Collegial Mentorship

Mentoring is typically thought of as a top-down process, but it can also be based on collegial mentorship. This article describes an example of peer-to-peer mentoring that helped advance research in the field in field of information systems

A Collaborative Project Management Approach and a Framework for Its Supporting Systems

The project management (PM) paradigm has changed during the past decade due to the globalization of business and advancement of information technology (IT). Increasingly, projects involve members from different geographical locations more than at any other time in history. Traditional PM methods may be inadequate to manage distributed projects, and new information systems are needed to support distributed PM. This article provides the rationale for a collaborative PM approach to manage distributed projects and proposes a conceptual framework for the collaborative PM software development. The objective is to present a collaborative PM framework that can guide further research and development in this challenging area

Mitigating the Security Intention-Behavior Gap: The Moderating Role of Required Effort on the Intention-Behavior Relationship

Although users often express strong positive intentions to follow security policies, these positive intentions fail to consistently translate to behavior. In a security setting, the inconsistency between intentions and behavior—termed the intention-behavior gap—is particularly troublesome, as a single failure to enact positive security intentions may make a system vulnerable. We address a need in security compliance literature to better understand the intention-behavior gap by explaining how an omnipresent competing intention—the user’s desire to minimize required effort—negatively moderates the relationship between positive intentions and actual security behavior. Moreover, we posit that this moderating effect is not accounted for in extant theories used to explain behavioral information security, introducing an opportunity to broadly impact information security research to more consistently predict behavior. In three experiments, we found that high levels of required effort negatively moderated users’ intentions to follow security policies. Controlling for this moderating effect substantially increased the explained variance in security policy compliance. The results suggest that security researchers should be cognizant of the existence of competing intentions, such as the desire to minimize required effort, which may moderate the security intention-behavior relationship. Otherwise, such competing intentions may cause unexpected inconsistencies between users’ intentions to behave securely and their actual security behavior

SUPPORTING JOINT APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT (JAD) WITH ELECTRONIC MEETING SYSTEMS: A FIELD STUDY

One of the more common approaches to involving users in the system development process is called JAE) (Joint Application DevelopmenO. The JAD approach is based on highly structured, facilitated meetings and, as such, has the potential to be supported by Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS). A multiple-site field study was conducted in which JAD meetings - both traditional and electronic - were observed. Some differences between JAD and JAD supported by EMS were found. The quality of group member participation was more equal in supported JAD meetings, but supported JAD meetings lacked the session discipline of traditional JAD, Further, conflict resolution (closure) emphasized in traditional JAD was not achieved m several electronic sessions. Overall session management activities - the responsibility of the facilitator for integration of the session with other life cycle activities - was weaker in JAD supported by EMS

Towards a Personalized Assistance in Distributed Group Facilitation

With the advancement of group decision support systems (GDSS), facilitation has been regarded as one of the most important means in enhancing the outcome of group decisions. Many researchers have spent great efforts in creating useful methodologies and techniques to better support group facilitation. However, most of the research in the current literature deals more with facilitation targeted at a group-level than an individual level. With the increasingly available personalization techniques found in e-commerce, personalized facilitation seems to be a natural direction in group system facilitation research to deal with the needs of individual members for the overall gain of the group. In this paper, we address the needs for personalized facilitation in the context of the “EasyWinWin” framework in software requirements analysis by proposing a conceptual framework of personalized facilitation, developing a system architecture towards personalized facilitation and identifying key functions for a personalized facilitation system

INTEGRATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGIES TO SUPPORT CONSULTATION IN AN INFORMATION CENTER

This paper presents an approach for integrating different types of information systems technologies to support the functions of an Information Center (IC). A knowledge based system, Information Center Expert/Help Service (ICE/H), has been developed to provide support for the help services of an IC. A general process model to represent the consultation process in an IC is described. Based on this model, an architecture to support the consultation process has been developed. The architecture depicts the use of a knowledge management system, a data management system and a communication (E-mail) system to emulate the consultation process. The ICE/H system has been implemented using this architecture to support an IC with 5000 users

On The Theoretical Foundation for Data Flow Analysis in Workflow Management

In workflow management, the data flow perspective specifies how data are produced and consumed by activities in a workflow. Data flow analysis can detect data flow anomalies occurring in a workflow while its control flow can be syntactically error-free. Currently, most commercial workflow management systems do not provide the tools for data flow analysis at design time. We have previously proposed a data flow analysis approach and developed the basic concepts and the essential algorithms. As another step forward, this paper examines the issues of data flow anomalies and their verification from a theoretical point of view and validates the correctness of the proposed approach

Design Principles for Special Purpose, Embodied, Conversational Intelligence with Environmental Sensors (SPECIES) Agents

As information systems increase their ability to gather and analyze data from the natural environment and as computational power increases, the next generation of human-computer interfaces will be able to facilitate more lifelike and natural interactions with humans. This can be accomplished by using sensors to non-invasively gather information from the user, using artificial intelligence to interpret this information to perceive users’ emotional and cognitive states, and using customized interfaces and responses based on embodied-conversational-agent (avatar) technology to respond to the user. We refer to this novel and unique class of intelligent agents as Special Purpose Embodied Conversational Intelligence with Environmental Sensors (SPECIES) agents. In this paper, we build on interpersonal communication theory to specify four essential design principles of all SPECIES agents. We also share findings of initial research that demonstrates how SPECIES agents can be deployed to augment human tasks. Results of this paper organize future research efforts in collectively studying and creating more robust, influential, and intelligent SPECIES agents