The Real-Time Revolution: Transforming Your Organization to Value Customer Time

Publisher\u27s description: Business survival requires valuing what customers value—and in our overworked and distraction-rich era, customers value their time above all else. Real-time companies beat their rivals by being faster and more responsive in meeting customer needs. To become a real-time company, as top scholars Jerry Power and Tom Ferratt explain, you need a real-time monitoring and response system. They offer detailed advice on how to put procedures in place that will collect data on how well products or services are saving customer time; identify strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities; and specify innovations needed to save even more customer time.Where should leaders look to innovate? Powers and Ferratt say to search every step in the life of a product or service, from development to production to usage. And for each step, they identify four possible levers for innovation: the design of the products or services themselves, the process used to produce them, the data that can be gathered on their use, and the people who make or provide the product or service.The book features dozens of examples of companies that are getting it right and the innovations they used to help their customers save time, all while helping themselves to a hefty slice of market share. This is a comprehensive, authoritative guide to thriving in a revolution that is sweeping every industry and sector.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/books/1040/thumbnail.jp

Extending the Vision of Distance Education to Learning via Virtually Being There and Beyond

Our vision of distance learning—learning via virtually being there—challenges educators and technology designers to go beyond the dominant distance education vision of learning via structured isolation. Our vision builds on the best of the technology-enhanced classroom and distance education. Interactions among participants are not only asynchronous but also synchronous, not only one-to-one and one-to-many but also few-to-many and many-to-many, not only about academics but also about the person, and not only consisting of written words but also voice and video. Learning materials and activities are prepared in advance and spontaneously, scheduled and unscheduled, and text-based as well as based on sound and images. Our belief is that most learners benefit from “being there” in a class and that “virtually being there” should provide that same benefit. Important features of our vision that are currently challenging to realize are related to technology limits on sharing all participants’ video, audio, and screens. These and other limitations, which may be beyond our ability to recognize at the moment, will be overcome when visionary educators and technology designers collaborate to develop solutions that fully engage participants in learning and take us beyond what has been envisioned to date

Synergy and Its Limits in Managing Information Technology Professionals

We examine the effects of human resource management (HRM) practices (e.g., career development, social support, compensation, and security) on IT professionals‟ job search behavior. Job search is a relatively novel dependent variable in studies of voluntary withdrawal behavior, in general, and for IT professionals, in particular. From a universalistic perspective, HRM practices individually and in combination exhibit independently additive effects on job search behavior. Our study contrasts this perspective with configurational theory, hypothesizing that proposed idealtype configurations of HRM practices have synergistic effects on job search behavior. We contribute to the IT and broader HRM literature by theoretically explicating and empirically demonstrating with IT professionals the power of configurational theory to explain the relationship between HRM practices and job search behavior. Our empirical results show that two configurations of HRM practices – Human Capital Focused (HCF) and Task Focused (TF), which are high and low on all HRM practices, respectively – exhibit a synergistic relationship with the job search behavior of IT professionals. HCF has lower job search behavior than would be expected based on the independently additive effects of the HRM practices, whereas TF has correspondingly higher job search behavior. Our results also show that less than perfect horizontal fit detracts from the synergy of these extreme configurations. Just as importantly, several other non-extreme configurations of HRM practices exhibit independently additive effects for the HRM practices but not synergy, suggesting that synergy is limited to extreme configurations. We also discuss a number of implications for research and practice

Fast and Slow Processes Underlying Theories of Information Technology Use

Although theories of information technology (IT) use have been widely researched, organizations continue to struggle with insufficiently utilizing their IT assets. Those interested in understanding and managing IT use need both novel theoretical development and new directions for future research. In this paper, we address both of these needs. Regarding the first need, we develop novel theory by explaining two types of cognitive processes—one fast and one slow—that underlie theories of IT use. The impetus for our explanation of underlying processes (EUP) comes from studies of IT use that have found moderating effects of previous interaction with IT. With these results, researchers have concluded that cognitions are less important in determining IT use as the use of that IT increases. Consistent with that conclusion, our EUP posits that, as learning from prior use occurs, the influence of fast, automatic, unconscious (type 1) cognitive processes increases while the influence decreases for slow, controlled, conscious (type 2) cognitive processes. Type 1 processes automatically generate a default type 1 response; type 2 processes have the potential to generate an intervening type 2 response. The intervention potential is highest for initial use of the target IT and lowest when learning is high such that use of the IT has become automatic. From our EUP, we develop three insights: 1) that the cognitions that lead to a default response are not necessarily the cognitions found in extant theories of IT use, 2) that both type 1 and type 2 processes are subject to bounded rationality, and 3) that the relationship between learning and the intervention potential for a type 2 response, although negative, may not be linear. To address the second need that we note above, we suggest new directions for future research, which includes investigating the cognitive control problem (i.e., when type 2 processes intervene) and exploring the effects of heuristics, nudges, and bounded rationality on decisions to use IT. Beyond the hope that the suggested directions for research will yield solutions for addressing the underutilization of IT assets, the fundamental advances in theoretical understanding that we present here suggest notable implications for practice, including developing brief, simple, cognitively unconscious messages directed at nudging decision makers toward a default response to use the target IT

Assessing the Emphasis on Information Security in the Systems Analysis and Design Course

