Chee-Sing Yap

CEO characteristics, organizational characteristics and information technology adoption in small businesses

The importance of information technology (IT) to businesses is widely acknowledged. Yet, while large businesses have been using computers for some time, small businesses have been slow in adopting IT. The literature on technological innovation suggests that there are two main classes of variables that are important in determining adoption of an innovation: individual characteristics and organizational characteristics. As IT can be viewed as a technological innovation, these two classes of variables are possible determinants of IT adoption. This paper examines the effect of three characteristics of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and three organizational characteristics on adoption of IT. The three CEO characteristics studied are CEO innovativeness, CEO attitude towards adoption of IT, and CEO IT knowledge. The three organizational characteristics studied are business size, competitiveness of environment, and information intensity. Six hypotheses were formulated and tested using data collected from a sample of 166 small businesses. The results suggest that notwithstanding the business size, CEO characteristics are important factors affecting IT adoption in small businesses. Small businesses are more likely to adopt IT when the CEOs are more innovative, have a positive attitude towards adoption of IT, and possess greater IT knowledge.

Top Management Support, External Expertise and Information Systems Implementation in Small Businesses

Top management support is a key recurrent factor critical for effective information systems (IS) implementation. However, the role of top management support may not be as critical as external IS expertise, in the form of consultants and vendors, in small business IS implementation due to the unique characteristics of small businesses. This paper describes an empirical study of the relative importance of top management support and external IS expertise on IS effectiveness in 114 small businesses. Partial least squares (PLS) was used for statistical testing. The results show that top management support is not as important as effective external IS expertise in small business IS implementation. While top management support is essential for IS effectiveness, high quality external IS expertise is even more critical for small businesses operating in an environment of resource poverty. These findings call for more research efforts to be directed at selecting and engaging high quality external IS expertise for IS implementation in small businesses.

Testing an ethical decision-making theory: the case of softlifting

There is a lack of both theoretical and empirical research on the process of ethical decision making in the domain of information systems (IS). As a step in this direction, we describe and test a general ethical decision-making theory developed in the marketing discipline. We conducted a study on the ethical decision-making process of 243 entry-level IS professionals with regard to softlifting--that is, illegal copying of software for personal use. The results show support for the applicability of the tested ethical decision-making theory to the domain of IS, specifically in the context of softlifting. Entry-level IS professionals were found to use both deontological and teleological evaluations to arrive at an ethical judgment of a moral issue. Subsequently, moral intention to pursue softlifting behavior is primarily determined by the ethical judgment. These findings have implications for both research and practice.

Engagement of external expertise in information systems implementation

Most small businesses lack computer experience and do not have sufficient internal computer expertise. Hence, small businesses are more dependent on external expertise such as consultants and vendors than are larger businesses. This paper compares the information systems (IS) effectiveness of a group of small businesses that engage separate consultants and vendors (consultant-vendor approach) with that of another group of small businesses that engage vendors who also provide consultancy service (vendor-only approach). The results show that small businesses that adopt the vendor-only approach have more effective information systems than small businesses that adopt the consultant-vendor approach. Further, the vendor-only approach results in the same level of consultant effectiveness and a better level of vendor support for small businesses compared with the consultant-vendor approach. The relationship between vendor and other parties in the IS implementation project is found to be an important predictor of IS effectiveness.

Business Process Reengineering in the Public Sector: The Case of the Housing Development Board in Singapore

Our existing knowledge of business process reengineering (BPR) is mainly derived from the experiences of private sector organizations, which have fundamentally different characteristics from public organizations. This paper represents a first step in understanding how BPR may be different in public organizations. Drawing on the public administration literature, it examines the differences between public and private organizations and their implications for BPR. Following that, it examines the BPR experience of a large public organization through an intensive case study. The case analysis shows that while there are similarities in the BPR experiences of public and private organizations, there are also notable differences. In this specific case, there were social and political pressures to reengineer, press publicity to promote BPR, a reengineering team comprised mainly of neutral staff, performance benchmarks adapted from the private sector, high-level approval for redesigned processes, and a pilot site implementation to secure further funding. It concludes with lessons learned for implementing BPR in public organizations.

Information systems effectiveness: a user satisfaction approach

Information systems (IS) effectiveness is a complex variable. The literature on organizational effectiveness suggests that it may not be possible to find a precise measure of IS effectiveness and the criteria for effectiveness may vary from organization to organization. A popular perceptual construct, user satisfaction, is examined through a review of IS effectiveness literature. Problems with this construct are highlighted and the social psychology literature is used to clarify these problems. It is noted that theories and models from the behavioural sciences offer a sound basis for understanding the problems with conceptualization and operationalization of user satisfaction. As a result of this review, we offer some principles to keep in mind when utilizing user satisfaction as a measure of IS effectiveness.

Information systems and occupational stress: a theoretical framework

The information systems (IS) profession is a stressful profession. However, there is little theoretical or empirical research on the effects of occupational stress on IS professionals. A major reason is because IS professionals and researchers are unaware of the consequences of occupational stress and unfamiliar with the occupational stress literature. The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework of occupational stress for IS professionals. Based on a review of the IS, psychology, and general management literature, 12 occupational stress models are identified. These stress models are analyzed along the two dimensions of focus and theoretical foundation. The analysis shows that most of the occupational stress models consider stress to be the consequence of the interaction between an environmental stimulus and the idiosyncratic response of the individual. Further analysis of these models suggests that nine key points are critical in developing a theoretical framework of occupational stress for IS professionals. A mapping of how the existing stress models incorporate the nine key points is also presented. The findings of this paper can provide a theoretical basis for further research on the occupational stress of IS professionals. Finally, an agenda for further research into this issue is presented.

Information Technology Adoption by Small Business: an Empirical Study

Drawing upon theories from the technological innovation literature, this study examines the relationship between various contextual factors (CEO innovativeness, information intensity, attitude towards IT adoption, IT knowledge, and competition) and IT adoption in small businesses. The results show that small businesses are more likely to adopt IT when they have more innovative CEOs, positive attitude toward adoption of IT, and greater IT knowledge. While CEO innovativeness and attitude toward IT adoption are important determinants of the decision to adopt, they do not affect the extent of IT adoption subsequently. The extent of IT adoption is mainly determined by the level of IT knowledge.

Environments for Information Systems Implementation in Small Businesses

Top management support and external information systems (IS) expertise, in the forms of consultants and vendors, have been identified as 2 key factors for effective IS implementation in small businesses. This article proposes a framework for IS implementation in small businesses. The framework is based on high-low combinations of top management support and external IS expertise to characterize 4 IS implementation environments. The framework was tested with a questionnaire survey of 114 small businesses in Singapore. Interviews were also conducted with 67 of these small businesses. IS implementation success was measured by user satisfaction, organizational impact, and overall IS effectiveness. The results show that the most effective IS implementation environment is one in which both top management support and external IS experts work as a team. However, notwithstanding the lack of top management support, IS implementation can still be effective if the quality of external IS expertise is high.

Symbolic rule extraction from neural networks: an application to identifying organizations adopting IT

Interest in the application of neural networks as tools for decision support has been growing in recent years. A major drawback often associated with neural networks is the difficulty in understanding the knowledge represented by a trained network. This paper describes an approach that can extract symbolic rules from neural networks. We illustrate how the approach successfully extracted rules from a data set collected from a survey of the service sectors in the United Kingdom. The extracted rules were then used to distinguish between organizations using computers from those that do not. The classification scheme based on these rules was used to identify specific segments of a market for promoting adoption of information technology. The extracted rules are not only concise but also outperform discriminant analysis in terms of predictive accuracy.