Business process re-engineering (part of the Business Process Management domain) is among the top three concerns of Information Technology (IT) leaders and is deemed to be one of many important IT leveraging opportunities. Two major challenges have been identified in relation to BPM and the use of IT. The first challenge is related to involving business process participants in process improvement initiatives using BPM systems. BPM technologies are considered to be primarily targeted for developers and not BPM users, and the need to engage process participants into process improvement initiatives is not addressed, contributing to the business-IT gap. The second challenge is related to potential de-skilling of knowledge workers when knowledge-intensive processes are automated and process knowledge resides in IT, rather than human process participants. The two identified challenges are not separate issues. Process participants need to be knowledgeable about the process in order to actively contribute to BPM initiatives, and the loss of process knowledge as a result of passive use of automated systems may further threaten their participation in process improvement. In response to the call for more research on the individual impacts of business process initiatives, the purpose of this dissertation study is to understand the relationship …

The purpose of the study was to investigate a modification of a managerial accounting technique, Activity-Based Costing (ABC), as a tool for addressing Information Resource Management (IRM) concerns within business processes. To indicate that ABC has been adapted for the IRM context, this study called the tool "Activity-Based Analysis" (ABA). ABA includes ABC's costing methodology as well as additional methods to address broader issues. The research method was a single-site case study at a property and casualty insurance company. The unit of analysis was a business process consisting of activities needed to provide claims handling services for workers' compensation insurance. Four questions guided the study: 1. Did ABA identify management information required to monitor process effectiveness and efficiency? 2. Did ABA support outsourcing decision making by identifying IRM cost components within business processes? 3. Did ABA identify information resources; that are sharable? 4. Did ABA identify differences between Company organizational characteristics andIRM department organizational characteristics?

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. "

This study investigated, in the context of a field-based case study, possibilities for formation of a synergistic union between CSCW and CASE tools. A major dimension of today's software challenge is in gearing up for large-scale system development necessitating large teams of systems engineers. The principal goal of this research was to advance the body of knowledge regarding the nature of collaborative technological support in the software development process. Specifically, the study was designed to evaluate the potential for using a CSCW tool as an effective front-end to a CASE tool in the furtherance of SDLC goals.

This research conducted an interdisciplinary field experiment to identify relationships between productivity, user satisfaction and IS Helpdesk USP's use of effective communication behavior. An experimental group of Helpdesk USPs of a large retail organization were trained by communication professionals in communication effectiveness, with emphasis on the needs of the telephone environment.

This research examines the role of electronic messaging in business firms. The study presents a taxonomy of electronic mail uses, develops a theoretical framework for analyzing electronic mail impact, and investigates risks and advantages of electronic messaging. The research focus is intermediate-size firms.

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 …

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 purpose of this study was to test the comparability of several psychological instruments commonly used in Information Systems (IS) cognitive style research. The objective was to determine the limitations of: existing instruments in IS cognitive style research. The motivation for this research was the inconclusive findings reported in IS human information processing research. The study used a repeated measures design. Each individual completed the following cognitive style and personality instruments; the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Group Embedded-figures Test, the Learning Style Inventory, the Human Information Processing Survey, and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Figural Form A). The individual also completed a dichotic listening and tachistoscope task. Data was collected from business administration, BCIS, liberal arts majors, and IS professionals. The results of this study indicate IS researchers need to consider several factors in the use of these instruments. A direct relationship exists between cognitive ability and results on the GEFT. Cognitive ability should be considered a moderating variable in interpreting the results of the GEFT. Also, the hypothesis that the GEFT is a surrogate for analytical and low-analytical abilities is not supported by this study. Other reported results include the inappropriateness of using the TTCT with adult populations. …

The majority of Web site design literature mainly concentrates on the technical and functional aspects of Web site design. There is a definite lack of literature, in the IS field, that concentrates on the visual and aesthetic aspects of Web design. Preliminary research into the relationship between visual design and successful electronic commerce Web sites was conducted. The emphasis of this research was to answer the following three questions. What role do visual design elements play in the success of electronic commerce Web sites? What role do visual design principles play in the success of electronic commerce Web sites? What role do the typographic variables of visual design play in the success of electronic commerce Web sites? Forty-three undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory level MIS course used a Likert-style survey instrument to evaluate aesthetic aspects of 501 electronic commerce Web pages. The instrument employed a taxonomy of visual design that focused on three dimensions: design elements, design principles, and typography. The data collected were correlated against Internet usage success metrics data provided by Nielsen/NetRatings. Results indicate that 22 of the 135 tested relationships were statistically significant. Positive relationships existed between four different aesthetic dimensions and one single success measure. …

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.

The purpose of this study is to identify what detail design tools are more productive for the different types of professional software developers. By establishing a match between the detail design tool and the cognitive style of the professional programmer, the end product (Information Systems) should be of a higher quality. Two laboratory experiments were conducted. The first experiment was with professional Software Developers; the second one was with students. The dependant variables considered in this study were the number of semantic errors and the time required to complete a design task for conditional logic. The independent variables were the cognitive style of the subject, the complexity of the task, and the detail design tools. Decision trees, flowcharts and pseudocode were used as detailed design tools. Field dependence was the only dimension of cognitive style that was tested.

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.

