Management Information Systems Commons^™

The Business Model Of "Software-As-A-Service", Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The emergence of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model has attracted great attentions from both researchers and practitioners. SaaS vendors deliver on-demand information processing services to users, and thus offer computing utility rather than the standalone software itself. In this work, the author propose an analytical model to study the competition between the SaaS and the traditional COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) solutions for software applications. The author show that when software applications become open, modulated, and standardized, the SaaS business model will take a significant market share. In addition, under certain market conditions, offering users an easy exit option through the software …

Improving Memory-Based Collaborative Filtering Using A Factor-Based Approach, Zhenxue Zhang, Dongsong Zhang, Zhiling Guo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Collaborative Filtering (CF) systems generate recommendations for a user by aggregating item ratings of other like-minded users. The memory-based approach is a common technique used in CF. This approach first uses statistical methods such as Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient to measure user similarities based on their previous ratings on different items. Users will then be grouped into different neighborhood depending on the calculated similarities. Finally, the system will generate predictions on how a user would rate a specific item by aggregating ratings on the item cast by the identified neighbors of his/her. However, current memory-based CF method only measures user similarities …

People-Search : Searching For People Sharing Similar Interests From The Web, Quanzhi Li

Dissertations

On the Web, there are limited ways of finding people sharing similar interests or background with a given person. The current methods, such as using regular search engines, are either ineffective or time consuming. In this work, a new approach for searching people sharing similar interests from the Web, called People-Search, is presented. Given a person, to find similar people from the Web, there are two major research issues: person representation and matching persons. In this study, a person representation method which uses a person's website to represent this person's interest and background is proposed. The design of matching process …

Sifting Customers From The Clickstream : Behavior Pattern Discovery In A Virtual Shopping Environment, Peishih Chang

Dissertations

While shopping online, customers' needs and goals may change dynamically, based on a variety of factors such as product information and characteristics, time pressure and perceived risk. While these changes create emergent information needs, decisions about what information to present to customers are typically made before customers have visited a web site, using data such as purchase histories and logs of web pages visited. Better understanding of customer cognition and behavior as a function of various factors is needed in order to enable the right information to be presented at the right time. One approach to achieving this understanding is …

Modeling Architectural Strategy Using Design Structure Networks, C. Jason Woodard

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

System architects face the formidable task of purposefully shaping an evolving space of complex designs. Their task s further complicated when they lack full control of the design process, and therefore must anticipate the behavior of other stakeholders, including the designers of component products and competing systems. This paper presents a conceptual tool called a design structure network (DSN) to help architects and design scientists reason effectively about these situations. A DSN is a graphical representation of a system’s design space. DSNs improve on existing representation schemes by providing a compact and intuitive way to express design options—the ability to …

Control Of The Electronic Management Of Information, A. Boone, R. Szatmary Jr.

Publications (YM)

This procedure establishes the responsibilities and provides direction for developing and evaluating the adequacy of process controls on specific uses of electronically stored information. These uses include, but are not limited to, information used in design input, developed as design output, or developed as input to or output from scientific investigation or performance assessment modeling and analysis. This pertains to information that resides in an electronic information management system or on electronic media.

An Exploratory Study Of Iso 9001:2000 Quality Management Systems Using The Iso/Iec 15504 Architecture, Paul Richard Shimp

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to provide an exploratory study on the implementation and issues regarding Quality Management Systems as defined by ISO 9001 :2000 using the architecture of ISO/IEC 15504. The recently published ISO/IEC 15504 series of standards provides a framework to assess processes and determine levels of capability. With the use of this framework, the study will focus on the assessment and identification of problem areas requiring focus for continual improvement within an ISO 9001 :2000 quality management system.

The structure of this paper is as follows: Section 1 provides a background discussion of ISO 9001 :2000. …

Refinement Of An Instrument To Assess Readiness For Knowledge Management, Landon C. Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

Academics and practitioners have described knowledge as a primary source for competitive advantage for organizations; however, many attempts at instituting knowledge management programs to increase organizational competitiveness do not succeed. Instituting knowledge management programs generally requires organizations to make significant changes and the concept of readiness has long been believed to be an important precondition for successful organizational change. By linking previous research in enablers for knowledge management and organizational change, it is possible to adapt an established organizational change readiness instrument to measure readiness for knowledge management. This study culminates in the development and field-testing of the resultant knowledge …

Valuing Information Technology Infrastructures: A Growth Options Approach, Qizhi Dai, Robert J. Kauffman, Salvatore T. March

