ABSTRACT:
The perceptual measures of the impacts of information technology (IT) have long met with mistrust. Reflecting the assumed biases of the general managers assessing the impacts, perceptions are generally considered inferior to the objective indicators of performance. The IT-related perceptual assessments are quite specialized and thus open to another set of doubts. Yet the objective measures are frequently not accessible to researchers, and the subjective assessments can deliver a potentially rich set of metrics, leavened by the insight and experience of the individual managers. In the opening paper of this issue, Paul P. Tallon and Kenneth L. Kraemer deploy the sensemaking theoretical lens to establish empirically just how reliable the corporate executives’ perceptions of IT impacts really are. Within the scope of their investigation, the authors find that these perceptions are quite reliable indeed, on the process and on the firm level. This result will help to enrich the toolbox of our researchers, just as it can give credence to the assessments for the organization’s own uses, politics permitting. The finding is important for the progress of our field.
Business-to-business electronic marketplaces were a notable set of failures during the close of the Web 1.0 period. This intermediary segment has hardly recovered during the present Web 2.0 stage. A marketplace needs a critical mass of participants. Here, Jai-Yeol Son and Izak Benbasat deploy a dual theoretical perspective to establish the factors that could lead to organizations’ participation in these marketplaces. The authors distinguish among the factors that antecede the initial adoption and those that influence the level of continuing participation. The findings will be of interest to the marketplace builders as well as to the researchers expanding our perspectives on these transformative institutions.
The implementation of enterprise systems is fraught with many a danger and the critical success factors have been studied at length. But those factors do not exert their influence in isolation and the study of their interactions requires a coherent theoretical perspective. Here, Jahangir Karimi, Toni M. Somers, and Anol Bhattacherjee use the approach derived from the innovation diffusion theory to study the circumstances under which the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system brings about the desired outcomes for business processes. The results offer a more intricate picture of dependencies than heretofore available.
Geographically distributed software development has been on a steep rise since the advent of the Internet–Web compound. Coordination of such an effort is a multifaceted challenge. In their paper, J. Alberto Espinosa, Sandra A. Slaughter, Robert E. Kraut, and James D. Herbsleb determine empirically what exactly those facets are. Their approach to the issue is rooted in the study of team cognition as a collective phenomenon. Of course, evolving collective knowledge of a geographically distributed team through several mechanisms analyzed by the authors brings its own challenges. The authors, therefore, offer a set of general propositions concerning the coordination of the team effort, as well as the propositions stemming from work dispersion.
The knowledge-oriented perspective is taken up in the next paper as well. Radhika Santhanam, Larry Seligman, and David Kang study the patterns of knowledge transfers following an information system implementation. In a sense, a system is never fully implemented; it persists in a state of implementation, with modifications accompanied by such knowledge transfers. Specifically, the authors study here the nature of the transfers between the system users and the help-desk IT professionals. Different types of knowledge circulate within these groups and are exchanged between them. The research surfaces a thick set of knowledge-based interactions and learning processes that require organizational support. The authors find that these implementation-enhancing processes would be endangered in outsourcing of the technical support function.
The last theme is vastly amplified in the next paper of the issue. Dowan Kwon, Wonseok Oh, and Sangyong Jeon study the impact of organizational restructuring (such as a downsizing, for example) on the information-processing networks in the organization. These networks, formed by the people supported by IT, are vital to the enactment of an organization’s knowledge processes. Basing themselves on the theory of social networks, the authors offer a taxonomy of such networks in an organization and proceed to study through simulation modeling their robustness and efficiency in the event of an organizational restructuring. They find that some of the structures are more stable than others and the efficiency gains, if achieved, differ as well. Even more important, the researchers also tease out the transitional measures for alleviating the ill effects of downsizing on social information–processing networks in an organization. Wide-ranging implications result both for corporate strategy and for the new methods of future research on the organizational collective knowledge processes.
