Brian Corbitt

Developing intraorganizational electronic commerce strategy: an ethnographic study

This paper presents an argument for qualitative research and the use of ethnography in information systems (IS) research using a detailed investigation of the types of strategies used in implementing electronic commerce in a corporate finance institution. The paper describes how these strategies were developed and why and models those responses. This paper confirms other studies which argue that certain key elements must be in place to ensure the successful implementation of information technology (IT) or electronic commerce. However, this research has highlighted the fact that there are important influential issues operating at another level within the organization studied. Politics and the power of vested interest groups within an organization and managerial misunderstanding about what electronic commerce is created unrealistic expectations of the innovation by management.

Cultural Context and its Impact on Requirements Elicitation in Thailand

This paper reports one part of an ethnographic study of how software analysts in Thai software houses undertake the requirements engineering process. In this paper the impact of Thai culture on the elicitation of requirements in information systems developed will be reported. The important role of requirements for software and systems development can be traced to the early study of software engineering. Software developers realised that errors during the requirements phase caused high cost in fixing systems and often led to rejection of systems (Laudon and Laudon 1995). This paper compares the nature of elicitation of requirements by systems analysts in Thailand with standard descriptions of elicitation in requirements engineering research. Detailed descriptions of elicitation processes and an evaluation of text are used to suggest that elicitation in Thailand is affected by different use of analytical and elicitation tools, different adaptation of those tools to the elicitation process, an inability to gain full access to all users where requirements can be identified, increased time needed to uncover requirements and an inability to develop requirements specification. This has important implications for Software Houses using western consultants or organisations employing consultants not familiar with Thai Culture. Understanding the nature of the impact of Thai culture on Requirements engineering processes should ensure that project failure due to poor understanding of requirements for systems would be lessened.

Exploring the Social Construction of IT Policy—Thailand and Singapore

This paper explores the nature of two IT policies, one in Singapore and one in Thailand. The analysis employed suggests that IT policies are socially constructed and thus reflect discourse and ideologies that are pervasive in society. As such then a comparison of the two policies should reflect a difference. This paper argues that the differences between the Singaporean and Thai national IT policies reflect differences in the discourses that frame the social construction of the policy in each case. This paper argues that one fundamental difference between the IT policies implemented in Thailand and Singapore is that the Thai policy is introspective reflecting a deferent society, whilst Singapores is outward looking and pointedly global, reflecting a society markedly more extrovert. In analysing the text of the two policies it is argued that IT policy reflects a discourse framed by the state, which in turn represents the dominant discourse in society.

Towards E-Government: A Study of Supplier Attitudes towards the Adoption of E-Auction Procurement by the Metropolitan Electricity Authority of Thailand

In Thailand, administrative reform is well underway from the ground up. In the second year of its first term (2002), the government implemented sweeping bureaucratic reform, reorganising government ministries according to an agenda-based structure to maximise efficiency and create a matrix organisation. The government made it possible to pass new laws on government restructuring and on good governance.