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Decisions to invest in information technology (IT) infrastructure are often made based on an assessment of its immediate value to the organization. However, an important source of value comes from the fact that such technologies have the potential to be leveraged in the development of future applications. From a real options perspective, IT infrastructure investments create growth options that can be exercised if and when an organization decides to develop systems to provide new or enhanced IT capabilities. We present an analytical model based on real options that shows the process by which this potential is converted into business value, …

A Collaborative, Hierarchical, Incremental, And Problem Solving Information Systems Development Model, Timothy Joseph Burns

Dissertations

The "software crisis" has been a much discussed and debated topic in Information Systems research. A core cause of the crisis is often identified as the methodologies and approaches used to develop information systems. Thus, over the years a multitude of methodologies have emerged in support of quality software. While many of these methodologies have been effective, research has shown that system development is a highly circumstantial process, and that no one methodology can be optimal in every context of every project. It is also a fact that system development practitioners have employed ad hoc approaches to modify formal methodologies …

Revealing The Antecedents And Benefits Of Kms Use: An Exploratory Study In A Petroleum Company In Oman, Kamla Al-Busaidi '05, Lorne Olfman, Terry Ryan, Gondy Leroy

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

This pilot study aimed to explore technical and social antecedents and benefits of KMS use in a petroleum company in Oman. Data was collected through questionnaire given to KMS users. From the technical perspective, results uncovered that both knowledge utilizers and contributors were concerned about the system ease of use, speed and integration. Knowledge utilizers also valued knowledge richness in terms of relevancy and timeliness. From the social perspective, both knowledge utilizers and contributors considered time/availability as the major determinant of their behaviors. The results also suggested that knowledge utillizers valued the technical factors more than the social factors, whereas, …

Predicting Crime Reporting With Decision Trees And The National Crime Victimization Survey, Gondy Leroy, Juliette Gutierrez '13

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Crime reports are used by law enforcement to find criminals, prevent further violations, identify problems causing crimes and allocate government resources. Unfortunately, many crimes go unreported. This may lead to an incorrect crime picture and suboptimal responses to the existing situation. Our goal is to use a data mining approach to increase understanding of when crime is reported or not. An increased understanding could lead to new, more effective programs to fight crime or changes to existing programs. We use the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) which comprises data collected from 45,000 households about incidents, victims, suspects and if the …

Value-At-Risk In It Services Contracts, Robert J. Kauffman, Ryan Sougstad

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As information systems (IS) and technology solutions become increasingly service-driven, managers are faced with the task of choosing parameters such as service-levels, pricing, and contract duration. Information technology (IT) services vendors manage portfolios of contracts in which parameters, decided at inception, are often subject to future risks. The contract profit maximization decision may adversely affect the risk position of the firm's portfolio of services contracts. We propose a model to inform vendors on setting optimal parameters for IS contracts subject to acceptable levels of risk. The analytic model presented draws from IS economics research and the principles of value-at-risk (VaR) …

Real-Time Supply Chain Control Via Multi-Agent Adjustable Autonomy, Hoong Chuin Lau, Lucas Agussurja, Ramesh Thangarajoo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Real-time supply chain management in a rapidly changing environment requires reactive and dynamic collaboration among participating entities. In this work, we model supply chain as a multi-agent system where agents are subject to an adjustable autonomy. The autonomy of an agent refers to its capability to make and influence decisions within a multi-agent system. Adjustable autonomy means changing the autonomy of the agents during runtime as a response to changes in the environment. In the context of a supply chain, different entities will have different autonomy levels and objective functions as the environment changes, and the goal is to design …

Reputation Stretching In Online Auctions, Jianqing Chen, Mei Lin, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Reputation systems are ubiquitously employed in the online marketplaces to provide information on users’ abilities and trustworthiness. We focus particularly on the problem of reputation stretching, the extension of an established reputation into a new market. By examining various factors—market size, the expected performance in the expanding market, and the risk of performance in the expanding market—we characterize conditions that affect bidder’s stretching decision in the expanding market. Moreover, we analyze both the short-term and the long-term expanding cases, and obtain contrasting results in the two settings.

