Ramakrishna Ayyagari

Technostress: technological antecedents and implications

With the proliferation and ubiquity of information and communication technologies (ICTs), it is becoming imperative for individuals to constantly engage with these technologies in order to get work accomplished. Academic literature, popular press, and anecdotal evidence suggest that ICTs are responsible for increased stress levels in individuals (known as technostress). However, despite the influence of stress on health costs and productivity, it is not very clear which characteristics of ICTs create stress. We draw from IS and stress research to build and test a model of technostress. The person-environment fit model is used as a theoretical lens. The research model proposes that certain technology characteristics--like usability (usefulness, complexity, and reliability), intrusiveness (presenteeism, anonymity), and dynamism (pace of change)--are related to stressors (work overload, role ambiguity, invasion of privacy, work-home conflict, and job insecurity). Field data from 661 working professionals was obtained and analyzed. The results clearly suggest the prevalence of technostress and the hypotheses from the model are generally supported. Work overload and role ambiguity are found to be the two most dominant stressors, whereas intrusive technology characteristics are found to be the dominant predictors of stressors. The results open up new avenues for research by highlighting the incidence of technostress in organizations and possible interventions to alleviate it.

The Dark Side of Information and Market Efficiency in E‐Markets*

Price dispersion reflects the differences in prices for identical products. While in physical markets such dispersion is prevalent due to high search costs, many researchers argue that search costs and price dispersion will be much lower in electronic markets (e-markets). Empirical evidence does not support this contention, and researchers have studied search costs, market factors, and service-quality factors to explain this dispersion. Previous research has largely assumed that more information is better. By ignoring the dark side of information, we argue that only a partial understanding of price dispersion is possible. In this article, information overload and equivocality are studied as two dark attributes of information that lead sellers to different pricing decisions in e-markets. Hypotheses relating these attributes to price dispersion are supported through analysis of 161 product markets. This work opens up new avenues in the study of e-markets and discusses the implications of these findings for research and practice on consumer and seller decisions. Subject Areas: Consumer Behavior, E-Markets, Information Equivocality, Information Overload, Market Efficiency, and Price Dispersion.

Disaster at a University: A Case Study in Information Security.

To this end, we present a case that addresses a data breach at a university caused by lax security policies and includes an element of social engineering. The data breach at the university resulted in a number of students’ losing personally identifiable information. The resulting aftermath placed a significant financial burden on the university as it was not prepared to handle an information security disaster. This case can be used as a pedagogical tool as it uniquely captured a data breach in a university setting. Readers of the case will identify that at the management level the case raised a number of issues regarding the security culture at the university and management of security function. The case also highlights the issues of lack of training and access control.

Investigating the determinants of telepresence in the e-commerce setting

Abstract While a majority of the US population uses the Internet to seek product information for purchasing decisions, U.S. Census (2017) shows only a small portion of actual retail sales occur on the Internet. Previous research shows that consumers anxiety on performance risk is one of the core causes for this small ratio of online sales, and can be addressed by enhanced telepresence. However, few studies investigated how telepresence can be enhanced. Drawing on theories of human information processing, we identify four drivers of telepresence. The four drivers identified are Standardization of Specification, Sensory Descriptiveness, Interactivity and Feedback Quality. Our study expands the nomological network of telepresence by presenting antecedents to telepresence. The proposed model is tested using 391 online consumers and results from the study are discussed.