Darren B. Meister

Information systems research and Hofstede's culture's consequences: an uneasy and incomplete partnership

Information systems (IS) researchers have begun to investigate how national culture, as articulated by Hofstede, affects a wide variety of issues. A citation analysis of IS articles that cite Hofstedes research on national culture suggests that most research is focused on issues related to IS management and to IS, while issues related to IS development and operations and to IS usage remain relatively unexamined. Within the dominant categories, research is concentrated in the IS management and types of information systems subcategories. Furthermore, the dimensions of national culture outlined by Hofstede have not been frequently used to develop and to build theory. Research opportunities and approaches to develop a stronger cumulative tradition and theory for international IS issues are proposed.

Small business growth and internal transparency: the role of information systems

While many large businesses start out as a small enterprise, remarkably little is known about how an organization actually changes internally during the periods of growth. Small business growth is known to strain internal communication processes, for example, which likely limits growth opportunities. Information systems are often called upon to remedy such deficiencies. Through a participatory action research project, we investigated the ways in which a small business management team developed an IS-enabled solution to address their growth needs. During the progression of the project, a new outcome of organizational effectiveness, internal transparency, was identified and developed. Adopting a punctuated equilibrium perspective, a theoretical process model is proposed that sheds light on a relationship between internal transparency, small business growth, and IS. The paper concludes with observations that internal transparency may well be a concept that offers significant potential for MIS research as well as a discussion about the applicability and credibility of participatory action research for this project.

Introduction: fragmentation and integration in knowledge management research

Knowledge management (KM) research lacks a common conceptual core; it is cross‐disciplinary, addresses a wide variety of phenomena, and has difficulty distinguishing itself from many related areas of research. The result is a fragmented field that is itself artificially split from the related literature on organizational learning. KM may be progressing through a predictable life‐cycle that could end in collapse of the KM concept unless researchers can develop more integrative core theories of learning‐ and knowledge‐related phenomena in organizations. The diverse body of organizational learning and knowledge management research provides an impressive foundation for the synthesis of such broader theories of learning and knowledge that are creative, new, and integrative.

Internet Technologies, ECRM Capabilities, and Performance Benefits for SMEs: An Exploratory Study

Research on large firms suggests that dedicated customer relationship management (CRM) software applications play a critical role in creating and sustaining customer relationships. CRM is also of strategic importance to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but most of them do not employ dedicated CRM software. Instead they use generic Internet-based technologies to manage customer relationships with electronic CRM (eCRM). There has been little research on the extent to which the use of generic Internet technologies contributes to SME performance. The present study fills the gap, building upon the literature on organizational capabilities, marketing, and SMEs to develop a research model with which to explore the relationships between generic Internet technologies, eCRM capabilities, and the resulting performance benefits in the SME context. A survey across 286 SMEs in Ireland finds strong empirical evidence in support of the hypotheses regarding these benefits. The study contributes to managerial decision making by showing how SMEs can use generic Internet technologies to advance their customer relationships and contributes to theory development by conceptualizing eCRM capabilities in an SME context.

Reexamining Relative Advantage and Perceived Usefulness: An Empirical Study

Relative advantage and perceived usefulness are often used interchangeably in the literature. In this paper, the authors argue that this limits the understanding of the adoption of ICTs, especially when there are multiple alternatives. To address this issue, the authors reexamine relative advantage in relation to perceived usefulness, providing a re-specification of relative advantage and empirically testing a model that explores the roles of these constructs in explaining and predicting the adoption of a new technology in the presence of an existing one. The results demonstrate that perceived usefulness and relative advantage are related but distinct constructs. In particular, relative advantage fully mediates the effect of perceived usefulness of existing technology on the intention to use a new technology, and partially mediates the effect of perceived usefulness of the new technology on the intention to use it. The findings have important theoretical implications that help investigators better apply these constructs in research, as well as practical implications for ICT promotion strategy.

Multiattribute coalition formation analysis

A methodology for multiattribute coalition formation analysis is presented. The approach employs a multicriteria decision making technique, called the ordinal deductive selection system (ODSS). ODSS requires that the user provide only ordinal preference and issue importance information in order to develop a comprehensive preference model. Previous work in preference similarity metrics designed for use with conflict analysis is used as an attribute. However, the model is extended to include more qualitative factors that contribute to coalition formation such as the historical relationship between parties. A case is presented to illustrate the approach.<<ETX>>

Voluntary use of information technology: an analysis and synthesis of the literature

Voluntariness is recognized as an important influence on individual and collective technology acceptance. We conducted a comprehensive review of this literature and identified a rich set of voluntariness concepts and methods of operationalization. However, while considerable empirical evidence is reported in the literature, our review also revealed inconsistent results concerning the relationship between voluntariness and other concepts. Against that backdrop, we synthesized the literature into three types of voluntariness – perceived, intended and realizable voluntariness (RVOL), and showed how prior literature had not adequately accounted for RVOL. Moreover, we examined the multiple mechanisms that influence voluntariness and created a model to describe how to advance new knowledge about the important relationships among the three types of voluntariness and between voluntariness and user behavior. We argue that these concepts and relationships may help advance our knowledge of how a new technology is used individually and collectively in organizations.

Action Research in A Virtual Setting

Virtual teams are used by leading companies around the world to address important business problems and to support critical business operations. However, the best ways of providing leadership and managing technological-based change within these teams remain challenges for the practitioner and research communities. In this project, we describe how, as part of a research team, we participated in an Action Research project within a virtual setting. While we gained insights along the way, ultimately the project failed. From this failure, we draw our personal conclusions about what happened and what Action Researchers may do in the future to avoid such problems again.