Communications Design for Co-Op: A Group Decision Support System

Decision Support Systems (DSSs), computer-based systems intended to assist managers in preparing and analyzing decisions, have been single-user systems for most of the past decade. Only recently has DSS research begun to study the implications of the fact that most complex managerial decisions involve multiple decision makers and analysts. A number of tools for facilitating group decisions have been proposed under the label Group Decision Support Systems (GDSSs). One of the most important functions of a GDSS is to provide problem-oriented services for communication among decision makers. On the basis of an analysis of the communication requirements in various group decision settings, this paper presents an architecture for defining and enforcing dynamic application-level protocols that organize decision group interaction. The architecture has been implemented on a network of personal computers in Co-oP, a GDSS for cooperative group decision making based on interactive, multiple-criteria decision methods

Effectiveness of Web-Based Instruction for ESL Students: An Empirical Study with Focus on Gender, Ethnicity, and Instructional Media

Students with English as a Second Language (ESL) make up a growing student population across the U.S. As Web-based instruction continues to gain wide acceptance, educators need to ensure that ESL students are not placed at a disadvantage due to language and cultural barriers. This study compared the performance of ESL students in three different settings - Web, lecture, and lecture with Web. The results showed that the lecture group performed significantly better than the Web group. Ethnicity contributed to a significant difference in performance in the lecture group. The study found no differences in performance due to gender. Students with PC ownership with Internet access and those with longer residency in the U.S. performed significantly better irrespective of the setting. The paper concludes with lessons learned and offers helpful suggestions in teaching Web courses to ESL and minority students

Emergent Groups for Emergency Response – Theoretical Foundations and Information Design Implications

Experience from recent crises strongly suggests that involvement of ordinary individuals or groups of people in emergency response is a critical contribution to large-scale disaster relief, especially at the beginning of the crisis. While not meant to displace response from trained authorities, they should not be regarded as a liability but as immediately available assets. Instead, the issue is to find ways to support these emergent groups in the middle of a large-scale disaster, when formal responders have yet to arrive at the scene and information is scarce, confusing, depressing, and not informative enough to support rescue work. In this paper, we investigate theoretical foundations that explain the motivational basis, group dynamics and information and communication needs of a helping community. Given the central role of information and communication technologies (ICT), we suggest how critical information should be gathered, presented and disseminated using a workflowbased template design to assist emergent groups to help others

Establishing Interagency Collaboration in Large-Scale Systems Development: Lessons Learned from an E-government Project for Trade and Transport Facilitation

Based on recommendations of various international and intergovernmental bodies, many countries have adopted the concept of an Internet-based “Single Window” with an expectation that it would allow seamless G2G, G2B, B2G, and B2B information exchange within and across borders to enhance the facilitation of the international trade. The implementation of such effort requires unprecedented interagency collaboration which is seen as an unnatural act between non-consenting agents. To gain insights on how the interagency collaborative platform is established and maintained, we participate in the large-scale e-government project for trade and transport facilitation in Thailand, examine activities that have been carried out during the first phases, and assist the establishment of a collaborative relationship. From our study, we generate lessons learned that offer some practical ideas for policy-makers and project managers as well as issues for future research

Post-Adoption Behavior of Digital Media: The Merge of U&G Theory and Affect Event Theory

We incorporate two streams of IS research: 1) the quality of the systems in determining systems success and 2) the effects of online incidents including online waiting interruptions and service failures on consumer behaviors, to understand three post-adoption behaviors in the use of digital media; continuance intention, recommendation, and complaint. We investigate digital media use from the perspectives of affective events theory and U & G motivations. The results of PLS analysis with 415 responses from an online survey suggest that usage behaviors are determined by perceived site quality and cognitive appraisal of incidents handling (CAIH) and satisfaction mediated the effect of positive and negative affects to post-adoption behaviors. Information and Entertainment motivations are two salient motivations of digital media use. However, interactivity shows no effect to satisfaction of digital media use. CFA and path analysis attest the dimensionality of constructs and the structure relationships of the integrated model

Investor relation internet disclosure and the cost of equity capital: an empirical analysis

This dissertation contributes to the academic literature by examining two issues in relation to corporate Internet disclosure. First, we make a detailed content analysis of the investor relation section on the Web sites of US companies to gain insight into the type and amount of information provided to investors on corporate Web sites and to establish a measure of the Internet disclosure level. We find that companies are not exploiting the full potential of this disclosure medium. In a second study, we examine the relation between the cost of equity capital and the disclosure level of information in the investor relation section of corporate Web sites. We regress the cost of equity capital, obtained from a comprehensive discounted cash flow model, on the disclosure measure from the content analysis study to examine the relationship between these two variables. For a cross-sectional sample of 141 non-financial US companies, we find a negative and highly significant association between the cost of equity capital and level of Internet investor relation disclosure. The results remain significant after controlling for potentially influential variables such as different risk characteristics and firm size. The results indicate thus that Internet disclosure is useful to investors