The determinants of individuals’ perceived e-security: Evidence from Malaysia

Despite the critical role of individuals’ perceived security in an online environment, previous research has not attempted to comprehensively study the influences and interrelations between the determinants of online individuals’ perceived security. This research employs five theories to examine the interrelations that might exist between the antecedents of individuals’ perceived security in online environment in Malaysia. It is the first attempt to empirically examine the interrelations of the confidentiality related factors identified in the literature which is a significant original contribution. A questionnaire was the primary research methodology and structural equation modeling was employed to test the hypotheses. The findings suggest that individuals’ perceptions about security are significantly influenced by their perceived technical protection while technical protection was found to be influenced by website design features. Moreover, it was found that individuals’ perceptions toward internally provided assurances are highly influenced by externally provided assurances. However, the results found no significant relations between internally and externally provided assurances about a website's security. The findings imply that e-retailers should launch well-designed websites and communicate the technical protection capabilities of their websites to address individuals’ security concerns. The results also suggest that e-traders should consider the factors influencing individuals’ security perceptions when designing/developing their websites.     

Information culture and organizational effectiveness

This paper develops a typology of information cultures by synthesizing empirical and theoretical research in organization science and information science. Four information culture types are proposed. In a Result-oriented culture, the goal of information management is to enable the organization to compete and succeed in its market or sector. In a Rule-following culture, information is managed to control internal operations, and to reinforce rules and policies. In a Relationship-based culture, information is managed to encourage communication, participation, and a sense of identity. In a Risk-taking culture, information is managed to encourage innovation, creativity, and the exploration of new ideas. We expect most organizations to display to varying degrees norms and behaviors from all four types, and that the information culture profile of an organization would be related to its effectiveness. The paper ends by looking at the practical and theoretical value of a systematic examination of information culture and its link to organizational effectiveness.     

Academic discipline and risk perception of technologies: An empirical study

This article brings together two areas of research: studies on risk perception of technologies and studies on vocational/career choice. This is an important link since decisions concerning technologies are influenced by decision makers’ risk perceptions and these in turn may be related to educational and career paths.We analyze students of different academic disciplines with regard to their risk perception of four technologies. The aim is to find out whether there is a relationship between area of study (as a precursor of vocational and career choice) and risk perception of technologies regarding health, environment and society. The four technologies under study are renewable energies, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and information and communication technologies (ICT). Key results are: irrespective of academic discipline risk of genetic engineering on average is rated highest and renewable energies lowest. This holds for all the risks studied (environmental, health, societal risks). On average, students from different academic disciplines differ in their risk perception. Factor analyses show that common dimensions of risk are the technologies and not the kind of risk. Regression analyses show that the variables influencing perceived risks vary between the technological fields.     

Examining the Effectiveness of Support for UK Wave Energy Innovation since 2000. Lost at Sea or a New Wave of Innovation?

Patients and carers now have unprecedented access to health information via specialist journals and the popular media, while the worldwide web has revolutionised public access to clinical information. Levels of patient demand for information about health have grown and there is evidence to suggest that patients wish to receive more information than is sometimes currently provided by clinicians. In secondary care, some specialisms have more readily adopted the use of information communication technologies (ICT) in clinician/patient communication than others. This paper focuses on clinicians' perceptions of client Internet use for psychiatric conditions and studies the influence this has had on the consultation process in the United Kingdom. The research method consisted of a postal questionnaire distributed to the members of the Women in Psychiatry Group on the register of the Royal College of Psychiatry. Telephone interviews were conducted, employing the critical incident method, as well as a brief additional questionnaire. The data show that psychiatrists who used the Internet discerned client usage more readily. Where the client sought to discuss information acquired electronically with the consultant this tended to extend the consultation period, but a number of psychiatrists reported a greater sense of partnership as a result. The paper explores consultant perceptions of client motivations for Internet use and the perceived advantages and disadvantages for both client and psychiatrist. Overall, the psychiatry profession appears to be following the lead of clients in the use of ICT. Policy recommendations are offered with respect to the provision of profession-validated information on the Internet and psychiatrists' training in IT.     

Determinants of professionally autonomous end user acceptance in an enterprise resource planning system environment

To fully exploit the capabilities of complex technologies, businesses must deliberately foster technology acceptance by end users. This deliberate activity must recognize the complexity of factors that influence individuals’ perceptions, intentions, and usage of information technology. This study surveyed 66 professionally autonomous end users and gathered information on their perceptions related to several technology acceptance factors for a newly installed enterprise resource planning (ERP) system component. Study analyses focused on end user perceptions of ERP component usefulness, their intention to use the system, and self-reported usage of a system component. Valuable insights into the perceptions of professional end users toward a component of a complex technology were gained. Recommendations based upon the results of this study include: (a) clearly describe, early in the implementation process, an overall picture of the ERP system flow and visually show end users how the components they use “fit” into the whole system; (b) convert ERP-related “tech talk” to common end user language by either clear explanation of unique terms or associations of new terms to ones commonly understood by end users, and (c) provide adequate resources (financial, physical, human, etc.) to ensure that end users have access to timely support.     

