The Effects of Trustworthiness Perceptions on the Formation of Initial Trust: Implications for MIS Student Teams

Teamwork is a growing part of management education. One aspect of ensuring a successful team experience as part of the educational process involves the formation of trust between teammates. We present the results of an experiment that examines how students form initial trust under two general conditions - when selecting teammates to complete class assignments (task context) and when selecting teammates to forge new relationships (relationship context). The findings indicate that the factors that result in trust are weighted differently, depending on the purpose of the teams. Teams that are focused on completion of a task weighed prospective team members\u27 ability the most, while teams that were focused on forming friendships focused on the prospective team members\u27 integrity. We present specific recommendations and an exercise that MIS instructors can use to encourage trust formation in their teams

Borgs in the Org? Organizational Decision Making and Technology

Data warehousing and the development of the World Wide Web both augment information gathering (search) processes in individual decision making by increasing the availability of required information. Imagine, for example, that one wanted to buy new golf clubs. Thirty years ago, the cost of information gathering would likely have limited an individual\u27s search process to geographically proximal vendors and the golf clubs they stocked. Today, a prospective purchaser can log onto the World Wide Web to find out what types of golf clubs are available anywhere; consult databases, chat rooms, and bulletin boards (e.g., epinions.com) to gather product information and user opinions; and compare prices across vendors around the world

Leaving Nothing to Chance: Modeling the Proactive Structuration of a New Technology

Adaptive structuration theory (AST, DeSanctis and Poole 1994) describes how people come to understand and use a technology. In this paper we develop the idea of proactive structuration--how social networking can be proactively managed in order to speed the comprehensive adaptation of a technology within a community of users. We examine two facets of proactive structuration--formal institutionalization of a community of practice and socialization of users--and stochastically model the impact of proactive structuration on comprehensive adaptation latency. Implications for the effective management of new technology adoption are discussed.

Workflow and Performance Under Computer Mediated Interruptions

Technologically enhanced computer mediated communication (CMC) environments create a trade-off between eliminating delays and increasing performance. In such environments, incoming interruptions can break the “flow” of work and deteriorate performance. In this regard, we describe a mechanism that explains why particular types of information are attended to, and how such interruptions interrupt work flow creating deterioration in performance. Specifically, this study investigates to specific facets of interruptions, the influence of task presentation format and interruption relevance on performance. Results showed significant performance differences related to different presentation format and interruption relevancy. Furthermore, flow had a significant effect on work performance. Future research should future propose more comprehensive taxonomies of both interruption in task characteristics, and examine the effects of such interruptions in systematic ways and in different contexts

Performance Benchmarking: A Literature Review And Analysis For Atmospheric Fluidized Bed Combustion Plants

Gaining and maintaining a competitive edge is the key to success in all walks of life, both on the athletic field and in the boardroom.  This research paper will: (1) provide a background on the concept of benchmarking; and (2) present some examples of performance benchmarks for AFBC (atmospheric fluidized bed combustor) steam and power plants resulting from data collected during 1999

A Deontological Approach to Designing Ethical Collaboration

A core focus of Collaboration Engineering (CE) research has been to design and deploy codified fundamental building blocks (artifacts) of collaboration, thus making it possible for practitioner groups to collaborate even without the help of a professional facilitator. Given the fundamentally social nature of collaboration, we believe that designing such fundamental blocks (artifacts) needs to include considerations of participants’ ethical values. As such, we propose a conceptual schema for a fundamental artifact having ethical features derived from the deontological view of ethics. Based on the notions of design theory, value-sensitive design, and deontological ethics, this paper develops an object-oriented representation of an Ethical Collaboration class that can be instantiated into objects that, in turn, can serve as fundamental building blocks for ethical collaboration. Contributions and future implications of such a conceptualization are also discussed

Gender and Personality in Media Rich Interfaces: Do Birds of a Feather Flock Together?

This research explores how user and interface characteristics can interact to influence decision performance. Specifically, this research examines the effects of gender, personality similarity, and increased levels of information cues on user involvement with a computer-based decision aid. In addition, this research explores the downstream effects of user involvement on decision time, effort, satisfaction, confidence, and quality. Findings indicate that gender has a significant influence on user involvement, and that involvement and the level of information cues provided by the decision aid have a direct influence on decision performance

Knowledge Representation with Ontologies: The Present and Future

Recently, we have seen an explosion of interest in ontologies as artifacts to represent human knowledge and as critical components in knowledge management, the semantic Web, business-to-business applications, and several other application areas. Various research communities commonly assume that ontologies are the appropriate modeling structure for representing knowledge. However, little discussion has occurred regarding the actual range of knowledge an ontology can successfully represent

Virtual study groups: A challenging centerpiece for working adult management education

Groups and teams are critical to modern organizations, and consequently management education has incorporated groups as a centerpiece of both content (the study of group process) and process (the use of study groups and group projects). Unfortunately, working-adult educational programs appear to have yet to take an important final step - acknowledging that study groups often interact virtually and then providing support for virtual study group interaction. We provide both theory and data concerning the use of study groups as virtual teams. We believe that there are important benefits to be gained when study groups make educated decisions about the design and process of their virtual interaction

A Look at How Levels of Vividness and Social Presence Affect Trust in a Decision Aid

Building on past research on trust and social presence, this study explores how multimedia vividness and social presence affect trusting beliefs and subsequently trusting intentions of a computer-based decision aid. An experiment involving 550 subjects examines the effect that decision aid personality and increased levels of vividness (text, voice, and animation) have on social presence, and downstream trust-related constructs including trusting beliefs and trusting intentions. The effect of a user’s computer playfulness on social presence is also investigated. Past research on trust and social presence provide the theoretical foundation for the study and suggest that increased vividness may moderate the effect of decision aid personality on perceptions of social presence, with social presence consequently affecting trusting beliefs