In 2012, the CIA World Fact Book showed that the service sector contributed about 76.6% and 51.4% of the 2010 gross national product of both the United States and Ghana, respectively. Research in the services area shows that a firm's success in today's competitive business environment is dependent upon its ability to deliver superior service quality. However, these studies have yet to address factors that influence customers to remain committed to a mass service in economically diverse countries. In addition, there is little research on established service quality measures pertaining to the mass service domain. This dissertation applies Rusbult's investment model of relationship commitment and examines its psychological impact on the commitment level of a customer towards a service in two economically diverse countries. In addition, service quality is conceptualized as a hierarchical construct in the mass service (banking) and specific dimensions are developed on which customers assess their quality evaluations. Using, PLS path modeling, a structural equation modeling approach to data analysis, service quality as a hierarchical third-order construct was found to have three primary dimensions and six sub-dimensions. The results also established that a country's national economy has a moderating effect on the relationship between service quality and …

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the external factors that influence an organizations' business intelligence (BI) data collection strategy when mediated by BI attributes. In this dissertation, data warehousing strategies are used as the basis on which to frame the exploration of BI data collection strategies. The attributes include BI insightfulness, BI consistency, and the organizational transformation attribute of BI. The research population consisted of IT professionals and top level managers involved in developing and managing BI. Data was collected from a range of industries and organizations within the United States. An online survey was used to collect the data to empirically test the proposed relationships. Data was analyzed using partial least square path modeling (PLS). The results of this study suggest that there exists a positive relationship between institutional isomorphism and BI consistency. The results also indicate that there exists a positive relationship between BI consistency and BI comprehensive data collection strategy, and the organizational transformation attribute of BI and BI comprehensive data collection strategy. These findings provide a theoretical lens to better understand the motivators and the success factors related to collecting the huge amounts of data required for BI. This study also provides managers with …

Since the concept of business intelligence (BI) was introduced in the late 1980s, many organizations have implemented BI to improve performance but not all BI initiatives have been successful. Practitioners and academicians have discussed the reasons for success and failure, yet, a consistent picture about how to achieve BI success has not yet emerged. The purpose of this dissertation is to help fill the gap in research and provide a better understanding of BI success by examining the impact of BI capabilities on BI success, in the presence of different decision environments. The decision environment is a composition of the decision types and the way the required information is processed to aid in decision making. BI capabilities are defined as critical functionalities that help an organization improve its performance, and they are examined in terms of organizational and technological capabilities. An online survey is used to obtain the data and partial least squares path modeling (PLS) is used for analysis. The results of this dissertation suggest that all technological capabilities as well as one of the organizational capabilities, flexibility, significantly impact BI success. Results also indicate that the moderating effect of decision environment is significant for quantitative data quality. These …

With advances in computer technology, organizations are able to store large amounts of data in data warehouses. There are two fundamental issues researchers must address: the dimensionality of data and the interpretation of multiple statistical tests. The first issue addressed by this research is the determination of the number of components to retain in principal components analysis. This research establishes regression, asymptotic theory, and neural network approaches for estimating mean and 95th percentile eigenvalues for implementing Horn's parallel analysis procedure for retaining components. Certain methods perform better for specific combinations of sample size and numbers of variables. The adjusted normal order statistic estimator (ANOSE), an asymptotic procedure, performs the best overall. Future research is warranted on combining methods to increase accuracy. The second issue involves interpreting multiple statistical tests. This study uses simulation to show that Parker and Rothenberg's technique using a density function with a mixture of betas to model p-values is viable for p-values from central and non-central t distributions. The simulation study shows that final estimates obtained in the proposed mixture approach reliably estimate the true proportion of the distributions associated with the null and nonnull hypotheses. Modeling the density of p-values allows for better control of …

Understanding the process of consumers during key purchasing decision points is the margin between success and failure for any business. The cultural differences between the factors that affect consumers in their decision-making process is the motivation of this research. The purpose of this research is to extend the current body of knowledge about decision-making factors by developing and testing a new theoretical model to measure how culture may affect the attitudes and behaviors of consumers in restaurants. This study has its theoretical foundation in the theory of service quality, theory of planned behavior, and rational choice theory. To understand how culture affects the decision-making process and perceived satisfaction, it is necessary to analyze the relationships among the decision factors and attitudes. The findings of this study contribute by building theory and having practical implications for restaurant owners and managers. This study employs a mixed methodology of qualitative and quantitative research. More specifically, the methodologies employed include the development of a framework and testing of that framework via collection of data using semi-structured interviews and a survey instrument. Considering this framework, we test culture as a moderating relationship by using respondents’ birth country, parents’ birth country and ethnic identity. The results …