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and farmers’ decision-making across the agricultural supply chain

Using a case study of the Indian Tobacco Company's (ITC) e-Choupal initiative, the paper empirically analyses the role of information delivery through information and communication technology (ICT) in enhancing decision-making capabilities of Indian farmers. Users of e-Choupal show significantly better decision-making aptitudes, as compared to non-users, on various agricultural practices across the agricultural supply chain. Further, socio-demographic background's of the users such as education levels, the social category they belong to, income level's, and landholding size also play a significant role in impacting decision-making aptitudes. The impact is particularly prominent in production planning and post-harvest and marketing related decisions. Policy implications of these findings are discussed. The study emphasizes the importance of designing ICT enabled information systems to suit the socio-demographic profile of the user groups.     

Exploring the role of psychological safety in promoting the intention to continue sharing knowledge in virtual communities

Virtual communities play an important role in business, society, and education. At present, one of the great challenges faced by virtual communities is the availability of knowledge, which is mainly created through knowledge-sharing behavior. Although prior studies have extensively studied knowledge-sharing behavior in virtual communities from various perspectives, they largely ignored the important role of psychological safety in this process. We propose to address this gap by examining psychological safety and its effect on individuals’ intention to continue sharing knowledge. We also identify trust in the virtual community and self-consciousness as antecedents of psychological safety. The research model is empirically tested through a survey across two virtual communities in a major university. The results show that the condition of psychological safety has a positive influence on the intention to continue sharing knowledge. The level of trust has a positive impact on the intention to continue sharing knowledge not only directly, as documented in the literature, but also indirectly, through the mediating role of psychological safety. Finally, we find that self-consciousness exerts a negative influence on feelings of psychological safety. The implications of our findings and the need for future research are also discussed.     

The private value of software patents

We investigate the value creation or destruction associated with the introduction of software patents in the United States in two ways. The first looks at the cumulative abnormal returns to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) firms around the time of important court decisions that impacted software patents, and the second analyzes the relationship between firms’ stock market value, the sector in which they operate, and their holdings of software patents. We conclude that the market evaluated software patents as a negative development ex ante. Ex post, a greater number of firms in all ICT sectors invested in these patents, and these firms had slightly higher market values than those with no software patents. However, while we obtain clear evidence that the technological importance or quality of patented innovation mattered for the market value of hardware firms both before and after the legal changes, it is less clear that the marginal patent right per se was associated with increases in market value, and there are no significant valuation effects associated with patents for pure software firms after the change.     

Competing Values Framework and its impact on the intellectual capital dimensions: evidence from different Portuguese organizational sectors

Organizational culture and intellectual capital (IC) have been important topics in the current organizational literature. However, few studies have analysed the correlations between these constructs. From this evidence, the main goal of the present study is to examine the correlation between the perceptions of organizational culture and the perception of IC measures. A sample consisting of 401 workers from the technological, health and services sector responded to the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument and the Intellectual Capital Scale. Results show that the Competing Values Framework dimensions (clan, adhocracy, hierarchy and market cultures) are correlated with the three IC dimensions studied (customer, structural and human capital). Our results also show that the culture explained variance varies across organizational sectors. The current study provides an initial contribution to the investigation of the correlation between perceived organizational culture and IC measures. The discussion and analysis ends with an integrated framework with practical implications for management, followed by suggestions and guidelines for future studies.     

“Stacking” and “picking” inventions: The patenting behavior of European inventors

By using a sample of 793 inventors drawn from the PatVal-EU dataset, this paper explores three aspects of patent production at the individual inventor level: (1) the number of EPO patents that the inventors produce; (2) the average value of their inventions; (3) the production of the most valuable patents. By jointly estimating the three equations we find that the inventors’ level of education, employment in a large firm, and involvement in large-scale research projects positively correlate with quantity. Yet, apart from the size of the research project, none of these factors directly influence the expected value of the inventions. They do, however, have an indirect influence, as we find that the number of patents explains the probability of producing a technological hit (the maximum value). Also, there is no regression to the mean in the invention process at an individual level, as the number of inventions that an inventor produces is not correlated with the average value.     