Open source software (OSS) has changed the nature of competition in software markets (and, beyond that, is changing our understanding of the nature of production in the presence of the Internet–Web compound, with the multiple capabilities it furnishes). Ravi Sen provides here a strategic analysis of the competition between OSS and proprietary software. The author offers a novel analytical model as a workbench for the study of this competition. By exercising the model, he is able to offer specific, unobvious, and theory-grounded strategic recommendations to software vendors.
IT outsourcing in toto has been an object of intense study in our field. However, outsourcing decisions are frequently taken at the project level. The decision-making process leading to such an outsourcing is targeted here by Amrit Tiwana and Ashley A. Bush. The researchers study the managers’ approach to an outsourcing decision from three theoretical perspectives in order to understand the deeper assumptions these managers work under in their decision making. Moreover, the study encompasses Japanese and U.S. IT managers and offers a rich set of similarities and contrasts in the relative ascriptions of importance to various factors by these two sets. The work surfaces an understanding of the hierarchy of factors in outsourcing decisions and produces pragmatic advice on the governance of outsourced projects that stems from some of these factors.
Monideepa Tarafdar, Qiang Tu, Bhanu S. Ragu-Nathan, and T.S. Ragu-Nathan study the impact of the IT-induced technostress. In an empirical study, the authors trace this form of stress to five factors. They further show how technostress affects the individual’s role stress and how both of these stress forms sap productivity. Theoretical value of the proposed model is in our deeper understanding of this frequently spoken about, but rarely acted on, form of stress. In practical terms, the authors offer a diagnostic instrument for the evaluation of the degree of stress in the organization, so that appropriate measures can be taken.
Intrusion prevention is an essential security measure in information systems, and thus a measure that underpins organizational operations today. This approach to security goes beyond intrusion detection by detecting and preventing an attack on the information system from taking effect. Intrusion prevention systems can be configured to operate reactively, by sending all the alarms to human analysts, or proactively, by blocking the suspicious traffic. Costs differ and serious organizational consequence may result from a wrong decision. Here, Wei T. Yue and Metin Çakanyildirim offer an analytical model to make these decisions, based on the key parameters. Considering the importance of organizational resilience under a great variety of attacks, the model is certain to see further use and refinement.
Opening another, the twenty-fourth, volume of JMIS is an excellent occasion to express our—the Editorial Board’s and mine—gratitude to our referees, always the primary guarantors of the top-ranked Journal’s quality. Here are the JMIS referees:
Niv Ahituv
Pervaiz Alam
Gove Allen
Paul Alpar
Donald L. Amoroso
Murugan Anandarajan
Hayward P. Andres
Dorine Andrews
Yoris Au
Benoit A. Aubert
Sulin Ba
Barbro Back
Akhilesh Bajaj
Dirk Baldwin
Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay
Ravi Bapna
Indranil R. Bardhan
Reza Barkhi
Henri Barki
Stuart J. Barnes
Anitesh Barua
Richard Baskerville
Dinesh Batra
Irma Becerra-Fernandez
Skip Benamati