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 …

The widespread distribution of personal computers (PCs) throughout organizations has made a substantial impact on information systems. Additionally, the tremendous growth of the Internet has changed the way business is carried out. As the user population evolves into a much more technical and demanding group, their needs are also changing. With this change, Management Information Systems (MIS) departments must develop new ways of providing service and support to the user community. This study investigates the relationship between information systems support structures, support services, service quality and the characteristics of a diverse user population. This includes investigating technical support issues influencing user satisfaction. This study attempts to improve the understanding of the support function within MIS. The results of this study clarify the support needs of the users and identify user satisfaction factors, as well as factors relative to the quality of the support received. Six streams of prior research were reviewed when developing the research framework. These include: user support, end users and end-user computing, identifying and classifying user types, information centers, user satisfaction, service quality and other sources of computer support. A survey instrument was designed using the (UIS) user satisfaction instrument developed by Doll and Torkzadeh (1988) and …

The purpose of this research was to determine if personality type and system response time have any effect on state anxiety and user response time. The sample for this study consisted of senior and graduate level college students who possessed basic know 1 edge of a text editor. Each test subject was administered the Jenkins Activity Survey to determine scores for Type A versus Type B, speed and impatience, involvement, and competitiveness. The test subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups (good, variable, and poor system response time). They were required to edit a text file which contained multiple errors. The test subjects were provided hard copies of the file with errors (errors highlighted) and the file as should appear without the errors. The test situation for each test subject was identical, except for changes in system response time. The A-state scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was administered to the test subjects immediately prior to the edit task in order to determine pre-task state anxiety levels. The A-state scale of the STAI was again administered immediately after the edit task in order to determine post-task state anxiety levels. Analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, regression, …

The social network sites (SNS) industry has recently shown an abnormal development pattern: An SNS could rapidly accumulate a large number of users, and then suffer a serious loss of users in a short time, which subsequently leads to the failure of the Web site in the highly competitive market. The user's social network site continuance is considered the most important factor for an SNS to keep its sustainable development. However, little knowledge of the user's SNS continuance raises the following research question: What factors could significantly influence the user's SNS continuance intention? To address this research question, I study the question from three lenses of research, including the I-view, the social interactivity view, and the trust based view. The I-view is an extension of the IS continuance model. From this research perspective, I tested the influence of the utilitarian factor (i.e., perceived usefulness) and the hedonic factor (i.e., perceived enjoyment) on the user's satisfaction in the I-view. In addition, I extend the umbrella construct, confirmation, into two sub-constructs, informativeness and self-actualization, and respectively study their influences on the utilitarian factor and the hedonic factor. I find that the user's perceived enjoyment has a significant positive effect on the user's …

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 …

The purpose of this research was to determine if presentation format, given a particular task to be performed, would affect the decision-making process of financial decision makers. The problem motivating this study is the potential for managers to make inefficient decisions when they use reports which are presented inappropriately for a given task.

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 research tends to ignore individual differences in users. This laboratory experiment sought to illuminate contributions of decision-makers' cognitive processes to decision outcome as reflected in four hypothesis sets: the impact of imagery preference and presentation format upon (HI) recall accuracy and upon hemispheric activation during (H2) encoding and (H3) recall, and (H4) to examine the relationship between hemispheric activation differences and accuracy differences. Point-value (specific values) and intraset-pattern (relationships between values) recall were considered. Thirty MBA students, grouped by imagery preference (cognitive style) as favoring verbal (textual) or visual (graphical) information presentation, performed computer-based recall tasks using tabular and graphical formats in a repeated measures design. Hemispheric activation (cognitive process) was assessed using ratios of EEG activity in six frequency bands captured from six pairs of homologous electrode sites during encoding and recall.

Several studies have suggested that the effect of cultural differences among Information Systems (IS) professionals from different nations on the development and implementation of IS could be important. However, IS research has generally not considered culture when investigating the process of systems development. This study examined the relationship between the cultural backgrounds of IS designers and their process-related values with a field survey in Singapore, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Hofstede's (1980) value survey module (i.e., Power Distance (PDI), Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI), InDiVidualism (IDV) and MASculininity/femininity) and Kumar's (1984) process-related values (i.e., technical, economic, and socio-political) were utilized in the data collection. The hypotheses tested were: whether the IS professionals differed on (H.,) their cultural dimensions based on country of origin, (Hg) their process-related values based on country of origin, and (H3) whether a relationship between their cultural dimensions and their process-related values existed. The countries were significantly different on their PDI, UAI and MAS, but not on their IDV. They significantly differed on their technical and sociopolitical values but not on their economic values. IDV and MAS significantly correlated with the process-related values in Singapore, Taiwan and the United States. In the United Kingdom, UAI significantly …

This study investigates the impact of multimedia on the effectiveness of information scanning. Information scanning is the act of seeking and receiving a wide variety of special information to develop a thorough understanding of the organization and the environment. The application domain of this study is Executive Support Systems. The experimental task is to identify potential threats and opportunities, a strategic information-scanning activity, based on the information stored in three ESS prototypes. Forty subjects from four organizations participated in the experiment. A random assignment process allocated them into three groups. The control group used the text-based ESS. The first experimental group used the visual multimedia ESS. The second experimental group used the audiovisual multimedia ESS. The experiment was carried out on the sites of the participating organizations. The investigator measured the effectiveness of information scanning based on the number of threats and opportunities each subject identifies. A close-ended questionnaire measured subjects' retention of information. The results of this study support the cognitive-fit theory. The findings indicate that multimedia is not an appropriate presentation format for analytical tasks. Subjects who use text-based ESS identify significantly more threats and opportunities than subjects who use audiovisual multimedia ESS. The cognitive style of subjects …

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.