|
|||||||
|
Spring 2008 (Vol 48, Issue 3) Table of Contents A SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT CAPSTONE COURSE AND PROJECT FOR CIS MAJORS This paper presents a capstone course given to CIS seniors involving projects which utilize programming, database design, requirements analysis, use cases, object modeling, project management, and written and oral communication skills in an active learning environment. The learning objectives for this course correspond with most of the learning units described for the upper level courses in the IS 2002 model curriculum. The course content and capstone project are based on an object-oriented methodology that centers on component-based design. Project elements emphasize both creative and critical thinking processes and are designed to utilize and challenge the technical, managerial, and communication skills of students, who also engage in reflective analysis by constructing project workbooks and journals. Keywords: Java Programming, Database Design, Systems Analysis, Project Management, Component-Based Design, IS 2002 Learning Units, Journal Writing THE CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER: AN ANALYSIS OF THE SKILLS REQUIRED FOR SUCCESS The aim of this study is to determine a set of skills needed for a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) in a competitive business today. To this end, a review of the literature and IT security executive interviews were conducted to identify a set of relevant skills. This list was then compared to a set of job listings for CISOs. Ultimately, a set of skills were developed that organizations can use when defining the CISO position and seeking new CISOs. Keywords: Chief Information Security Officer, Security, Governance, IT Management GENDER DIFFERENCES IN EMAIL AND INSTANT MESSAGING: A STUDY OF UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS STUDENTS This study examined gender differences concerning the use and perceived usefulness of email and instant messaging software. Participants were asked to rate both media in terms of frequency and usefulness. The findings provide evidence that women perceive email as more useful than men do when communicating with people who were geographically distant. Aside from that difference, this study suggests that male and female college students use and perceive email and instant messaging in a similar manner. There was no evidence of a statistically significant difference between men’s and women’s perceptions of email or instant messaging usefulness and frequency of use when communicating with people who were geographically close. There was also no evidence of a statistically significant difference between men and women in usefulness perceptions when using instant messaging for communicating with people who were geographically distant. Keywords: Chief Information Security Officer, Security, Governance, IT Management ExPLORING THE INTENTION TO USE COMPUTERS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE ROLE OF INTRINSIC MOTIVATION, ExTRINSIC MOTIVATION, AND PERCEIVED EASE OF USE This research utilizes the Integrated Model of Technology Acceptance (IMTA) to study the intention to use computers among first line managers in a mid-sized manufacturing organization (n=172). As hypothesized, the study found 1) a positive relationship between extrinsic motivation and behavioral intention to use computers, 2) a positive relationship between perceived ease of use and behavioral intention to use computers, 3) a positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, 4) a positive relationship between perceived ease of use and extrinsic motivation, and 5) a positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and perceived ease of use. However, the hypothesis that intrinsic motivation would have a positive relationship to behavioral intention to use computers was not supported. This work makes a needed contribution to the literature by validating the IMTA with a group of real-world users, and suggests that the model may provide a useful foundation for future research in this area. Keywords: Integrated Model of Technology Acceptance (IMTA), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Motivation, Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Enjoyment THE ROLE OF PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE IN INTERNET ABUSE Previous research suggests that computer security countermeasures are effective in preventing computer abuse in organizations. However, the computer abuse problem still persists despite such measures. This study examines the sociological perspective of Internet abuse that explains a causal link between abusive behavior and an actor’s psychological state, drawn on theory of pluralistic ignorance (TPI). Pluralistic ignorance is a form of erroneous social interference that is both an immediate cause and a consequence of literal inconsistency between private attitudes and public behavior. Under pluralistic ignorance, mistakenly perceived social norms overwhelm personal attitudes and subsequently lead to overt behavior contrary to an actor’s attitude. This new approach contributes to the theoretical body of knowledge on Internet abuse by providing a new angle to view the problem. In addition, it suggests to practitioners that social aspects should be considered, along with