Diffusion of Complex Information Systems across Organizations

Organizations deal with complex information systems innovations such as enterprise resource planning systems to enable and support their operations. While there is considerable research on organizations’ adoption, implementation, and use of such complex information systems, prior literature has not dwelt as much on the diffusion or the spread of such complex information systems across a population of organizations. A limited number of studies have shown different information sources such as external, internal, and mixed influences to drive diffusion, and found variations in the diffusion patterns of different complex information systems. These findings, however, belong to different populations and do not account for organizational or technology characteristics that may be influential in diffusion. This study seeks to expand our understanding by examining the diffusion of several complex information systems within the same population of S&P-500 organizations between 1990 and 2008 by modeling different influence mechanisms and employing event-history analysis

The Bass Model of Diffusion: Recommendations for Use in Information Systems Research and Practice

The Bass Model (TBM), first introduced in 1969, has been used in several fields – including sociology, economics, marketing, and communication studies – to understand diffusion of products and innovations, but has received limited attention in information systems (IS) research and practice. TBM views diffusion as occurring through a combination of innovation (p) and imitation (q). Innovation and imitation describe the extents to which influences external to the population and influences internal to the population respectively affect diffusion. To encourage and enable greater use of TBM in IS research and practice, we describe an application process for using TBM and illustrate potential applications of TBM

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis dissertation consists of three essays that investigate the general decision process of users' choices regarding information technology (IT) applications and products, focusing on placebo effects of software pricing, incorporating user perceptions and product attributes in modeling software product choices, and firms' practices of green IT. Taking a customer-centric approach to users' assessments of IT applications and products, I address the evaluative responses of individual consumers and organizations to market information including price, product attributes, and key contextual factors. The objective of the first essay is to understand the placebo-like effects invoked by the price of software products on consumers' satisfaction, problem-solving performance, and purchasing behavior. Built upon the response expectancy theory, a research framework and a series of hypotheses are proposed. I test the hypotheses with a controlled experiment, and the data supports most of the hypotheses. Specifically, a user's outcome expectancy, as activated by software price, affects not only his/her satisfaction, but also the problem-solving performance using the software product. Satisfaction and actual problem-solving performance in turn affects the user's willingness-to-pay. In order to better explain and predict consumers' preferential choices of software products, I propose in the second essay a model that incorporates product attributes and consumer perceptions to estimate users' software product selection. The influences of product attributes on users' perceptions of product characteristics are also examined. With a choice-based conjoint study, and the collection of additional data on users' perceived product characteristics, I demonstrate that the proposed model can better explain and predict users' software choices than the model with product attributes only, or with user perceptions only, in terms of the in-sample fit and the holdout prediction hit rate at the individual-level and the aggregate-level. The third essay examines important drivers of green IT practices by firms. I propose a framework premised on social contracts theory and institutional theory, and then use it to develop a model that explains firms' decisions. I test the model and the associated hypotheses with the survey data collected from 304 major firms in Taiwan. Overall, the results show global environmental awareness, industry norms, and key stakeholders' attitudes affect a firm's green IT practices directly. Competitors seem to play a limited role, as suggested by an insignificant impact on the firm's green IT practices

Modeling and Analysis of Complex Technology Adoption Decisions: An Investigation in the Domain of Mobile ICT

Mobile information and communication technologies (ICT) promise to significantly transform enterprises, their business processes and services, improve employee productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency, and create new competitive advantages and business agility. Despite the plethora of potential benefits, however, widespread enterprise adoption of mobile ICT has not been as extensive as initially anticipated. Drawing on the extant information systems, technology management, and organizational innovation literature, this dissertation investigates the salient drivers and inhibitors of emerging ICT adoption, in general, and mobile ICT in particular, and develops an integrative ICT adoption decision framework. From this synthesis we identify four broad elements that influence an enterprise s decision to adopt mobile ICT: (1) business value, (2) costs and economics, (3) strategic alignment, and (4) enterprise readiness. The latter decision element has received only little theoretical and practical attention. In order to fill this gap, this dissertation explored the concept of enterprise readiness in further detail and identified eight key dimensions and their associated assessment indicators. Using a two-stage expert study and experimental design approach, we empirically validated these dimensions and determined their relative importance. Results indicated that leadership readiness followed by technology, data and information, and resource readiness, contributed the most to enterprise readiness for mobile ICT. The results are implemented into a web-based readiness diagnostic tool (RDT) that enables decision makers to assess an enterprise s readiness for mobile ICT. The benefits of the RDT are multifold: first, it navigates the decision maker through the complex readiness assessment space; second, it identifies potential organizational deficiencies and provides a means to assess potential sources of risks associated with the adoption and implementation of mobile ICT; and third, it enables decision makers to benchmark their level of readiness against other organizations. The dissertation concludes by highlighting both theoretical and practical implications for emerging and mobile ICT adoption management and suggesting directions for future research.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Rouse, William; Committee Member: Cross, Steve; Committee Member: Cummins, Michael; Committee Member: DeMillo, Richard; Committee Member: Vengazhiyil, Rosha

