Ly Fie Sugianto

User satisfaction with business-to-employee portals: conceptualization and scale development

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate the business-to-employee portal user satisfaction (B2EPUS) measure. Five sequential stages of scale development were undertaken to achieve this purpose: conceptual model development, item generation, content validation, exploratory study, and confirmatory study. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the five dimensions of the B2EPUS, namely Usefulness, Confidentiality, Ease of Use, Convenience of Access, and Portal Design as the dimensions of the construct. Competing model analysis indicates that the second-order factor model is the better fitting for the B2EPUS construct. The theoretical and practical implications of the study as well as directions for future research are discussed in the concluding sections of this paper.

The Development and Empirical Validation of the B2E Portal User Satisfaction (B2EPUS) Scale

Advances in information technology (IT) and the rapid growth of the Internet use over the past decade have considerably changed the way organisations interact with their employees. An increasing number of organisations have implemented a business-to-employee (B2E) portal as a communication and facilitating tool to assist employees in performing administrative, personal-related, and specific tasks more effectively and efficiently. An understanding of what constitutes employees’ satisfying use of a portal is crucial for developing a successful B2E portal. To date, very little research has been devoted to establishing a measurement of user satisfaction with Web-based information systems, specifically B2E portals. The aim of this study is to develop a scale for measuring user satisfaction with B2E portals. This paper discusses three main sequential studies in developing the scale: domain identification, content validation, and an exploratory study. Evidence about reliability, content validity, criterion-related validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity is presented. Finally, we conclude this study by discussing limitations and future research avenue.

A new framework for B2E portal development

Rapid changes in the Internet technology present businesses with significant challenges and opportunities. Having made major investment on B2B and B2C aspect of e-business, businesses are now looking to adopt B2E portal technology to improve organisational effectiveness and employee moral. However, the lack of a suitable framework may seriously impede B2E portals implementation, and as a result, businesses may not be able to achieve the potential benefits of B2E portals. To address this gap, we propose a comprehensive framework for B2E portal development, which provides clear guidelines for B2E portal implementation considering the specifics associated with B2E scenario.

A class of semicontinuous fuzzy mappings

Abstract The concept of upper and lower semicontinuity of fuzzy mappings introduced by Bao and Wu [Y.E. Bao, C.X. Wu, Convexity and semicontinuity of fuzzy mappings, Comput. Math. Appl., 51 (2006) 1809–1816] is redefined by using the concept of parameterized triples of fuzzy numbers. On the basis of the linear ordering of fuzzy numbers proposed by Goetschel and Voxman [R. Goetschel, W. Voxman, Elementary fuzzy calculus, Fuzzy Sets and Systems 18], we prove that an upper semicontinuous fuzzy mapping attains a maximum (with respect to this linear ordering) on a nonempty closed and bounded subset of the n -dimensional Euclidean space R n , and that a lower semicontinuous fuzzy mapping attains a minimum (with respect to this linear ordering) on a nonempty closed and bounded subset of R n .

Co-optimization of energy market and ancillary services

This paper describes an innovative approach of co-optimizing the energy and ancillary services markets in the Australian National Electricity Market. A heuristic based technique called horizon scan is applied as the optimization procedure to find optimal solution for the problem. Horizon scan is a heuristic based technique to search for optimal solution in a non-linear solution space. The performance of horizon scan in optimizing the energy market has been reported in a separate paper. The paper also includes several case studies depicting simplified market models. Optimal schedules resulting in economical dispatch costs are obtained when horizon scan is applied to optimize trading between multi-regions with inter-connectors. Linear and non-linear constraint equations are also included in the model to take into account dynamics of the power system

Test of Asymmetry Effect of Demand on Spot Price Using MCMC Methods

Analysing and forecasting spot price has become a task that cannot be overlooked since the deregulation of the electricity market in Australia. There are many factors that affect electricity spot prices. Demand, especially, as one of the fundamental drivers, plays an important role as prices are decided according to the balance of the supply and demand. Financial economists have studied the temporal relationship between price and the trading volume in most commodity markets. The relationship implies the validity of a number of hypotheses, including sequential information arrival hypothesis and the market inefficiency, in the sense that volume can be used to predict future price changes. Such research finding can be used to design trading strategy for market players. Previous studies were either mainly concentrated on price itself or the direct relationship between demand and price, if they incorporate demand into spot price forecasting. In this paper, we attempt to find out whether or not positive and negative changes in demand have the same effect on spot price. As electricity spot prices possess the characteristics of mean-reversion, stochastic volatility and occasional jumps, we considered a mean-reverting asset pricing model that allows the conditional variance to incorporate log-stochastic volatility and a Poisson-directed jump process. Due to the complexity of the model, conventional estimation methods, such as Ordinary Least Squares, Maximum Likelihood and Quasi Maximum Likelihood, do not suit anymore. To accommodate this, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method, combined with Bayesian inference, is chosen to estimate the chosen model. MCMC methods have been reported to outperform the conventional estimation methods especially in estimating asset pricing models with stochastic volatility. The data we used in this study is the peak 30-minute spot price and demand from 2001-2005 in the Victoria region, Australia. The findings should help predict future electricity spot prices and strengthen any trading strategy based on price-demand relationship.

Potential of RFID in Emergency Management: Task-Technology Fit Perspective

This study aims to explore the potential of adopting radio frequency identification (RFID) in emergency management. In discovering the relevance and practicality of RFID in emergency management, a conceptual framework based on TTF model has been proposed and discussed in this paper. Multiple case study method has been employed to validate the proposed framework. The empirical findings in this study indicate that five key factors influencing the decision to adopt are privacy, compatibility, standardization, implementation and locatability. It is hoped that the findings of this research will inform emergency management organizations to better plan the adoption of RFID for emergency operations.

A Comparative Study on Pricing Rules and Its Effect on Total Dispatch Cost

Abstract A focus of study in auction market design is revenue comparison. Revenue Equivalence Theorem implies that bidders receive the same amount of revenue invariant to the auction type. This paper explores the applicability of this theorem in the context of the electricity market. We develop experimental test cases using agent-based simulation to examine the impact of different pricing rule on total dispatch cost. Using Q-learning in a repetitive trading environment, generator agents can quickly learn the market characteristics and seek to maximize their revenue by adapting their bidding strategies. A look-up table is utilized as a learning mechanism to improve the agents bidding strategies. We conclude that Revenue Equivalence Theorem holds in a multi-unitmulti- period in symmetric bidding. In asymmetric bidding and when the market share of generator agents differs significantly, the computer simulation allows us to observe the rapid increase in revenue with uniform auction.

Construct Validity Assessment in IS Research: Methods and Case Example of User Satisfaction Scale

Valid and reliable measures are critical to theory development as they facilitate theory testing in empirical research. Efforts in scale development have been put on ensuring aspects of validity. In this paper, the authors address a specific topic of construct validity assessment in scale development. Using data from the five leading IS journals between 1989-2008, in this paper, the authors determine if and how the field has advanced in construct validity assessment. Findings suggest that the proportion of studies reporting construct validity had increased and Confirmatory Factor Analysis CFA, Exploratory Factor Analysis EFA, and Multi-Trait Multi-Method MTMM were the three most common methods of construct validity assessment. The authors also apply a popular method from psychology and exemplify how the correlation analysis technique can be used to measure construct validity.

A Note on Continuity and Semicontinuity of Fuzzy Mappings

We study two deferent concepts of semicontinuity of fuzzy mappings by establishing characterizations of these fuzzy mappings. Relationships between semicontinuity and continuity of fuzzy mappings are explored. Some basic properties of these fuzzy mappings are presented and proved.