The Measurement of Information Systems Success in China: Re-validating IS-Impact in the Chinese Organizational Context

Information system (IS) investments are under increasing scrutiny and pressure to justify their contribution to the productivity and competitiveness of organizations. The impacts from contemporary IS, Enterprise Systems being the quintessence, are arguably difficult to measure. In response (Gable, Sedera, & Chan, 2008) introduced the IS-Impact measurement model \u27a measure at a point in time, of the stream of net benefits from the IS, to date and anticipated, as perceived by all key-user-groups.\u27 IS-Impact, though extensively validated with enterprise system (ES) in both public and private sectors in Australia, has yet to be tested in other countries. This paper proposes a study to operationalise a Mandarin version of the IS-Impact model, and to validate the model, instrument and approach in the Chinese organisational context, thereby further validating and generalizing the IS-Impact approach. A context study, in combination with IS-Impact survey results, will also yield valuable insights into the state of ES in China

How "critical" are the critical success factors (CSFs)? Examining the role of CSFs for ERP

PURPOSE – The authors aim to examine the literature on enterprise resource planning (ERP) to establish whether the critical success factors (CSFs) for achieving stages of an ERP project have been empirically shown to be “critical”. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH – The authors used a systematic approach to review 627 refereed papers published between 1998 and 2010 on ERP, from which 236 papers related to CSFs on ERP were selected for analysis. The authors employed procedures from qualitative and interpretive research methods, to analyse and interpret the material using five-step procedure of gathering, categorising, coding, analysing and comparing the data. FINDINGS – Prior studies have identified a large number of CSFs for ERP implementation success or improved performance outcomes. The authors have shown that a limited number of CSFs have been empirically investigated for their role in, and effect on, implementation success or post-implementation performance outcomes. While reporting the factors that have some evidence to support them, the authors question the utility of the general concept of CSFs. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS – The authors' findings question the validity of many of the claimed CSFs and the utility of the general body of literature on CSFs. The authors caution researchers who may plan to use claimed CSFs for ERP in their research to carefully examine the veracity of the claim before proceeding. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS – The findings can help managers to focus their attention, priorities, resources and leadership on managing the CSFs that have been established to be critical for achieving ERP project implementation and/or performance outcomes. ORIGINALITY/VALUE – The results provide new insights into the usefulness of CSFs and indicate that merely identifying possible CSFs is not sufficient to help with ERP success. Further investigation is required to establish the criticalness of the proposed CSFs before managerial time is devoted to them.Jiwat Ram, David Corkindal

Children's view of child friendly environment in a low cost high density urban neighbourhood

Child-friendly environment allures children to become active citizens. This environment in turn increases the children’s quality of life. Children’s physical, social and mental skills which are essential in their later adult life are achieved through their interaction with the outdoor environment. The environment encompasses a network of places where children can experience a sense of belonging individually or collectively. Children participation in shaping their settings plays a role in the creation of child-friendly environments. Nowadays, children are not only forced to be in places that are not relevant from their point of view, but with various constraints that reduce their movement in outdoor environment. The aim of the research is to determine the child-friendly environment from the view of Malaysian children in places that they play and interact in urban neighbourhood. This is to reveal the factors that influence the range of children’s movement and the places they interact and play among middle childhood age (7 to 11 years old) in urban neighbourhood. This research was conducted at Flat Larkin, a residential area in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Data was elicited using three methods, namely, survey questionnaire (N=120), seven-day-activity log (N=39), and children’s drawings (N=52). Confirmatory factor analysis, frequency analysis, and content analysis were used to analyse the data to acquire results. The results revealed three main constructs which are independence, humanity and outdoor environment that affecting children’s range of movement in urban neighbourhood. Playgrounds and courtyards were the most visited open places for playing and interaction in the urban neighbourhood. Recreational services with emphasis on natural elements in children’s drawing afforded highest contribution to ideal places for children play. The result showed that as children play in the outdoor environment, their personal relationships with the environment are formed. An assessment model for a child- friendly environment was constructed which comprises of two central criteria for friendliness which are the amount of outdoor environment for children play and children’s range of movement. The model can contribute to a better understanding of children’s interaction and play in outdoor environment in their urban neighbourhood, and highlight the importance of such environment in promoting outdoor play

Developing a socio-technical process framework for information systems project management in a Public HEI : a case study of Kuwait University

