IT Project Manager Decision-Making Authority: An Empirical Examination of Antecedents and Consequences

Successful management of IT projects remains a challenge for many organizations. Given the cross-functional nature of IT projects, one of the primary and most difficult tasks for project managers is coordinating the activities of a diverse group of project stakeholders. Using the pluralist perspective of power as a lens for understanding project conflict, this paper asserts that a key factor in accomplishing this task is project manager decision-making authority. The results of this study provide evidence that an organization’s dependence on information systems to provide strategic value, a project manager’s vertical position within a firm’s hierarchy, and the project organizational structure adopted for IT initiatives are all significant predictors of an IT project manager’s decision-making authority. In turn, decision-making authority has significant positive relationships with the IT project performance variables of budget, schedule, and functionality, as well as the product performance variable of organizational IT satisfaction

Social Influence and Willingness to Pay for Massively Multiplayer Online Games: An Empirical Examination of Social Identity Theory

The development and sale of massively multiplayer online games has emerged as a significant part of the 21st century entertainment industry. Yet, firms competing in this sector of the videogame industry vary in their ability to generate revenue from their products. We contend that social influence constitutes one primary factor that determines which massively multiplayer online game individuals consume. Using social identity theory for our theoretical underpinning, we argue that the identity that membership in important social groups provides influences individuals. We investigate the effects that two identity-related constructs, consumer-brand identification and social identity complexity, have on satisfaction and willingness to pay a subscription fee for a massively multiplayer online game. Our results suggest that social influence has a complex relationship with an individual’s willingness to pay. Consumer-brand identification and social identity complexity had significant direct relationships with willingness to pay, while consumer-brand identification had a significant indirect relationship with willingness to pay through satisfaction. Additionally, social identity complexity significantly moderated the relationship between consumer-brand identification and willingness to pay. Overall, our results support social identity theory’s ability to explain how social influence occurs for individuals that play massively multiplayer online games

Social Influence and Willingness to Pay for Online Video Games

Social influence is an important factor in guiding individual behavior, including purchase decisions. The online gaming industry has demonstrated itself to be one of the most successful business sectors to integrate the Internet into its business models. The purpose of the study is to investigate the influence an individual’s social environment has on willingness-to-pay a subscription fee for an online video game. Specifically, social influence is conceptualized as occurring on three levels within an individual’s social environment: the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. Using a survey research methodology, this study examines the effects that these influences have on expected benefit, willingness-to-pay, and each other

Internet Banking and Customers’ Acceptance in Jordan: The Unified Model’s Perspective

Internet banking in Jordan has developed rapidly since the year 2001, as most Jordanian banks have adopted some form of Internet usage and launched websites to serve their customers. This study extends the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) by adding perceived facilitating conditions and personality dimensions, two factors that have been suggested as important determinants of technology adoption. The frame of the study was “counter bank customers” sampled in three banks from three major cities in Jordan. The results indicated partial support for the UTAUT with respect to the predictors’ effect on behavioral intentions. The extended model supported the influence of performance expectancy, social influence, self-efficacy, perceived trust, and locus of control on the individual’s intentions to use Internet banking. Implications for research and practice, limitations, future research, and conclusions are discussed

An Empirical Comparison of Consumer Innovation Adoption Models: Implications for Subsistence Marketplaces

So called “pro-poor” innovations may improve consumer wellbeing in subsistence marketplaces. However, there is little research that integrates the area with the vast literature on innovation adoption. Using a questionnaire where respondents were asked to provide their evaluations about a mobile banking innovation, this research fills this gap by providing empirical evidence of the applicability of existing innovation adoption models in subsistence marketplaces. The study was conducted in Bangladesh among a geographically dispersed sample. The data collected allowed an empirical comparison of models in a subsistence context. The research reveals the most useful models in this context to be the Value Based Adoption Model and the Consumer Acceptance of Technology model. In light of these findings and further examination of the model comparison results the research also shows that consumers in subsistence marketplaces are not just motivated by functionality and economic needs. If organizations cannot enhance the hedonic attributes of a pro-poor innovation, and reduce the internal/external constraints related to adoption of that pro-poor innovation, then adoption intention by consumers will be lower

Social Influence and Willingness to Pay for Online Video Games

Business models integrating the internet into their value propositions have demonstrated varying levels of viability. In particular, firms offering information-based products via the internet commonly are unable to generate sufficient revenue and, consequently, experience financial losses. Researchers continue to examine factors which motivate individuals\u27 willingness-to-pay for online content. One factor from the marketing literature which has been argued to affect consumer behavior is social influence. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of the three levels of social influence, micro-, meso-, and macro-, on both willingness-to-pay for online content and each other. This is accomplished by examining social influence in the context of online gaming, which has proven to be one of the most successful industries in integrating the internet as a delivery channel for information-based goods. Our results suggested that all levels of social influence play a considerable role in the product valuation process. While micro-level influences, such as attitude, arguably serve as the best predictors of WTP, we found that macro-level social influence, in the form of reputation, played the greatest role in affecting the formation of individual attitudes and behaviors. This was due not only to its direct effect on WTP, but also a consequence of several significant indirect effects. Our hypothesis that an interaction effect occurs between social influences such that their effect on WTP would be greater than the sum of their parts was not supported. Nonetheless, our study demonstrates social influence\u27s ability to affect an individual is not a straight forward process. Only examining the relationships between constructs occurring at different levels of social structure does the magnitude of interaction which occurs between them becomes apparent

An Exploratory Examination of Antecedents to Software Piracy: A CrossCultural Comparison

Software piracy continues to be a growing problem on a global scale for software developers. The purpose of this study was to conduct a crosscultural comparison of a model predicting the intent of individuals to pirate software using two subsamples: Jordan and the US. Our results suggest that the Theory of Reasoned Action provides a strong predictive ability for our US subsample, but not for our Jordanian sample. Additionally, public selfconsciousness, ideology, and religiosity varied in their ability to moderate the relationships of TRA across cultures. Overall, our results suggest culture plays an important role in affecting software piracy, and individual behavior in general