Supply Chain Information Sharing In A Macro Prediction Market, Zhiling Guo, Fang Fang, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper aims to address supply chain partners' incentives for information sharing from an information systems design perspective. Specifically, we consider a supply chain characterized by N geographically distributed retailers who order a homogeneous product from one manufacturer. Each retailer's demand risk consists of two parts: a systematic risk part that affects all retailers and an idiosyncratic risk part that only has a local effect. We propose a macro prediction market to effectively elicit and aggregate useful information about systematic demand risk. We show that such information can be used to achieve accurate demand forecast sharing and better channel coordination …

Fisheries Research Contract Report No. 14 - Aquatic Animal Health Subprogram: Development Of A National Translocation Policy Using Abalone And Prawns As Templates For Other Aquatic Species (Frdc Project No. 2004/080) Final Report, Brian Jones, Fran Stephens

Fisheries Research Contract Reports

The use of scientifically based hazard identification, risk analysis and risk management is fundamental to managing unwanted effects. Hazards, such as quarantine incursions, will continue to occur despite the use of risk assessment methodologies but the frequency and severity of their occurrence will be reduced.

This was recognised by the Ministerial Council on Forestry, Fisheries and Aquaculture in 1999 when they published the "National policy for the translocation of live aquatic organisms".

This FRDC project provides a simple risk assessment methodology based on the Australian Standard for Risk Management (AS/NZS 4360: 2004) and one that is consistent with the Ministerial …

Critical Success Factors For Erp Implementation And Upgrade, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Santiago Delgado

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Seven categories of critical success factors were identified from the ERP literature: (1) business plan and vision; (2) change management, (3) communication; (4) ERP team composition, skills and compensation; (5) management support and championship; (6) project management, (7) system analysis, selection and technical implementation. We conducted a case study of two organizations that had implemented and upgraded ERP systems. We adopted Markus and Tanis' four-phase model and compared the importance of these critical success factors across the phases of ERP implementation and upgrade. The importance of these factors across the phases of ERP implementation and upgrade is very similar. 'Business …

Fisheries Research Contract Report No. 15 - Aquatic Animal Health Subprogram: Pilchard Herpesvirus Infection In Wild Pilchards (Frdc Project No. 2002/044) Final Report, Brian Jones, Melanie Crockford, Richard Whittington, Mark Crane, Graham Wilcox

Fisheries Research Contract Reports

In 1995 and again in 1998/9, millions of pilchards (Sardinops sagax neopilchardus) were found dead or dying off the coast of Australia. Some pilchards in New Zealand were also affected during the 1995 epizootic. The epizootics moved progressively in a "bushfire-like" manner against the prevailing currents at a rapid speed. An uncharacterised herpesvirus, pilchard herpesvirus (PHV), was associated with both mortality events and, based on its occurrence in affected fish and the disease pathogenesis, generally accepted as the causative agent, although experimental evidence of its role was not established. Until recently, rapid and sensitive methods to detect PHV were not …

The Viability Of Is Enhanced Knowledge Sharing In Mission-Critical Command And Control Centers, Sameh A. Sabet

Dissertations

Engineering processes such as the maintenance of mission-critical infrastructures are highly unpredictable processes that are vital for everyday life, as well as for national security goals. These processes are categorized as Emergent Knowledge Processes (EKP), organizational processes that are characterized by a changing set of actors, distributed knowledge bases, and emergent knowledge sharing activities where the process itself has no predetermined structure. The research described here utilizes the telecommunications network fault diagnosis process as a specific example of an EKP. The field site chosen for this research is a global undersea telecommunication network where nodes are staffed by trained personnel …

Experimental And Empirical Perspectives On Grid Resource Allocation For The Singapore Market, Danny Oh, Steven Miller, Nan Hu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we describe our work on using the Tycoon system developed by HP Labs to provide a market-based resource allocation and bidding framework for a grid. We discuss how we intend to evaluate the feasibility of the Tycoon system by measuring its economic performance using agent-based simulation experiments for a particular type of grid usage scenario, namely, the digital media market scenario. We will also discuss a related effort in collecting and using real grid data from the National Grid Pilot Platform in Singapore and how we will be using real data collected to derive actual usage patterns …

Enterprise Agility And The Enabling Role Of Information Technology, Eric Overby, Anandhi S. Bharadwaj, V. Sambamurthy

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In turbulent environments, enterprise agility, that is, the ability of firms to sense environmental change and respond readily, is an important determinant of firm success. We define and deconstruct enterprise agility, delineate enterprise agility from similar concepts in the business research literature, explore the underlying capabilities that support enterprise agility, explicate the enabling role of information technology (IT) and digital options, and propose a method for measuring enterprise agility. The concepts in this paper are offered as foundational building blocks for the overall research program on enterprise agility and the enabling role of IT.

