The Critical Role of Historiography in Writing IS History

Insightful histories of an academic field can only be written when there is sufficient raw material to serve as “grist for the mill” for historians. This is the first task for those who are monumentally interested in preserving the origins of a field from the ravages of time is to collect artifacts—written, verbal, visual, and physical—that can later be used in historical inquiries. But the critical perspective to know what to collect and how much to collect is served by historiography, the science that elaborates on the variety of methods and procedures that historians use. A simple but incomplete set of these variations include: political history, intellectual history, cultural history, and social history. Each of these viewpoints brings with it a different set of assumptions about what is important and, although there is considerable overlap among them, each brings a different set of requirements for artifactual evidence. Historiography should not be overlooked when the field of information systems begins an all-out effort to collect data about the history of the field

CONTROLLING COMPUTER ABUSE: AM EMPIRICAL STUDY OF EFFECTIVE SECURITY COUNTERMEASURES

Considerable evidence has come to light that information systems are vulnerable to dangerously high and persistent abuse and that managers perceive this threat to be high. The organizational response to abusive potential has been to implement a computer security administrative unit with the charge of deterring and preventing computer abuse. Exactly how effective are the countermeasures employed by these units? This victimization survey of 1,211 randomly selected DPMA organizations has determined that computer abuse can be controlled through a set of deterrent administrative procedures and through preventive security software. Understanding these relationships should greatly assist IS managers in allocating resources to the security function and in disseminating this pertinent information to top management

The Love of Art vs. Website Design: An Application of Bourdieu\u27s Theory in Online Environments

Several IS studies have shown that well-designed websites positively influence users, capturing visitor attention and encouraging return behaviors. However, little attention has been paid to non commercial and cultural websites such as museum websites. This study draws on human-computer interaction literature and sociology of culture to determine the influence of website design on museum visitor intentions. Two free-simulation experiments were conducted with American and French college students who were invited to visit a museum website and express their opinions through a web questionnaire. The results suggest that website design can encourage museum visits, actualizing in this way the list of factors identified by Bourdieu and Darbel (1969). However, the socio-cultural factors, namely prior experience, museum interest and subjective norms, still play an important role that balance IT effects

The Relative Importance of Perceived Ease of Use in IS Adoption: A Study of E-Commerce Adoption

The technology acceptance model (Davis 1989) is one of the most widely used models of IT adoption. According to TAM, IT adoption is influenced by two perceptions: usefulness and ease-of-use. Research has shown that perceived usefulness (PU) affects intended adoption of IT, but has mostly failed to do so regarding perceived ease of use (PEOU). The basic proposition of this study is that this varying importance of PEOU may be related to the nature of the task. PEOU relates to assessments of the intrinsic characteristics of IT, such as the ease of use, ease of learning, flexibility, and clarity of its interface. PU, on the other hand, is a response to user assessment of its extrinsic, i.e., task-oriented, outcomes: how IT helps users achieve task-related objectives, such as task efficiency and effectiveness. Accordingly, the study theorizes that PEOU directly affects IT adoption only when the primary task for which the IT is deployed is directly associated with intrinsic IT characteristics, such as when the task itself is an integral part of an IT interface. Extending this proposition to e-commerce, it was hypothesized that when a Web site is used to purchase products, PEOU would not affect IT adoption because IT ease-of-use is not an inherent quality of the purchased product. On the other hand, when the Web site is used to inquire about products, PEOU should affect IT adoption because the required information is embedded in the IT and thus its quality is directly related to IT ease-of-use. Data collected from 217 subjects in a free simulation experiment support these hypotheses. Implications for future Web development and theoretical refinements are discussed

Journal Self-Citation VI: Forced Journal Self-Citation – Common, Appropriate, Ethical?

Forced journal self-citation, as defined in this paper, has serious implications for the IS field. We introduce a statistical perspective on how common the practice is, discuss whether it is appropriate or not, and evaluate its ethicality. We find that journal self-citations do influence journal impact factors, a measure of journal quality and a tool for many schools in their promotion and tenure process. We suggest that forced self-citations are not considered appropriate by community standards nor are they ethical in terms of the greatest good. We therefore propose that impact factors be disseminated both with and without self-citations to make the practice of forced self-citation more transparent to the IS community. An example of the proposal is shown

Examining Trust in Information Technology Artifacts : The Effects of System Quality and Culture.