In recent years, social media has experienced tremendous growth in the number of users. Facebook alone has more than 1.3 billion active users and Twitter has attracted over 600 million active users. Social media has significantly changed the way humans communicate. Many people use social media to keep in touch with family and friends and receive up-to-date information about what happens around the world. Politicians are using social media to support their campaigns. Use of social media is not restricted to individuals and politicians. Businesses are now using social media to promote their products and services. Many companies maintain Facebook and Twitter accounts to keep in touch with their customers. Consumers also use social media to receive information about products/services. Online product reviews are now an important source of information for consumers. This dissertation aims to address one fundamental research question: how do individual differences among users lead to different levels of performance on social media? More specifically, this dissertation investigates the motivations of use and the predictors of performance in the context of social media. We utilize sentiment mining to predict performance in different types of social media including information diffusion in Twitter and helpfulness and readership of online …

Over the past few years, there has been a skyrocketing growth in the use of mobile devices. Mobile devices are ushering in a new era of multi-platform media and a new paradigm of “being-always-connected”. The proliferation of mobile devices, the dramatic growth of cloud computing services, the availability of high-speed mobile internet, and the increase in the functionalities and network connectivity of mobile devices, have led to creation of a phenomenon called BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), which allows employees to connect their personal devices to corporate networks. BYOD is identified as one of the top ten technology trends in 2014 that can multiply the size of mobile workforce in organizations. However, it can also serve as a vehicle that transfers cyber security threats associated with personal mobile devices to the organizations. As BYOD opens the floodgates of various device types and platforms into organizations, identifying different sources of cyber security threats becomes indispensable. So far, there are no studies that investigated how user, device and usage characteristics affect individuals’ protective and risky IT behaviors. The goal of this dissertation is to expand the current literature in IS security by accounting for the roles of user, device, and usage characteristics …

The central purpose of this dissertation is to develop and test a theoretical model of mind wandering in a technological setting by integrating the emerging work and theory on mind wandering—a shift of attention from the primary task to the processing of internal goals. This dissertation is intended to advance our understanding on the costs and benefits of mind wandering in information systems (IS) research and in turn, contribute to the literature of cognitive IS research. Understanding the consequences of mind wandering in a technological setting is imperative because mind wandering plays a vital role in influencing various outcomes associated with technology use and/or technology learning, such as technology anxiety, software self-efficacy, and task performance. This dissertation is composed of three essays which examine the determinants and consequences of mind wandering and focus of attention on a number of emotional and cognitive outcomes. A multi-method approach (i.e., online survey and laboratory experiment) across three essays is used to test the research models. Essay 1 focuses on developing the measurement items and estimating the impact of mind wandering on users' emotional outcomes (i.e., technology anxiety and users' satisfaction). Drawing upon the content regulation hypothesis of mind wandering, the content of thoughts …

Abstract Attracting and developing information technology (IT) professionals is one of the top concerns for companies. Although much research has been conducted about the job behavior and attitudes of IT professionals over the last three decades, findings are inconclusive and contradictory. This suggests that something may be missing in how we examine this phenomenon. Most of this research is drawn from theories of motivation, very little examines the effect of social relationships on IT professionals' behavior and attitude. Yet, social capital theory suggests that job behavior and attitude may be greatly influenced by these relationships. This suggests that IT professionals' social capital warrants empirical examination. The primary research question that this dissertation addresses is how social capital affects IT professionals' work attitude and behavior including job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, job performance and turnover intention. The research model in this dissertation examines the influence of three aspects of social capital on IT professionals' job attitude and work behavior: tie strength, the number of ties and the structural holes. Data were collected from 129 IT professionals from a range of jobs, organizations and industries. Results indicate that tie strength in the organization of an IT professional is positively related to job …

