756 research outputs found

    E-Commerce Audit Judgment Expertise: Does Expertise in System Change Management and Information Technology Auditing Mediate E-Commerce Audit Judgment Expertise?

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    A global survey of 203 E-commerce auditors was conducted to investigate the perceptions about the potential determinants of expertise in E-commerce audits. We hypothesize and find evidence indicating that information technology and communication expertise are positively related to expertise in E-commerce audit judgment. We also find that system change management expertise and information technology audit expertise mediate this relationship.E-commerce Audit Judgment, IT Audit, Structural Equations Modeling

    Do we bank on regulation or reputation? A meta-analysis and meta-regression of organizational trust in the financial services sector

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    Purpose: – Trust in financial institutions has been eroded through the collapse of mortgage-related securities, with confidence further denuded through well publicized cases of rogue traders and rate fixing cases, such as with the Lehman brothers, the Libor rate-fixing scandals, and the hypo real estate breakdown. In response to these events, governments have introduced a range of distinct policy initiatives designed to restore trust in this sector. Thus, the question arises: are these regulations and control mechanisms sufficient in isolation, or are there other elements that this sector needs to pay attention to in efforts to build and sustain customers’ trust? The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: – There is a compelling agenda for both financial organizations and academics to understand better organizational trust in this context especially the role and impact of regulatory mechanisms in its development and repair. The paper therefore examines the special facets of the financial services sector in comparison to other sectors, such as manufacturing, to consider whether trust is fundamentally different in this context than others, and thus address how far there are special challenges concerning trust and the banking industry. The paper analyses, by using a meta-analytical design, 93 studies (N=38,631), of which 20 empirically investigate organizational trust in the financial sector with a combined N of 11,224 respondents. Findings: – The paper shows that the banking sector is heavily affected by two distinct forces: first, customers’ perception of an organization's level of compliance and conformity with laws and regulations is a necessity for banks’ sociopolitical legitimization, and second it is also related to how non-compliance is dealt with. Importantly, this meta-analysis indicates that regulation is just one of a suite of devices that organizations need to deploy in their efforts to restore trust. The paper identified two further elements of significance: customers require direct evidence, derived either from their own or others’ satisfaction with the goods or services provided, and customers do take note of the external endorsement of the firm, especially in Asia, where customers place huge emphasis on the firm's reputation. Research limitations/implications: – First, meta-analysis is inherently reliant on the earlier studies and therefore retains their weaknesses. Some of the relationships included self-report variables collected at the same point in time and therefore may be inflated by common method bias. Second, due to the focus and because of the limited number of studies in this sector, and a paucity of attention on some key topics, such as perceptions of regulation, second-order sampling error may also be a limitation. Third, some relationships were not investigated frequently enough in studies to enable us to include them in the review, such as cooperation, opportunistic behaviour or quality. Finally, despite calls for trust scholars to include propensity to trust measures within their studies, many of these studies do not include this measure and therefore it is more difficult to identify and control individual difference factors. Practical implications: – The results show the merit of multi-strand trust development strategies. There is a striking paucity of financial institutions, which have examined how far their trust deficit may be related to their internal culture, and whether recent corporate corruption could be the product of bonuses and the internal short-term individualized reward systems. The analysis reveals that although external regulations and controls are an effective and powerful devise for organizational trust, over the last two periods of significant crisis, their impact appears to be warning; Yet reassuring customers of their expectations of the other party's future behaviour is central to trust. Alternative remedies need to be considered, such as the establishment of a more effective regulator, or board of governors who oversee and assure compliance. Monitoring and surveillance offer a further external means of reducing the possibility of future misbehaviours. However, as the analysis indicates, other strands are required to build trust, including greater attention by firms on customers’ direct experiences, which in turn would enhance the third part endorsement of their competence and goodwill intentions of organizations. Social implications: – Significantly, the results indicate the potentially partial erosion of credence factors, and thus confidence, in this sector over the last 20 years, during what has been a period of repeated exposure to trust breaches. The paper shows that single strand solutions, such as improvements to customer communication, are no longer sufficient, nor, more importantly, do they have the same impact. Instead, the paper shows the necessity to utilize more effectively and target attention towards three distinct antecedents: external regulations and their enforcement; third party and expert endorsements, and therefore external reputations; and customer satisfaction in terms of the effective delivery of customer expectations. Originality/value: – Organizational trust has been shown as critical in positively affecting and repairing broken relationships through uncertainty reduction and confidence enhancement. In the past, different meta-analyses of trust have been undertaken, but this, to the authors knowledge, is the first meta-analytic study measuring trust on an organizational level in the context of the financial services sector and its regulatory environment. This meta-analysis indicates that regulation is just one of a suite of devices that organizations need to deploy in their efforts to restore trust. The paper identified two further elements: customers require direct evidence, and do take note of the external endorsement of the firm

    E-Commerce Audit Judgment Expertise: Does Expertise in System Change Management and Information Technology Auditing Mediate E-Commerce Audit Judgment Expertise?

