Govindan Marthandan

What drives Malaysian m‐commerce adoption? An empirical analysis

– This study aims to empirically examine the factors that affect the consumer intention to use (IU) mobile commerce (m‐commerce) in Malaysia. The five factors examined in this study are perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease‐of‐use (PEOU), social influence (SI), perceived cost and trust., – The study sample consists of 222 respondents with a response rate of 84.09 per cent. Data were analyzed by employing correlation and multiple regression analysis., – The findings revealed that PU, SI, perceived financial cost and trust are positively associated with consumer IU m‐commerce in Malaysia. In addition, PEOU and trust were found to have an insignificant effect on consumer IU m‐commerce in Malaysia., – The generalizability of the findings is limited as the study focuses only on Malaysia., – Based on the findings, companies involved in m‐commerce should focus on improving the usefulness of the system, trust (i.e. security and privacy protection) and reducing the cost of m‐commerce services to improve the adoption of m‐commerce., – The findings made a contribution in terms of allowing us to understand the factors that can contribute to the adoption of mobile commerce. This study successfully extend the TAM model in the context of mobile commerce by incorporating one trust‐based construct (trust), one behavioural control construct (perceived financial cost) and one subjective norm construct (SI). This extended TAM model provides a greater understanding of user acceptance of mobile commerce in Malaysia.

E‐commerce usage and business performance in the Malaysian tourism sector: empirical analysis

Purpose – Based upon the E‐VALUE model developed, this paper aims to investigate the impact of e‐commerce usage on business performance in the tourism sector.Design/methodology/approach – A cross‐sectional survey is carried out on 165 Malaysian firms involved in the tourism sector (hotels, resorts, and hospitals engaged in health tourism) through the use of a structured questionnaire.Findings – The structural equation modeling results indicate that technology competency, firm size, firm scope, web‐technology investment, pressure intensity, and back‐end usage have significant influence on e‐commerce usage. Among these variables, back‐end integration is found to function as a mediator. E‐commerce experience (in years) is found to moderate the relationship between e‐commerce usage and business performance.Research limitations/implications – The paper focuses on the tourism sector in Malaysia and concentrates only on the management perspective of e‐commerce adoption.Practical implications – The results provid...

Information systems evaluation: an ongoing measure

With increased spending of information systems (IS), IS evaluation is becoming increasingly important. It is important for organisations to evaluate business value of IS they have spent a portion, sometimes large, of their yearly revenue on. For that purpose, however, practitioners and researchers still have not agreed on a single method, although cost-benefit analysis seems to be a flavour among IS practitioners. The decision on which evaluation method is more appropriate in a particular situation is largely context dependent. Evaluators commonly face a difficult situation in choosing the right method for a particular context. This paper first reviews different terms being used to describe evaluation of IS business value. Next, it presents past research results about IS evaluation practices of organisations. It then proceeds to provide a summary of IS evaluation methods, IS evaluation approaches, and IS evaluation types. Last, it concludes with research themes of IS evaluation studies.

Information technology evaluation: issues and challenges

Purpose – To justify an increase in information technology (IT) spending and to understand utilization of limited organizational resources on IT, the correlation between IT and business performance has been of great interest to business managers. However, business managers face issues and challenges in finding out how and to what extent IT is able to deliver the intended benefits. The purpose of this paper is to examine IT evaluation issues and challenges faced by information systems (IS) researchers, IS specialists, and business managers. Design/methodology/approach – This paper begins by reviewing the disparate discussions in past literature on IT evaluation issues and challenges. It then provides a synthesis of the disparate discussions by identifying eight issues and challenges in IT evaluation. Findings – The eight issues and challenges identified are: evaluation scope, evaluation timing, unit of analysis, level of analysis, different perspectives, different dimensions, different measures, and underpinning theoretical frameworks. It concludes with some suggestions on ways to improve IT evaluation practices. Originality/value – This paper posits that before a pragmatic IT evaluation approach can be developed, it is necessary to first understand the issues and challenges faced by IS researchers, IS specialists, and business managers in IT evaluation. Having identified the eight issues and challenges, this paper provides pointers on what needs to be considered when conducting IT evaluation.

