Models, Mei Lin, Xuqing Ke, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Designing business models that take into consideration the role of advertising support is critical to the success of online services. In this paper, we address the challenges of these business model strategies and compare different ad revenue models. We use game theory to model vertical differentiation in both monopoly and duopoly settings, in which online service providers may offer an ad-free service, an ad-supported service, or a combination of these services. Offering both ad-free and ad-supported services is the optimal strategy for a monopolist because ad revenues compensate for the cannibalistic effect of vertical differentiation. In a duopoly equilibrium, exactly …

Towards The Deployment And Adoption Of Location-Based Services For Optimal Mobile Communication Operations In Africa, Folasade Dahunsi

The African Journal of Information Systems

Africa is the world’s second largest and second most populous continent with about one billion people. Mobile phones are a major source of communication and means of taking information and technology to rural and remote areas of the continent. With low-cost and readily available mobile phones, underprivileged, low-income earners and rural dwellers can also participate in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution. Services are introduced by mobile operators and vendors to enhance and optimize this mobile evolution. One of such service is location-based services (LBS); LBS make available personalized services based on the geographical location of the subscriber’s phone. …

Effects Of Information Importance And Distribution On Information Exchange In Team Decision Making, Babajide James Osatuyi

Dissertations

Teams in organizations are strategically built with members from domains and experiences so that a wider range of information and options can be pooled. This strategic team structure is based on the assumption that when team members share the information they have, the team as a whole can access a larger pool of information than any one member acting alone, potentially enabling them to make better decisions. However, studies have shown that teams, unlike individuals, sometimes do not effectively share and use the unique information available to them, leading to poorer decisions. Research on information sharing in team decision making …

Aligning Security And Usability Objectives For Computer Based Information Systems, Santa Ram Susarapu

Theses and Dissertations

With extensive use of information systems in day-to-day business operations, many organizations are facing challenges to develop robust computer-based information systems that are secure and widely used by the user community. In order to develop information systems that are secure and useful, understanding what stakeholders consider important and value about the security and usability is critical. Security refers to confidentiality, integrity and availability and usability refers to efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction. Using Value Focused Thinking approach, this research first proposes the usability objectives based on the values of system developers and users. Using the security objectives proposed by Dhillon …

Pfau Library Technology Plan 2012-2014, Jonathan M. Smith

Library Faculty Publications & Presentations

This technology plan is essentially a two-year plan that focuses on modernizing current technology in Pfau Library and laying the groundwork for future projects that will transform the library into a leader among peer institutions.

Institutionalization Of Information Security: Case Of The Indonesian Banking Sector, Muhamad Faisal Fariduddin Attar Nasution

Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the institutionalization of information security in the banking sector. This study is important to pursue since it explicates the internalization of information security governance and practices and how such internalization develops an organizational resistance towards security breach. The study argues that information security governance and practices become institutionalized through social integration of routines and system integration of relevant technologies. The objective is to develop an understanding of how information security governance and practices in the Indonesian banking sector become institutionalized. Such objective is built on an argument that information security governance and practices become institutionalized through …

Java Applet Awareness Impacting User Web Browsing Behavior, Norilyz Figueroa

College of Management Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to investigate the web browsing behaviors of computer users and how awareness about threats impacts their behaviors. This research focused on how users behave towards web browser alerts which prompt users to install Java Applets. Applets have become common tools for enhancing user experience. However, installing these features overrides security mechanisms inherent in browsers and provides complete access to users’ computing resources. A survey was administered to two separate groups of students from the University of Massachusetts Boston to collect data. The first group took the survey after being given a few details about …