AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)

Supplement 2009 - 2011

Hans Ulrich Buhl — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 07:00:26 PDT

Today, we are proud to present a reprint of the first 18 issues of the plural- istic, rather design science-oriented, interdisciplinary, and peer-reviewed e-journal “Business & Information Systems Engineering” (BISE). BISE addresses the entire techno-economically oriented community and is globally accessible via http://www. springerlink.com, http://www.bise-journal.org, and http://aisel.aisnet.org/bise.With this special print we would like to invite interested readers to get a first impres- sion of BISE’s contents and to give authors and reviewers a brief overview of articles published in 2009, 2010, and 2011.This special print compiles the tables of content and the abstracts of the 18 issues from 1/2009 to 6/2011. It furthermore includes the calls for papers for the issues 1/2013 (“Mobile and Ubiquitous Solutions for Health Care of the Fu- ture”), 3/2013 (“BISE and Marketing”), and 5/2013 (“Green IS – Information Sys- tems for Environmental Sustainability”).

An Empirical Examination of the Impact of ICT Investments on Future Levels of Institutionalized Democracy and Foreign Direct Investment in Emerging Societies

Daniel S. Soper et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:39:01 PDT

The macro-level impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) investments on institutionalized democracy and foreign direct investment (FDI) levels in emerging societies are examined within a multi-theoretic framework that considers societal structure, power, and globalization-driven societal change. Using multilevel change modeling and longitudinal data from 48 emerging societies across seven years, ICT investments are observed to produce positive direct impacts on future levels of institutionalized democracy and FDI. After controlling for several covariates, the direct impact of ICT investments on future levels of institutionalized democracy in emerging societies is shown to partially explain the observed relationship between ICT investments and future FDI in those societies. The implications of these results are discussed in light of an emerging and exemplary World Bank debate over the historical search for a simple recipe for emerging society development and the need for a new way of thinking represented by what has been referred to as “new structural economics”.

IT and Firm Agility: An Electronic Integration Perspective

Salman Nazir et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:38:57 PDT

Firms evolving in increasingly turbulent environments need to respond to market threats and opportunities with speed. At the same time, firms implement numerous information technologies (IT) in the hope of streamlining processes and providing managers with unfettered access to information from both within and outside the firm. While research shows how agility and IT contribute to firm performance, the relationship between these two constructs remains relatively unexplored. Using an electronic integration perspective, we develop a framework that addresses this issue. The framework suggests that IT applications affect the two components of agility (sensing and responding) through two types of integration (internal and external). The framework also explains the mediating roles of knowledge exploration, knowledge exploitation, and process coupling. Four propositions are developed and illustrated with different examples. Avenues for future research are developed.

A Mixed Methods Approach to Technology Acceptance Research

Philip Fei Wu — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:38:55 PDT

The aim of this paper is to discuss the significance and potential of a mixed methods approach in technology acceptance research. After critically reviewing the dominance of the quantitative survey method in TAM-based research, this paper reports a mixed methods study of user acceptance of emergency alert technology in order to illustrate the benefits of combining qualitative and quantitative techniques in a single study. The main conclusion is that a mixed methods approach provides opportunities to move beyond the vague conceptualizations of “usefulness” and “ease of use” and to advance our understanding of user acceptance of technology in context.

Dissection of Dependency A Crossdisciplinary Review

Hameed Chughtai — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:22 PDT

Life in the modern societies, principally in the Western world, has been demystified. This demystification process has caused the social structures like technology, to lose some of the charm they had during the early Industrialisation period. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become integral parts of our identity in the context of organizational and personal life; the dependence on technology blurs the line between real and virtual worlds. This paper attempts to bridge the gap in understanding our dependence on modern technology. An attempt has been made to dissect the humantechnology dependency to find out how technology is interpreted, it’s meaning in the modern world, and what are the working mechanisms that are feeding this dependency as it grows with the growth of ICTs. The paper concludes that there is neither a single source of dependency nor a root cause. Instead the answer lies deep within the mesh of social patterns and structure and how we interact with them. The dependency in question is much more a function of the properties people attribute to ICTs than of what an ICT can or cannot actually be made to do.