technical countermeasures, to reduce the pervasive Internet abuse problem. Keywords: Pluralistic Ignorance, Personal Use of the Internet, Social Norm, Internet Abuse A SOPHISTICATED APPROACH TO SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES DISCOVERY Web services have become a new paradigm of Web-based applications. As the number of available Web services has increased, finding a method for locating appropriate services has become an important issue. For this purpose, many works for semantic Web service discovery have been proposed. Since they lack a precise scheme for specifying and matching service advertisements and user requirements, semantic mismatches can occur in service discovery. This paper presents a sophisticated method of discovering Web services. The proposed method facilitates specifying semantics precisely and flexibly based on the proposed integrated concept model. Additionally, more sophisticated discovery is supported by computing many-to-many complex matching relationships between ontological concepts. Experimental results show that the proposed method performs more efficiently for various kinds of user requests, as compared to previous works. Keywords: Web Services, Discovery, OWL-S, Match-Making ANTECEDENTS OF USE-CONTINUANCE IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS: TOWARD AN INTEGRATIVE VIEW The effectiveness of investment in information system (IS) can be partly explained by the continuous usage of installed systems. Therefore, the research on IS user retention is important from both practical and academic perspectives. In order to develop an integrative model for IS users’ continued usage, this paper explores the main antecedents that cause the retention of IS users. In addition to attitude, the integrative model links previous behavior like habit and behavioral control belief like switching cost, to IS continuance intention. For an empirical exploration, 345 samples were collected from the users of a web portal site. Data analysis using Structural Equation Modeling shows that IS quality in terms of desire congruency and expectation congruency has a direct effect on attribute satisfaction. The attribute satisfaction shows a significant effect on continuance intention mediated by the attitude toward use-continuance. Lastly, it is found that switching cost has a significant direct effect on continuance intention while habit has an indirect effect via switching cost. Keywords: IS Continuance, IS Quality, Switching Barrier, Satisfaction, Attitude, Habit INFORMATION ExTRACTION AGENTS FOR SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE USING WEB SERVICE SYSTEMS: A FRAMEWORK In some business domains, such as financial investment services, maintaining current information is a serious challenge, as markets evolve by the hour. This creates a demand for continually-updated information systems to support business decision-makers. Many sources of domain information are online documents containing unstructured text. For the information encoded in these natural language texts to be usable by systems, it must be extracted and reshaped into forms which those systems can recognize. The goal of this research is to investigate ways to exploit information-rich, online source texts in order to automatically update information in web service (WS) systems implemented in service-oriented architecture (SOA) environments. We propose a general framework for service-oriented web service systems that incorporates information extraction (IE) components capable of handling unstructured text. Since IE systems are sophisticated and difficult to implement, performance and economic considerations suggest that firms with special expertise should perform these tasks and sell the services to service customers. Our prototype information extraction system, which can be embedded in a WS system, is described to illustrate the framework. Keywords: WebServices (WS),Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Information Extraction (IE), Natural Language Processing (NLP) COMBATING THE DECLINE IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS MAJORS: THE ROLE OF INSTRUMENTAL ASSISTANCE The sharp decline in the number of students pursuing information systems (IS) degrees is a source of great concern not only for academic institutions offering IS degrees, but also for companies in need of hiring qualified professionals. In response, university educators are searching for mechanisms to generate larger pools of IS graduates. This study focuses on one such mechanism, instrumental assistance, to promote student choice of IS as a primary field of study. Using Social Cognitive Career Theory as a guiding framework, instrumental assistance is found to boost student confidence (i.e., self-efficacy) and expectations of valued rewards (i.e., outcome expectations). In turn, self-efficacy and outcome expectations elevate student interest, which ultimately influences students’ aspirations to choose IS as a major. The study provides important insights into how a particular intervention strategy can be implemented to attract more students to the IS field. Keywords: Information Systems Education, Instrumental Assistance, Enrollments, Decline, Social Cognitive Career Theory DETERMINANTS OF THE ADOPTION OF ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING WITHIN THE