Laura L. Hall

Factors Affecting Information Technology Usage: A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature

With an estimated investment of over 1 trillion dollars to date on information technology (IT) products and applications, one would hope that there exists a corresponding improvement in organizational performance and productivity. The level of IT usage has widely been accepted as an important indicator of IT success within organizations. This research synthesizes and validates the construct of IT usage using a meta-analysis. It accomplishes that by analyzing the empirical results of various studies over a period of time covering a broad scope of characteristics of both users and information systems (IS), and it examines the relation between these characteristics and the level of IT usage within organizations. In general, the results of this meta-analysis lead to the conclusion that there exists a strong and significant positive relation between the perception of ease of use and the perceived usefulness of an IT system to the actual amount of usage. Another factor that indicates a high level of IT usage is the organizational support of IT within an enterprise. Although the factors of education level, training level, and professional level were found to have a substantial effect on IT usage, the magnitude of these effects were lower than those of the perceptions of the user and organizational support. Managers and IT professionals may have a better chance of avoiding IT system ineffectiveness and even failure by paying attention to the results of this research, especially in view of the fact that it synthesized and validated the results of a significant number of empirical studies published in some of the best IS journals. Rarely do single research experiments provide definitive answers on which to base policy decisions.

Cybersecurity, women and minorities: findings and recommendations from a preliminary investigation

This paper presents the work done by the ACM ITiCSE, 2013 Conference Working Group (WG) on Cybersecurity, Women and Minorities: How to Succeed in the Career! The ITiCSE 2013 conference was held July 1-3, 2013, in Canterbury, United Kingdom. The overall goal of the WG was to conduct a preliminary investigation into the reasons behind the lack of women and minorities within the field of Cybersecurity. This is not just an issue of academic or research interest, but is important in ensuring that a greater number of women and minorities progress through a full career in Cybersecurity. There are currently no statistics available on the numbers of women and minorities either currently enrolled in or graduated from these programs. There is a need to explore the full range of factors that influence women and minoritys decisions not to consider a career in Cybersecurity.

Measuring e-Commerce Technology Enabled Business Value: An Exploratory Research

While a plethora of anecdotal evidence exists, there is little empirical evidence on the value-creating potential of e-commerce technologies. The present research investigates whether firms using e-commerce technologies are successful in generating business value and, if so, what e-commerce drivers determine success and how to best use these drivers. This work shows how diffusion theory can be used to analyze the wide-spread utilization of e-commerce technologies and how they create business value. It presents an exploratory model of e-commerce business value grounded in information technology (IT) business value and productivity literature. We use a sample from more than 550 company executives, identified as innovative and successful users of IT.

Preparing IS Students for Real-World Interaction with End Users Through Service Learning: A Proposed Organizational Model

Although teaching the technical skills required of Information Systems IS graduates is a straightforward process, it is far more difficult to prepare students in the classroom environment for the challenges they will face interacting with end users in the real world. The ability to establish a successful relationship with end users is a critical success factor for any IS project. One way to prepare students for interaction with end users is through the implementation of service learning projects. Service learning projects provide a rich environment for students to experience real world interactions with users. This paper presents an organizational model to guide the implementation of service learning projects in IS curriculums. Service learning projects better prepare students to assume important management positions by giving them experience in applying the system development life cycle to an IS project and working with people. This organizational model uses the system development life cycle approach to integrate typical curriculum and service learning models. The organizational model is grounded in anecdotal evidence from prior experiences with IS students in service learning environments.

A Nomological Network Analysis of Research on Information Security Management Systems

This study offers a comprehensive examination of hypothetical concepts related to the behaviors, attitudes, outcomes, processes, experiences, manifestations and indicators connected with an organizations design, implementation and management of a coherent set of policies, procedures and systems to manage risks to its information assets. We introduce network analysis tools as a novel approach to highlight the construct relationships found in Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) literature published in the new millennium. Descriptive results display a significant expansion in the research of ISMS-related phenomena. Network analyses showcase the critical influence of certain constructs in scholarly publications as well as the most salient relationships among these constructs. Our study provides a gap analysis that also underscores those constructs that may require further exploration by this stream of research.