An Exploratory Investigation Of The InternetInvolvement: Instrument Development, MeasurementAnd Implications For Electronic Commerce

With the advent of the Internet or the World Wide Web, economic entities such as business firms and consumers are converging to the new frontier for economic exchange: Electronic Commerce. Businesses are investing in infrastructure, content and transaction specific relationships paving the way for electronic commerce over the Internet. But the antecedent of any consumer related activities over the Internet requires afundamental understanding of the Involvement construct as related to the Internet. The concept of involvement has played a significant role in explaining consumer behavior in the marketing literature as well as in developing and formulating marketing strategies and policies. In this paper, we focus on developing and validating the Involvement construct as related to the Internet from an electronic commerce perspective. Data was collected for this purpose and initial analysis reveals that the construct is likely to be multi-dimensional and each dimension taps into two aspects of Internet Involvement. One representing the aesthetic or fascinating aspect of the Internet such as animations, Java applets, fancy graphics, etc., and the other representing the value creating aspect of the Internet such as easy access to interesting and valuable information, product or service offerings, knowledge enhancements etc. This paper contributes to the literature by investigating a crucial concept underlying many consumer behaviors such as exposure to media, processing of advertising information, response to persuasive messages, word-of-mouth communications about new products or services, etc. in the context of electronic commerce

An Examination of Resilience in Healthcare Information Systems in the Context of Natural Disasters

Contemporary healthcare information systems (HIS) rely heavily on IT/IS infrastructures to manage primary and essential services. Given that hospitals and HIS have been facing various disruptions from disasters, it is essential to take an integrative approach to help prepare effective coping strategies in disaster situations. To date, little is known about how HIS resilience is achieved. While Information Systems Assurance, IT Capability and Effective HIS use are important, the high degrees of HIS complexity and Interdependence of health information systems also have an impact on resilience. This study integrates a socio-technical perspective and theorizes the effect of disaster experience and influential factors for HIS resilience. HIS resilience will enable healthcare organizations to sustain the continuity of effective performance in terms of critical medical services in a disaster situation

Collective Sense-Making through the Twitter Service during the 2011 Egypt Revolution

This study explores the role of Twitter during the 2011 Egypt revolution. Drawing on the body of literatures on collective behavior in general and social movement in particular, we investigate the concept of sense-making which is considered as a key aspect of collective behavior. Our special focus will be placed on analyzing the changing patterns of hashtags by applying the Markov-Switching Model. The analysis of hashtags is expected to explicate (1) how the collective sense-making process emerges over time through Hashtags, and (2) what the implications of those sense-making processes are in the particular situation of the 2011 Egypt revolution. A few theoretical and practical implications will be discussed

A Managerial Decision Support System for Client/Server Computer Network Configuration: A Performance and Resource Utilization Approach

Network design and configuration is frequently studied from a technical perspective alone. However, there are substantial managerial decisions involved in long-term network development and maintenance, which attempts to balance the conflicting demands of cost minimization and faster network performance. Additionally, different network performance measures lead to different design and cost considerations. This research develop a DSS model to aid managers in designing and planning network configurations to maximize resource utilization and minimize network access and application delay times