TECHNOLOGY-ORGANIZATION-ENVIRONMENT FRAMEWORK: TAIWAN’S COMMUNICATIONS Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are costly and complex but vital for companies having to face a rapidly changing business environment and an increasingly competitive marketplace. As the first study to examine the factors within the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework that affect the decision to adopt ERP in Taiwan’s communications industry, the empirical tests conducted here are based on personal interviews with a sample of 99 firms in Taiwan’s communications industry. Eight factors in three broad categories are tested using logistic regression, and four of these, technology readiness, size, perceived barriers and production and operations improvements, are found to be important determinants of the adoption of ERP. This model correctly classifies 79.8% of the decisions made with respect to the adoption of ERP. The results substantiate the usefulness of this model which may be interesting to managers seeking to be more proactive in planning for their adoption of an ERP system. Keywords: Technology-Organization-Environment Framework; Enterprise Resource Planning; Communications Industry; Adoption OUTSOURCING SERVICES IN PARTIAL DIGITAL ENVIRONMENTS: ASSESSING MANAGEMENT PREFERENCES WHERE PAPER IS KING The drive to achieve consistency and reliability of information across healthcare organizations has resulted in highly publicized standardization mandates by government regulators. The risk of funding loss, accreditation revocation, and financial penalties has led to speculation that disparity in management practices by healthcare organizations would largely disappear, as a result of government mandated initiatives to standardize and computerize patient information. This study seeks to examine how institutional forces influence the degree of outsourcing adoption in healthcare organizations, using a national survey of all accredited U.S. health information managers. Results suggest that significant non-adoption of information technology continues to occur across organizations, despite the risk of penalties designed to enforce reliability of medical patient information. We further examine how management varies across levels of incremental electronic record adoption and across organizations. We find significant variation exists in outsourcing adoption between highly computerized and paper-based medical record functions. We find like variation in motivating factors and task areas. Ramifications for information management in partial digital environments are discussed. Keywords: Outsourcing, Computerized Records, Incremental Adoption, Paperless Office, Media-Dependent, Technology Adoption, Diffusion of Innovation DRIVERS FOR TRANSACTIONAL B2C M-COMMERCE ADOPTION: ExTENDED THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR Although voluntary individual adoption of information technology is well studied in the literature, further theoretical development is needed to account for the specific characteristics of the mobile commerce artifact. In this study, we augment the theory of planned behavior to include evaluative variables that are not fully captured in attitude and to enhance the specificity of the model to mobile commerce. More specifically, we develop, operationalize and empirically test a model for explaining the adoption intention of transactional B2C mobile commerce. The model is empirically tested with mobile device users who have not adopted mobile commerce yet. The empirical results provide strong support for the theoretical model, shedding light on the significance and relative importance of specific adoption factors. The theoretical and empirical implications of these results are discussed. Keywords: M-commerce, Theory of Planned Behavior, IT Adoption AN ExPLORATORY STUDY OF FACTORS INFLUENCING ASP (APPLICATION SERVICE PROVIDER) SUCCESS This study investigates key determinants of ASP (Application Service Provider) success from the user's perspective. Potential determinants of ASP success are inferred from the general characteristics of ASP system,the literature in Information System (IS) success and interviews with ASP experts. The potential factors are grouped into system quality and service quality. A user satisfaction construct is used to measure ASP success. The level of a user’s IS knowledge and user involvement are used as moderators. A questionnaire is used to assess the satisfaction of users who have used ASP. The data collected by questionnaire were analyzed to investigate the relationships among the identified constructs and user satisfaction. Understanding key determinants of ASP success provides valuable guidance to both vendors and customers. Based on the results of this study, ASP vendors can focus on improving the factors that affect user satisfaction. Customers can benefit from this study in selection of a desirable ASP vendor who can provide as many ASP success factors as possible. Keywords: ASP Success Factors, User Satisfaction, System Quality, Service Quality
Index of JCIS Articles JCIS articles are indexed in the major research databases:
You can also access JCIS citations and article abstracts via ISI Web of Science. Check with your institution for access to these research databases.
|
|||||||
| back to top | |||||||
| Copyright © IACIS 2003 | |||||||