Michel Benaroch
Raquel Benbunan-Fich
François Bergeron
Hemant Bhargava
Anol Bhattacherjee
Sudip Bhattacherjee
Gilbert Bock
Wai Fong Boh
Indranil Bose
Robert M. Brown
Glenn J. Browne
Jacek Brzezinski
Scott Buffett
Kelly Burke
Brian Butler
Terry A. Byrd
Jinwei Cao
Sven Carlsson
William J. Carroll
Hasan Cavusoglu
Susy Chan
Jerry Cha-Jan Chang
Debabroto Chatterjee
Patrick Chau
Ramnath K. Chellappa
Hong-Mei Chen
Kuan Chen
Hsing Kenneth Cheng
Robert T.H. Chi
Roger Chiang
Alina M. Chircu
Jong-min Choe
H. Michael Chung
Wingyan Chung
Theodore H. Clark
Roger Clarke
Randolph Cooper
Qizhi Dai
Ronald Dattero
Sergio De Cesare
Bruce Dehning
Didem Demirhan
Sarv Devaraj
Rajiv M. Dewan
Debabrata Dey
Peter Duchessi
Kaushik Dutta
Omar A. El Sawy
Sean B. Eom
J. Alberto Espinosa
Ming Fan
Xiaofen Fang
Steven Feiner
Eliezer M. Fich
Kirk Fiedler
Edmond P. Fitzgerald
Jerry Fjermestad
Chiara Francalanci
Mark Fuller
Brent Furneaux
Michael R. Galbreth
Dennis Galletta
Michael Gallivan
Dale Ganley
Gordon Gao
Edward J. Garrity
Judith Gebauer
David Gefen
Michiel van Genuchten
Anindya Ghose
Sanjay Goel
Janis L. Gogan
Thomas Goh
Dale Goodhue
Ram D. Gopal
Sanjay Gosain
Peter Gray
Stefano Grazioli
Saul Greenberg
Robert K. Griffin
Michael D. Grigoriades
Bin Gu
Kemal Guler
Alok Gupta
Jungpil Hahn
Barbara Haley
James A. Hall
Ingoo Han
Paul Hart
Stephen Hayne
Alan R. Hevner
Ann Hickey
Starr Roxanne Hiltz
Richard Hoffman
John A. Hoxmeier
Paul Hu
Qing Hu
Ming-Hui Huang
Wayne Huang
Cary Hughes
Kai Lung Hui
Ard Huizing
Ghiyong Im
Zahir Irani
Gretchen I. Irwin
Bala Iyer
Varghese Jacob
Bharat A. Jain
Matthias Jarke
Bao-Jun Jiang
James J. Jiang
Alice Johnson
Linda Ellis Johnson
K.D. Joshi
Surinder Kahai
Timo Kakola
Ajit Kambil
Atreyi Kankanhalli
P.K. Kannan
Jahangir Karimi
Michael Kattan
Timothy Kayworth
Julie E. Kendall
William J. Kettinger
Omar E.M. Khalil
Melody Y. Kiang
Sia Siew Kien
Ruth King
Rajiv Kishore
Gary Klein
Dong-Gil Ko
Cenk Kocas
Chang Koh
Rajiv Kohli
Esther Koster
Marios Koufaris
Kenneth A. Kozar
Kenneth L. Kraemer
Allan Krebs
Ramayya Krishnan
Uday Kulkarni
Akhil Kumar
Ram Kumar
Vineet Kumar
Mary C. Lacity
Atanu Lahiri
Simon S.K. Lam
Karl R. Lang
Tor J. Larsen
Gwanhoo Lee
Heeseok Lee
Ho Geun Lee
Jungwoo Lee
Thomas Lee
Yang Lee
Zoonky Lee
Richard Leifer
Jan Marco Leimeister
Katherine N. Lemon
Mary Jane Lenard
Hugo Levecq
Natalia Levina
Dahui Li
Xiaotong Li
Ting-Peng Liang
Stephen L. Liedtka
John Lim
Kai Lim
Ming Lin
Yihwa Irene Liou
Jacqueline Lipton
Alexandre Lopes
Paul B. Lowry
Henry C. Lucas Jr.
Mark Lycett
Jane M. Mackay
Simha R. Magal
M. Adam Mahmood
Arvind Malhotra
Yogesh Malhotra
Ji-Ye Mao
Salvatore T. March
Nelson Massad
Anne P. Massey
Charles H. Mawhinney
Jerrold H. May
William McCarthy
Roy McKelvey
Ephraim R. McLean
Nigel Melville
Nirup Menon
Shaila Miranda
Rajesh Mirani
Dinesh Mirchandani
Prasenjit Mitra
William Money
Ali R. Montazemi
Ramiro Montealegre
Jolene Morrison
Michael D. Myers
Peter P. Mykytyn Jr.
Barin N. Nag
Murli Nagasundaram
Fiona Nah
R. Ryan Nelson
Boon Siong Neo
Fred Niederman
Mark Nissen
Dmitri Nizovtsev
Rosalie Ocker
Wonseok Oh
Bob O’Keefe
Lorne Olfman
James Oliver
Carl Pacini
Jonathan W. Palmer
Raymond R. Panko
Manoj Parameswaran
Michael Parent
Jeffrey Parsons
Ravi Patnayakuni
Souren Paul
David J. Pauleen
Paul A. Pavlou
Kenneth Peffers
Robin Pennington
Francis Pereira
Roger A. Pick
Mitzi G. Pitts
Jean-Charles Pomerol
Gerald Post
John H. Prager
G. Premkumar
Sandeep Purao
Jim J. Quan
S. Raghunathan
Arik Ragowsky
T.S. Ragu-Nathan
Arun Rai
Rex Kelly Rainer Jr.