Representation matters: An exploration of the socio-economic impacts of ICT-enabled public value in the context of sub-Saharan economies

In this investigation we use a modified Networked Readiness Index (NRI) framework to investigate whether (1) ICT capabilities impact public value creation, and (2) if the public value is associated with the socio-economic impact of ICT capabilities. In the case of this study the construct Public Value is represented via two different proxies. In the first case we use a perception-based measure of public value (as represented by the World Government Indicators) and in the second case we use a surrogate objective measure (as represented by the Cost of Business Startup Procedures (CBSP)). We use a six-step multi-method methodology that involves Cluster Analysis, Correlation Analysis, Decision Trees Induction, Data Envelopment Analysis, Association Rules Mining, and Ordinary Least Squares regression to conduct the inquiry in the context of 26 Sub-Saharan (SSA) economies. Results of our data analysis include: 1) the set of economies with better developed ICT Capabilities are relatively more efficient in converting ICT Capabilities into Public Value than the relatively poorer economies with less developed ICT Capabilities; 2) High levels of ICT capabilities in the areas of Affordability Readiness, Skills Readiness, the Political & Regulatory Environment, and Business Usage allow for relatively more efficient generation of Public Value.     

Factors affecting university-industry R&D projects: The importance of searching, screening and signalling

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of research cooperation between firms and Public research organisations (PROs) for a sample of innovating small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The econometric analysis is based on the results of the KNOW survey carried out in seven EU countries during 2000. In contrast to earlier works that provide information about the importance of PROs’ research, we know the number of firm/PRO collaborative research and development (R&D) projects. This allows us to study the determinants of firm collaboration with PROs in terms of both the propensity of a firm to undertake R&D projects with a university (do they cooperate or not) and the extent of this collaboration (number of R&D projects). Two questions are addressed. Which firms cooperated with PROs? And what are the firm characteristics that might explain the number of R&D projects with PROs? The results of our analysis point to two major phenomena. First, the propensity to forge an agreement with an academic partner depends on the ‘absolute size’ of the industrial partner. Second the openness of firms to the external environment, as measured by their willingness to search, screen and signal, significantly affects the development of R&D projects with PROs. Our findings suggest that acquiring knowledge through the screening of publications and involvement in public policies positively affects the probability of signing an agreement with a PRO, but not the number of R&D projects developed. In fact, firms that outsource research and development, and patent to protect innovation and to signal competencies show higher levels of collaboration.     

Relationship between index term specificity and relevance judgment

Concurrent concepts of specificity are discussed and differentiated from each other to investigate the relationship between index term specificity and users’ relevance judgments. The identified concepts are term-document specificity, hierarchical specificity, statement specificity, and posting specificity. Among them, term-document specificity, which is a relationship between an index term and the document indexed with the term, is regarded as a fruitful research area. In an experiment involving three searches with 175 retrieved documents from 356 matched index terms, the impact of specificity on relevance judgments is analyzed and found to be statistically significant. Implications for index practice and for future research are discussed.     

A scalable privacy-preserving recommendation scheme via bisecting k-means clustering

Privacy-preserving collaborative filtering is an emerging web-adaptation tool to cope with information overload problem without jeopardizing individuals’ privacy. However, collaborative filtering with privacy schemes commonly suffer from scalability and sparseness as the content in the domain proliferates. Moreover, applying privacy measures causes a distortion in collected data, which in turn defects accuracy of such systems. In this work, we propose a novel privacy-preserving collaborative filtering scheme based on bisecting k-means clustering in which we apply two preprocessing methods. The first preprocessing scheme deals with scalability problem by constructing a binary decision tree through a bisecting k-means clustering approach while the second produces clones of users by inserting pseudo-self-predictions into original user profiles to boost accuracy of scalability-enhanced structure. Sparse nature of collections are handled by transforming ratings into item features-based profiles. After analyzing our scheme with respect to privacy and supplementary costs, we perform experiments on benchmark data sets to evaluate it in terms of accuracy and online performance. Our empirical outcomes verify that combined effects of the proposed preprocessing schemes relieve scalability and augment accuracy significantly.     

A cross-national comparison of perceived strategic importance of RFID for CIOs in Germany and Italy

Purpose

Drawing from literature on innovation, strategy and culture the objective of this study is to explore the role of perceived potentials and perceived strategic importance on CIOs’ perspective on RFID technology in two different cultural settings.

Methodology

Based on survey responses from 463 German and 157 Italian IT decision makers we analyzed the data with PLS structural equation modeling.

