An examination of home internet and mobile device use in the U.S

It is important to understand the determinants of the extent and types of activities performed by home Internet users and by mobile device users, as well as the interactions between these modes of usage. Few studies have looked at the interactions between these two channels of digital com-munication. While most prior research has been based upon surveys of attitudes toward and inten-tions to use a technology (and lack a final link to actual usage), in this study, the extent of actual home Internet use, mobile device use, and the simultaneity between these modes of usage are ex-amined. We find that, overall, mobile device use is enhanced by home Internet use, while the two act as substitutes in the case of advanced and sensitive applications

Organizational Commitment, Knowledge Management Initiative Importance And Success Likelihood As Antecedents Of Knowledge Sharing Intention: An Exploratory Study

Using an experimental design to explore the individual and interactive effects of organizational commitment, likelihood of success of a knowledge management initiative, and importance ascribed to the KM initiative by a firm on a knowledge worker’s intention to share her knowledge, we find that importance by itself positively impacts knowledge sharing intent. The effect of importance appears to be enhanced (super-additively) by success likelihood. Organizational commitment is substitutable by the two factors of importance and success likelihood. Implications of these reported 2 and 3-way interactions are that seemingly logical influences may in actuality be conditional on other variables, i.e., their influences are configural. A KM effort that disregards any element of the triad does so at its own risk

Procurement of IT Consulting Services and Firm-Specific Characteristics

Information technology investments and the management consulting industry witnessed unprecedented growth in the last decade. This led to regulators\u27 (SEC and Congress) allegations that consulting services that are provided by incumbent auditors may be disguised extra payments to auditors for favorable financial reporting. However, there may be alternative valid reasons for procurement of consulting. Under new legislation (proclaimed in the aftermath of spectacular failures like Enron and Worldcom), publicly traded corporations that engage professional services firms to provide both audit services and consulting services must now disclose the extent and nature of these services. Using the data made available by these new mandated disclosures and using the theoretical backdrop of the resource-based view (RBV), this paper examines whether investments by firms in consulting services follow predictable patterns driven by economic factors. Thus, rather than examine whether IT consulting has any ex-post value or whether procurement of consulting impairs auditor independence, this study focuses on whether investments, ex-ante, follow logical patterns consistent with microeconomic principles. Our analysis shows that procurement of IT and management consulting is consistent with the resource-based view -companies seek to develop organizational capabilities they lack as dictated by their strategic business need. In contrast to the narrow IT Doesn\u27t Matter view, it can be argued that even in the current environment of IT outsourcing, firms must carefully match their IT capability (in-house or outsourced) with organizational strategy and capability to develop unique and inimitable resources as put forth by RBV. We find that companies are indeed investing consistent with fundamental tenets of financial value analysis and based on market expectations of performance. More specifically, after controlling for pressure to perform and cash availability, low margin and low turnover companies spend more on consulting services. Low-margin strategy companies expend more on consulting when their asset turnover is also low, while low-turnover strategy companies expend more on consulting when their earnings margin is also low

Examining Student Satisfaction and Gender Differences in Technology-Supported, Blended Learning

Recently, blended learning has become popular in higher education. In this study, we aim to investigate influential factors that could impact student learning in this young and relatively immature environment. Factors from three perspectives – students themselves, instructors, and institutional support – were examined. Specifically, these factors are students’ computer self-efficacy, instructor characteristics, and facilitating conditions. A research model was developed to systematically assess their impacts on students’ perceived accomplishment, perceived enjoyment, and satisfaction toward the blended class. We also explored the gender differences by testing the research model on the two genders respectively. Interestingly, we found that for female students all three factors had significant impacts on their perceived accomplishment and perceived enjoyment, which in turn significantly impacted their learning satisfaction; however, for male students, no significant impact was found from computer self-efficacy to either perceived accomplishment or perceived enjoyment (the other two factors were significant)

Using Business Analytics to Target Baseball Free Agents: A Case Study

This paper presents a scenario for a Business Analytics (BA) teaching case that is targeted at the baseball free agent market. It is presented in a flexible manner designed to allow for its use as a multi-part case covering all phases of a data analytics project or a more restrictive case where the data collection has been completed for the students and/or only a portion of the analyses described in the case are covered. The case is primarily designed for use by undergraduate or graduate students in BA courses. However, selected portions of the case are suitable for use in a statistics course or upper division general MIS course. It is intended to support the stages of problem identification and planning and the application of analytics outputs to the business decision, as well as, supporting the technical aspects of: data collection, cleaning, and storage (ETL); application of appropriate data mining tools to produce actionable results, and development of user friendly visualizations that highlight those results