Intrinsic Motivation and Information Systems Security Policy Compliance in Organizations

Incidents of computer abuse, proprietary information leaks and other security lapses have been on the increase. Most often, such security lapses are attributed to internal employees in organizations subverting established organizational IS security policy. As employee compliance with IS security policy is the key to escalating IS security breaches, understanding employee motivation for following IS security policy is critical. In addition to several types of extrinsic motives noted in prior studies, including sanctions, rewards, and social pressures, this study adds that an important contributing intrinsic factor is empowerment. Per Thomas and Velthouse’s (1990) intrinsic motivation model, empowerment is the positive feelings derived from IS security task assessments. Through survey data collected from 289 participants, the study assesses how dimensions of psychological empowerment (i.e., competence, meaning, impact, and choice) as derived from IS security task may impact the IS security performance of the participants, measured by their compliance with IS security policy. The study demonstrates that the competence and meaning dimensions of psychological empowerment have a positive impact on participants’ IS security policy compliance intention, while impact has a marginal negative influence on compliance. Furthermore, dimensions of psychological empowerment can be predicted by structural empowerment facets, particularly IS security education, training, and awareness (SETA), access to IS security strategy and goals, and participation in IS security decision-making. In addition, the competence and meaning dimensions of psychological empowerment may act as mediators for the relations between structural empowerment and participants’ IS security policy compliance. Theoretical contributions, managerial implications, and directions for future research of this study will be discussed

Electronic government in Malaysia: Evaluating federal government website

A content analysis study was conducted to determine the status of government websites of Malaysia, focusing on federal websites – using presence, content, service delivery and public response attributes.The results were matched with the General Circular No. 1/2000, Guidelines on Malaysia Civil Service Link (MCSL) and Government Web Sites that was introduced in 2000 by MAMPU. The study identified 28 federal government web sites that linked to MyGovernment Portal.The website content revealed that the basic features were added, except for more interactive features such as email and multimedia.Public outreach need to be improved because only 50% web sites offer dual languages and almost half of the site do not disclosed the last updated date.None of the web sites provide the chat room facility, which allows the government and citizens to interact online, and make government closer to the citizens.E-government officials need to work to improve citizen respond because 73.6% of the government agency site does not respond to citizens email request.One of the practical implications of this study is the attributes can serve as indicators for individual governments to strive towards better web service delivery

Falling prey for social media shopping frauds: The victims’ perspective

Proliferation of e-commerce and the advent of social media utilization have contributed to the significant progress of social commerce around the world. Similar to existing internet applications for businesses, such as conventional e-commerce and mobile commerce, interactions and socialization on online medium (with less visibility of sellers and buyers physical presence) over the social media also possess risks of unreliable and fraudulent transactions. Despite the informed risks of online dealings, fraudulent social commerce incidents are growing. While the existing literature on social commerce provided insights on social commerce development in terms of its advantages and adoption, dearth of studies offer understanding of the dark side of social commerce, particularly with regards to the occurrence of social commerce frauds.This proposed qualitative study intends to bridge this gap, with the focus to examine the occurrence and the nature of the social commerce fraud, and consequently to understand how and why shoppers become victims of social commerce fraud.Findings are expected to contribute towards conceptual understanding of social commerce fraud phenomenon and offer inputs to increase awareness among social commerce community

Portfolio Selection: Assessment of a Framework

Decision-making often involves selecting a portfolio of alternatives, rather than a single option. For example, in assembling an IS project team, rather than picking one best” employee, multiple employees are selected based on various skills to fill different positions. The value of the employees depending not only on their individual competency skills, but also on how well they work as a team. The team synergy is important, and the value of the portfolio (i.e. IS project team in this case) is different from the sum of the values of the individual team members. Though many studies have been published on portfolio selection in diverse contexts, most of these studies tend to focus on specific problem environments and cannot easily be generalized. This paper assesses and enhances a previously published, general framework for portfolio decisions with respect to its usefulness in classifying and understanding decision problems

E-government in Malaysia: Evaluating federal goverment web site

The E-Government initiative applies to all the services government provides to citizens and businesses.E-Government seeks to improve the access to and quality of all services, including transaction-based services, including payment or without payments, and information-based services, that are private to citizens and general to public (MDC, 1998). Citizens are at the core of the process in E-Government, thus a user-centered government web site is significantly related to the success of government online service.In this report, we review the current condition of government web site, focusing on the federal level government.Using a detailed analysis of 28 federal government web sites, and an email response test, we studied what kinds of features are available online, how E-Government sites respond to citizen request for information, and whether the web site info structure and presentation compliance with the General Circular No. 1/2000, Guidelines on Malaysia Civil Service Link (MCSL) and Government Web Sites.The research was conducted from July to November 2005.The result shows that the use of Internet to deliver government information and services has become a growth industry in Malaysia and already made headways to drive towards E-Government concept.However, still the government web sites are not making a full use of available technology.Among the significant findings of the research are: Only 32% offer services that a fully executable online and only 1 federal web site provides online payment service.Public outreach need to be improved – only 50% web sites offer dual languages and almost half of the site do not disclosed the last updated date. None of the web sites provide the chat room facility, which allows the government and citizens to interact online, and make government closer to the citizens. 73.6% of the government agency site does not respond to citizens email request.There is a need to improve the organization and structuring of the site – make a full use of hyperlink and site mapping to help the citizens navigating the sites.Hence, as the government agencies web sites are not only providing information, but also more and more services are being put online, there is a need to ensure that these official sites are well managed and well designed.It is recommended that government agencies could think of enhancing communication by utilizing applicable advance technology and Internet features