Application of multisource feedback (MSF) increased dramatically and became widespread globally in the past two decades, but there was little conceptual work regarding self-other agreement and few empirical studies investigated self-other agreement in other cultural settings. This study developed a new conceptual framework of self-other agreement and used three samples to illustrate how national culture affected self-other agreement. These three samples included 428 participants from China, 818 participants from the US, and 871 participants from globally dispersed teams (GDTs). An EQS procedure and a polynomial regression procedure were used to examine whether the covariance matrices were equal across samples and whether the relationships between self-other agreement and performance would be different across cultures, respectively. The results indicated MSF could be applied to China and GDTs, but the pattern of relationships between self-other agreement and performance was different across samples, suggesting that the results found in the U.S. sample were the exception rather than rule. Demographics also affected self-other agreement disparately across perspectives and cultures, indicating self-concept was susceptible to cultural influences. The proposed framework only received partial support but showed great promise to guide future studies. This study contributed to the literature by: (a) developing a new framework of self-other …

Converting individual knowledge into organizational knowledge can be difficult because individuals refuse to share knowledge for a number of different reasons. Creating an atmosphere of fairness plays an important role in the creation of a knowledge-sharing climate. This dissertation proposes that perceptions of organizational justice are crucial building blocks of that environment, leading to knowledge sharing. Data was collected using a field survey of IT managers representing a broad spectrum of the population in terms of organizational size and industry classification. The survey instrument was developed based on the adaptation of previously validated scales in addition to new items where no existing measures were found. Hypotheses regarding the influence of distributional, procedural, and interactional justice on knowledge sharing processes were tested using structural equation modeling techniques. Based on the theory of reasoned action, which states that attitudes and subjective norms are the major determinants of a person's intention, the hypotheses examining the relationship between attitude toward knowledge sharing, subjective norm and the intention to share knowledge were supported. However, results did not support the hypothesis exploring the relationship between the organizational climate and the intention to share knowledge. The results show that all three types of justice constructs are statistically …

The purpose of our research is to empirically test how system attributes of blockchain build trust through system and information components in blockchain food traceability systems. Findings showed that system attributes of blockchain are strong predictors of trust leading to intention to purchase. A sample of 358 responses were collected from college students through online survey. SmartPLS 3.0 is adopted for data analysis. We made contributions by building a new research model to guide future studies on trust formation in blockchain based systems as well as informing practice to adopt proven features of blockchain to create and capture values for customers.

The data produced and collected by organizations represents both challenges and opportunities for the modern firm. Business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) comprises a wide variety of information management technologies and information seeking activities designed to exploit these information resources. As a result, BI&A has been heralded as a source of improved organizational outcomes in both the academic and practitioner literature, and these technologies are among the largest continuous IT expenditures made over the last decade.Despite the interest in BI&A, there is not enough theorizing about its role in improving firm performance. Scholarly investigations of the link between BI&A and organizational benefits are scarce and primarily exploratory in nature. Further, the majority of the extant research on BI&A is techno-centric, conceptualizing BI&A primarily an organizational technical asset. This study seeks to explicate the relationship between BI&A and improved organizational outcomes by viewing this phenomenon through the lens of dynamic capabilities, a promising theoretical perspective from the strategic management discipline. In so doing, this research reframes BI&A as an organizational capability, rather than simply a technical resource. Guided by a comprehensive review of the BI&A and dynamic capabilities literature, as well as a series of semi-structured focus groups with senior-level business practitioners …

Despite much interest in service quality and various other service quality measures, scholars appear to have overlooked the overall concept of quality. More specifically, previous research has yet to integrate the effect of the customer network and customer knowledge into the measurement of quality. In this work, it is posited that the evaluation of quality is based on both the delivered value from the provider as well as the value developed from the relationships among customers and between customers and providers. This research examines quality as a broad and complex issue, and uses the “Big Quality” concept within the context of routine healthcare service. The last few decades have witnessed interest and activities surrounding the subject of quality and value co-creation. These are core features of Service-Dominant (S-D) logic theory. In this theory, the customer is a collaborative partner who co-creates value with the firm. Customers create value through the strength of their relations and network, and they take a central role in value actualization as value co-creator. I propose to examine the relationship between quality and the constructs of value co-creation. As well, due to the pivotal role of the decision-making process in customer satisfaction, I will also operationalize …

