CIO herds and user gangs in the adoption of open source software

Open Source Software (OSS) has received wide attention from the research community, analyzing both the innovation process of software development by distributed and unrelated teams, and the market dynamics at play between "free" and proprietary software. Up until now, OSS adoption has been irregular, although it seems to be breaking the dominance of existing players in some market segments. In this paper, we contend that due to the particularities of its development process, traditional ways of explaining IT adoption -rational decision making, technology diffusion models, and the psychology of the decision maker- are insufficient to explain the case of OSS diffusion. We believe that the existence of a strong and diffused development community leads to a new role of the user community, as both are intertwined. In addition, new concerns for social corporate responsibility and welfare create a new context, in which "user gangs" may exert some degrees of pressure on the IT decision maker. By analyzing some significant cases we depict under what conditions significant OSS adoption may unfold, showing that in two of the cases studied user gangs play a significant role. The resulting preliminary framework will inform future work, in which we aim at validating the emerging insights gained in this research.Open source software; IT adoption; user communities; CIO herding;

An Empirical Investigation into the Assimilation of Open Source Server Software

In recent years, open source software (OSS) has become widely known and adopted in practice. In academic literature, an increasing number of studies on the adoption of OSS have been published to investigate which factors influence its adoption. However, most of these studies have an exploratory nature, and empirical support based on a large-scale quantitative study is still missing. To address this issue, we present the results of a large-scale quantitative study investigating the factors that influence the assimilation of open source server software (OSSS) by organizations. OSSS refers to open source software products such as operating systems, web servers and mail servers. We developed a conceptual model that describes the factors influencing the assimilation of OSSS. We gathered data from 210 Belgian organizations and analyzed it using PLS to test this conceptual model. The proposed model was able to explain a large proportion of the variance in the dependent variable in the model. Surprisingly, we have found no support for the influence of several widely claimed advantages of OSSS. Our findings further show that the assimilation of OSSS is predominantly influenced by the availability of internal and external knowledge of OSSS

Exploring the Factors of Innovation Rejection

Computer systems cannot improve organisational performance if they aren’t adopted. There has been much research into why and how systems are adopted by organisations and individuals, however the area is still unable to explain the adoption phenomenon completely. At the same time, innovation rejection, as a topic, has been largely ignored in the research literature. This paper aims to develop a list of factors which affect innovation rejection and documents an initial attempt to develop a research model that describes technology rejection. This section of the study explores the research literature for factors that affect rejection. The results show rejection factors at the environment, the organisation, the workgroup and the system levels. However, there is very little evidence of factors at the adoption process level. This could be an interesting area for further research

Managing Climatic Risks to Combat Land Degradation and Enhance Food security: Key Information Needs

This paper discusses the key information needs to reduce the negative impacts of weather variability and climate change on land degradation and food security, and identifies the opportunities and barriers between the information and services needed. It suggests that vulnerability assessments based on a livelihood concept that includes climate information and key socio-economic variables can overcome the narrow focus of common one-dimensional vulnerability studies. Both current and future climatic risks can be managed better if there is appropriate policy and institutional support together with technological interventions to address the complexities of multiple risks that agriculture has to face. This would require effective partnerships among agencies dealing with meteorological and hydrological services, agricultural research, land degradation and food security issues. In addition a state-of-the-art infrastructure to measure, record, store and disseminate data on weather variables, and access to weather and seasonal climate forecasts at desired spatial and temporal scales would be needed