The topic of trust in information technology (IT) artifacts has piqued interest among researchers, but studies of this form of trust are not definitive regarding which factors contribute to it the most. Our study empirically tests a model of trust in IT artifacts that increases our understanding in two ways. First, it sets forth two previously unexamined system quality constructs-navigational structure and visual appeal. We found that both of these system quality constructs significantly predict the extent to which users place trust in mobile commerce technologies. Second, our study considers the effect of culture by comparing the trust of French and American potential users in m- commerce technologies. We found that not only does culture directly affect user trust in IT artifacts but it also moderates the extent to which navigational structure affects this form of trust. These findings show that system quality and culture significantly affect trust in the IT artifact and point to rich possibilities for future research in these areas.Commerce mobile; Systems use; System quality; Navigational structure; Mobile commerce; M-commerce portals;

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE AND USEFULNESS OF SECURITY SO TWARE IN DETECTING COMPUTER ABUSE

Computer security remains an important issue in the management of organizational information systems. Losses resulting from computer abuse and errors are substantial, and IS managers continue to cite security and control as a key management issue. With continued expansion of clistributed data processing and storage, the need to both prevent and detect violations also increases. This latter aspect, detection of computer abuse incidents, is the focus of this study. This empirical study examines the prevalence and sophistication of security software system installations across the United States. Using a victimization survey of 528 randomly-selected DPMA members, the study examines discovered incidents of computer abuse in organizations and attempts to identify relationships between comprehensive (i.e., sophisticated) security software and successful discovery of abuse. More comprehensive security software was found to be associated with greater ability to identify perpetrators of abuse and to discover more serious computer abuse incidents. Larger organizations used both a greater number and more sophisticated security software systems than smaller organizations. Wholesale/retail trade organizations used less comprehensive software than average, while manufacturing organizations and public utilities used more comprehensive software. Surprisingly, no relationships were found between the maturity of an organization\u27s security function and the number and/or sophistication of security software systems utilized

An Analysis of the Evolving Intellectual Structure of Health Information Systems Research in the Information Systems Discipline

The rapid evolution of health information systems (Health IS) research has led to many significantcontributions. However, while the Health IS subset of information systems (IS) scholarship hasconsiderably grown over the past two decades, this growth hasled to questions regarding the currentintellectual structure of this area of inquiry. In an effort to more fully understand how Health ISresearchhas contributed to the IS discipline, and what this may mean for future Health IS researchin the IS domain, we conduct an in-depth evaluation of Health IS research published in mainstreamIS journals. We apply citation analysis, latent semantic analysis (LSA), and social network analysis(SNA) to ourdata setof Health IS articles in order to: (1) identify Health IS research themes andthematic shifts, (2)determine which Health IS research themes are cohesive (versus disparate), (3)identify which Health IS research themes are central (versus peripheral), (4) clarify networks ofresearchers (i.e., thought leaders) contributing to these research themes, and(5) provide insights intothe connection of Health ISresearchto its reference disciplines. Overall, we contribute a systematicdescription and explanation of the intellectual structure ofHealth ISresearchand highlight how theexisting intellectual structure of Health ISresearchprovides opportunities for future research

Specifying Formative Constructs in Information Systems Research

While researchers go to great lengths to justify and prove theoretical links between constructs, the relationship between measurement items and constructs is often ignored. By default, the relationship between construct and item is assumed to be reflective, meaning that the measurement items are a reflection of the construct. Many times, though, the nature of the construct is not reflective, but rather formative. Formative constructs occur when the items describe and define the construct rather than vice versa.In this research, we examine whether formative constructs are indeed being mistaken for reflective constructs by information systems researchers. By examining complete volumes of MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research over the last 3 years, we discovered that a significant number of articles have indeed misspecified formative constructs. For scientific results to be valid, we argue that researchers must properly specify formative constructs. This paper discusses the implications of different patterns of common misspecifications of formative constructs on both Type I and Type II errors. To avoid these errors, the paper provides a roadmap to researchers to properly specify formative constructs. We also discuss how to address formative constructs within a research model after they are specified

Do Academics Share Knowledge? Ethiopian Public Higher Education Institutions in Perspective

This study examines the knowledge sharing practices of academics in Higher Education Institutions(HEI) in Ethiopia. Based on the understanding that Knowledge Sharing is a key enabler of Knowledge Management, the study analyses how individual based variables determine knowledge sharing practices. The major relevant variables are drawn from the Theory of Planned Behavior. A survey instrument that has employed the conceptual framework was developed mainly from the extant literature in order to collect data from faculty of selected HEIs in Ethiopia. A quantitative approach of study will be employed to analyze the data obtained from the survey. Apart from providing a holistic perspective on the KS behaviors of faculty, based on the TPB model, the study intends to produce a validated and reliable instrument to measure KS