Draft Model for Network Information System: Working Paper Series--03-15

This paper presents a model to aid researchers with the task of identifying the elements of a network-based information system in their studies. If the elements are not properly identified, the results of a study may be misinterpreted or lost. The elements of network-based information can be divided into three major categories: Use: people using or benefiting from use of the information system, procedures used by the people, and functional area data; Applications: people developing or maintaining software, development and maintenance procedures, application configuration data, and the applications; Infrastructure: systems personnel, systems procedures, protocols, system data, system software, and hardware. Proper identification of network-based information system elements can make delimiting the study easier and make the results more convincing

Toward iconic-based information technology and application control exception messages: Working paper series--07-09

Users of information technology (IT) commonly encounter exception messages during their interactions with application programs. Exception messages are an important element in accounting application controls which address exposures within specific computer application programs such as payroll, sales processing, and cash disbursements. Exception messages are similar in purpose to the warning messages that appear on consumer products and equipment (e.g., cigarettes, power tools, etc.), in various work environments (e.g., around machinery), and on chemicals. This manuscript reviews the normative elements and information that are included in product, chemical, and environment warnings and proposes that these elements and information should also be included in IT and application control exception messages. It is argued that including these elements will increase the effectiveness, informativeness, and consistency of exception messages. Additionally, we report the results of an experiment carried out to determine if IT and application control exception messages designed to conform to the normative elements, by specifically including descriptive icons, improves user interactions. The results of the experiment confirm that user's behavioral compliance increases when interacting with a system that incorporates iconic-based exception messages

A design tool for novice programmers: Working paper series--00-01

Most program design methods are intended for experienced programmers. Beginner friendly program design methods date back to procedural languages, such as Pascal and Basic. These methods lack connections to objects and events since the languages contained neither objects nor events. This paper presents a summary table and a sketch to get novice programmers started in the process of designing a program. The table organizes information about the program requirements and aides in creating a design for a program that may contain events and objects. The sketch represents the calling relationships among the modules in the program. The table and the sketch can be use with an existing method, such as pseudocode. The tools enhance existing methods of design. A new method is not proposed. The most important philosophies in developing the tools were simplicity and guidance. The table guides the student's design efforts and is simple. The columns collect data about what the program does, when it does its tasks, and what data it uses. The rows relate tasks, events, and objects. The table prompts identification of objects and events and makes high-level functionality stand out. The high-level functional design captured by the table is made explicit in the relations sketch

The effect of qualitative expressions of magnitude in the letter to shareholders on investors' perceptions of earnings performance: Working paper series--03-18

Annual reports issued by publicly traded firms are important documents for communicating the financial performance of a company. In addition to the financial statements, annual reports contain non-numerical information (i.e., written expressions). The letter to shareholders is typically the first non-numerical item representing management's communication that a reader comes to in an annual report. The primary content of the letter to shareholders is a series of written expressions used to describe the company's financial situation. We report how readers' perceptions are influenced by one type of written expression often found in the letter to shareholders: Qualitative expressions of magnitude (e.g., "minimal," "moderate" or "sizable") used to describe the results of operations. Top management (e.g., presidents) very often uses qualitative expressions of magnitude in the letter to shareholders to describe the quantitative financial performance of the company found in the accompanying financial statements. Holding the actual percentage change in corporate earnings and other contextual factors constant, we find that the type of expression used in the letter to shareholders does influence readers' perception of financial performance reported in the financial statements. In addition, we find evidence that less sophisticated investors are influenced more by the use of qualitative expressions of magnitude

Information technology exception messages - An investigation of compliance with the normative standards of warnings: Working paper series--07-08

Users of information technology (IT) frequently encounter "exception messages" during their interactions with computing systems. Exception messages are important points of communication with users of IT and are similar in purpose to warning messages that appear on consumer products and equipment (e.g., cigarettes, power tools, etc.), in various work environments (e.g., around machinery), and on chemicals. This study reviews the normative elements and information that are included in product, chemical, and environment warnings and proposes that these elements and information should also be included in IT exception messages. Also reported are the results of an investigation of a sample of exception messages to determine their degree of compliance with the proposed elements. Results indicate that, relative to normative prescriptions established in the literature on warnings, IT exception messages lack descriptive content

Alternative forms of program documentation for the support of audit review: An experimental investigation of usability: Working paper series--02-06

