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 …

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 …

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, …

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 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 …

This research seeks to derive and examine a multidimensional definition of information security awareness, investigate its antecedents, and analyze its effects on compliance with organizational information security policies. The above research goals are tested through the theoretical lens of technology threat avoidance theory and protection motivation theory. Information security awareness is defined as a second-order construct composed of the elements of threat and coping appraisals supplemented by the responsibilities construct to account for organizational environment. The study is executed in two stages. First, the participants (employees of a municipality) are exposed to a series of phishing and spear-phishing messages to assess if there are any common characteristics shared by the phishing victims. The differences between the phished and the not phished group are assessed through multiple discriminant analysis. Second, the same individuals are asked to participate in a survey designed to examine their security awareness. The research model is tested using PLS-SEM approach. The results indicate that security awareness is in fact a second-order formative construct composed of six components. There are significant differences in security awareness levels between the victims of the phishing experiment and the employees who maintain compliance with security policies. The study extends the theory by …

In information systems design there are two schools of thought about what factors are necessary to create a successful information system. The first, conventional view holds that system performance is a key, so that efficiency characteristics such as system usability and task completion time are primary concerns of system designers. The second, emerging view holds that the visual design is also the key, so that visual interface characteristics such as visual appeal, in addition to efficiency characteristics, are critical concerns of designers. This view contends that visual design enhances system use. Thus, this work examines the effects of visual design on computer systems. Visual design exerts its influence on systems through two mechanisms: it evokes affective responses from IT users, such as arousal and pleasure and it influences individuals’ cognitive assessments of systems. Given that both affective and cognitive reactions are significant antecedents of user behaviors in the IT realm, it is no surprise that visual design plays a critical role in information system success. Human-computer-interaction literature indicates that visual aesthetics positively influences such information success factors as usability, online trust, user satisfaction, flow experience, and so on. Although academic research has introduced visual design into the Information Systems (IS) …

The objective of this research is the investigation of the patterns of information growth to test whether there has been an "information explosion." To tackle the main problem, there are three issues which need to be addressed: (1) the concept of information dimensionality; (2) determination of common parameters to measure the amount of information within each dimension; and (3) a working definition of "explosiveness. "

The problem motivating this study is that database query facilities are not effectively meeting the needs of casual users. A solution to this problem is especially important due to the increasing number of potential casual users. There is considerable controversy revolving around the question of which elements and/or which combination of elements within the casual users' environment are necessary to provide an effective man/machine interface. The purpose of the study is to extend the basic knowledge relating to the effect of using different data models, the effect of cognitive style differences, and the interaction effects of these two independent variables on casual users' performance and confidence in writing database queries. The data models being investigated are the relational, hierarchical, and network models. The cognitive style classifications used are two of the Jungian dimensions, Sensing/Intuition and Thinking/Feeling.

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 …

Information systems professionals now face the automation of their own work in integrated computer aided software engineering. Organizations need to achieve all the leverage possible from costly IT implementations to enhance competitiveness, profitability, and survival in a rapidly changing environment. ICASE technology is a part of the infrastructure necessary to meet this challenge but appears to present significant difficulties in implementation.

The purpose of this research is to continue examining the project management process. The management of projects is complicated. It is the complexity of the process that makes a project so difficult to control. This research examines the effect of particular facets of the project manager's skill set and operating environment on management decisions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between selected end-user training programs corporations provide to their employees and subsequent employee performance based on these opportunities.

Managing a software development project presents many difficulties. Most software development projects are considered less than successful, and many are simply canceled. Ineffective project management has been cited as a major factor contributing to these failures. Project management tools can greatly assist managers in tracking and controlling their projects. However, project management tools are very structured and analytical in nature, which is not necessarily supported by decision-making styles of the managers. This research examined the influence that decision style has on a project manager's use of a project management tool.

In this study, neural networks are developed under conditions of nonnormality as alternatives to standard control charts, and their performance is compared with those of standard ‾x and CUSUM control charts.

Service quality as a component of overall Information Systems quality is examined. Three related studies test the SERVQUAL and related instruments (SERVPERF and Importance-weighted SERVPERF) using Information System users. SERVPERF outperformed SERVQUAL in all three studies.

Organizations expend a great deal of time, effort and money on the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. They are considered the price of entry for large organizations to do business. Yet the success rate of ERP systems is poor. IS literature suggests that one possible reason for this is the underutilization of these systems. Existing ERP literature is replete with research to improve ERP project implementation success; however, notably absent from these streams is the research that identifies how ERP systems are utilized by individuals or organizations. This dissertation posits that increased ERP utilization can result from increased software and business process understanding gained from both formal training and experiential interventions. New dimensions of system utilization (required vs. optional) are proposed. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how these interventions impact ERP utilization. The results of this dissertation show that while software-training interventions are important to understanding, it is the business process training interventions that seem to provide the greater effect on understanding. This increased understanding positively affects utilization scenarios where a mixture (required vs. optional) of software features and business process tasks can be leveraged by end-users. The improved understanding of post-adoptive ERP utilization gained …

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 …

This study empirically examines the impact of IT capability on firms' performance and evaluates whether firms' IT capabilities play a role in improving employee capability, customer value, customer satisfaction, and ultimately business performance. The results were based on comparing the business performance of the IT leader companies with that of control companies of similar size and industry. The IT leader companies were selected from the Information Week 500 list published annually from 2001 to 2004. For a company to be selected as IT leaders, it needed to be listed at least twice during the period. Furthermore, it had to be listed in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) so that its customer satisfaction level could be assessed. Standard & Poor's Compustat and the ACSI scores were used to test for changes in business performance. The study found that the IT leaders had a raw material cost measured by cost-of-goods-sold to sales ratio (COGS/S) than the control companies. However, it found no evidence that firms' IT capability affects employee capability, customer value, customer satisfaction, and profit. An important implication from this study is that IT becomes a commodity and an attempt to gain a competitive advantage by overinvesting in IT may …

The discipline of information security management is still in its infancy as evidenced by the lack of empirical scholarly work in this area. Most research within the information security domain focuses on specific technologies and algorithms and how it impacts the principles of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. But, an important area receiving little attention is the antecedents of effective information security management at the organizational level (Stanton, Guzman, Stam & Caldera, 2003). The little empirical research that has been conducted in this area has shown that information security management in many organizations is poor (Baskerville, 1993; Shimeall & McDermott, 1999). Several researchers have identified the need for methods to measure the organization-wide information security posture of organizations (Eloff & Von Solms, 2000; James, 1996). This dissertation attempts to measure the organization-wide information security posture by examining benchmark variables that assess role, planning orientation, and performance structure within the organization. Through this conceptualization of an organization's information security posture, a means is presented to measure overall information security and how it impacts the effective utilization of information security strategies. The presence of the dependent variable, effectiveness, gives academics and practitioners a success measure which can guide more effective decision making in …

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.