A Two Stage Investigation of the Determinants of Information Systems Outsourcing

Outsourcing has recently emerged as akey method of managing Information Systems especially since the report about Eastman Kodak and IBM\u27s outsourcing partnership in 1989 (Loh and Venkatraman, 1992a, 1992b). The importance of outsourcing is partially illustrated by the fact that there are myriad conflicting arguments both for and against outsourcing (Chaudhury et al, 1989, 1995; Gantz, 1990; Lacity and Hirschheim, 1993; Nam et al, 1995a, 1995b). Most outsourcing studies have focused on the investigation of the determinants of the decision to outsource by clients. Transaction cost economics (TCE) theory has recently been used in the study of the determinants of outsourcing (Lacity and Hirschheim, 1993; Nam et al, 1995a, 1995b). The theory of transaction cost economics (TCE) was originally formulated to address the make versus buy choice (Anderson and Coughlan, 1987; Erramilli and Rao, 1993) In TCE, Williamson (1989, 1987, 1981, 1979) proposed that firms should insource when they expect opportunistic behavior by the vendors. In particular when clients are locked-in with vendors, vendors\u27 opportunistic behavior will significantly impair the clients\u27 interests. This statement implies that attributes of existing relationships such as opportunism affect the firms\u27 subsequent make-or-buy decision with the incumbent vendors. However, most prior empirical research on TCE has treated each sourcing decision as an independent event (Masten, 1984; Walker and Walker, 1987, 1984) thereby disregarding the prior relationships that affect the subsequent sourcing decisions. Therefore, any outsourcing study must explicitly incorporate the role of prior ties in its analytical framework (Gulati, 1995). In the outsourcing context, it has been reported that very often clients continue their relationships with vendors. Also, many firms have to decide whether they should continue the outsourcing relationships with the vendors or not. Factors that affect continuation of the relationships are different from factors that affect the initial outsourcing behavior because client firms have locked-in relationships with vendors. According to Seabright et al (1992), and Levinthal et al (1988), prior relationships need to be investigated in order to study the subsequent relationships between clients and vendors. This study willfocus on i) the determinants of the outsourcing decisions and ii) the tendency to persist in the locked-in outsourcing relationship. We investigate the factors that determine outsourcing decisions in two stages. In the first stage, both insourcing and outsourcing firms are studied to investigate the determinants of make-or-buy decision. In the second stage, only outsourcing firms are considered in order to study the intention to continue with the relationship. Two dimensions are proposed in order to conceptualize the diverse types of outsourcing between clients and vendors (Nam et al, 1994a, 1994b). The first dimension is the extent of substitution by IS vendors and the second dimension is the strategic impact of IS applications. There are two types of strategic impact of IS applications: differentiation and cost reduction. The first dimension is proposed from the IS vendors\u27 point of view while the second dimension is proposed from the client firms\u27 point of view. Based on these two dimensions, four types of outsourcing relationships are proposed. These four types are support, reliance, alignment, and alliance. The support cell has a low extent of substitution and low strategic impact. This cell corresponds to the traditional IS vendors service. Vendorsare usually restricted to non-core IS activities and the size of contract is small. The reliance cell has a high extent of substitution and low strategic impact. The IBM and Kodak outsourcing example corresponds to this cell. In recent years, the trend ofoutsourcing has moved from the support cell to the reliance cell. The alignment cell has a low extent of substitution and high strategic impact. Examples in this cell are mostly IS consulting types of services. Even though vendors are not significantly involved with client firms\u27 IS operations, IS vendors significantly influence clients\u27 IS operations. The alliance cell has a high extent of substitution and high strategic impact. Outside vendors not only substitute in-house IS operations but also contribute to clients\u27 competitive advantages through provision of important IS functional activities. In the first stage, hypotheses are developed based on transaction and non-transaction cost factors with respect to the two proposed outsourcing dimensions. Threetransaction cost factors are studied as determinants of the two dimensions: asset specificity, uncertainty, potential number of vendors. Four non-transaction cost factors are also investigated. These four non-TCE factors are IT competency, IS influence, heterogeneity of information systems, and decision analysis effort. Multiple regressions are used to test hypotheses in the first stage. In the second stage, hypotheses are proposed based on prior relationships between clients and vendors in order to studythe determinants of the intention to continue with the outsourcing relationships. Prior relationships are represented by the four types of outsourcing relationships based on two dimensions of outsourcing, vendors performance in terms of client satisfaction, vendors\u27 opportunistic behavior and the length of prior relationships. Logistic regression is employed to test hypotheses in the second stage. Questionnaires were developed based on interviews with IS manager and pretested. Following a pretest, 800 questionnaires were sent to senior IS managers in the U.S. A follow-up letter was mailed to those who had not responded after about three weeks. In total 154 usable questionnaires were received representing a response rate of 19.25%. Out of 154, 93 respondedas outsourcing firms and 61 responded as insourcing firms

Choice of Information: A Study of Twitter News Sharing during the 2009 Israel-Gaza Conflict

The study explores determinants of the prominence of public information sources in Twitter. Twitter users are conceptualized as the “gated” who play an active role in selecting and distributing news sources through their Twitter messages. Using Twitter data on the Israel-Gaza conflict, the study identifies three determinants that characterize information sources: whether they are produced by mainstream media, whether they are filtered through aggregator services, and the number of in-links to the source media generated by the online public

Computational Modeling of Business Processes

In this paper we investigate the modeling and analysis of business processes with the goal of improving their efficiency and effectiveness. The main objective of this research is to develop a computational model of business processes that takes into account relevant economic, social, organizational facets of a business process. The research develops a computational tool that will help uncover insights into the interdependencies among agents, activities, and resources in a business process

A Sociotechnical View of Information Diffusion and Social Changes: From Reprint to Retweet

This research in progress study explores the role of Twitter during the 2011 Egypt revolution. Drawing on a research method of historians who investigated the role of print technology during the Protestant Reformation in Western Europe during the early 16th century, we explicate the socio-technical implications of information diffusion through retweeting during radical social changes. Through retweet analysis, we identify inseparable dynamics of (1) existence of a few opinion leaders, (2) a large number of supporting individuals, and (3) the emergence of attendant collective sense-making process as a critical antecedent of radical social changes

Key challenges to digital financial services in emerging economies: the Indian context

YesPurpose: Digital Financial Services (DFS) have substantial prospect to offer a number of reasonable, appropriate and secure banking services to the underprivileged in developing countries through pioneering technologies such as mobile phone based solutions, digital platforms and electronic money models. DFS allow unbanked people to obtain access to financial services through digital technologies. However, DFS face tough challenges of adoption. Realising this, the aim of this paper is to identify such challenges and develop a framework. Design/Methodology/Approach: We develop a framework of challenges by utilising Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) and Fuzzy MICMAC approach. We explored eighteen such unique set of challenges culled from the literature and further gathered data from two sets of expert professionals. In the first phase, we gathered data from twenty-nine professionals followed by eighteen professionals in the second phase. All were pursuing Executive MBA programme from a metropolitan city in South India. The implementation of ISM and fuzzy MICMAC provided a precise set of driving, linkage and dependent variables that were used to derive a framework. Findings: ISM model is split in eight different levels. The bottom level consists of a key driving challenge V11 (i.e. high cost and low return related problem) whereas the topmost level consists of two highly dependent challenges namely V1 (i.e. risk of using digital services) and V14 (i.e. lack of trust). The prescribed ISM model shows the involvement of ‘high cost and low return related problem (V11)’, which triggers further challenges of DFS. Originality/value: None of the existing research has explored key challenges to DFS in detail nor formulated a framework for such challenges. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper on DFS that attempts to collate its challenges and incorporate them in a hierarchical model using ISM and further divide them into four categories of factors using fuzzy MICMAC analysis