Auditors and programmers review information systems and application documentation for a number of purposes, including the evaluation and maintenance of controls. Information systems documentation may include application flowcharts, systems flowcharts, logic diagrams, etc. The same coded application procedure can be represented in the application documentation in different ways. Prior research suggests that the form of the documentation may affect the ability of auditors and programmers to efficiently and effectively review the documentation. This study reports an experiment that investigates the effect of alternate forms of documentation on the efficiency and effectiveness of the auditor and programmer's review of documentation. The review task of interest involves the auditor or programmer's identification and evaluation of control procedures within an application. The hypotheses are based upon the theory of cognitive fit which postulates that decision-making performance on a task will be enhanced when there is a cognitive fit (i.e., match) between the information emphasized in the representation and that required by the task. The results indicate that subjects using a spatial representation (flowcharts) took less time to complete the review task than the subjects using a symbolic (structured English) representation. There were, however, no differences in accuracy across the two representations. These results held for both spatial and symbolic review tasks

The perceived hazard of earcons in information technology exception messages: The effect of musical dissonance: Working paper series--10-03

Users of information technology (IT) commonly encounter exception messages during their interactions with application programs to signal a computing problem or error. Exception messages often are accompanied by earcons which are aural messages of a musical nature used in the human-computer interface to provide information and feedback about some computer object, operation, or interaction. Utilizing the notion of musical dissonance earcons were designed that vary as to their degree of aural disagreeableness along a rank order scale. It is hypothesized that in the context of IT exception messages earcons with a higher degree of musical dissonance (aural disagreeableness) would be perceived as communicating a higher degree of hazard associated with the underlying computing problem signaled by an exception message. Participants rated the degree of hazard of each earcon presented in a random order in an experiment. Results of the data analysis indicate partial support of the hypothesis. The implications are that it may be possible to increase the degree of hazard matching in IT environments by designing earcons that accompany exception messages to communicate different levels of perceived hazard of an underlying computer problem

Ethics of computer use: A survey of student attitudes: Working paper series--06-02

The potential for misuse of computer systems and resources has been an important issue for many years. The rapid growth in use of remote access systems, the use of the internet and distributed systems for financial and other sensitive transactions, and the expansion in the availability of products in digital form is causing ethical issues surrounding misuse of computer resources to become an increasingly serious problem. This paper surveys ethical attitudes of a set of undergraduate business majors. The survey presents sets of scenarios in which students are asked to indicate whether a particular action is ethical or unethical using a 7 level Likert scale. Alternative base scenarios have been designed to present ethical issues relating to various types of unauthorized access to computer resources. Other sets of base scenarios focus on the use of computers to illegally copy products (software and music recordings). In addition, for each base scenario, alternative sub-scenarios are presented in which the motives of the individual vary between intellectual curiosity, securing resources for personal use, profit, and malice toward the affected entity. The scenarios are designed to provide an evaluation of how the level of malicious intent in the action affects the students' perception of the degree to which the action represents a breach of ethics. Results of this survey suggest that the intent of the individual engaging in unauthorized access or illegal copying does substantially affect student perceptions of the degree to which the behavior is a violation of ethics. In general, actions undertaken for profit or malicious intent are judged to be less ethical than the same actions undertaken for intellectual curiosity or to secure resources for personal use. In addition, a very strong majority of the students surveyed believe that any active participation in downloading is unethical

The Effect of Exercise Date Uncertainty on Employee Stock Option Value

The IASC recently recommended that employee compensation in the form of stock options be measured at the 'fair value' based on an option pricing model and the value should be recognized in financial statements. This follows adoption of "SFAS No. 123" in the United States, which requires firms to estimate the value of employee stock options using either a Black-Scholes or binomial model. Most US firms used the B-S model for their 1996 financial statements. This study assumes that option life follows a Gamma distribution, allowing the variance of option life to be separate from its expected life. The results indicate the adjusted Black-Scholes model could overvalue employee stock options on the grant date by as much as 72 percent for nondividend paying firms and by as much as 84 percent for dividend paying firms. The results further demonstrate the sensitivity of ESO values to the volatility of the expected option life, a parameter that the B-S model or a Poisson process cannot accommodate. The variability of option life has an especially big impact on ESO value for firms whose ESOs have a relatively short life (5 years, for example) and high employee turnover. For such firms, the results indicate a binomial option pricing model is more appropriate for estimating ESO value than the B-S type model. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2003.