K. Ramamurthy
K.S. Raman
B. Ramesh
Richard G. Ramirez
H.R. Rao
R. Ravichandran
T. Ravichandran
Sury Ravindran
Amy W. Ray
Louis Raymond
Paul Resnick
Hyuen-Suk Rhee
William B. Richmond
Frederick Riggins
Daniel Robey
Nicholas C. Romano Jr.
Sherry D. Ryan
Young U. Ryu
Timo Saarinen
Rajiv Sabherwal
Naveed Saleem
G. Lawrence Sanders
Sunanda Sangwan
Radhika Santhanam
Suprateek Sarker
Surendra Sarnikar
Carol Saunders
George Schell
Petra Schubert
Judy Scott
Larry Seligman
Ravi Sen
Kishore Sengupta
Nainika Seth
Vikram Sethi
Theresa M. Shaft
Michael Shaw
Steven Sheetz
Jim Sheffield
Olivia Sheng
Morgan M. Shepherd
Michael Shields
Siew Kien Sia
Keng Siau
Mark Silver
Atish P. Sinha
Sumit Sircar
H. Jeff Smith
Michael D. Smith
Charles A. Snyder
Toni M. Somers
Jai-Yeol Son
Scott Spangler
William E. Spangler
Valerie K. Spitler
Rajendra P. Srivastava
Thomas F. Stafford
Stephen Standifird
Sandy Staples
Eric W. Stein
Dick Stenmark
Katherine Stewart
Mani Subramani
Girish Subramanian
Ramesh Subramanian
Robert T. Sumichrast
Shankar Sunarajan
Arun Sundararajan
Shankar Sundaresan
Tae Kyung Sung
Roderick I. Swaab
Edward J. Szewczak
Paul P. Tallon
Kar Yan Tam
Sonny Tambe
Bernard C.Y. Tan
Yao-Hua Tan
Qian Candy Tang
Mohan R. Tanniru
Monideepa Tarafdar
Alfred Taudes
Nolan Taylor
David P. Tegarden
Rahul Telang
Gary F. Templeton
James T.C. Teng
Thompson Teo
Jason B. Thatcher
Matthew Thatcher
Ron Thompson
James Y.L. Thong
Amrit Tiwana
Kerem Tomak
Leon van der Torre
Jonathan K. Trower
Gregory E. Truman
Yanbin Tu
Ilkka Tuomi
Brad Tuttle
Tuure Tuunanen
N.S. Umanath
Andrew Urbaczewski
Rustam Vahidov
Vasja Vehovar
Viswanath Venkatesh
Roumen Vragov
Michael Wade
Steven Walczak
Zhiping Walter
Bin Wang
Jingguo Wang
Michael S. Wang
Shouhong Wang
Weiquan Wang
Y. Richard Wang
Molly Wasko
Carol Watson
Mary Beth Watson-Manheim
Thomas Weber
Chih-Ping Wei
Charles E. Wells
John Wells
Larry West
J. Christopher Westland
Seungjin Whang
Michael E. Whitman
Jeffrey L. Whitten
George Widmeyer
Rolf Wigand
Fons Wijnhoven
Christopher Wolfe
Charles A. Wood
Hans Wortmann
D. J. Wu
Mu Xia
Weidong Xia
Christopher Yang
Mun Yi
Byungjoon Yoo
Fatemeh Zahedi
Dongsong Zhang
Han Zhang
Ping Zhang
Zuopeng Zhang
Huimin Zhao
J. Leon Zhao
Lina Zhou
Kevin Zhu
Youlong Zhuang
Ilze Zigurs
Moshe Zviran
Let us now read the papers.
Vladimir Zwass
Editor-in-Chief