Social software has become pervasive including technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social networking sites. Interactive Web 2.0 technology is distinguished from earlier Internet channels, with content provided not only from the website host, but also and most importantly, user-generated content. These social technologies are increasingly entering the enterprise, involving complex social and psychological aspects as well as an understanding of traditional technology acceptance factors. Organizations trying to reap potential benefits of enterprise social software (ESS) must successfully implement and maintain ESS tools. This research develops a framework for assessing knowledge sharing based on reciprocal determinism theory and augmented with technology acceptance, sociological, and psychological factors. Semi-structured interviews with IT professionals, followed by a written survey of employees using ESS are used to collect data. The hermeneutic circle methodology is used to analyze the interview transcripts and structural equation modeling is used to analyze the survey data. Results show technological advantage has no significant effect on the intention to share knowledge, but community cohesiveness and individual willingness significantly affect knowledge sharing intention and behavior. The study offers a synthesized model of variables affecting knowledge sharing as well as a better understanding of best practices for organizations to consider when implementing …

Extracting meaningful information from large collections of text data is problematic because of the sheer size of the database. However, automated analytic methods capable of processing such data have emerged. These methods, collectively called text mining first began to appear in 1988. A number of additional text mining methods quickly developed in independent research silos with each based on unique mathematical algorithms. How good each of these methods are at analyzing text is unclear. Method development typically evolves from some research silo centric requirement with the success of the method measured by a custom requirement-based metric. Results of the new method are then compared to another method that was similarly developed. The proposed research introduces an experimentally designed testing method to text mining that eliminates research silo bias and simultaneously evaluates methods from all of the major context-region text mining method families. The proposed research method follows a random block factorial design with two treatments consisting of three and five levels (RBF-35) with repeated measures. Contribution of the research is threefold. First, the users perceived a difference in the effectiveness of the various methods. Second, while still not clear, there are characteristics with in the text collection that affect the …

The increasing demand for mobile apps is out the current capability of mobile app developers. In addition, the growing trend in smartphone ownership and the time people spend on mobile apps has raised several opportunities and risks for users and developers. The average time everyday a user spend on smartphones to use mobile apps is more than two hours. The worldwide mobile app revenue increase is estimated to grow 33%, $19 billion. Three quarter of the time used on mobile apps is solely for using game and social networking apps. To provide more customized services and function to users, mobile apps need to access to personal information. However, 80% of mobile apps put people's information privacy at risk. There is a major gap in the literature about the privacy concerns of mobile device users in the context of mobile apps. This dissertation addresses one fundamental research question: how does individuals' privacy change in the context of mobile apps? More precisely, the focus of this dissertation is on information privacy role in individuals' and mobile app developers' protective behaviors. We investigate the information sensitivity level influence on mobile app developers' emphasis on privacy across mobile app categories. The results show information …

Managers rely on analytics to make decisions and the choice of the analytical method can influence their decision-making. This dissertation considers three cases and examines how the choice of analytical methods influence interpretations and implications. These areas are communication for health-related information in social media, health information technology investment by hospitals as it relates to patient satisfaction, and health related expenditure policies of countries. These studies develop theoretical models and empirically test them on primary or secondary data, comparing the performance of popular analytical methods. The conduct of these three studies contributes to a better understanding about the choice of analytical methods and allow development of a heuristic approach by offering guidelines for selecting an appropriate methodology. They demonstrate the value of heuristic approaches for use with non-traditional and traditional statistical methods, as the information gained from non-traditional methods (NNs) provides insights into traditional statistical methods, similar to insights gained from exploratory data analysis. The studies also show the value in examining any dataset with multiple methods because they either confirm each other or fail to confirm, providing insights.

Ubiquitous computing results in access to vast amounts of data, which is changing the way humans interact with each other, with computers, and with their environments. Information is literally at our fingertips with touchscreen technology, but it is not valuable until it is understood. As a result, selecting which information to use in a decision process is a challenge in the current information environment (Lu & Yuan, 2011). The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate how individual decision makers, in different decision contexts, determine when to stop collecting information given the availability of virtually unlimited information. Decision makers must make an ultimate decision, but also must make a decision that he or she has enough information to make the final decision (Browne, Pitts, & Wetherbe, 2007). In determining how much information to collect, researchers found that people engage in ‘satisficing' in order to make decisions, particularly when there is more information than it is possible to manage (Simon, 1957). A more recent elucidation of information use relies on the idea of stopping rules, identifying five common stopping rules information seekers use: mental list, representational stability, difference threshold, magnitude threshold, and single criterion (Browne et al., 2007). Prior research indicates …