Findings

We show that perceived potentials of RFID influence the perceived strategic importance which positively influences CIOs’ intention to invest in RFID. The composition of perceived potentials affecting the strategic importance of RFID differs significantly in both cultures. In Germany, potentials attributed to RFID are improving quality, automating manpower, reducing counterfeits, and improving customer service. Italian CIOs value reducing stock inconsistencies, optimizing stock keeping, and improving customer service as RFID potentials. Regardless of culture, findings show that company size hardly has impact on perceived strategic importance.

Originality/value

This research shows on a large empirical basis cultural differences in the perception of RFID in two countries using PLS.     

Location, collocation and R&D alliances in the European ICT industry

This paper argues that spatial proximity plays a role in determining the propensity of firms to engage in R&D alliances. Drawing from economic geography, network theory and innovation theory, we discuss how prior collocation can affect the propensity to engage in R&D alliances, arguing that alliances can act both as a substitute and as a complement to collocation. Using a novel dataset matching alliances and patent data for the European ICT industry, we show that alliances are complementary to prior collocation (at both national and sub-national regional level) of firm’s R&D labs. In such an intra-industry, oligopolistic scenario, firms strategically use R&D alliances as a means to limit knowledge flows and protect competences, rather than to promote knowledge flows. Furthermore, while a common institutional context is important to promote collaboration, because of the high level of R&D internationalisation as well as the complex social networks within an oligopolistic industry, national institutional contexts are less relevant.     

Toward incorporating a task-stage identification technique into the long-term document support process

Effective knowledge management in a knowledge-intensive environment can place heavy demands on the information filtering (IF) strategies used to model workers’ long-term task-needs. Because of the growing complexity of knowledge-intensive work tasks, a profiling technique is needed to deliver task-relevant documents to workers. In this study, we propose an IF technique with task-stage identification that provides effective codification-based support throughout the execution of a task. Task-needs pattern similarity analysis based on a correlation value is used to identify a worker’s task-stage (the pre-focus, focus formulation, or post-focus task-stage). The identified task-stage is then incorporated into a profile adaptation process to generate the worker’s current task profile. The results of a pilot study conducted in a research institute confirm that there is a low or negative correlation between search sessions and transactions in the pre-focus task-stage, whereas there is at least a moderate correlation between search sessions/transactions in the post-focus stage. Compared with the traditional IF technique, the proposed IF technique with task-stage identification achieves, on average, a 19.49% improvement in task-relevant document support. The results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method for knowledge-intensive work tasks.     

The effect of internal social capital on knowledge sharing

On the basis of the Chinese schema, we propose that internal social capital manifests itself in the form of ‘guanxi’, trust, and norms. We discuss the concept of interpersonal relationships within the context of Chinese culture by embedding the guanxi concept into a model to investigate the relationships among the three dimensions. We used a survey-based methodology to collect data from 230 employees of the top 100 high-technology firms in Taiwan and structural equation modelling (SEM) with LISREL 8.54 to examine the hypotheses model. The results indicated that at the individual level, guanxi is positively related to both trust and norms, which are also positively related to knowledge sharing. The mediating effects of trust and norms were also found to be significant. Trust directly influences knowledge sharing, and plays a mediating role between knowledge sharing and guanxi. This suggests that knowledge sharing is likely to occur when trust exists among employees. The results further indicate that norms mediate the relationship between guanxi and knowledge sharing. Guanxi among members influences knowledge sharing; therefore, organizations require a feasible solution using the relational norms mechanism. Previous studies have either emphasized the direct influence of social capital or regarded all variables to be of similar importance for knowledge sharing; however, no clear explanations have been provided explaining its influence on knowledge sharing. We advance understanding of why social capital enhances knowledge sharing among employees and the means by which this occurs.     

A meta-analysis of third-person perception related to distorted information: Synthesizing the effect,antecedents, and consequences

In the long run of fighting distorted information, empowering Internet users is believed to be an economic and sustainable solution. The effectiveness of this approach relies on the assumption that Internet users pay close attention to and hold unbiased perceptions of the distorted information. To obtain a systematic examination of people's perceptions of the distorted information, we performed a two-part meta-analysis based on 24 articles with 20,777 participants across three continents. Drawing on the third-person perception/effect (TPP/TPE) framework, Part I synthesized the literature examining the perpetual gap of distorted information's influence on self and others. Based on 28 effect sizes, the results confirmed a strong third-person perception related to distorted information (d = 0.614, p <.0001). Factors identified as moderating the effect magnitude include distorted information type, TPP operationalization, and study context. Part II was a synthesis of 63 effect sizes examining the potential antecedents and consequences of distorted information TPP. The results indicated that media use, distorted information exposure, and efficacy beliefs are predictors of distorted information TPP. However, policy support, proposed as a potential consequence, was not found to be so. The implications of our findings and directions for future research are discussed.