The Potential of In-train Crowdsourcing

B.J. van der Wees — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:20 PDT

Nowadays railway operators are improving their services by offering IT-services within their trains. This paper reports on a design study we performed at Dutch Railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen, NS) in order to research whether or not NS can crowdsource activities utilizing the novel in-train IT infrastructure it is currently rolling out, and provide their passengers a better journey experience at the same time. We specifically focused the potential of future services an the users intention to use the service over time. The study followed a design cycle, in which we created artefacts, and analysed adoption of these artefacts utilizing an in-train survey. Despite the limited scope of the study we can conclude that there is potential for in-train crowdsourcing. Passengers do show interest in the applications we designed, and the more general concept of in-train interaction. Adoption is more likely to occur when serious applications are used, as opposed to entertainment applications.

Ultranet as a Future Social Network: An Actor-Network Analysis

Arthur Tatnall — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:19 PDT

Community development is seen as an increasingly important role for government and the potential of Web 2.0 tools to aid in community development seems obvious. An experimental technology relating to e-government is being introduced by the State Government of Victoria, Australia. This involves a closed social network called the Ultranet which is intended to support communities of parents, teachers and students in State schools. As the Ultranet has only recently come into operation, this paper cannot present an analysis of its operation, only a theoretical investigation of its possibilities. In the paper the Ultranet is seen as an innovation, and handled accordingly. An ActorNetwork approach is proposed as a potential analytical lens for researching the Ultranet, its application and its social impact. The paper also proposed use of actornetwork theory to identify how the Ultranet might be shaped by future use, and how it could be used to identify problematisations of this new network and the actors that it seeks to involve and hence to identify potential translations of the innovation. Analysis of these potential translations allows the creation of a theoretical framework that permits a sensible review of the introduction of the Ultranet. The framework allows for the possible production of communities of practice amongst teachers, a „door‟ for parental involvement as opposed to the „windows‟ currently common in education, with an ideal that involves a Web 2.0 supported community where all parties (students, teachers, resources provided by the Departments of Education, parents and the local community) contribute. The paper suggests that perhaps this is the future of safe, secure social networking for schools.

Electronic Patient Records in Managing Medication Information ‒ A Health Care Professional Perspective

Matti Mäntymäki — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:17 PDT

Efficiently managed information is a key resource in clinical practice. Electronic patient records (EPRs) are in focal point in managing patient-specific medication information. In this multi-method-study, we combine qualitative and quantitative data to investigate Finnish physicians’ perceptions of EPRs. Physicians consider EPRs important in their clinical practice and use them in managing patients’ medication information while addressing a considerable dissatisfaction with quality of the current EPRs. Altogether the findings highlight the need for improving the quality of the systems and increasing the physicians’ satisfaction to materialize the benefits from the EPRs

The LITIS Initiative: Measuring the Level of eHealth Adoption in the Italian Healthcare Trusts

Oscar Tamburis et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:16 PDT

The Italian Federation of Healthcare Trusts and Municipalities promoted a national initiative (LITIS, Italian acronym for: Levels of Technological Innovation in Healthcare), to assist its members in the governance of the eHealth phenomenon. The LITIS model spans over the complete spectrum of the eHealth support to care and administrative processes, from two perspectives: the Functions F (services for citizens, social / healthcare operators, managers, administrative staff) and the Enabling Components C (i.e. indirect factors that are prerequisites to deploy the Functions and handle the change). On the basis of a survey on nearly two thirds of the Italian Public Healthcare Trusts, LITIS produced a taxonomy of eHealth adoption indicators (145 micro–indicators in the lower layer; 36 topics, 12 sectors in the intermediate layer; 3 macro–area indexes and the “ICLI index”, acronym for: Global Index of Innovation Level, at the upper layer) as a decisional tool for effective planning of the sector. The Healthcare Trusts were assigned to 5 “Classes of Adoption”, according to their value for ICLI. A proposal for a stepwise “meaningful evolution” of the 5 Classes was produced, with an approach similar to the Capability Maturity Model.