Optimizing security and flexibility by designing a high security system for e-government servers

E-government is one of the most popular applications in the Web base applications.It helps people to do those work online, access the government sites, apply for online jobs, access to important data from the government database, and on top of that it also helps the government employees to access cameras and sensors over the country. However there are many challenges to keep the government data safe and secure in an open environment (network).Therefore, this paper is proposed to discuss two issues.In the first stage how to keep the data in safe, where this paper introduces many applications that guarantee a very high security for accessing and editing of data.The paper also carries a new design for E-government servers in which the authors try to distribute the security service on each line to avoid any attack from out or inside. The second issue is to ensure the flexibility of the data flow from the servers to the user which is the second challenge in the design.The experiment shows a good expected result, with the new approach have a high security and at the same time flexible E-government access.This paper provides a different view and uses a mixture of technologies to achieve a high security rate that will not affect different user's access.E-Government environment is subject to multiple security challenges, thus this paper proposed a model on how to secure the servers and how to ensure the flexibility of the system, in a simple way balance between a lot of security tools and the appreciate protecting vs. granting the flexible data flow up and download to the user

MASMe: Developing Mobile Accounting Software for Micro Entrepreneurs

In this study, a new mobile accounting application called MASMe has been developed to assist microentrepreneurs in the area of financial management and accounting. The MASMe prototype helps to simplify finance and accounting processes and produce real-time reporting both online and offline. This will help micro-entrepreneurs to understand the accounting concepts and to obtain information to help manage their business and better decision-making. The system will also enable micro-entrepreneurs to apply for business loans and government grants from government agencies and banks to expand their business. As mobile accounting software, MASMe is reasonably simple and straightforward and uses the simple concept of money-in and money-out (i.e. cash flow) given many micro-entrepreneurs have limited finance and accounting knowledge. Employing the Waterfall method of the System Development Life Cycle (SLDC) the requirements of users were collected, and the design of the model was constructed using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) technique. The model was validated and tested through the development of the prototype with feedback received from users of the system. While several inherent limitations were noted, these limitations are expected to be overcome in future versions of the application with the ability to print invoices, export data into Microsoft Excel and to expand the loan payment function of the application to benefit microentrepreneurs

The impact of minimum pay implementation on small businesses operating cost and sustainability: a case of service business

The implementation of minimum wage requirement in Malaysia beginning mid 2016 seems to impact both employees and employers in different ways. While this implementation could increase household income and claimed to boost employees’ productivity, employers or business operators, on the other hand are experiencing stringent effect on their business operating cost.The effect is more significant for small business operators, including the childcare centers.Childcare industry operates in the service sector, which represents the main contributor of Malaysian SMEs. Unfortunately for the industry, there is an increasing numbers of childcare centers have to cease their operation due to inability to comply with the minimum pay requirement.In the absence of thorough understanding of the phenomena, the small businesses, particularly among institution-based childcare, is at the risk of losing their businesses.This exploratory study intends to assess how the implementation of minimum pay requirement affects the existing operating cost structure, and consequently business sustainability of Malaysian childcare industry

A study on the computerized revenue collection system of local authority: A case of Perlis, Kedah and Penang

This survey identifies the extent of computerized revenue collection system use among the local authorities in the northern region of Peninsular Malaysia. Survey questionnaires and interviews were gathered from 14 local authorities located in Perlis, Kedah and Penang. The study shows a high adoption rate (100%) among the respondents, due to the awareness of importance of automated system in data processing. However, the extent of use of the adopted system is still low due to the difficulty in selecting suitable software, lack of expertise and experience, cost constraints, attitude problems and lack of training. Some recommendations have been made to improve the existing scenario. They include provide training and consultation to the users on latest advancement of technology in accounting, develop specific software for revenue collection and government can also support the local authorities by providing financial assistance and expertise in technology. The study concludes that the local authorities in the northern region are not yet prepared to implement e-collection to the public

The roles of top management and users in strategic IS planning: a perspective of SMEs

Research on the strategic Information Systems (IS) planning is typically concentrated on large firms. However, the outcomes of this research may not be sufficient to adequately apply to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Responding to the limited body of work in SMEs with respect to strategic IS planning, this research aims to fill the gap in the body of literature. Having limited resources available, financially and technically, strategic IS planning is getting more crucial for SMEs. Prior work suggests that a high level of internal competencies such as IT leadership by the owner or the top management of the firm are important for progressive IT development to take place in SMEs. Having said that IS is getting paramount for firm’s survival to optimize IS effectively, it is incumbent to investigate the factors influencing strategic IS planning amongst the SMEs. This study contributes to research and practice by providing indepth insights into the IS planning processes in SMEs with a particular focus on the roles of top management and users. Researchers can use these results, which are somewhat different from larger organizations, to revise IS planning phases