PERFORMANCE EVALUATION UNDER UNCERTAINTY: THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION SYSTEM INTEGRATION ON PROCEDURAL JUSTICE PERCEPTIONS

The design and functioning of organizational control systems that allow for the monitoring of employee performance is at the core of management accounting research. With the emergence of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and the recent developments towards information system integration, the traditional structures of organizational control mechanisms have significantly changed. Only sparse evidence exists, however, regarding the role that the integration of information technology plays in performance measurement and evaluation. As a response, this paper investigates the impact that information system integration has on managers’ attitudes towards their performance evaluation processes. Based on organizational justice theory we hypothesize that integrated information systems positively impact managers’ perceptions of procedural justice, as these systems can improve the comprehensiveness and objectivity of performance data as well as the traceability of managers’ decisions. We further hypothesize that this effect is amplified with an increasing environmental uncertainty the managers perceive. Survey evidence from 132 managers of companies in Germany confirms the hypotheses and highlights the importance of integrated information systems in the performance evaluation process

Towards a Process Model for Digital Content Analysis – The Case of Hilti

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is an emerging concept in Information Systems (IS) research providing the means for an efficient administration of digital content. However, there are lots of obstacles which may face enterprises when adopting ECM. In particular the diligent analysis of an organisation‟s individual content situation often turns out to be a major success factor. However, adequate guidelines for performing content analyses can hardly be found in ECM literature. In this paper, we propose a process model for analysing content and present the first results that have been gained during its application within the Hilti Corporation

A Study on the Acceptance of ECM Systems

The present paper summarizes selected results of the first au-thor‟s Master‟s thesis for the student track at the 10th Interna-tional Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik in Zurich, Switzer-land. The thesis was co-supervised by the second and the third author. Building upon the technology acceptance model (TAM), the assignment was to investigate factors impacting on end users‟ acceptance of enterprise content management (ECM) systems. The study suggests twenty-two factors at the enterprise, process, technology, and content level that can influence ECM success. The results are grounded in both a systematic review of the lite-rature on ECM, including related fields such as document man-agement and records management, and an analysis of qualitative data collected from five ECM-adopting organizations. It is hoped that the findings will inform future Information Systems (IS) research on ECM acceptance. Practitioners can use the results in the process of planning and conducting their own ECM projects

Transforming Design Science Research into Practical Application: Experiences from Two ECM Teaching Cases

Research – not only in the discipline of Information Systems (IS) – must address the tasks faced by practitio-ners. The goal must always be to transform the ideas and findings into real-life business solutions. In IS re-search, this entitlement is particularly acknowledged by the design science research paradigm. Whereas the goal of behavioural science is truth, design science generally aims at developing an “IT artefact” highly use-ful for practitioners. Utility is commonly evaluated on the basis of case studies or simulations, for example. We argue that these evaluation methods must not necessarily be applied by the researchers themselves: Teaching cases represent a suitable alternative by also providing new potentials for refining the artefact. As an example of application, we refer to a newly emerging field in IS research, Enterprise Content Management (ECM). We present the results and experiences from two ECM project seminars that have been set up on the basis of work-shops and interviews with a large-scale international enterprise. The teaching cases are based on firsthand accounts from our research in the field of ECM – a framework for content analyses. Accordingly, both courses focussed on analysing the company’s content situation. The company highly valued the results gained in the seminars and has since applied our framework within additional application areas

On the ground electronic states of copper silicide and its ions

The low-lying electronic states of SiCu, SiCu^+, and SiCu^− have been studied using a variety of high-level ab initio techniques. As expected on the basis of simple orbital occupancy and bond forming for Si(s^2p^2)+Cu(s^1) species, ^2Π_r, ^1Σ^+, and ^3Σ^− states were found to be the ground electronic states for SiCu, SiCu^+, and SiCu^−, respectively; the ^2Π_r state is not that suggested in most recent experimental studies. All of these molecules were found to be quite strongly bound although the bond lengths, bond energies, and harmonic frequencies vary slightly among them, as a result of the nonbonding character of the 2π-MO (molecular orbital) [composed almost entirely of the Si 3p-AO (atomic orbital)], the occupation of which varies from 0 to 2 within the ^1Σ^+, ^2Π_r, and ^3Σ^− series. The neutral SiCu is found to have bound excited electronic states of ^4Σ^−, ^2Δ, ^2Σ^+, and ^2Π_i symmetry lying 0.5, 1.2, 1.8, and 3.2 eV above the ^2Π_r ground state. It is possible but not yet certain that the ^2Π_i state is, in fact, the “B state” observed in the recent experimental studies by Scherer, Paul, Collier, and Saykally

Maturity Models in IS Research

Notwithstanding the relevance of maturity assessments in practice, Information Systems (IS) research has – despite exceptions – yet rarely endeavoured into reflecting and developing theoretically sound maturity models. This paper reports a literature review on maturity models in the IS domain. Specifically, it explores what type of research on maturity models has been undertaken (retrospection) and which potentially useful measures might be pursued in IS for future research (prospection). The paper suggests that research on maturity models is of growing interest; nevertheless, comparably few related articles have been published in the leading IS journals. We see that the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and its successor CMM Integration (CMMI) dominate studies of maturity. While maturity models have been addressed in prescriptive, descriptive and reflective works, the notions of maturity and maturity models have rarely been conceptualised in detail. In view of that, the paper presents implications for the practice of maturity model application and research thereof

Maturity Models in Information Systems Research: Literature Search and Analysis

This article collects and analyzes seventy-six maturity model articles that have been published in leading Information Systems (IS) journals and conference proceedings during the past fifteen years. We study the IS literature on maturity models from three different perspectives: a research perspective, which is particularly relevant for scholars who are interested in the design and adoption of maturity models; a publication perspective, which reflects the interests of authors and reviewers of maturity model articles; and a practitioner’s perspective, which is especially relevant for maturity model users and consultants. The results are interesting in several respects. From the research perspective, the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is the most dominant foundation of past IS research on maturity models. In contrast, theories on the design and adoption of maturity models are distinctly rare in our sample. The publication outlets that are considered feature quantitative and qualitative empirical research alike, but―with a decreasing number―purely conceptual research as well. Of late, past maturity model research can mainly be located in the area of IT and organizations, while the formerly very popular domain of IS development is of less interest today. As for the publication perspective, we find that the level of publication activity in the field has generally been increasing over the last fifteen years, with North American and European researchers dominating the academic discussion. Finally, with regard to the practitioner’s perspective, we compile advice on the practical application of maturity models from a critical analysis of the literature. It is hoped that the results can stimulate and guide future research in the field and inform the development and usage of theoretically sound maturity models in practice