Assessing the Risk in E-Commerce

This study identifies the risks to e-commerce using a diverse sample of Internet and other firms by assessing the stock market reaction to hacker attacks. The research issue is, do expert business risk assessors perceive that Internet activity and e- commerce risks per se generate incremental risk of financial distress

Free cash flow, agency costs, and the affordability method of advertising budgeting

This is the published version. Copyright 2002 by the American Marketing Association.The allocation of excess cash has long been recognized in the finance literature as an important aspect of the basic agency conflict between managers and owners. In the advertising budgeting context, marketing scholars report that firms possessing high levels of cash tend to spend more on advertising than what seems necessary or desirable. Indeed, this positive link between excess cash and advertising expenditures constitutes a part of what is commonly referred to as the affordability method of advertising budgeting. Surprisingly, there has been little research that attempts to view this association as a manifestation of agency costs. Therefore, this article examines whether agency costs, as measured by managerial ownership, moderate the relationship between excess cash and advertising expenditures. On the basis of received theory, the authors conceptualize that agency costs will first decrease, then increase, and then decrease again with the level of managerial ownership

Determinants of Budgeted Information Technology Expenditures

Information technology expenditures vary across firms and across industries; however, very little empirical research has investigated the factors influencing the level of these expenditures. The object of this paper is to present theory and evidence of the determinants of corporate IT budgets. Using InformationWeek data, we find that budgeted IT expenditures are significantly influenced by the strategic role that IT plays in an industry, and by the level of complexity arising from industry and firm-level factors. The level of concentration within the industry has a significant impact on IT budgets. A number of firm-level factors also affect IT budgets, including prior IT investments, resource availability, business volatility, and the level of diversification. This suggests that managers should adjust for these firm and industry-level factors when comparing their IT spending to selected benchmark firms

Information Technology and the Volatility of Firm Performance

This study investigates the impact of IT investments and several contextual variables on the volatility of future earnings. We find evidence that IT investments strongly increases the volatility of future earnings and that four contextual factors - industry concentration, sales growth, diversification, and leverage - strongly moderate IT's effect on earnings volatility. It is notable that while the main effect of IT spending on earnings volatility is strongly positive, not all of the moderators are. This suggests that there are conditions under which the positive risk-return relation can be either offset or even reversed. Taken together, these results suggest an explanation for what has recently been termed the "new productivity paradox", i.e. the apparent under-investment in information technology despite evidence of highly positive returns for doing so

Mineshafts on Treasure Island: A Relief Map of the eBay Fraud Landscape

As explorers once opened up new trade passages, thus attracting hordes of both honest traders and dishonest pirates, so too has the Internet opened new lanes of commerce and attracted the modern versions of the same. One of the widest of these lanes undoubtedly runs through eBay, located at http://www.ebay.com . From its humble beginnings as a little-known auction site hawking PEZ candy dispensers, broken laser pointers and other garage-sale pickings, eBay has transformed itself into a reputable public sales powerhouse where a Gulfstream II jet, million-dollar sports artifacts, and Madonna’s wedding tiara might easily change hands.

The Value Relevance Of Announcements Of Transformational Information Technology Investments

In this paper, we examine the influence of IT strategic role to extend the findings of Im et al. (2001), Chatterjee et al. (2002) and Dos Santos et al. (1993). Specifically, we demonstrate that IT strategic role can explain how IT investments in each of the IT strategic roles might affect the firm\u27s competitive position and ultimately firm value. We find positive, abnormal returns to announcements of IT investments by firms making transformative IT investments, and with membership in industries with transform IT strategic roles. The results of previous research are not found to be significant when IT strategic role is included as an explanatory variable. These results provide support for the value of capturing the IT strategic role of a firm\u27s IT-related competitive maneuvering in studies striving to understand the conditions under which IT investments are likely to produce out-of-the-ordinary, positive returns

Assessing the Impact of Premier Information Systems Research over Time

In this study we examine the influence of premier information systems research over time to assess the maturity of the Information Systems (IS) field and its impact on subsequent IS and non-IS research. 19,357 citations from the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) (1982-2004) are attributed to 879 articles published in MIS Quarterly (MISQ), Information Systems Research (ISR), and the IS articles from Management Science (MS) between 1982 and 2004, and this number continues to increase over time. The results suggest that research in premier IS journals has an influence on other disciplines as 7,137 citations come from outside the IS discipline and this number continues to increase over time. Of particular note is the consistent increase over time in citations of premier IS research articles from the management, engineering and physical sciences, organizational behavior, and computer science disciplines. Given recent debates regarding the IT artifact, we also directly test the impact of articles that address the IT artifact and those that do not. We find that articles that directly address the IT artifact are cited significantly more often than those that do not, consistent with arguments made by Benbasat et al. [2003]

Assessing Leading Institutions, Faculty, and Articles in Premier Information Systems Research Journals

This study provides a current assessment of the impact of various Information Systems (IS) articles, and the productivity of IS researchers and institutions. Using a data set of Information Systems articles that spans 15 years, we conducted a scientometric study of the field. The articles are drawn from three premier IS journals. We use citation analysis to demonstrate the impact of articles on institutions and individuals in the IS field. In addition, we identify IS topics with the highest impact. The results indicate that leading productive institutions have changed over time, and problematically, institutions outside of North America are poorly represented. We compare our results with earlier productivity findings created using alternative metrics

The Consequences of Information Technology Control Weaknesses on Management Information Systems: The Case of Sarbanes-Oxley Internal Reports

In this paper, we investigate the association between the strength of information technology controls over management information systems and the subsequent forecasting ability of the information produced by those systems. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 highlights the importance of information system controls by requiring management and auditors to report on the effectiveness of internal controls over the financial reporting component of the firm’s management information systems. We hypothesize and find evidence that management forecasts are less accurate for firms with information technology material weaknesses in their financial reporting system than the forecasts for firms that do not have information technology material weaknesses. In addition, we find that this association appears to be driven by control weaknesses most directly related to data processing integrity. Our results support the contention that information technology controls, as a part of the management information system, affect the quality of the information produced by the system