Tribes & Cultures – Cross-disciplinary Communication: Pinpointing the Issues for eLearning

Naomi Dreher et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:14 PDT

Effective communication and co-operation across disciplines is needed to create and deploy eLearning systems so that they contribute to enhanced outcomes for students and teachers. Using a Grounded Theory methodology we probed the cultures of the participating tribes: the Educationalists; the Instructional Designers; and the Information Technology Specialists. Six salient themes emerged from the semistructured interview data of respondents selected from the three tribes, each of which is described in detail in this article. These themes give rise to Six Rules of Thumb to help promote fruitful communication and interaction among the tribes and cultures of eLearning system stakeholders, and thus result in improved eLearning systems.

Development of an Internet-Based Chronic Disease Self-Management System

Ali Sunyaev et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:12 PDT

Patient self-management programs and information systems that support them can improve the quality of healthcare. Flaws in user experience reduce the willingness of patients to adopt such systems. To explore how emerging technology such as rich Internet applications can be used to address the usability issues of personal health information systems, we developed a health self-management application that is based on an open-source framework. In this work we present the architecture of the system, discuss the issues we faced and lessons we learned while developing it. This work can help researchers and practitioners in evaluating approaches towards developing new generation of personal health solutions. Furthermore, this work serves as a basis for implementing a feature-rich system that can improve chronic disease self-management.

An Empirical Examination of the Relationships between the Dimensions of Culture and E-service Quality Perceptions

Hongxiu Li et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:10 PDT

E-services are diffusing rapidly in the developing economies. E-service quality plays an important role in determining the customers’ satisfaction and usage behaviour. Culture, in turn, has been found to influence customers’ perceptions of service quality. However, the current understanding of the influence of culture on e-service perceptions is limited. This study presents a review of prior e-service quality literature and position ease of use, responsiveness, system availability and reliability as the predictors of overall e-service quality. Furthermore, we examine Hofstede’s dimensions of culture as moderators between the dimensions of dimensions of e-service quality and overall e-service quality. Our research model is empirically tested with data collected from 453 Chinese e-service customers and analyzed using PLS. The results show that all the four dimensions of culture values influence on some, but not all, dimensions of e-service quality. Finally, directions for further research are suggested.

The Impact of Social Networking Sites on the Employer-Employee Relationship

Malte Martensen et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:08 PDT

The effects that internet-based social networking sites (SNS) have on the labour market have yet to be investigated. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and in what way SNS are changing the nature of the relationships between employers on the one hand, and employees and job applicants on the other. By means of an online survey, information was collected about attitudes towards data security, self-marketing and career development. This study suggests that employees who use social networking sites as self-marketing tools aim to build a positive reputation and thus redress the asymmetrical information relationship with employers. The survey also shows that data security plays an important role.

Information Management Issues and Challenges in an Enterprise 2.0 Era: Imperatives for Action

Susan P Williams et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:07 PDT

The potential benefits of E2.0 such as improved intra- and inter-organisational collaboration and information sharing are now widely acknowledged, however the management of digital information arising from the use of E2.0 technologies is presenting significant issues and challenges. In this paper we report on a research study to identify the issues and challenges associated with E2.0 and digital information management more widely and outline key imperatives for action. Key issues emerging from the analysis include uncertainty about the nature and scope of E2.0 and how the information it generates should be preserved and managed in a dynamic and changing environment.

Web vs Phone based Service Experiences: Effects of Emotions on Customer Satisfaction Across Sectors

Luuk P.A. Simons et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:05 PDT

Empirical studies show that emotions mediate the impact of perceived service quality on customer satisfaction. In this paper, we explore how the mediating effect of emotions differs between web and telephone encounters. In addition, we explore if this mediating effect differs across three service industries that rely heavily on telephone and web customer care: telecommunications, energy and banking. We use SEM to analyze a large-scale consumer survey (N = 2872) in telecommunication, energy and banking sectors. Emotions partially mediate the effect on customer satisfaction, both for telephone-based (25% mediation) and web-based service encounters (21%). When distinguishing positive and negative emotions, the mediating effect of negative emotions is much stronger. While mediation takes place in all three sectors, negative emotions in phone-based service encounters are more important in telecommunications, while negative emotions in web-based encounters are more important in banking industry. We advise firms to use explicit emotion evoking strategies for positive service experiences and emotion reducing strategies for negative ones.