The mobile information access experience - A user perspective

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Mobile technologies, such as mobile phones, smartphones and Palmtop computers, are in an upwards trend and earliest models of such devices are already available to end-users to communicate and access multimedia content on-the-move. As a logical outcome of this development in mobile technologies and devices, content provider companies have already started investing and piloting mobile multimedia content distribution and broadcasting technologies. Nevertheless, no matter how cutting-edge technology is and no matter how stylish the mobile devices are, the ultimate success of wireless communication technologies and devices are directly associated with the user adoption and embrace of these new equipment and technologies. In this perspective, since multimedia content, for mobile or not, is ultimately produced for the education and/or enjoyment of viewers, the user's perspective concerning the presentation quality is surely of equal importance as objective Quality of Service (QoS) technical parameters, to defining distributed multimedia quality. In order to comprehensively understand user experiences whilst accessing information using mobile devices and technologies, we investigate user-mobile device interaction and look into the surrounding issues in a uniform manner by combining multiple aspects: user initial device experience (Out-of-Box Experience), mobile information access in a real-world context, device impact on user information access and perceptually tailored multimedia content impact on user information assimilation and satisfaction. Accordingly, an extensive experimental investigation has been undertaken to see how user experiences varied based on device familiarity, device type, real-world context and variable locations. The findings has shown that the overall perception, and effectively the user information access experience, is affected and improved when multimedia content is tailored according to user device type and context. Thus highlights that the future of mobile computing necessitates two-faceted research, which should combine both a user as well as a technical perspective

MSUO Information Technology and Geographical Information Systems: Common Protocols & Procedures. Report to the Marine Safety Umbrella Operation

The Marine Safety Umbrella Operation (MSUO) facilitates the cooperation between Interreg funded Marine Safety Projects and maritime stakeholders. The main aim of MSUO is to permit efficient operation of new projects through Project Cooperation Initiatives, these include the review of the common protocols and procedures for Information Technology (IT) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). This study carried out by CSA Group and the National Centre for Geocomputation (NCG) reviews current spatial information standards in Europe and the data management methodologies associated with different marine safety projects. International best practice was reviewed based on the combined experience of spatial data research at NCG and initiatives in the US, Canada and the UK relating to marine security service information and acquisition and integration of large marine datasets for ocean management purposes. This report identifies the most appropriate international data management practices that could be adopted for future MSUO projects

The Efficiency of Communication Technologies in Distance Higher Education

The present paper analyzes the functions that the new communication technologies play in relation with the distance education.  We consider in this regard that computer mediated communication is the most accessible and efficient in teaching and learning process. We described the standards for platform design in order to emphasize the  string relation between the didactic act and the technological design

An Empirical Analysis of the Business Value of Open Source Infrastructure Technologies

Organizations are increasingly interested in exploring Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) based technologies as viable alternatives to proprietary or commercial solutions, but research on the business value of such technologies is lacking. In this paper, we contribute to this important, yet understudied, topic by examining the antecedents of the business value of open source infrastructure technologies. The paper puts forward a new model for explicating the organizational benefits of these technologies. Our findings suggest that in order to realize benefits from open source infrastructure technologies, organizations should have the human and technological capacities to absorb and utilize them as well as the ability to establish, maintain, and leverage ties with the technologies’ communities of developers and users. The paper focuses on open source databases (specifically, MySQL) as an instance of open source infrastructure technology. A PLS analysis of 149 responses from organizations that have implemented MySQL revealed that absorptive capacity for the database, ties with the technology’s user/developer community-of-practice, and an open source IT infrastructure that facilitates MySQL utilization explain about 20 per cent of the business value of the open source technology. These findings should help organizations realize the numerous potential benefits of open source technologies

CIO Herds and User Gangs in the Adoption of Open Source Software

Open Source Software (OSS) has received wide attention from the research community, analyzing both the innovation process of software development by distributed and unrelated teams, and the market dynamics at play between “free” and proprietary software. Up until now, OSS adoption has been irregular, although it seems to be breaking the dominance of existing players in some market segments. In this paper, we contend that due to the particularities of its development process, traditional ways of explaining IT adoption -rational decision making, technology diffusion models, and the psychology of the decision maker- are insufficient to explain the case of OSS diffusion. We believe that the existence of a strong and diffused development community leads to a new role of the user community, as both are intertwined. In addition, new concerns for social corporate responsibility and welfare create a new context, in which “user gangs” may exert some degrees of pressure on the IT decision maker. Through the analysis of some significant cases we depict under which conditions significant OSS adoption may unfold, showing that in two of the cases studied user gangs play a significant role. The resulting preliminary framework will inform future work, in which we aim at validating the emerging insights gained in this research