The observable variety in Information Systems projects outcomes is a global phenomenon, and IS projects in the State of Kuwait are no exception. The participatory approach of managing IS projects by including key stakeholders (e.g. top and middle managers, IT support, external vendors, consultants, and users) became a commonly accepted fashion both in public and private institutions to improve project efficiency and effectiveness. The consensus is that IS project success relies on interlinked factors that support/hinder those stakeholders in reaching their planned goals. Accordingly, these factors are socio-technical as they continuously affect the interplay between the social sub-system and technical sub-system of the IS project. Aiming to understand the status quo of IS project implementation at Kuwait University, this thesis adopts McLeod and MacDonell’s framework (2011) supported by the Social-Technical Theory (Mumford, 2006). Both led the researcher to explore different factors that affect individual’s actions, development process, project content, and the overall project outcomes in Kuwait University (as a public institution). The Kuwaiti context is under-researched and required an interpretative research approach to shed light on this developing context and address the expanding west-east digital divide. In doing so, a qualitative case study was best suited to help capture the social construction of those success factors and reveal their constructive influence on the IS project success/failure. Out of 23 semi-structured interviews, our findings refer to an “event” as a temporal instance that causes turbulence/imbalance between individual’s actions, the development process, and project context. During these incidents, the project outcomes respond differently to the institutional environment. Further, our evidence pointed to two layers of institutional factors that reflect completely different epistemological grounds; country-level versus organisational level. While the former reflects the political factors that shape the outcomes of IS projects in the State of Kuwait in general, the latter reflects socio-technical factors that apply on educational IS systems developed in Kuwait University. Theoretically, a revised model of educational IS development has been developed to reflect the temporal dimension that shapes the development process and the project outcomes. McLeod and MacDonell’s process-based framework offers a socio-technical view that is untapped in the original framework and helps set out the right policies and practices of IS project management for practitioners and regulators in Kuwait University. Furthermore, the political and cultural insights offered by the research participants would assist western universities while developing IS educational projects in Kuwait through franchise entry mode or distant learning

Designing adaptaptive user interfaces for enterprise resource planning systems for small enterprises

It is widely acknowledged that enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems suffer from complex user interfaces. The complexity of these user interfaces negatively affects the usability of these systems. Current research has shown that a need exists to improve the overall usability of ERP systems. This research proposes the use of adaptive user interfaces (AUIs) as a means of improving the overall usability of ERP systems. Research has shown that AUIs are capable of improving system usability by reducing user interface complexity and improving the overall user experience. The primary objective of this research was to determine how AUIs could be designed to improve the usability of ERP systems. An adaptation taxonomy, ERP system architecture (incorporating an AUI), a set of AUI components and a set of usability heuristics for ERP systems were proposed to support the design, development and evaluation of AUIs for ERP systems. The proposed adaptation taxonomy provides support for three types of adaptation: content adaptation, presentation adaptation and navigation adaptation. The proposed ERP system architecture is a three-tiered system architecture, consisting of a Presentation Layer (incorporating an AUI), an Application Layer and a Database Layer. The proposed set of AUI components comprise a user model, a task model and a dialog model. The set of proposed usability heuristics aims to identify usability issues of ERP systems within the areas of Navigation, Presentation, Task Support, Learnability and Customisation. An AUI prototype was developed based on selected adaptive techniques from the proposed adaptation taxonomy and selected components from the proposed system architecture. All of the proposed AUI components were implemented. The AUI prototype was developed for an existing ERP system, namely SAP Business One (SBO). This prototype was designed, in order to resolve the usability issues of SBO identified through the use of the proposed set of heuristics. The development of the AUI prototype was made possible through the use of a software development kit (SDK) provided with SBO. The AUI prototype made use of content adaptation, presentation adaptation and navigation adaptation in order to address the identified usability issues. An empirical evaluation was conducted on the AUI prototype to determine whether it provided any usability benefits over the standard SBO system. The results from the empirical evaluation revealed that the AUI presented usability benefits with regard to learnability and satisfaction. Users who used the AUI prototype were able to learn how to use the ERP system a lot quicker and were more satisfied than users of the standard SBO system. The successful implementation of the AUI prototype provided practical evidence that the proposed adaptation taxonomy and the proposed system architecture can be implemented. This research has provided empirical evidence that the use of AUIs can improve the usability of ERP systems. Future research has outlined several possibilities to utilise and enhance the proposed adaptation taxonomy, the ERP system architecture and ERP heuristics, for the purpose of furthering research within the area of AUIs for ERP systems

Metodología de implantación de modelos de gestión de la información dentro de los sistemas de planificación de recursos empresariales. Aplicación en la pequeña y mediana empresa

La Siguiente Generación de Sistemas de Fabricación (SGSF) trata de dar respuesta a los requerimientos de los nuevos modelos de empresas, en contextos de inteligencia, agilidad y adaptabilidad en un entono global y virtual. La Planificación de Recursos Empresariales (ERP) con soportes de gestión del producto (PDM) y el ciclo de vida del producto (PLM) proporciona soluciones de gestión empresarial sobre la base de un uso coherente de tecnologías de la información para la implantación en sistemas CIM (Computer-Integrated Manufacturing), con un alto grado de adaptabilidad a la estnictura organizativa deseada. En general, esta implementación se lleva desarrollando hace tiempo en grandes empresas, siendo menor (casi nula) su extensión a PYMEs. La presente Tesis Doctoral, define y desarrolla una nueva metodología de implementación pan la generación automática de la información en los procesos de negocio que se verifican en empresas con requerimientos adaptados a las necesidades de la SGSF, dentro de los sistemas de gestión de los recursos empresariales (ERP), atendiendo a la influencia del factor humano. La validez del modelo teórico de la metodología mencionada se ha comprobado al implementarlo en una empresa del tipo PYME, del sector de Ingeniería. Para el establecimiento del Estado del Arte de este tema se ha diseñado y aplicado una metodología específica basada en el ciclo de mejora continua de Shewhart/Deming, aplicando las herramientas de búsqueda y análisis bibliográfico disponibles en la red con acceso a las correspondientes bases de datos