Participatory Design of Web 2.0 Applications in SME Networks

Martina Peris et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:03 PDT

In increasingly complex and dynamic markets, small and medium sized enterprises (SME) face new challenges. Amongst others, these are innovativeness and technological expertise. In order to counteract the challenges, SMEs cooperate in corporate networks. Here, information and communication technologies are main drivers. At this point, Web 2.0 technologies are uttermost important. Until now, the development and implementation of Web 2.0 applications in SMEs was proceeded independently from the future users. We aim at bridging this gap by developing a participatory procedural model. The presented model includes the futures users from the beginning of the development process. The model respects SME specific characteristics.

Analytical Social CRM: Concept and Tool Support

Olaf Reinhold et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:02 PDT

The Social Web offers new opportunities, such as direct market access, interactive customer contact or a better understanding of market demands, in the field of customer relationship management (CRM). Consequently, firms develop new strategies, processes and technologies to utilise the Social Web for their needs. From the perspective of CRM, the Social Web creates an opportunity to directly include customer knowledge and shape a field called Social CRM (SCRM). Even though methods and tools for data extraction and media monitoring are already available, the analytical requirements of SCRM and necessary functionalities are open for research. This research explores the role of analytical SCRM and examines available tools with the required functional and technological components. The findings show that existing tools still have a limited functional scope which makes a ‘best-of-breed’ approach necessary. Finally, a concept for an integrated analytical SCRM system is proposed that comprises necessary SCRM components.

“What are they Thinking?” - Accessing Collective Intelligence in Twitter

Martin Böhringer et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:15:00 PDT

In today’s social networks like Twitter and Facebook, each day millions of status updates provide a huge source of information on current sentiments of their users. However, still it is unclear how to structure problems in a way that they can be answered based on social networking activities. Facilitating an exploratory prototype, we tested the direct retrieval of user opinions during the FIFA World Cup 2010 in Twitter. Our findings based on an initial research framework suggest that using social networks can serve as an access point to collective intelligence. However, the experiment also showed weaknesses of the used approach. Therefore we discuss an updated research model based on our results which provides a foundation for future works.

Assessing Degrees of Web-2.0-ness for Websites: Model and Results for Product Websites in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Andrea Back et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:14:58 PDT

This paper describes the development of a maturity model to assess the Web-2.0-ness of websites. The model draws on O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 principles and patterns. It distin-guishes six dimensions with four degrees of 2.0-ness each. The rating scheme has been evaluated and refined to improve inter-rater reliability in a discussion and a coding iteration. This model raises awareness for 2.0-ness, helps to benchmark website design, and supports decisions about 2.0-ness adoption. Based on aggregated scores and a normal distribution, our sample of 44 pharmaceutical over-the-counter (OTC) product websites is classified in three maturity stages: Innovators, Adopters, and Laggards. The model can also be used for other industries and website types. In five of the six dimen-sions, at least one website reaches the top degree, but n one achieves top grades in every dimension. Diversity in 2.0-ness is observed for product websites in the pharma-ceutical industry, as well as for one company’s different product brands. Further re-search will extend the 2.0-ness analysis to the overall web presence, including social media sites. Another next step is to relate 2.0-patterns to websites’ success measures.

The Cloudy Future of Consumer Computing

Roger Clarke — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:14:57 PDT

Consumers used to run software on their own devices and store their data at home. They are now increasingly dependent on service-providers for both functionality and data-storage. Risk assessment techniques need to be applied to consumer contexts. These are diverse, covering many kinds of consumer devices, many different consumer profiles, and various consumer needs. A preliminary evaluation concludes that consumers who place reliance on outsourced consumer services may be seriously exposed, because the Terms of Service of mainstream service-providers offer very low levels of assurance about features critical to consumers' interests.