Factors Impacting Key Management Effectiveness In Secured Wireless Networks, Yongjoo Shin

Theses and Dissertations

The use of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) offers a cryptographic solution that can overcome many, but not all, of the MANET security problems. One of the most critical aspects of a PKI system is how well it implements Key Management. Key Management deals with key generation, key storage, key distribution, key updating, key revocation, and certificate service in accordance with security policies over the lifecycle of the cryptography. The approach supported by traditional PKI works well in fixed wired networks, but it may not appropriate for MANET due to the lack of fixed infrastructure to support the PKI. This …

Tacit Knowledge, Nonaka And Takeuchi Seci Model And Informal Knowledge Processes, Siu Loon Hoe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The organizational behavior and knowledge management literature has devoted a lot attention on how structural knowledge processes enhance learning. There has been little emphasis on the informal knowledge processes and the construct remains undefined. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of informal knowledge processes, propose a definition for these processes and link them to the socialization and internalization processes suggested by Nonaka and Takeuchi in the SECI model. The paper offers a fresh perspective on how informal knowledge processes in organizations help to enhance the organization’s learning capability. It will enable scholars and managers to have …

Text Mining With Exploitation Of User's Background Knowledge : Discovering Novel Association Rules From Text, Xin Chen

Dissertations

The goal of text mining is to find interesting and non-trivial patterns or knowledge from unstructured documents. Both objective and subjective measures have been proposed in the literature to evaluate the interestingness of discovered patterns. However, objective measures alone are insufficient because such measures do not consider knowledge and interests of the users. Subjective measures require explicit input of user expectations which is difficult or even impossible to obtain in text mining environments.

This study proposes a user-oriented text-mining framework and applies it to the problem of discovering novel association rules from documents. The developed system, uMining, consists of two …

Dynamic Measuring Tools For Online Discourse, Jeffrey S. Saltz

Dissertations

When evaluating participation within an Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN), current best practices include counting messages and reviewing participant surveys. To understand the impact of more advanced dynamic measurement tools for use within an ALN, a web-based tool, known as iPET (the integrated Participation Evaluation Tool), was created. iPET, which leverages Social Network Analysis and Information Visualization techniques, was then evaluated via an empirical study. This research demonstrates that using a tool such as iPET increases participation within an ALN without increasing facilitator workload. Due to the fact that active online discussion is a key factor in the success of an …

Using Content And Process Scaffolds For Collaborative Discourse In Asynchronous Learning Networks, Irene Wong-Bushby

Dissertations

Discourse, a form of collaborative learning, is one of the most widely used methods of teaching and learning in the online environment. Particularly, in large courses, discourse needs to be 'structured' to be effective. Historically, technology-mediated learning (TML) research has been inconclusive with often conflicting results. To address this issue, TML research needs greater breadth and depth in pedagogical grounding. The purpose of this research is to build and test an original, technology-mediated, discourse-centered model called the Asynchronous Learning Network Cognitive Discourse Model (ALNCDM) grounded in pedagogy. Cognitive discourse is defined as discourse on conceptual subject matter. The model is …

Using A Digital Library Of Images For Communication: Comparison Of A Card-Based System To Pda Software, Trudi Miller '08, Gondy Leroy, John Huang '05, Serena Chuang '05

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Autism spectrum disorder has become one of the most prevalent developmental disorders and one of the main impairments is difficulty with communication. One method of augmentative and alternative communication is the use of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) to create messages using a series of images printed on cards and organized in binders. We are developing a digital alternative based on an image library that is displayed on a personal digital assistant (PDA). We conducted an initial user acceptance study that compared the effectiveness and usability of both systems. The study showed that the PDA system was able to …

Health Information Text Characteristics, Gondy Leroy, Evren Eryilmaz '11, Benjamin T. Laroya

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Millions of people search online for medical text, but these texts are often too complicated to understand. Readability evaluations are mostly based on surface metrics such as character or words counts and sentence syntax, but content is ignored. We compared four types of documents, easy and difficult WebMD documents, patient blogs, and patient educational material, for surface and content-based metrics. The documents differed significantly in reading grade levels and vocabulary used. WebMD pages with high readability also used terminology that was more consumer-friendly. Moreover, difficult documents are harder to understand due to their grammar and word choice and because they …

Dynamic Generation Of A Table Of Contents With Consumer-Friendly Labels, Trudi Miller '08, Gondy Leroy, Elizabeth Wood

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Consumers increasingly look to the Internet for health information, but available resources are too difficult for the majority to understand. Interactive tables of contents (TOC) can help consumers access health information by providing an easy to understand structure. Using natural language processing and the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), we have automatically generated TOCs for consumer health information. The TOC are categorized according to consumer-friendly labels for the UMLS semantic types and semantic groups. Categorizing phrases by semantic types is significantly more correct and relevant. Greater correctness and relevance was achieved with documents that are difficult to read than with …