Relationship and Contract Issues of IT Outsourcing – Descriptive Case Studies in China Regions

In spite of the continuous increase in IT outsourcing activities globally, a major percentage of outsourcing deals failed or suffered from serious problems. In China regions where IT outsourcing practice is still at its initial stage, the situation is even serious: there lacks systematic guidance in terms of how to negotiate decent contracts and how to develop sound relationships. In view of this, the current research develops a research framework based on the theories in Economics, Management and Marketing fields, and investigates the effects of both relationship and contract on IT outsourcing success. To support the research framework, evidence was collected from two descriptive case studies conducted in Hong Kong and Mainland China. The case analysis implies the dimensionalities of relationship and contract. What is more, IT outsourcing success is mainly evaluated from the technological benefits client company could gain. A significant contribution of this study to theory is to look into IT outsourcing phenomenon with a balanced view and through an integrated theoretical lens. For practitioners, this research removes executives’ doubts about simultaneously employing both relationship (soft side) and contract (hard side) as governance mechanisms in managing IT outsourcing deals

MOTIVATING IDENTITY-RELATED BEHAVIORS IN ONLINE COMMUNITY – A BROADEN-AND-BUILD PERSPECTIVE

With the pervasiveness of online community, people expand their identities by acquiring memberships of different online communities. Online community not only provides contexts and tools for people to build up and manage new identities, but also evokes people to have emotional experience. This research aims to understand how member’s emotional experience induced by different community artifacts (contents or other members) will influence the participation behaviors through the understanding of their relationships with the online community. This research proposes that emotional experience changes how one identifies with the community, hence influences the behaviors that relate to the self-definitions, e.g. self-disclosure, knowledge contribution, self-presentation and social interaction. Taken the perspective of broaden-and-build theory and social identity theory, this research proposes that positive emotional experience promotes open-minded coping, and consequently expands the self-concepts and become more social inclusive

TO USE A TREE OR A FOREST IN BEHAVIORAL INTENTION

Cloud computing is a new technology that has been applied to education and has e nabled the development of cloud computing classrooms; however, student behavioral intentions toward cloud computing remain unclear. Most researchers have evaluated, integrated, or compared few (1 to 3) theories to examine user behavioral intentions and few have addressed additional theories or models. In this study, we test, compare, and unify six well -known theories, namely, service quality (SQ), self - efficacy (SE), the motivational model (MM), technology acceptance model (TAM), theory of reason action (TRA)/theory of planned behavior (TPB), and innovation diffusion theory (IDT) in the context of cloud computing classrooms. This empirical study was conducted using an online survey. The data collected from the samples (n=478) were analyzed using structural equation modeling. We independently analyzed each of the six theories, formulating a united model. The analysis yielded three valuable findings. First, comparing the explained variance and degree of freedom (df) difference, yielded the following ranking in explained variance: MM=TAM\u3eIDT\u3eTPB\u3eSE=SQ (equal =; superior to\u3e). Second, comparing the explained variance yielded the following ranking in explained variance: MM\u3eTAM\u3eIDT\u3eTPB\u3eSE=SQ. Third, based on the united model of six theories, some factors significantly affect behavioral intention and others do not. The implications of this study are critical for both researchers and practitioners

Developing a Typological Theory Using a Quantitative Approach: A Case of Information Security Deviant Behavior

Different from classification and taxonomy, typology meets the criteria of a theory and is a unique form of theory building. Typology is a good first step in exploring a research topic, and, therefore, we are concerned with building typological theories for underdeveloped topics with limited studies. We propose a four-step approach involving content analysis, multidimensional scaling, judgmental analysis, and empirical testing to guide researchers in developing typological theories in their domains of interest using a quantitative approach that rides on empirical methods and industry wisdom. Previous research in information security has paid little attention to employees’ deviant behavior in the workplace. We, therefore, built a typology of information security deviant behavior as an example to illustrate the theory development process. We discuss the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of this study

The Effects Of Malfunctioning Personalized Services On Users’ Trust And Behaviors

Online merchants adopt web personalization to customize web content to match online users’ needs. Prior research has only looked at the “success” side of web personalization. Little research examines the “problematic” side of web personalization. The objective of this research is to explore how “malfunctioning” personalized web services influence an online user’s trust in the personalization agent and the behavioral intention of that user. In particular, this research looks at two types of malfunctioning personalization: irrelevant recommendations and biased recommendations. We draw on trust theories to develop seven hypotheses to predict the effects of malfunctioning personalized web services. We conducted a study with a personalized music download website. We found that irrelevant recommendations led to low trust in the personalization agent’s competence and integrity, and biased recommendations led to low trust in the integrity of the personalization agent. These findings provide empirical evidence of the possible problems of malfunctioning personalization and help firms understand and quantify the challenges and limitations of incorporating web personalization in their websites

Journey with Ting-Peng Liang in Pacific Asia Information Systems Field

Our respectful old friend Professor Ting-Peng Liang (in short, TP) whom we loved suddenly passed away on May 20, 2021. But we cannot forget his smile and passion, and his inerasable footprints in PACIS, PAJAIS, and AIS Community. He was the founder of PACIS, founding editor-in-chief of PAJAIS, and past president of AIS to list just a few. He was the pioneer who received the first AIS Fellow and the first LEO Award from Asia Pacific. That is why the leaders of the information systems field organized the first ever special tribute session in PACIS 2021 in memory of TP (https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2021/253/

Charm and Bottom Semileptonic Decays

We review the present status of theoretical attempts to calculate the semileptonic charm and bottom decays and then present a calculation of these decays in the light--front frame at the kinematic point $q^2=0$. This allows us to evaluate the form factors at the same value of $q^2$, even though the allowed kinematic ranges for charm and bottom decays are very different. Also, at this kinematic point the decay is given in terms of only one form factor $A_{0}(0)$. For the ratio of the decay rates given by the E653 collaboration we show that the determination of the ratio of the Cabibbo--Kobayashi--Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements is consistent with that obtained from the unitarity constraint. At present, though, the unitarity method still has greater accuracy. Since comparisons of the semileptonic decays into $\rho$ and either electrons or muons will be available soon from the E791 Fermilab experiment, we also look at the massive muon case. We show that for a range of $q^2$ the $SU(3)_F$ symmetry breaking is small even though the contributions of the various helicity amplitudes becomes more complicated. For $B$ decays, the decay $B \rightarrow K^{*} \ell \bar{\ell}$ at $q^2=0$ involves an extra form factor coming from the photon contribution and so is not amenable to the same kind of analysis, leaving only the decay $B \rightarrow K^{*}\nu \bar{\nu}$ as a possibility. As the mass of the decaying particle increases we note that the $SU(3)$ symmetry becomes badly broken at $q^2=0$.Comment: Latex, 19 pages, two figures are attached, a minor change in the manuscript related to thi