Due to several recent highly publicized information breaches, information security has gained a higher profile. Hence, it is reasonable to expect that information security would receive an equally significant emphasis in the education of future systems professionals. A variety of security standards that various entities (e.g., NIST, COSO, ISACA-COBIT, ISO) have put forth emphasize the importance of information security from the very beginning of the system development lifecycle (SDLC) to avoid significant redesign in later phases. To determine the emphasis on security in typical systems analysis and design (SA&D) courses, we examine (1) to what extent security is emphasized in the core SA&D courses and (2) at what phase in the SDLC do most SA&D courses begin to emphasize security. In order to address these questions, we reviewed SA&D textbooks currently on the market to identify how extensively they cover security-related issues. Given the fairly high awareness of information security in practice, we expected to see an equally high emphasis on such matters in the textbooks. However, our review suggests that this is not the case, which suggests a gap in our preparation. To address this gap, we offer a proposal for modifying a portion of the SA&D curricula

Issues and Opinions: Assessing the Emphasis on Information Security in the Systems Analysis and Design Course

Due to several recent highly publicized information breaches, information security has gained a higher profile. Hence, it is reasonable to expect that information security would receive an equally significant emphasis in the education of future systems professionals. A variety of security standards that various entities (e.g., NIST, COSO, ISACA-COBIT, ISO) have put forth emphasize the importance of information security from the very beginning of the system development lifecycle (SDLC) to avoid significant redesign in later phases. To determine the emphasis on security in typical systems analysis and design (SA&D) courses, we examine (1) to what extent security is emphasized in the core SA&D courses and (2) at what phase in the SDLC do most SA&D courses begin to emphasize security. In order to address these questions, we reviewed SA&D textbooks currently on the market to identify how extensively they cover security-related issues. Given the fairly high awareness of information security in practice, we expected to see an equally high emphasis on such matters in the textbooks. However, our review suggests that this is not the case, which suggests a gap in our preparation. To address this gap, we offer a proposal for modifying a portion of the SA&D curricula

Choosing Management Information Systems as a Major: Understanding the smiFactors for MIS

Given declining management information systems (MIS) enrollments at our university, we seek to understand our students‘ selection of a major. Prior studies have found that students choose a major based on a number of factors, with subject matter interest consistently being most important. We contribute to the literature by developing a deeper understanding of what is meant by subject matter interest, which we refer to as smiFactors, for MIS as a major and career. Based on a qualitative analysis of open-ended survey questions completed by undergraduate business students, we confirm a number of smiFactors for MIS gleaned from recent studies and identify three new ones. We also relate our findings to broad categories of vocational interests. Of the newly identified smiFactors, one—linking business and technology—is unique to MIS, whereas the other two—practical application of course work and daily variety—apply to MIS as well as other majors and careers. Our findings provide a more complete foundation for helping students make an informed choice of MIS as a major. We use our findings and an extension of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to identify four types of intervention for increasing MIS enrollments

ACM SIGMIS CPR Panel Report: Should Information Systems Professors be More Techno-savvy than Students? (And What Would that Mean for Teaching in Times of the COVID-19 Crisis?)

Rapid advances in information and communication technologies present a challenge to information systems (IS) professors. Not only do these advances frequently make course materials out of date, but also IS professors may struggle to stay current with popular technology applications. In a sense, these forces lead to a paradox that students may be more techno-savvy than their professors (at least in certain areas). Furthermore, students may feel frustrated when techno-savvy professors cannot efficiently teach them in learning technologies. In this paper, we synthesize the panel titled “The Elephant in the Classroom: Do Information Systems Professors Need to be more Techno-Savvy than Students?” at the 55th ACM SIGMIS Computer and People Research Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Thomas Ferratt, Michael Gallivan, Yaojie Li, Thomas Stafford, Mary Sumner, and Crag Van Slyke served as panelists. We use their discussion to develop techno-savviness as a construct in the IS education context and to describe distinct types of techno-savviness

IS Journal Quality Assessment Using the Author Affiliation Index

Research productivity is one means by which academic units attain legitimacy within their institutional milieu and make their case for resources. Journal quality assessment is an important component for assessing faculty research productivity. We introduce the Author Affiliation Index (AAI), a simple method for assessing journal quality, to the IS domain. Essentially, the AAI of a journal is the percentage of academic authors publishing in that journal who are affiliated with a base set of high-quality academic institutions. Besides explaining the AAI, we demonstrate its use with a set of well-known IS journals, discuss its rankings vis-à-vis those resulting from other methods, and provide an example of how the basic AAI approach can be modified by changing the base school set that is used to define journal quality. The AAI has a number of advantages. First, it is a simple, low cost and transparent method for assessing any journal given a base school set. Second, it provides a consistent ranking of journals, particularly of those beyond the top consensus journals where less consistency is achieved with other measures. Third, it enables new journals to be rapidly assessed against more established ones without the lags or costs of other measures. The AAI provides another indicator of journal quality that is different from surveys and citation analyses

Choosing Management Information Systems as a Major: Understanding the smiFactors for MIS

Given declining management information systems (MIS) enrollments at our university, we seek to understand our students’ selection of a major. Prior studies have found that students choose a major based on a number of factors, with subject matter interest consistently being most important. We contribute to the literature by developing a deeper understanding of what is meant by subject matter interest, which we refer to as smiFactors, for MIS as a major and career. Based on a qualitative analysis of open-ended survey questions completed by undergraduate business students, we confirm a number of smiFactors for MIS gleaned from recent studies and identify three new ones. We also relate our findings to broad categories of vocational interests. Of the newly identified smiFactors, one—linking business and technology—is unique to MIS, whereas the other two—practical application of course work and daily variety—apply to MIS as well as other majors and careers. Our findings provide a more complete foundation for helping students make an informed choice of MIS as a major. We use our findings and an extension of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to identify four types of intervention for increasing MIS enrollments