Online users struggle with different concerns whenever they use information systems. According to Miyazaki and Fernandez (2001), there are three important categories of concerns for online users: privacy concern, third party fraudulent behavior concern ("system security"), and online website fraudulent behavior concern ("security"). Kim, Sivasailam, and Rao (2004) proposed a similar categorization for web assurance dimensions. They argue that online websites are supposed to address users' privacy, security, and business integrity concerns to decrease user concerns. Although several researchers tried to answer how different factors affect these concerns and how these concerns affect users' behavior, there are so many ambiguities and contradictions in this area. This Essay I in this work develops a comprehensive map of the role of online privacy concern to identify related factors and categorize them through an in-depth literature review and conducting meta-analysis on online privacy concern. Although users have concerns about their privacy and security, there is still growth in the number of internet users and electronic commerce market share. One possible reason is that websites are applying assurance mechanisms to ensure the privacy of their users. Therefore, it could be an interesting research topic to investigate how privacy assurance mechanisms affect users concern and, …

The current generation of structural equation modeling (SEM) is loosely split in two divergent groups - covariance-based and variance-based structural equation modeling. The relative newness of variance-based SEM has limited the development of techniques that extend its applicability to non-metric data. This study focuses upon the extension of general linear model techniques within the variance-based platform of partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). This modeling procedure receives it name through the iterative PLS‑SEM algorithm's estimates of the coefficients for the partial ordinary least squares regression models in both the measurement model and the overall structural model. This research addresses the following research questions: (1) What are the appropriate measures for data segmentation within PLS‑SEM? (2) What are the appropriate steps for the analysis of rank-ordered path coefficients within PLS‑SEM? and (3) What is an appropriate model selection index for PLS‑SEM? The limited type of data to which PLS-SEM is applicable suggests an opportunity to extend the method for use with different data and as a result a broader number of applications. This study develops and tests several methodologies that are prevalent in the general linear model (GLM). The proposed data segmentation approaches posited and tested through post hoc analysis …

This study addresses the antecedents of individuals' disposition to use telemedicine applications, as well as the antecedents of their usage to provide insight into creating sustained usage over time. The theoretical framework of this research is Bhattacherjee's expectation-confirmation IS continuance model. By combining a series of key factors which may influence the initial and continued usage of telemedicine applications with key constructs of Bhattacherjee's IS continuance model, this study aims to provide a deeper understanding of barriers to telemedicine app usage and how to facilitate continued use of these apps. Online survey data was collected from college students who are telemedicine application users. A total of 313 responses were gathered, and data analysis was conducted using SmartPLS 3. This dissertation contributes by looking at the IS adoption and IS continuance research simultaneously to connect these two research streams as well as suggesting the usage context of some established IS theory being different with regard to healthcare applications.

Numerous models of IS success and technology acceptance their extensions have been proposed and applied in empirical. This study continues this tradition and extends the body of knowledge on the topic of IS success by developing a more comprehensive model for measuring IS success and technology acceptance within a government organization. The proposed model builds upon three established IS success and technology acceptance frameworks namely the DeLone and McLean (2003), Venkatesh et al.'s (2003) unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), and Wixom and Todd (2005). The findings from this study provide not only a comprehensive IS success assessment model but also insights into whether and how IS success models are influenced by application variables as applied within a government organization. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were performed for instrument refinement and validity test of the existing and proposed models. Using data from employees of a local government municipal, the comprehensive model explained 32 percent variance. Four of the hypothesis were fully supported five were not supported, and four were partially supported. In addition, the results suggest that behavioral intention may not be the best predictor of technology acceptance in a mandatory environment.

Spending by U.S. companies in offshore IT services continues at unprecedented levels despite a high failure rate. This study fills a gap in the existing literature by examining the client-vendor offshoring relationship through the theoretical lens of social exchange theory at the organizational level of analysis from the client's perspective. Social exchange theory focuses on the exchange of activities between two parties, whether they are individuals or companies and was used as a basis for examining the client and vendor relationship. Variables were identified by a review of the literature primarily from IT outsourcing and offshoring but also from general IT, marketing, sociology and organizational science literature. Data was collected using a field survey of Fortune 500 CIOs representing a population of organizations at the forefront of the offshoring phenomenon. The survey instrument was developed based on the adaptation of previously validated scales. Hypotheses regarding the correlations between social variables such as trust, communication, dependence, power, shared values and offshoring success were tested using Spearman's rho correlation. Seven of the hypotheses were supported, four hypotheses were not supported and one hypothesis was deemed not testable due to lack of information.