Robert D. St. Louis

Managing your total IT cost of ownership

Though the TCO of end-user workstations can always be reduced by sacrificing end-user service, careful planning can reduce the costs without the sacrifice.

E-business differentiation through value-based trust

For e-business, location is irrelevant and competition is intense. To succeed in this environment, organizations must find new ways to differentiate themselves from their competition. One way to achieve e-business differentiation is to foster trust by building a perception of value congruence and avoiding a perception of value conflict. We explore how value congruence contributes to and how value conflict decreases trust in e-businesses. An experiment was conducted to examine the respective impacts of value congruence and value conflict on trust in an e-commerce setting. Our results show that, for e-businesses, value congruence has an enabling effect on trust while value conflict reduces trust. Such effects are strong enough to suggest that value congruence can be employed as an effective way for e-businesses to differentiate themselves while creating and sustaining competitive advantage. Managerial implications are drawn from our results.

Sharing information and building trust through value congruence

This study explores how value congruence contributes to the formation of trust in e-businesses, and how trust and value congruence influence consumers to share personal information. It is hypothesized that the perceived values of organizations regarding moral, social, environmental and political causes can have an effect on the trusting beliefs of e-commerce consumers and their willingness to disclose private personal information. A total of 775 subjects rated their perceived value congruence with organizations, their trusting beliefs, and the types of information they would be willing to disclose. This study finds that value congruence not only plays a role in mediating the trust of consumers for the organizations, but it also has a strong effect on determining their willingness to disclose personal information. In some cases, the influence of value congruence is greater than that of trust, even though trust has been touted in the literature as one of the most important factors in e-commerce. This research expands prior work by using structural equation modeling to test the relative strength of the effect of value congruence on each dimension of trust and the overall trust level, as well as its direct effect on behavioral intentions in terms of information sharing for non-profit and for-profit organizations.

Asynchronous implementation of the nominal group technique: is it effective?

Abstract Two major organizational shifts are the movement toward teams and the movement toward nonstandard work schedules. This has simultaneously increased the need for meetings and decreased the ability to meet. One of the most successful processes for structuring meetings is the nominal group technique (NGT). This paper provides evidence that computer-assisted asynchronous (CAA) implementations of the NGT are more effective than noncomputer-assisted synchronous (NCAS) implementations of the NGT (they generate more and better ideas, and do it in less time). The implication is that organizations are wasting huge amounts of money on travel and accommodations for face-to-face meetings that could be conducted asynchronously.

Understanding Time-Series Regression Estimators

Abstract A large number of methods have been developed for estimating time-series regression parameters. Students and practitioners have a difficult time understanding what these various methods are, let alone picking the most appropriate one for their application. This article explains how these methods are related. A chronology for the development of the various methods is presented, followed by a logical characterization of the methods. An examination of current computational techniques and computing power leads to the conclusion that exact maximum likelihood estimators should be used in almost all cases where regression models have autoregressive, moving average, or mixed autoregressive-moving average error structures.

Centralization vs. decentralization of application software

between centralized and decentralized application software distribution , although modular program design and enterprise management software may break that cycle. Meanwhile, IT departments that want to manage the distribution and configuration of software across their networks are searching for an acceptable balance of control, reliability , and speed. Distributing application files on individual PCs maximizes network performance, but makes it much more difficult to enforce configuration standards and maintain control. Placing application files in a few central locations gives an IT department significant control over software configuration but may degrade network performance and lead to user dissatisfaction. Whichever way the IT department chooses, the result should never lose sight of the user. As the components and software in corporate networks become increasingly complex, simplification of their management and administration becomes essential. The network-attached PC has a high cost of ownership; CIO Magazine has estimated the cost to be

Unemployment Insurance Overpayments: Evidence and Implications

10,000 per desktop per year [3, 4]. The costs of a network-attached PC mostly cover maintenance, not installation or actually buying the equipment. These costs can be cut by reducing the number of hours spent on network administration tasks like implementing new software, distributing new software versions, applying patches, and troubleshooting problems with the individual software applications installed on each workstation. Centralization of application software is one

A method for developing dimensional data marts

This paper presents the principal findings of the most comprehensive study yet undertaken of payment errors in the unemployment insurance (UI) program. Among the five states studied—Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Washington—the percentage of benefit weeks with payment errors ranged in 1981–82 from 12 percent to 52 percent, with an average of 26 percent. In each state, overpayments greatly exceeded underpayments, with inadequate job search efforts the primary cause of the overpayments found. The authors discuss the implications of their findings for previous research and for UI program administration.

Employer Tax Evasion in the Unemployment Insurance Program

Decision-oriented dimensional data marts are fundamentally different than transaction-oriented relational databases. A distinctive methodology and a different set of tools are required for their effective development.

Reported VS. Actual Job Search by Unemployment Insurance Claimants

We use unique data to analyze employer tax compliance with Unemployment Insurance (UI) provisions. The data indicate that employers may have underreported