Ibrahim Akman

E-Government: A Global View and an Empirical Evaluation of Some Attributes of Citizens.

Abstract This paper reviews and discusses e-government (e-gov) issues in general, its global perspective, and then reports the findings of a survey concerning impact of gender and education amongst the e-gov users in Turkey. Although the impact of gender and education in the use of e-gov has long been attracting interests of academics, no quantitative research has ever been realized in this field in the country. The survey was conducted among e-gov users with different gender and level of education from different sectors such as ordinary citizens, government, and private sectors. According to the comparative analysis the use of e-gov content and services is pervasive and is closely linked to gender and level of education.

Information Technology in Human Resource Management: An Empirical Assessment

The present paper begins by introducing a number of observations on the applications of information technology (IT) in the field of human resource management (HRM) in general. This is due to the fact that IT and its wide range of applications have already made their presence felt in this area. This will be followed by a report on the findings of a survey on the present trends in organizations with in the different sectors in Turkey. Although the impact of IT on HRM has long been attracting the interest of academics, no empirical research has ever been realized in this field in Turkey, and few studies have been reported elsewhere. The survey was conducted among the 106 IT managers and professionals from various sectors, based on whose results, the data shows that IT is used extensively in the organizations to perform HRM functions in Turkeys dynamic economy. The results also indicated that, while IT has an impact on all sectors in terms of HRM to certain extent, the types of IT used vary significantly between recruitment, maintenance, and development tasks. However, the empirical results here reveal that these organizations are not applying these technologies systematically and maturely in the performance of HRM functions.

Ethical behavior issues in software use: An analysis of public and private sectors

Ethical issues related to information systems are important to the information technology (IT) professionals. These issues are also significant for organizations and societies. Although considerable literature on IT and related ethical issues exists, a review of this literature has found little empirical research on ethical practices within the government and private sector organizations. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to draw inferences regarding such practices currently in these sectors. The research results indicate a significant correlation between the code of ethics and the attitude of professionals towards the unethical use of software in government and private sector organizations. These also indicate significant differences in government and private sectors.

Software piracy among IT professionals in organizations

This paper reviews and discusses software piracy issues from a global perspective. It also reports the findings of a survey concerning the impact of demographic factors on software piracy among IT professionals in Turkey. Although the impact of these factors on software piracy has long been attracting the interest of academics, no quantitative research has ever been realized in this field in the country. Elsewhere also, most of the software piracy-related studies are limited to students and academics and very few have reported findings related to IT professionals in different organizations. The survey was conducted among IT professionals from government and private sector organizations. Based on this survey, the results indicated that gender, age and experience have significant impact on software piracy. The implications of these findings are discussed and compared with other related studies.

A Model for Measuring Cognitive Complexity of Software

This paper proposes a model for calculating cognitive complexity of a code. This model considers all major factors responsible for (cognitive) complexity. The practical applicability of the measure is evaluated through experimentation, test cases and comparative study.

Factors influencing consumer intention in social commerce adoption

Social media remarkably changed the way of interaction between the consumers and organizations. The increased acceptance of social media has given rise to social commerce (s-commerce) and s-commerce usage is gradually increasing over the last few years. The progressive development of technologies suggests that s-commerce will become the mainstream for marketing and a literature survey indicates that there have not been many studies in this area. The purpose of this paper is to predict the factors influencing consumer intention towards the adoption of s-commerce.,This study uses a survey approach with reference to important behavioural factors such as satisfaction, ethics, trust, enjoyment/easiness, social pressure and awareness. The research model was developed to be in line with the available literature. The data were collected using a five-point Likert scale and the research model was tested using least square regression.,The results showed that user intention is significantly and positively related to perceived trust, enjoyment/easiness, social pressure, satisfaction and awareness. Also, “intention” was found to be a significant mediating factor for actual usage.,First, the questionnaire was a “snap-shot” instead of longitudinal study. Second, future research should use other moderating variables that may affect the usage of social media. Also the study could apply a variant of research methods to include other techniques such as interviews, which allow for deeper understanding of the problem and issues.,Social media represents an important platform for electronic commerce and has one of the most metamorphic impacts on business. Therefore, investigating the usage of s-commerce with reference to important behavioural factors could provide valuable information for companies in establishing policies and strategies. It could also be useful for management studies and researchers in understanding the consumers’ attitude towards usage of social media for commercial purposes.,S-commerce creates opportunities for firms. Based on findings this research provides insights with major implications for marketers, who would like to generate direct sales on social network platforms.,Existing literature focusses largely on the effectiveness of social media. Only a handful has endeavoured to analyse s-commerce systems and the literature on consumers’ behaviour in using s-commerce is not mature yet. This study is one of the few studies in this field, and aims to predict and explain the user acceptance of social media for commercial purposes.

Framework for evaluation and validation of software complexity measures

This study proposes a framework for the evaluation and validation of software complexity measure. This framework is designed to analyse whether or not software metric qualifies as a measure from different perspectives. Unlike existing frameworks, it takes into account the practical usefulness of the measure and includes all the factors that are important for theoretical and empirical validation including measurement theory. The applicability of the framework is tested by using cognitive functional size measure. The testing process shows that in the same manner the proposed framework can be applied to any software measure. A comparative study with other frameworks has also been performed. The results reflect that the present framework is a better representation of most of the parameters that are required to evaluate and validate a new complexity measure.

Measuring Complexity of Object Oriented Programs

In this paper, a metric for object oriented language is formulated and validated. On the contrary of the other metrics used for object oriented programming (OOPs), the proposed metric calculates the complexity of a class at method level and hence considers the internal architecture of the classes, subclasses and member functions. The proposed metric is evaluated against Weyukers proposed set of measurement principles through examples and validated through experimentation, case study and comparative study with similar measures. The practical usefulness of the metric is evaluated by a practical framework.

Investigation of employers’ performance expectations for new IT graduates in individual and team work settings for software development

Purpose In general, software development work environments involve many different tasks and have high demands on efficiency and quality of performance at both individual and team levels, which depend on the competencies of employees. However, the literature does not provide satisfactory evidence as for the characteristics and competencies of individuals. Especially, the employers’ expectations of new graduates have not been investigated in detail for different work environments. The purpose of this paper is to examine employers’ expectancies regarding technical, personal and educational competencies among IT-graduated employees to provide a comparison between individual and team work settings. Design/methodology/approach A survey approach was used for this purpose, and the research model was tested using multiple regression. Findings The results revealed that significant diversity exists in individual and team work settings regarding employers’ expectations for new graduates’ competencies in terms of adapting to new software development methods and approaches, using time effectively and experience gained in undergraduate projects. Originality/value The results of this study will yield insight to computer-related departments in curriculum development by providing a comparison between the varying competencies required in individual and team work settings from the employer’s perspective. In the long run, the aim is to meet employers’ demands of the new graduates’ competencies, resulting in better individual and team performances in information technology companies, thereby leading to successful software development.

A Cognitive Evaluation for Meetings in Software Development Process

Software development includes number of different type of meetings in the whole development process. The cognitive activities also play an important role in decision making activities in these meetings since they are carried out by human being. In this paper, we evaluated the relevance of meetings in different phases of the software development process with reference to cognitive aspects.