Organisational Size Metrics in IS Research: A Critical Survey of the Literature 1989 - 2000

A number of disciplines pursue research into organisations. This organisational research serves to improve knowledge regarding the interaction, behaviour and direction of humans and groups. Many of these disciplines use proprietary methods for and approaches to such research. Because Information Systems (IS) has drawn on several of these disciplines for foundation, a number of research approaches exist for examining organisations within the IS domain. Organisational size measurement, as one research approach in the IS literature, has received considerable application but little critical examination. This study examines six leading IS journals over an eleven year period in order to document and classify the metrics used for organisational size measurement in the IS research literature. The results show a large number of metrics in scholarly use, with studies offering little supportive discussion regarding the application of these metrics. The findings raise a number of issues that are out of the scope of this study: these issues merit further research

Key Issues in Information Systems Management: A Serbiaas Perspective (Delphi study)

Delphi study used by many authors to compile a list of key issues related to information systems (IS) management in the world, i.e. to classify them and display their meaning. A key focus in this paper was put on trial IS managers in all areas, with emphasis on identifying and explaining regional similarities and differences. The results presented and compared with those obtained in similar studies in the U.S. and other European and non-European countries. Our research evidence points to profound differences in IS management between Serbia, the U.S. and other countries. The aim of this study was to identify key issues in organizations for management information systems over the next 3 to 5 years

Six Years after Its Passage, What Has Been the Impact of the Clinger-Cohen Act on the U.S. Air Force

Information systems are often inundated with thousands of attack alerts to distinguish novice hacker probes from genuine threats. Pattern classification can help filter relatively benign attacks from alerts generated by anomaly detectors, limited the numbers of alerts to requiring attention. This research investigates the feasibility of using pattern classification algorithms on network packed header information to classify network attacks. Both liner discrimination and radial basis function algorithms are trained using flood and scan attacks. The classifiers are then tested with unknown floods and scans to determine how well they categorize previously unseen attacks

Total quality management in higher education : Modelling critical success factors.

The research is aimed at determining the extent of TQM implementations in higher education institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, and Malaysia, uncovering common TQM critical success factors among the institutions, developing a generic and holistic TQM model for higher education institutions that incorporates the factors, measuring the performance of those factors and their contribution towards organisational excellence, and developing a mechanism for improving them.The research was conducted in three stages: exploratory study, descriptive, and empirical research. The exploratory study involves a literature review for searching structural TQM models that measure TQM essential elements. A criteria of modelling has been proposed for model selection. Based on this criteria, the Pyramid Model (Kanji, 1996) has been selected as a tentative model for further analysis. Further justification for selecting this model was provide by comparing it with the philosophical and system dimensions of TQM (Kanji, Morris & Haigh, 1993), ideas about TQM provided by major TQM contributors, and Hackman and Wageman's perspective of TQM philosophy (Hackman & Wageman, 1995).The descriptive study involved a questionnaire survey of higher education institutions in the U.S., U.K., and Malaysia. The survey result provided information on the extent of TQM implementations in those countries and indicated that the performance of TQM institutions are better then non-TQM institutions. It has also indicated that many higher education institutions in the three countries practiced the elements of the Pyramid Model. In the present research, the model's elements are regarded as critical success factors --- those few things that must go well to ensure the success of a manager or an organisation (Boynton & Zmud, 1984). The empirical research involved subjecting the Business Excellence Model to a structural analysis based on Partial Least Squares method by Wold (1980). Here, an iniital measurement instrument was developed to measure the model's constructs using multi-item rating scales. An iterative procedure retained only those items that were common and relevant to the higher education institutions in each sample. The final measurement scales had high values of Cronbach reliability coefficient. The model was found to be valid based on the result of %2 goodness-of-fit test and values of indices proposed by Bentler (1995).A mathematical equation that takes into account the mean scores and values of "outer coefficients" (strength of causal connections between items and constructs) was used to compute performance indices for the critical success factors and business excellence.The structural analysis produced "inner coefficients" that represent the strength of causal connections between the model's independent and dependent variables (constructs). These coefficients were used to determine the unit contributions of each construct toward business excellence. An improvement method that made use of the unit contributions had been developed to improve the values of critical success factor and business excellence. The method applied an algorithm that determined an optimal mix of critical success factors requiring improvements and made the improvements to the factors to achieve a desired business excellence target level. The Business Excellence Model has several notable strengths: simple; systematic; generic; robust; analytical; objective; critical and logical; and predictive