Dynamic Price Elasticity and the Diffusion of Mainframe Computing

The organizational adoption of information technology (IT) innovations has been an area of increasing research activity in the last two decades. While much attention has focused on the relationship between attributes of the innovation and the adoption decision, little has been done to study the adopters' reactions to changes in these attributes over time. An important innovation attribute is price, which is commonly used as a proxy for adoption cost. In this paper, we investigate how organizations in the United States react to mainframe price changes over a period of thirty years, from 1955 to 1984. A parsimonious diffusion model that integrates both diffusion and pricing effects is developed. The model is empirically tested using annual adoption and pricing data of mainframes. Quality-adjusted price index is used to account for any changes in quality improvement over time. Our findings indicate that (1) price is an important factor in the diffusion process, (2) organizations' reactions to price changes (i.e., price elasticity) are not constant, and (3) elasticity dynamics can serve as an innovation attribute that provides a continuous characterization of adoption behavior over the life cycle of an innovation. Implications to IS research and opportunities for future work are also discussed

Cost Consciousness: Conceptual Development from a Management Accounting Perspective

Cost consciousness is a notion which appears in thousands of scientific articles belonging to a wide range of disciplines. Despite its common use, the scientific community has allocated marginal attention to the understanding of cost consciousness. In this dissertation, I argue that it is important to develop this understanding for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, given that one of the objectives of scientific writing is to clearly communicate knowledge among scholars, unclear notions can be considered as unwanted elements of scientific literature. On the other hand, and certainly more important, developing our understanding of cost consciousness can potentially provide interesting and insightful new windows for research. This dissertation addresses the conceptualization of cost consciousness particularly from a management accounting perspective. In accomplishing this objective, this dissertation develops two interconnected exercises: (i) a conceptual exercise aiming to understand what cost consciousness is from the perspective of management accounting scholars; and (ii) a theoretical exercise analyzing how cost consciousness could be driven in an organization. In addition, a case company has been used to enrich the conceptualization of the notion and illustrate the way in which the formulation presented in this work could be used to analyze cases where the institutionalization of cost consciousness is of interest. With respect to the conceptual exercise, this work has rigorously identified and reviewed articles from management accounting related journals where the cost consciousness notion appears. From these, the definitions, interpretations, determinants and results which management accounting scholars have associated with cost consciousness have been identified and inferred. The results underline the difficulty in defining the notion and the perception of cost consciousness as a holistic concept that encapsulates various forms of understanding and reflecting on cost related issues. Moreover, management accounting systems have been identified as elements which may play an important role in driving cost consciousness. In addition, although the results of cost consciousness tend to be perceived as positive, the notion has also been associated with negative outcomes. With respect to the theoretical exercise, this work draws on the Burns and Scapens Framework (BSF) which is mainly based on Old Institutional Economics. Also, by considering the recent work by various scholars who have contributed and criticized the BSF, I have provided an extension of the framework and a formulation which includes and replaces various elements that appear on the original BSF. The conceptual and theoretical exercises are interconnected because the identified and inferred definitions, interpretations, determinants and results, have been brought into the extended BSF to theorize on how cost consciousness could be institutionalized from a management accounting perspective. In particularly, the results suggest that management accounting systems may play a very active role in the institutionalization of cost consciousness. Moreover, this dissertation also underlines the potential role of routines, rules, exogenous forces and agents in the institutionalization process. Therefore, the institutionalization of cost consciousness requires a mish-mash of elements and mechanisms interacting between each other. This dissertation serves as a comprehensive platform for various avenues of research on cost consciousness which could be based not any more on hunches, but on knowledge and better grounded understanding