Quang Neo Bui

Governing Public Sector Interorganizational Network Infrastructures-The Importance of Formal and Legal Arrangements

Government agencies increasingly enter into interorganizational alliances to accomplish common goals. Alliances to create and maintain shared IT infrastructures for communication, coordination, and collaboration among agencies are an especially important phenomenon. This article examines three perspectives on the governance of interorganizational alliances (interpersonal interactions, financial ownership, and legal forms) and evaluates their applicability to interorganizational network infrastructures on the basis of theoretical arguments and the analysis of a single case study. Even combined, the three perspectives do not address the full range of issues involved in the case, because they do not pay sufficient attention to the varied formal and legal arrangements by which interorganizational network infrastructures are governed. The conclusion is that the conceptualization of governance for interorganizational network infrastructures remains problematic and that future theoretical development as well as empirical research is needed to resolve the open questions.

Proposing the Affect-Trust Infusion Model (ATIM) to Explain and Predict the Influence of High- and Low-Affect Infusion on Web Vendor Trust

Trust is just as essential to online business as it is to offline transactions but can be more difficult to achieve - especially for newer websites with unknown web vendors. Research on web-based trust development explains that web vendor trust can be created by both cognitive and affective (e.g., emotion-based) influences. But under what circumstances will emotion or cognition be more dominate in trust establishment? Theory-based answers to these questions can help online web vendors design better websites that account for unleveraged factors that will increase trust in the web vendor. To this end, we use the Affect Infusion Model and trust transference to propose the Affect-Trust Infusion Model (ATIM) that explains and predicts how and when cognition, through perceived website performance (PwP), and positive emotion (PEmo) each influence web vendor trust. ATIM explains the underlying causal mechanisms that determine the degree of affect infusion and the subsequent processing strategy that a user adopts when interacting with a new website. Under high-affect infusion, PEmo acts as a mediator between PwP and vendor trust; under low-affect infusion, PwP primarily impacts trust and PEmo is dis-intermediated. We review two distinct, rigorously validated experiments that empirically support ATIM. To further extend the contributions of ATIM, we demonstrate how use of specific contextual features-rooted in theory and that drive ones choice of affect infusion and cognitive processing-can be leveraged into a methodology that we propose to further enhance user-centered design (UCD). We further detail several exciting research opportunities that can leverage ATIM.

Organizational and Institutional Arrangements for E-Government: A Preliminary Report on Contemporary IT Management Approaches in US State Governments

The success of e-government is believed to depend in part on the organizational and institutional arrangements that governments enact for the management of their IT resources. This paper develops the conceptualization of IT management arrangements by considering possible interactions between two dimensions-1) the organization of IT activities and 2) control over decisions about IT activities (also known as governance)-for each of two categories of IT activities-1) IT projects (such as website development) and 2) IT services (such as the operation of networks). In addition, the paper provides preliminary empirical evidence obtained from applying this expanded conceptualization in the context of American state governments. Many states appear to employ centralization of IT activities to offset decentralization of IT control and vice versa. Consequently, neither dimension alone provides a good characterization of governmental IT management arrangements. These findings have the potential to enhance our understanding of the barriers to, and enablers of e-government success.

Dominant Designs for Widespread Adoption? The Case of Alternative Designs in the Diffusion of Enterprise Architecture

Prior research has suggested that for widespread adoption to occur, dominant designs are necessary in order to stabilize and diffuse the innovation across organizations. This study explores the possibility of alternative designs, or stable and tenacious forms of implementation, at the presence of widespread adoption. In other words, is it possible for widespread adoption to occur with alternative designs instead of dominant designs? Using the data from the diffusion of Enterprise Architecture across the 50 U.S. State governments, the study shows that there are five alternative designs of Enterprise Architecture across all States, and each acts as a stable and autonomous form of implementation. These findings enhance our collective knowledge on innovation adoption, and suggest a potential research trajectory for innovation studies.