Factors influencing the success of the disaster recovery planning process: A conceptual paper

Disaster recovery planning (DRP) is an IT process that considers the mitigation of risk in the IT department and put in place the procedure to recover the IT systems in the event of outages. This paper reviews the researches conducted on the topic of DRP and business continuity management (BCM). It explains the factors inherent in DRP and BCM processes and how these factors could be incorporated into an updated framework and presents an illustrative framework for an effective and successful DRP and BCM implementation.

Thirst for Business Value of Information Technology

For years information technology IT has helped companies improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Todays IT plays a more strategic role in building capabilities for sustaining and creating competitive advantages. The increasing importance of IT has led many organizations to integrate it into their daily operations. To justify the ever-increasing spending on IT, organizations have been searching for evaluation methods to prove the business value of IT. However, this is a challenging undertaking, as there are contradictory answers to questions on whether it is worthwhile to pay substantial sums for IT. To gain insight into the reasons behind the contradictory answers, this paper first reviews conflicting research results of past studies on IT business value. It then explains the term IT productivity paradox. Last, it provides five reasons why IT business value is not fully reflected in the way business managers expect it to be.

Exploring hyperlink structure of electronic commerce websites: a Webometric study

Hyperlink analysis, an emerging research area in web structure mining, extracts hidden information from hyperlink data. This study analyses the websites of USAs best 50 small companies to determine the association between the Webometrics data and business performance measures as well as traffic ranking. The results show that there is an association between the Webometrics data and the companys business information as well as traffic ranking. This suggests that Webometrics data could be used as an indicator for evaluating the business performance of the company as well as the visibility of its website to a target audience.

Sun Tzu art of war strategies and supply chain management as a strategic change agent: a proposed model for Malaysian service sector

Presented in a systematic approach, this conceptual paper propose to seek the senior managers’ views and perception of Sun Tzu Art of War strategies (STAW) and Effective Supply Chain Management (ESCM) processes as a strategic change management agent in achieving Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA) in the service sector in Malaysia. First, the proposed model would consist of four dimensions of STAW strategies, two dimensions of ESCM and three dimensions of SCA. Secondly, we hypothesise that the STAW strategies has a positive relationship with SCA and that the ESCM is a mediator in a relationship between STAW strategies and SCA. The findings would reveal if STAW strategies and ESCM processes and its implementations will play a significant role in attaining a sustaining competitive advantage in Malaysian service organisations.

Reducing risks in crisis management by GIS adoption

Today, it has become the both public and private organizations’ concern to care human beings against ever-increasing crisis around the globe. Emergence of new technology, particularly information systems (IS), can help the managers reduce the crisis management risks while making the decisions. Geographic information system (GIS) is recognized as a useful system for alleviating the risks during crisis management. Despite the usefulness of IS, the adoption of them by the respective managers is an essential part to achieve desired results. In this connection, the crisis management organization can play a vital role by supporting the users. This study aims to come out with a new model to have a practical and applicable method of GIS adoption within crisis management in order to reduce the risks. This study uses the analytic network process to prioritize the organizational criteria influencing GIS adoption. External pressure, facilitating condition, and GIS unit professionals are used as organization factors to GIS adoption. The results bring out the priorities of these factors in the crisis management.

An extension of UTAUT model for Palestine e–commerce

This study investigates the extension of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model to online shopping. The results show that performance expectancy has a significant positive impact on the intention to shop online. A significant positive impact of effort expectancy on the intention to shop online has also been observed. Social influence has a significant positive impact on the intention to shop online. However, facilitating condition has no significant influence on the intention to shop online. The results also show that the attitude towards online shopping is salient in determining the intention to shop online. Trust has a significant positive impact on the attitude towards online shopping. Perceived competence, perceived security control, perceived privacy control, shared values and communication have a significant positive impact on the trust. Yet, perceived integrity has no significant positive impact on the trust. Furthermore, opportunistic behaviour has a significant negative impact on the trust.