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    A global survey of 203 E-commerce auditors was conducted to investigate the perceptions about the potential determinants of expertise in E-commerce audits. We hypothesize and find evidence indicating that information technology and communication expertise are positively related to expertise in E-commerce audit judgment. We also find that system change management expertise and information technology audit expertise mediate this relationship

    Implementing inter-organisational information systems for the integration of construction supply chains

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    Two trends are currently driving the need for supply chain firms to form closely integrated relationships: collaboration and digitisation. One of the ways to achieve digitisation of supply chain operations is to implement Inter-Organisational Information Systems (IOIS) with selected supply chain partners for a much more efficient, streamlined and orchestrated supply chain operations. Whilst IOIS can be implemented to support various cross-functional business processes (ranging from operational information exchange to pursuing strategic initiatives such as sharing ideas, identifying new market opportunities, and pursing a continuous improvement approach), in the context of this thesis, the purpose of IOIS implementation is to facilitate the inter-firm procurement-related operations with downstream supply chain firms. The study undertaken in this research project was initiated in response to an industry requirement to investigate the implementation of IOIS against a backdrop of improved Supply Chain Management and integration practices by large contractor organisations. A case study research strategy was adopted to investigate the IOIS project related, IOIS (system) related issues encountered in ex-ante and ex-post implementation stages of the IOIS. The study concludes that it is the non-technical factors that are critical to the successful delivery of IOIS projects and provides a guideline on IOIS implementation by large contractor organisations. The findings of this research project have been published in a number of peer-reviewed papers

    ICT Transformation in China After Its WTO Entry: Lessons from the Tobacco Industry

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    This study examines ICT’s impact in meeting the challenges, Chinese tobacco companies are facing in the context of an open door policy as well as the WTO entry. The analysis is based on an in-depth study of the ICT evolution in Chinese tobacco companies. For our conclusion we use Nolan’s stage hypothesis and the strategic grid model. We show that, depending on a company’s strategic grid cell, different behavior patterns can be observed in terms of Nolan’s stage model. We conclude that a fast transformation of ICT plays a major role for Chinese tobacco companies in order to face the challenges entailed by the WTO entry

    E-Business Strategy to Adopt Electronic Banking Services in Ethiopia

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    E-banking services in Ethiopia are increasing among low-income populations; however, with over 53 million mobile service users countrywide, more than 85% of the population still lacks access to banking services. A single case study was used to explore e-business strategies that bank managers use to promote the adoption of electronic banking services to the unbanked population in Ethiopia. The extended resource-based view of strategy served as the conceptual framework for this study. Data were collected from interviews with 12 experienced bank managers from leading commercial bank in Ethiopia. Data were analyzed using coding techniques and word clustering, with the help of qualitative data analysis software. After member checking and methodological triangulation, data were sorted into 5 themes including ensuring leadership, creating accessibility, fostering customers\u27 acceptance, leveraging unique features and organizational resources, and building an e-banking ecosystem. The result showed that bank managers need to develop a customer-centric organizational posture and they should focus to build e-banking ecosystem inside and outside the country so that they can realize their vision to become global competitors. The findings from the study may contribute to positive social change for the unbanked communities in Ethiopia by informing bank managers options of e-banking adoption strategies thereby improve the convenience and accessibility of banking services

    Purchasing through Social Platforms with Buy Buttons: Academic and Practical Considerations

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    Social commerce sales are considerably increasing in recent years. Social platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, and WeChat) play a strategic role in world economy. However, social platforms ran into several burning issues: low ad conversion rates, social platform users’ free-riding behaviors, etc. Although buy buttons, a clickable navigation element leading users from a social platform to an e-commerce platform, could be a solution for such issues, the outcomes of using buy buttons did not reach many professionals’ expectation. This thesis studied four issues related to social shopping with buy buttons. First, as it is undetermined whether a social platform should roll out the buy-button feature or not, it is necessary to study whether the presence of buy button is associated with better outcomes (e.g. users’ higher willingness to purchase through the social platform) or not. Second, as social commerce is a remote shopping mode in which buyers and sellers cannot have face-to-face interactions, high risk and low trust could be two crucial barriers of social commerce. Hence, it is needed to study how risk- and trust-related factors influence users’ direct purchasing behavior. Third, considering that social commerce could be risky, this thesis wants to examine whether the presence of safe shopping measures (vs. an unsafe shopping scenario) can improve the performance of social shopping or not. Finally, social commerce involves a purchase path from a social platform to an e-commerce platform. There are many pain points (e.g., re-entering billing and shipping information) in the purchase path. Meanwhile, as social shopping risks and pain points in the purchase path could be caused by a same factor, the silos between social platforms and e-commerce platforms. It is interesting to study how safe shopping measures and integrated path-to-purchase (users can complete a purchase without leaving the social platform; vs. separated path-to-purchase in which users have to leave the social platform and go to the e-commerce platform to complete a purchase) jointly influence users. In order to answer these questions, three essays have been included in this thesis. Several online surveys were conducted. The between-subjects experimental design and the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique were used. The results showed that the presence of buy button was related to better outcomes. It found that risk- and trust-related factors significantly influenced users’ direct purchasing behavior. Both the safe shopping measures and the integrated path-to-purchase design can generate better outcomes of using a buy button in social shopping. In most circumstances, users showed more positive reactions when the safe shopping measures or the integrated path-to-purchase was present. However, no significant interaction effects between the safe shopping measures (vs. an unsafe shopping scenario) and the integrated path-to-purchase (vs. the separated path-to-purchase) were found. The theoretical contributions have been discussed in contrast to previous literature. This thesis has added academic value by offering new insights for previously established variable relationships in a different research context and studying variable relationships that have not been examined in previously relevant studies. From a practical viewpoint, as buy buttons inject e-commerce capabilities into social platforms, this thesis implies that socially focused platforms could reap benefits from social commerce by rolling out a buy-button feature. It is recommended that social platforms wanting to roll out buy buttons take safe shopping measures and create a seamless shopping experience for users.Tesis Univ. Granada.China Scholarship Council grant number: 201606170055National Natural Science Foundation of China grant number: 7170206

    Measuring Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights

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    © Crown Copyright 2014. You may re-use this information (excluding logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov. uk/doc/open-government-licence/ Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concernedThe review is wide-ranging in scope and overall our findings evidence a lack of appreciation among those producing research for the high-level principles of measurement and assessment of scale. To date, the approaches adopted by industry seem more designed for internal consumption and are usually contingent on particular technologies and/or sector perspectives. Typically, there is a lack of transparency in the methodologies and data used to form the basis of claims, making much of this an unreliable basis for policy formulation. The research approaches we found are characterised by a number of features that can be summarised as a preference for reactive approaches that look to establish snapshots of an important issue at the time of investigation. Most studies are ad hoc in nature and on the whole we found a lack of sustained longitudinal approaches that would develop the appreciation of change. Typically the studies are designed to address specific hypotheses that might serve to support the position of the particular commissioning body. To help bring some structure to this area, we propose a framework for the assessment of the volume of infringement in each different area. The underlying aim is to draw out a common approach wherever possible in each area, rather than being drawn initially to the differences in each field. We advocate on-going survey tracking of the attitudes, perceptions and, where practical, behaviours of both perpetrators and claimants in IP infringement. Clearly, the nature of perpetrators, claimants and enforcement differs within each IPR but in our view the assessment for each IPR should include all of these elements. It is important to clarify that the key element of the survey structure is the adoption of a survey sampling methodology and smaller volumes of representative participation. Once selection is given the appropriate priority, a traditional offline survey will have a part to play, but as the opportunity arises, new technological methodologies, particularly for the voluntary monitoring of online behaviour, can add additional detail to the overall assessment of the scale of activity. This framework can be applied within each of the IP right sectors: copyright, trademarks,patents, and design rights. It may well be that the costs involved with this common approach could be mitigated by a syndicated approach to the survey elements. Indeed, a syndicated approach has a number of advantages in addition to cost. It could be designed to reduce any tendency either to hide inappropriate/illegal activity or alternatively exaggerate its volume to fit with the theme of the survey. It also has the scope to allow for monthly assessments of attitudes rather than being vulnerable to unmeasured seasonal impacts
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